Archive for November, 2007
An Immodest Proposal
Friday, November 30th, 2007When I stop to think about it, the prospect of improving communications here in Vanuatu seems an almost insurmountable problem. At the best of times, it feels like a labour of love. At other times it’s more reminiscent of wading chest deep through a vat of Jell-o.
Everything moves at an infuriatingly slow pace, a pace [...]
Ghost in the Machine
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007In the most recent RISKS mailing list digest, Peter Neuman includes a brief article by Adi Shamir describing a method of exploiting minor faults in math logic to break encryption keys in a particular class of processor.
Titled Microprocessor Bugs Can Be Security Disasters, the article makes an interesting argument. In fairly concise terms, Shamir outlines [...]
The Right Tools for the Job – II
Friday, November 16th, 2007I was in Pentecost island last week, visiting some members of my extended family in Lalwari, a village located almost in the clouds in the island’s mountainous spine. The village is only accessible by footpath, meaning that day-to-day life is almost entirely without automation of any kind.
Half an hour’s walk down a muddy mountain trail [...]
Network Neutrality
Monday, November 12th, 2007There was a story recently in the newspaper concerning a perceived need to ‘invent a new Internet’. It explained that the increasing use of music and video content was threatening to fill up our Internet connections, potentially bringing the whole system grinding to a halt. There’s been a lot of buzz about this recently, most [...]