Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Ripe it
A couple of weeks ago I attended to a summer school where one of the teachers was Bart Preneel; he's sooo cool. He gave some classes about how to formally proof crypto algorithms. The classes were interesting, but when I look at his home page I found out a couple of things about him which really impressed me.
He's one of the creator of RIPEMD-160. He says that RIPE-MD should be preferred to SHA-1 because of the way it was developed. In fact it happens that RIPE-MD was developed by a framework of European cryptographers and the whole process was public, while RSA was secretly developed by an American private company.
Well, I have to admit that I completely agree with him, so I propose to use RIPE-MD instead of SHA-1.
He's one of the creator of RIPEMD-160. He says that RIPE-MD should be preferred to SHA-1 because of the way it was developed. In fact it happens that RIPE-MD was developed by a framework of European cryptographers and the whole process was public, while RSA was secretly developed by an American private company.
Well, I have to admit that I completely agree with him, so I propose to use RIPE-MD instead of SHA-1.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Search the reader
Finally it is possible to search text in the feeds of Google Reader. It was one of its major lacks.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Experimenting with Trousers and the TPM
A couple of weeks ago I experimented a little bit with Trousers. For those who don't know, Trousers is an open source TSS... basically it is the software stack that you should use to pilot a TPM.
TSS (thus also Trousers) is based on the concept of Context and Objects.
A Context is similar to a session: usually one can create a Context, then he refers to the Context and when he finishes what he has to do, he destroys the Context.
Context deals with Objects that holds all the information needed by the TSS to interact with the TPM. Objects may be assigned with Flags that specify the type of the Object, its parameters and whatever is necessary.
Typically when a programs uses a TSS it should perform this operations:
TSS (thus also Trousers) is based on the concept of Context and Objects.
A Context is similar to a session: usually one can create a Context, then he refers to the Context and when he finishes what he has to do, he destroys the Context.
Context deals with Objects that holds all the information needed by the TSS to interact with the TPM. Objects may be assigned with Flags that specify the type of the Object, its parameters and whatever is necessary.
Typically when a programs uses a TSS it should perform this operations:
- Create a Context
- Connect the Context to a TSS; the TSS may be local or remote
- Create the Objects needed
- Assign flags to the Objects
- Call the functions needed to perform the operations
- Destroy the Objects and close the Context
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Miro
Democrayplayer changed its name in Miro, which is better, I think. Democracy sounded too much like some politically-aligned stuff. I've nothing against polically-aligned stuffs, but just it's not the purpose of a free video player.
I tried it and I've got to say that it has improved, a little. Now the video plays and the audio plays as well. I remember that I tested it when it was still called democracy and I was able either to see video or to hear the audio, but not at the same time.
I feel the home page is getting cleaner, but it still is far from perfection. I notice that Miro's team choose the vertical alignment for the small previews of the "Popular", "Category" and "Just added" feeds.
I would prefer the horizontal alignment, just as iTunes does. And I would also change the "Just added" into a "Random feeds".
Moreover, the homepage continues below the previews. This part is useless because it's not visible and the user has to scroll down and because it contains no information that can not be reached other way.
For example you can reach the categories from the top bar
and just beneath the top bar there's a link for submitting channels.
The only other information present in the lower part of the page are the Recent News, which can be added as a clip just as gmail does
I would also change the Video Search page: I would make it more web 2.0. The user should not be asked to choose where he/she wants to search in. If no option is given, Miro should search in any provider it knows and display information grouped by provider or by popularity or by resolution or by any other criteria suitable. If the user wants to refine the search, he/she can decide if he/she wants to search only in youtube, or google video, or whatever he/she likes.
Clearly it would be interesting to have some video-neighborhood features à-la-last.fm, for instance.
I tried it and I've got to say that it has improved, a little. Now the video plays and the audio plays as well. I remember that I tested it when it was still called democracy and I was able either to see video or to hear the audio, but not at the same time.
I feel the home page is getting cleaner, but it still is far from perfection. I notice that Miro's team choose the vertical alignment for the small previews of the "Popular", "Category" and "Just added" feeds.
I would prefer the horizontal alignment, just as iTunes does. And I would also change the "Just added" into a "Random feeds".
Moreover, the homepage continues below the previews. This part is useless because it's not visible and the user has to scroll down and because it contains no information that can not be reached other way.
For example you can reach the categories from the top bar
and just beneath the top bar there's a link for submitting channels.
The only other information present in the lower part of the page are the Recent News, which can be added as a clip just as gmail does
I would also change the Video Search page: I would make it more web 2.0. The user should not be asked to choose where he/she wants to search in. If no option is given, Miro should search in any provider it knows and display information grouped by provider or by popularity or by resolution or by any other criteria suitable. If the user wants to refine the search, he/she can decide if he/she wants to search only in youtube, or google video, or whatever he/she likes.
Clearly it would be interesting to have some video-neighborhood features à-la-last.fm, for instance.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Shapes on Google maps
Google is taking seriously the mission of bringing web apps to the highest level. They just added the possibility to draw shapes on their maps directly from the browser.
I don't know how this could be useful, but it's so cool. You can do things like this:
I don't know how this could be useful, but it's so cool. You can do things like this:
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