what’s cooking???

http://iruel.net/?p=64

http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2007-November/060846.html

minimalistic logging. :)

thanks Bruno, for the tip.

CTRL-Space Syndrome

Are you a compulsive Quicksilver user that is forced to use windows? Tierd of pressing CTRL-Space and find yourself gazing at the blank and then softly mumble “tsk…crap!”

Meet Keylaunch.

If you are using any other quicksilver wannabe (I was!) make sure you give this app a run for it’s life…you will not be let down.

File Encryption in Multi-Platform Scennarios.

Blowfish still seems to be the cross-platform encryption system of choice. Even as AES moves at a fast pace as the de facto standard I failed to find anything that would work on my Windows, Linux and Mac OS boxes without mind boggling hassle. I wasn’t even demanding much… I didn’t need a live encrypted file system or something of that magnitude. but actually had my hopes up for something I didn’t had to install on a windows computer as a stand alone application, some binary I could store on my usb memory stick and expect it to work without registering 4 dlls, add 12 registry keys and create another entry on add and remove programs.

I don’t mind bcrypt, I really don’t. Most people tend to find it arcaic: the lack of any sort of options, the inability to process more then one file at a time, the windows version doesn’t even mask the password as you type it, for the love of god! But in all honesty it’s so damn simple it’s great! sure, wildcards would be nice and a software created towards security that doesn’t mask passwords is a contradiction by itself…

But it works, and it works flawlessly in all three platforms (and some others I haven’t found a computer lying around to install them on) and I wish it was all as simple as bcrypt. a file copy away or a make away.

I’m waiting for AES, it’s got the juice one expects from today’s cryptography, but I’m also waiting for it to be useful and non obtrusive for a multi-platform user.

For the folk using only Mac OS there are these three nice apps from Steve Dekorte for your delight:

Crypt1 and 2 blowfish encryption

Crypt3 AES encryption

These are nice and easy to use, but the blowfish version does not decrypt anyhing encrypted with bcrypt. crypted files must have .blowfish for the app to decrypt them, otherwise it will encrypt them again.

gnuPG is great, but again, I need to install a bunch of stuff to get it to encrypt or decrypt anything. it’s truly cross-platform, but i’d need to install it in every single computer I’d use.

Googling for some news on the issue I came across a lot of posts in forums of people pretending that zipping or raring file with a password would produce a similar effect. Are these the people who actually failed at cracking a zip password? because that’s the point isn’t it? your encryption is only as good as your password and as good as the system that saves that password from peering software.