Pvphelp.com
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pvphelp.com
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What Alan Turing and the cryptographers of Bletchley Park started, distributed computing has finished. The M4 Project, which started its work less than two months ago, has cracked the first of three encrypted Nazi messages from 1942, which were never decoded during World War II. Using open source software, the team cracked a message that was apparently sent by a German sub, which said it was "forced to submerge" during a battle. Next up: two more messages leftover from the war, after which we assume the project will tackle the Vernam cipher.
We can forgive TiVo CEO Tom Rogers for acting like the concept of offering a tier of service in which the company gives away its boxes to customers who pay a slightly higher monthly fee is a new idea. After all, he hasn't been CEO that long. So, when Rogers announced recently that the company would start a test of a no-upfront-fee plan "fairly soon," he couldn't possibly have known that the company actually did start offering such a plan back in November of last year, and that links from the plan's web page still function, allowing customers to sign up for TiVo for $16.95 per month with no money down. Wait a minute. You say Rogers became CEO last July, and, therefore, was already with the company when the free deal was announced last November? Hmm. Maybe he was just out that day. Either that or he just hit the wrong button and skipped over it.
We're always up for a little bit of engineer poaching between device makers, like when Apple nabbed some VAIO guys from Sony for the MacBook Pro. Ah, good times. This time Apple is tasting a bit of their own medicine, since Samsung has scored Paul Mercer to design the YP-Z5. Mr. Mercer, a former Apple employee who helped design System 7 and worked on the Newton project, left Apple in 1994 and designed the original iPod interface as an independent contractor. Samsung tapped him for the YP-Z5, which has transparency effects and other interface niceties to give the nano a run for its money. Now we'll just have to wait and see if Mr. Mercer's work has managed to eclipse his former brilliance -- that screen won't be much help.
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