A horde of photographers descends on some geographically fecund place and documents 24 hours worth of typical sights in often stunning photos. His new project aims to do the same for cyberspace. Paul Kocher gained instant techno-fame when he published a rather technical abstract outlining new attacks on many of the currently popular cryptographic algorithms, including those used in the popular, not to say notorious, PGP encryption program. The method measures the amount of time required to execute various crypto algorithms, and provides an efficient tool which cracks ciphers using reasonable amounts of computer power. Roaster users can run NI's native compiler as well as Sun's javac compiler for full Java compliance.
Roaster includes a runtime applet testing environment.
All this to come by mid-1996. It's four hours of ripping history backed by this impressive Web site which contains source material covering the war's chronology, weapons and technology, and maps. The interviews are by far the strongest part of the site, and indeed of the program. Everyone gives candid accounts of what happened, from the generals, troops, Iraqi officials and soldiers, POWs, and diplomats on up to Thatcher and Gorbachev. There' s a feedback area here so put in your two cents about who won and who lost.