US – The Worlds Copyright Police – Update

This is a follow-up to the article I posted earlier this year.

The US have now started seizing domain names, against the wishes of their own people and the rest of the world. They need to be taught a lesson, that they are not gods and do not control the fate of the internet. The WORLD Wide Web should remain as such, a global system. Allowing one country to selectively control and censor it would make the internet far less useful and would become a politician weapon.

This needs to stop, right now. For the moment they have started taking control over torrent site domain names, which can be easily corrected by using the hosts file – which I will describe in a later post.

To anyone living in the US who may be reading, if you value freedom on the internet please protest to whomever you think can help.

You can read the full article on torrent freak here.

New Project – TCE – The Chemistry Explorer

Hi everyone!

Here I am, writing about yet another one of my projects. This time I have decided to work on a program relating to a subject that is both close to my heart and one that some people find difficult to understand – chemistry.

I am thus building a tool to help people understand and solve chemistry related issues, it comes with a periodic table (as shown below) a chemistry calculator as well as some other features. As always I am open to suggestions and help should you wish to contribute either.

I will post developments on this project as I complete or start work on various parts of it so stay tuned for more! (Yes, I did copy the colours from the Wikipedia Periodic Table but I am colour blind so that was the best I could do under the circumstances!)

Current Periodic Table Display (v1)

Image Encryption Tool – Data Format

Hi Everyone!

In an earlier post I said I would explain a little about the the format used in my new data encoder and so here it is.

The images are stored in PNG, not any other type of format, because PNG supports full alpha transparency. The data is encoded by converting the text into binary data and then these are converted into pixels of colour, with the data stored in one of the 4 colour components (red, green, blue, alpha).

Certain operations are then done on this data to make it harder to recover and the remaining spaces are filled in with randomly generated pixels.

Image Encryption Tool – Completed!

I am pleased to announce that the new image encryption tool I was working on is now completed, boasting some new features that I will post about later. I also hope to post about the format, and how the data is stored (though I will keep some of the details hidden to ensure the format remains secure). If anyone wishes to beta test the software then please context me.

But for now I am going to get some much deserved rest. Keep an eye here for more information soon.

The US – The Worlds Copyright Police?

I have just been reading a rather interesting article on TorrentFreak about a new law that the US government hopes to pass, for which I quote the title of the post on TorrentFreak.

United States lawmakers have proposed new legislation today that would allow the Department of Justice to take over domain names of websites that promote copyright infringement. The proposed bill would allow for court orders against domestic as well as foreign sites, which could potentially shutter many torrent sites including The Pirate Bay.

What the hell does the US think they are doing? Until now no political body has owned the rights to control the internet on that level, for whatever reason, and suddenly the US comes along and decides they have that right? How is it that the US feels they have the right to decide to impose their laws in other countries? Copyright law does not apply everywhere and it varies greatly from country to country… I fail to see how they can claim to remove a copyright infringing website from a country that may have a different idea of copyright violations.

Someone really needs to slap some sense into the US, they are starting to cross lines that are better left alone. Leave the internet free of political influence or beware the consequences.

Working on a New Image Encryption Tool

Hi everyone!

Since I now have some more spare time I have been working on a new tool that allows you to securely hide at most 4 pieces of information (each a maximum of 255 characters in length) inside a random pixel image. I am working on ways to use this technique inside real images, but that is somewhat more difficult and it may take a while to perfect, if it works at all.

The image appears to be a random pixel generated image with varying colours, usually with 50×50 pixels in dimension (but this is not required to be so). The image looks something like this:

Sample image.

… And when you open it in the decoder tool you get something like this:

Preview of the decoded information.

The program is actually quite simple but the way in which the information is stored should make it quite difficult to break. However with the decoding tool I have designed, you need only open the image to retrieve the information. If anyone is interested in hearing more or has some ideas to contribute, please let me know. I will release more information about the system used and so on at a later time when I stabilize the idea and format.

Found a Prime!

I’m quite happy to have found my first prime as part of PrimeGrid!

I got the following e-mail this morning:

Congratulations! Our records indicate that a computer registered by you has
found a unique prime number. This computer is running BOINC, is attached to
the PrimeGrid project, and is assigned to the Sophie Germain Prime Search. What makes
this prime unique is that it’s large enough to enter the Top 5000 List in Chris Caldwell’s
The Largest Known Primes Database.

Since you have auto-reporting selected, the following prime was submitted on your
behalf:

Added 94172 : 7318825406445*2^666666-1 (200701 digits)

On other news I will soon be starting work on an online recycling database for CCC. Keep checking for updates on that.