My latest book is "The Code Book" by Simon Singh, an interesting book that follows cryptography all the way from it's beginning to early 21st and late 20th century computer cryptography, including DES encryption and the powerful public and private key encryption scheme powered by the RSA algorithm. Also included is a short chapter about the mechanics of quantum cryptography and the power of quantum computers to break modern encryption systems. If you enjoy reading about security (Who doesn't? Sorry, bad question.) then you'll probably like this book.

After having played Call of Duty 4 multiplayer for over 20 hours I have come to the conclusion that it is a masterpiece of graphics and gameplay. As a forewarning, do not expect me to say it is better than Halo 3; it may be equal to Halo 3, but no matter how much Call of Duty fanatics whine and scream they cannot cover up the fact that Call of Duty 4 has just as many, if not more, faults as Halo 3. Off of that topic, I'm going to go back to salivating over the game.

Graphics

No matter how much those deluded Wii fans whine, graphics are still really important. Thankfully, Call of Duty 4 doesn't have to worry about bad ratings in the graphics category. With HDR, advanced night-vision, dynamic shadows, and great high-def explosions there is no lack of enticing graphics in this game. (The blood-splatters are really well done too; the guns really feel like they have some whump when the terrorists are thrown back a few feet if you unload a 10-round burst on them from an AK-47.)

Gameplay

Unlike previous Call of Duty games, it really seems like the developers actually exploited the convenient right and left bumpers on the controllers. (And didn't overuse them like the Bungie guys did in Halo 3.) The two bumpers contol the throwing of grenades, both your specialty grenades (Flash, stun, or smoke.) and the standard frag grenade. The developers also included lots of interesting equipment such as C4, claymores, and rocket propelled grenades. You can also use different "perks" that help to mix up the play a bit more, leading to the ability to make truly different and customized classes depending on your play style. You will love the claymores if your good at camping with a light machine gun or sniper rifle; though don't get too comfy, you'll still get taken out by counter-snipers or people with the Bomb-squad perk that allows them to spot your claymores more easily.

"Something truly amazing"

would be the correct description of Call of Duty 4. Combining a excellent degree of graphics, gameplay, and a degree of realism, Call of Duty 4 easily ranks in the top notch of games. It, combined with Halo 3, will definitely provide me with thousands of hours worth of entertainment for the next year.

That's right, Rain version 1 is complete and is available for download! Please be aware that this is the first version and there will likely be many bugs; for example Twitter only allows 70 authenticated requests to its API per 60 minutes, this means that if you post more than 70 updates in a 60-minute period all of your updates after the 70th update will not be accepted. Please comment with any other bugs that you encounter. Also, thanks again to Brett Terpstra for inspiration. If your on a Mac, download MoodBlast, it's much better than Rain. (It's Mac-only though.)

Forgot to mention this, but you will need Adobe AIR to run this application. AIR is a cross-desktop (Windows and Mac) runtime that allows you to build applications that will look and function the same on all supported operating systems. Download it here.

Reading Bruce Schneier's post on the new Storm worm was quite scary, even though I already knew about half of what he was saying about it. Seeing the complete description of the power and complexity of this twenty-first century worm was quite scary. With its new networking and distribution capabilities, Storm is virtually untraceable and invulnerable to anti-virus.

Why am I worried?

Although my computer and I are at little danger from this worm, primarily since I don't open emails with obvious subject lines like that, I am worried about what Bruce is calling Phase II. The time when the creators of the worm actually decide to do something with it. Since it likely has infected at least 1 million computers the total processing power behind the entire group of bots is monstrous. I fear that storm is just the beginning of worms that will take advantages of the complex networks and interconnectedness of the new Web 2.0 era.

Huh?

Misnamed errors can be quite frustrating, even more so when there obviously isn't an error. This is often the result of negligence, bad design, or the lack of the proper tools for feedback. In the image to the left, it is obvious that an error message isn't necessary, but there wasn't any other good way of giving feedback that the operation did run successfully than to display an error.

Combating This Problem

Until the proper tools come out, it seems kind of like we're stuck with misleading error messages.