You don't even have to be lucky to break standard encryption anymore. Distributed.net broke one of the securist 56 Bit schemes around recently. Looks like 128 bit encryption is now the floor for secure communications.

If you use a Mac, you might want to be aware of Apple’s Tech Exchange. The page at apple.com brings together info from their technical database, software updates, discussion forums, and hot news. It looks like a great starting point for troubleshooting a Mac. Another key site for this is Mac Fix It.

Seems a lot of people are waiting for DSL and some of them have a nicely sarcastic sense of humor.

The Newseum is an interesting concept: a museum for news. Their brick and mortor location is in the home of big news media: Manhattan. Their website has some nice exhibits including The Political Cartoons of David Horsey and Stories of the 20th Century. The last exhibit is nicely designed.

A funny story gets more amusing… Microsoft forgot to pay the renewal fee on a batch of domains they own including the one behind hotmail. Linux Consultant Michael Chaney, who has a hotmail account, couldn’t get to his email as a result. He ponied up the $35 fee. Well, Microsoft sent him a $500 check as thanks. Michael has now put the uncashed check up for bid on eBay with the proceeds going to the winning bidder’s charity of choice. Bidding doesn’t close until a week from tomorrow, but as of 8:50am CST, the highest bid was already US$5,000. Apparently the irony of a Linux Consultant crossed his mind because his account ends with "According to Microsoft, they had known about the problem the day before, and working with Network Solutions, their technicians were unable to determine the cause before we did. There’s no better way to say it, folks, this is a better way to write and debug software."