Ed Felton has been blogging on the partial “cracks” (collisions) found in the MD5 and SHA-1 hash functions that are being reported at Crypto 2004.

Felton’s brief analysis:

Where does this leave us? MD5 is fatally wounded; its use will be phased out. SHA-1 is still alive but the vultures are circling. A gradual transition away from SHA-1 will now start. The first stage will be a debate about alternatives, leading (I hope) to a consensus among practicing cryptographers about what the substitute will be.

Note to self: design my systems so it’s possible to update crypto algorithms in all my legacy data, should the need arise.

Every year Dan Russell at IBM Almaden hosts a small one-day workshop for HCI and related researchers to schmooze and talk a particular subject. This year’s topic was near & dear to my heart: what do we do with WAAAY too much information? The first half of the day featured talks from what Dan jokingly described as “people making the problem worse,” the second half dealt with specific methods for trying to understand huge amounts of information.

My trip report is now online for anyone who’s interested. Dan also promised that the conference video will be posted online — I’ll post a link when it’s up.

My friend Nick ‘Rawhide’ Matsakis had some insightful comments on my question about Apple v. Real, and since I’ve somehow broken my comments form (grumblings on MovableType to come later) and he’s a grad-student-with-no-time-for-his-own-blog™ I’m posting them here.

The way I see it, there are three parts to Apple music triumvirate: The iPod, the iTunes Content Store, and the Fairplay format (AAC+DRM). Each of these support the other two in a devilish lock-in scheme. Customers don’t appear to mind this lockin so much since the Apple solutions are all in the top of their class and arguably best of breed.

Despite many competitors, no one else has this kind of seamless experience and there is still no one who can. Sony has crashed and burned (see here) and Microsoft will no doubt have an excellent music store, but the only player they have announced is a $400+ media center thingy that plays movies and shows pictures. Meanwhile, Apple will sell millions of iPods this Christmas, with the $250 Mini leading the charge.

Also, despite claims of being proprietary, Apple has opened up this triumvirate. HP will begin selling iPods in a few weeks, Motorola will begin selling Fairplay-enabled cell phones next year, and Audible.com has been selling spoken-word content on iTunes for 9 months. So, what is the problem with Real making its content play on the iPod? The iPod is clearly the big moneymaker for Apple, so making it be able to play more content should only be a good thing, right?

On its face, yes, but I think there are two issues here. The first is one of control. Apple has ‘opened’ up its triumvirate, but only a tiny crack and only in ways that 1) are strategic for Apple and 2) maintain the quality of the experience for users (at least Steve Jobs’ vision of a quality experience). Having Real have access to the iPod doesn’t appear to offer either of these.

More iPod content is good, but the engineering effort required to maintain interoperability is better spent working with the likes of HP and Motorola, which will each bring the Apple solution to millions of customers (perpetuating the lock-in, etc.) Likewise, the deals with HP and Audible have maintained Apple’s control over the experience. I’d be surprised if the Motorola phones didn’t have an Apple-designed media player that enforced the Apple brand in its appearance and operation.

Also, more importantly, Real is a real competitor to Quicktime in the online streaming media domain. Apple would probably be very happy if Real disappeared completely, offering them a bigger slice of the cross-platform content-creation platform.

In short, I think this is all about Real, and the results might have been much different if another company had approached Apple trying to license fairplay. Personally, I want to think Apple is being foolish in not trying to get a broader base form MPEG-4/AAC over WMA. However, I think they are adopting the Microsoft battle plan: grab as much land as possible in the beginning then rent it to the rest of the world at a profit. This plan hurts consumers, but I think it is the only way that Apple will be able to hold off the onslaught of Microsoft.

This whole Real-Networks v. Apple flap over the iPod has me scratching my head. On the surface it’s the age-old fight we always see when one company makes money by giving away the razors and selling the blades and another company tries to “free load” and sell their own blades. What confuses me here is that Apple makes most of its profit from selling the razors (iPods), and very little from selling the blades (songs on their iMusic site). (Their Q3 revenue on iPods was 3-4 times their revenue from the iTunes Music Store, and my unfounded guess is that the profit margin is also a lot higher than the estimated ten-cents-on-the-dollar they make on each $0.99 iTunes sale.) That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about Apple’s digital-hub strategy — unlike Sony, they don’t have to be all schitzo about whether they’re an electronics company or a content provider.

So assuming they expect to remain the portable-player market leader based on the merits of the iPod’s design rather than format lock-in (bad assumption?) then why get bent out of shape that someone else is trying to make their product better?