Nikker

I'm guessing the washrooms in your area don't have sanitary paper(toilet paper).

So you are suggesting that it is out of reach for Google and Apple to publish libraries and frameworks that are optimized for a specific hardware platform (ARM A7 + A15) or is it that since Windows X already optimizes Intel / AMD offerings to an overwhelming extent that the differential would be moot?

Let me clarify.

When you program for Android/IOS how much of the logic you write is referenced from optimized libraries and how much is your own craft? Now look at the entire Market Place / App Store and figure how many of those apps entirely rely on Android / IOS optimized libraries.

While it may be true that some may wander off the beaten path and write their Apps in OpenGL ES directly and maybe even C/C++ most rely on frameworks and libraries already built in (which are indeed optimized).

I completely agree with performance per watt Intel is on the path to be where they need to be but ARM is on path to be par with a chip that even AMD's x86 offerings can't touch on a core by core basis. Now with Microsoft's Windows 8 trying it's very best to be a tablet experience it seems by sales figures people much rather prefer an Android or Apple tablet compared to even i5/A10 laptops with Windows 8. The technicalities you present are right on the money but what we have here is a perfect storm. Microsoft wants to be a tablet OS manufacturer and is skirting the traditional desktop/laptop experience leaving Intel with no real face value to their contribution.

When people go to their local stores and see rows of tablets that look like tablets and rows of laptops that look like tablets and rows of desktops that look like tablets, well they just seem to get actual tablets. Sure an Intel i3 will handily beat out the upper echelon of ARM offerings but with Android and IOS be entirely optimized for this experience we are finally realizing what AMD fans have been shouting for decades, the extra horsepower really does not come into effect often enough to make it a deal breaker. Your web page may load 40% slower on an ARM rig but when the Intel model will load it in 1.5s and you tablet will load it in 2s we now experience the Law of Diminishing Returns. If a dual core ARM A15 can consistently run at around 40-50% of the speed of an i3 mobile processor, a quad core ARM should settle at around 60-75% while being tasked to do much, much less.

With Intel and ARM you are also dealing with 2 very different ecosystems. x86 has had to be fast because most of the applications you will run on a daily basis are likely not really optimized, profiled or threaded anything above a couple compiler switches. They have to be fast because the code is so slow. Now with Android and IOS the language, libraries and sand-boxing improves the underlying mechanisms to the degree that most of the code that matters is optimized by Apple and Google where the equivalent Microsoft Windows libraries are not as optimized and in many cases so specialized that it gives a look and feel of a Wordpad type app rather than what you are really after.

Basically I feel by looking strictly at Intel's raw performance as to the reason why a platform will succeed is improper and an unfair comparison. People are moving en-mass to tablet and smart phone ecosystems not because they are faster or run by a particular processor but because it feels like a custom solution and the integration overall is acceptable. So I don't think it is ARM v Intel but rather tablet v notebook and laptop. If Microsoft keeps up with making their desktop OS look and feel like a tablet OS people buy tablets and Windows 8 doesn't have the applications, word of mouth or market penetration to make that possible right now.

If things don't change and quick we may just have a Microsoft and Intel "Double clutch"

"Double clutch: this is where a non-swimmer ends up in deep water and, out of panic, grabs the closest person to them to stay afloat." http://www.firstaid-cpr.net/lifeguarding/minor_major.html

Maybe 3 decades after it was released according to this paper; http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://59.1... Even if the NSA appointed S-Boxes did improve Lucifer then decreasing the block size does not really improve on your point.

Since many of these procedures are implemented in hardware directly, maybe it could be utilized as a conditional fall-back? An example might be a MITM attack that indicates an invalid hand shake or shows that an insufficient random pool is detected so it would attempt to connect using each alternative in order till it gets to the weak link. Technically speaking this would be ideal since the government and ISP's that carry these messages are so intertwined that the breadth would cover every citizen in their own country and likely many others.

Don't forget that IBM actually designed Lucifer which was 128bits but it was the (edit:s/NSA/NHIS) that truncated it to 56bits and named it DES. So maybe this is an example of "6 of one or half a dozen of the other"?

This sounds like it would likely be a Trademark infringement suit, which would be expected. Trademarks, if unprotected can lose their value. Having showing it on 100+ million of your devices should meet that requirement.

I think I see your point but you have to admit you haven't really established a foundation for your argument. You seem to feel (and I may be wrong of course) that one person selecting a fairly secure pass phrase once would be much more secure at any single point in time rather than a hap-hazard, dictionary based pass phrase that in comparison would be likely trivial to compromise at that same point of time. If that is indeed your point you do convey a valid point.

I just ask that if you advertise this method as somehow ideal then please allow for your audience to appreciate it as it is, an "if all else fails it's better than nothing" approach.

Cryptography in it's own principals are based on probability. If ignoring physical access attacks, social engineering attacks, etc are acceptable to you then yes, you can keep a "good" password for a long time. You also have to accept that out of all possible attacks accounting for nothing but brute force and basic dictionary attacks is 'enough' then you should also acknowledge the risks.

With the talent Microsoft hires vs their products the ratio always came out so low I just shook my head. I always pictured a day of work at Microsoft as someone holding a chair over a grad students head making them refactor sol.exe

And Farmville needs to know that same information? Or is it Farmville Dr.?

Owning and operating a business does as well. If you don't recruit the best you can for your company then indeed the risk is quite high.

You should probably know that before you start dealing with a prospective employee. If you are hiring quality people then it is definitely worth it. If you don't know for sure then you should not be hiring anyone.