text:
Indeed, it is thoroughly discussed that Angelina should enjoy treating William like a classroom of students. Such actions could provide behavioral control techniques, teaching interaction boundaries and giving of awards for good behavior. That, of course, must accompany Angelina tightly regulating all plans, enforcing rules and enduring misdemeanors. That won`t be easy but her years of teaching skills come into play in all of this. And without a doubt, Angie knows how to teach, teach and expertly govern a room of adults. Thus, a feeling of confidence about controlling William overtakes the theology professor.
As for the rewards part, Angie hopes that she doesn`t need to. For she is uncertain what effects may arrive from rewarding William. After all such might provide encouragement to him with ideas of wanting more of her and to take control of her. Yet, she sees the point in supplying positive reinforcement. It seems to be something needed so that she keeps a tight leash on a man who proves that he is a force that dominates. So with a deep breath, Angelina hopes of the eventual payoff of having no William in her life. It goes with the assumption that bad boy billionaires become frustrated when being extensively controlled. Quite an idea that has no true fact to back it up but both are willing to push things into what they feel is a positively perfect way to deal with what Angelina currently endures in concern to William McKnyght. So, within that everything seems all sorted as they finish making plans before bedtime.
Therefore, three full days of activities in the city do occur. It begins with morning runs to then mix in mid-afternoon lunches, and evening dinners out while participating in cultural events for amusement. All three days are thoroughly enjoyed with William building each moment to be the idea that Angelina is in control of everything. Hence, that has life seem that all things are easily comfortable and becoming as the women wish life to be. Thus, it is no surprise that all three of them spin the conversations and thrill in the sharing of events. It is a happiness that forms a semi-solid trio of friendship that seems somewhat more long-term than it is.
As friends, they each agree that life is going well and that Jenessa needs to live in North America so that life remains as it is. Yet, late on the last day, William sends the white limo to take the ladies to the airport. The two females soon stand at the terminal gate to the plane. Both appear somewhat lost and know that emotional pain exists in the coming days. Each feels that they are departing from a sister that is a best friend but truly the other woman only is a cousin. Hence, Angelina's eyes flood with tears with her saying farewell to Jenessa.
"Am gonna miss you. I miss you already, had fun. " Arrives in sobbing with continuing chatter. "You really should come live here. You always wanted too. You are divorced, I am divorced and we both enjoy teaching. We each exist workaholics and live so similar. You easily may find a job here. We share the house and everything would be great. "
Then more watery droplets stream for both as Jenessa peers at Angelina with helplessness and an, 'I love you' feeling. It shines on both women as Jenessa`s stare silently claims, 'great idea but it's not that easy'. Therefore, more tears flow with the next words from Angelina becoming inaudible.
As the Italian blond woman wipes away her own droplets she replies, "We will be together again when you visit. So, enjoy relaxing before the traveling that comes with studies overseas. You only have a year before all that study during next year. You need this year off and you need to enjoy it."
"I do." Tearfully asserts Angelina with embracing Jenessa once more.
"Yes, you do Angel. And you seem to be managing it well for a woman who is a workaholic. You even handle Billy very well." Comes spoken in admiration as the two cling to each other within the embracing.
Angelina grins of that providing a sassy, "Hell yes, I do. We have whipped him and taught lessons."
"Damn straight! And it is you that whipped him." Claims Jenessa with adding in, "Bombieri women can do everything. We are badass bitches that know the ropes with then making men kneel."
It is cocky of them. Indeed, it comes across as a bit arrogant but it is how they see it. Of course it`s untrue but still, it helps Angelina deal with the problem of William being so much William. And with mentioning of him then William suddenly strides up to them while holding two red roses tied with a yellow silk ribbon. He immediately passes over the two flowers to Jenessa with joyfully saying. "One is from Angelina. One is from me. Each is kissed. We both send you off with our best thoughts. Be safe." Then he leans forward embracing Jenessa while whispering in her ear. "I will miss you. If you ever need anything then call me. That is even if Angelina kicks me out of her life."
In return, Jenessa holds onto him a moment longer with whispering in his ear. "She may do that but hey you like the challenge."
"Yes, I do." he confidently affirms with immediately standing beside Angelina to place an arm about her waist with her automatically moving in closer to him. William smiles of the closeness that usually is not allowed and Jenessa instantly notices that her cousin strangely easily accepts the gesture. Such puzzles causing Jenessa to wonder what it means as she says to Angelina, "You are magical. You always amaze me but I am going to miss the flight. Miss it if we keep talking. So, I must go." Then Jenessa supplies one last hug to Angelina before stating, "You are doing great and you are happy too. Do remember that. But, if you aren`t okay, then I can be here within a minute. That is if you need me to be."
That brings the coming of a true farewell. Then Jenessa boards the plane as Angelina finds a lookout place to watch the plane fly off. Within this happening William follows Angelina to stand beside her in stating, "I will walk you to the car after you see it take off. I can`t stay longer than that. I also I can't join you for a late dinner but I will call later."
"Oh, okay." Comes the solemn response before they walk out of the airport with no further conversation between them until reaching the automobile. Upon approaching the white limo the chauffeur swings the door open with Angelina then taking to sitting in the backseat. In her doing so William bends downward to check if she is settled in before he then queries of many things, "What are your expectations from now on? Do the morning runs still exist? You still have control, my Angelina, it`s still all you. Everything between us is still all in your hands. So, how do we proceed?"
That instantly allows a stunned feeling of a stinging truth to fill her. That truth is that from this point onward life changes drastically. The fun times wanes into being alone with the busy routine almost nonexistent and her still having to deal with William. That creates quietness with William looking bewildered for he wants to seize control to dominate this moment. Yet, to deal with those sensations he grips the car door to send that energy into his fist. Within that, there exists a sharp silence until Angelina looks him dead straight in the eyes to share honesty with him.
"I only do running when she visits." Comes clearly spoken knowing that she must deal with this man all on her own, on her own with things that she merely wants to not have in her life.
"I know. But I run every morning at five. I always have. However, I like the routine of this month when it was seven. But no you won`t be doing that and so much is going to change once I close this door. I lose you when I let go of this door." He conveys in a tint of sorrow with immediately standing straight so that she doesn't see that it sincerely shows on his face.
With such said Angelina ponders how things now change between them. It brings thoughts of what existed before Jenessa`s visit. Then she thinks of the events of the past month. She sees how things may change. Then comes the further realization that she truly is on sabbatical. Her being on leave from teaching for two years with all of its loneliness and endless hours to fill subsists as a hardship for the workaholic professor. It comes, as tribulation for long ago, Angie understands that she needs to work so that life feels complete. Yet, she must endure one-year of no work, followed by studying all over the world next year. All of that exists before she then returns to teaching at the university again. To her, it`s all good events if she may skip the year of forced resting time so that she move into the remainder of coming events. However, the year of no work only screams to be boredom, loneliness and wandering around feeling lost. Within these thoughts and feelings, Angelina Ana Bombieri does the unspeakable.
"William, there aren't any changes. No changes as long as you keep your promises of me being in control. Thus, I do yoga and fitness at six each morning in my spare room. So, if you still run the same route we did this month then we may enjoy coffee at my place before you go to work. What do you say to that?"
That statement provides a luminescent smile with William feeling completely right about how he has Angelina exactly where she should be. Hence, the next four months have mornings filled with them sharing morning routines starting at six. The remainder of each day tends to be the two of them doing their own thing. But often dinner is together with it being almost anywhere in the city. Therefore, it involves various types of eateries, parks, his office and Angelina`s house. They occasionally add in going to museums, the cinema, the music theater, and art galleries. He shows her all that can exist for entertainment in the city. Including special nights at the BDSM club that William is a member of. So, there seems no real change but the happiness for them both increases.
Through it all, Angelina feels that she controls the relationship for William allows her to perceive it as that. William does but it is not true that Angelina controls their interactions for he often secretly intervenes or sets things up without her knowing it's initiated by him. Yet, according to the professor, their friendship seems to not change but it slowly does. It does in many little ways causing a quiet bliss to exist for both.
In time everyone around William treats the friendship as though he and Angelina are a couple doing dating and being destined for marriage. That subsists as not factual but William quietly encourages it with Angelina not really noticing. She does not for her only real concern is controlling his interactions with her life. Which she thinks that she expertly wields that power but Angelina is unaware of how much William influences their friendship into being more. Yet, without a doubt, Angelina does not want more than a basic friendship but it comes to her anyways. In truth, it exists via William's puppeteering efforts. Such endeavors exist right after Jenessa`s departing. In fact, from day one of the departure William slowly fills Angelina`s free time with his presence, his voice, his plans and anything that she can be a part of while being connected to him.
Of course, there is more than that in Angelina`s life. So in many ways, William is limited too. Actually, Angelina enjoys much more than their time together for she writes articles in concern to her career and deals with various aspects of her active social life. Hence, that is part of why Angelina doesn't know of his manipulations. Her naivety of his manipulation comes even easier due to there being no William late at night. Yet, at night Angelina is most happy and lost in it. She is, for in the depths of the late hours the sexy submissive professor feels that she is not alone.
How? How is it that she is not alone in a house of only her? Easily. For she quite honestly thrills in falling deeper in love with Ever. Thus, the beautiful professor remains dazed with being even more lost in love. In fact, as far as Angelina is concerned, she has heaven at night with her submissive love to a female phantasm while during her days a powerful man submits to her will. Therefore time passes sweetly with Angelina not noticing any of William`s trickery. In fact time journeys by quite swiftly within all that happiness.
Indeed, time joyfully moves onward with loads of great events to find pleasure in. Each new week brings Angelina into liking William; it brings her into wanting his daily companionship. Shocking to have such a change in her life, it would astound if she actually placed thought into it all without her needing to not be lonely.
Yet, Angelina does not even place the first thought into any of it, nor into the trust levels between them. Thus, in time much changes with the mornings of coffee becoming breakfast together. Then the young friendship truly becomes comfortable in many ways for Angelina allows herself to call him every day by mid-afternoon. And she does it just because too. Then during these calls, William tends to ask about her day and of her ideas for the day. Upon hearing those he brings those to fruition. On top of that William ever so conveniently makes certain that Angelina somehow gets connected to any social events that he is a part of. Hence, it arrives to be even more of a semi-sustained togetherness for them.
Throughout it all, it`s not seeming to be more than Angelina planning their interaction. That idea must happen so that the illusion of control by her is proudly shining in concern to all things betwixt them. That must subsist for William knows that he cannot do a return to what life existed like before the charade. He can`t for it is a life without Angelina. Thusly, he continuously has it seem that neither of them exists without the other while having people think it is a budding romantic relationship. Yet, Angelina doesn't see it as he does but she accepts that he sure makes life less lonely. Hence, she enjoys that a good amount of her days include him as a friend. But romance and love never cross her mind in concern to William.
William knows this too. Her accepts the no romantic notions from her and plans on changing it. It must change because the deepest love abides in William in concern to Angelina. So his life must have her in it. His life, his work, his thoughts, and all of him revolve around creating life to be, as he wants it to be. That life, his life is to have Angelina married to him. That comes to be the end plan. In his view, they must marry and she needs to love him when it happens. So, he feels that everything is great with their friendship only needing Angelina comfortable with being more than a friend.
The months pass by with the time approaching the concert sessions that Quinn has scheduled for the university`s concert hall. This event lives as a bit of excitement for all three of them due to obvious but differing reasons. Angelina is overjoyed because Quinlan Asher is that one musician that completely thrills all of Angelina`s senses. To top it off Quinlan Asher1s music provides the nightly sound stage for Angelina to ascend into the dreams where she meets Ever. Yet, Angelina almost forgot about the tickets but that`s because she bought them during the night of her last workday which is months ago. Currently, the two tickets lay on her desk at home waiting to be used but they possibly won`t be for William arranged tickets for them too. That is great but it makes two sets of tickets because Quinn supplies William with free tickets. Such occurs for the two friends plan to meet up in order to share a drink after the first night of the three-part concert session. That comes to be expected since they don`t often spend time together anymore. So to no surprise, William calls to say 'thank you' on the night that tickets arrive in the mail. After a 'thank you` being delivered the chat swings in many directions even though the hour is very late.
"So, did you fuck your fantasy last night?" shoots from William in a sneering tone during mid-chat. He does it because he cannot understand how a perfect alpha female like Quinn stoops to be falling in love with a dream phantom. Thus, he finds it's weird that Quinn is not dating many celebrity models or a high profile sex goddess that is touchable. Therefore, he says what he does, within thinking that he is teasing, but it's harshly edged with gripping a disrespectful tone directed at someone who commands respect from everyone.
When Quinn gives no immediate response William continues the chat. "As for my girl, I finally have Angelina exactly where I need her. In fact, by the time I take her to your concert, I will have fucked her many times. I might possibly have her collared as my slave too. And it will be happening while she thinks that she has control. She will believe that until she submits to loving me. Then, I will take the illusion away to collar that bitch as she kneels in begging me to be mine. "
Quinn listens to him but dislikes that voice tone that he uses. Their past comes vibrant of such chatting but this time it irks her and she does not know why. But, as her friend talks of fucking and acquiring this mystery woman as a slave, Quinn feels coldly hateful energy burning in her body`s very core. That too comes to be something that she does not understand for Quinn loves William like a brother. Thus, Quinn becomes strangely silent with William noticing it with it irking him. So he pushes for an answer to his question. "Well, come on. We always share our stories of fucking women. So, tell me, was there a puddle of cum on that pretty Holy Wood floor? Or did Ms. Dreamy do a no-show?"
A disgruntled earnest sound slips from Quinn who tries to shrug off the feelings while she leans against the archway entrance of the Holy Wood room. In doing that she firmly exclaims, "Dickhead! Knock off the attitude. Because you still have not fucked your bitch. So, watch it!"
William laughs of Quinn`s reaction as he listened to the continued answer. "As I have told you, during every chat in recent months, it`s sex every night. Every night with Beauty there is lovemaking. She eagerly comes demanding ravenous sex. Sex all night. It has me sleeping days, because it is stronger than my life force, with it leaving my spiritual and psychological energies exhausted upon waking."
"Really!" Interjects William being shocked of what is said. But he remains listening as Quinn further shares. "She soaks up my energies. The orgasms during the exchange are mind-blowing intense. Beauty`s soul energies suddenly are powerfully robust within being more dynamic than my own. She instantly pulls me into the dreams upon my inducing the last of the meditative state of the Divine Dream Circle. She shouldn't be able to do that. She is not an Ascended Mystic or a cleric. However, Beauty manages to connect so swiftly that I am breathless each night as her soul grips mine. It`s boggling how it seems that in her real life my wife is freshly given some kind of immortal super juice each night."
William never expected to hear what he has. Yet, he has. In his listening, a pondering grows inside him. He ponders until Quinn takes a breath to drink a few sips of purified lemon water in the preparation for the inducing of the Divine Dream Circle. Therefore with hearing her stop her talking William softly conveys, "Uhm. That is odd. Uhm! Very odd."
"Yes, it is Billy. But, I am not too concerned. I really like it a lot." Quinn shares after swallowing the last of lemon water before setting the glass on a table positioned close by along the hall that exists outside of Holy Wood room.
"Yeah. I understand. I would too. But, wow!" He says in awe to next worriedly state, "It seems that she is equal power on the Dreamscape. That should be impossible when considering that you`re the keeper of those books. Even more so, your biological ancestry claims that your energies exist as the dominant Human force on the Dreamscape. No one should be able to do what she now does to you. Plus, if she is cleric then you would know her in real time."
Such brings Quinn to convey her collected ideas about that. "Possibly it is a reverse of my own soul energies. Maybe some change in Beauty`s real-life triggers an ability that I have. Then again, my life force is feeling wild for months now. It makes the connection between her and me to be off the scale. I wonder if the books not being opened somehow do that. Maybe the books not having a soul to tie to allows the residual buildup to empower the books` physical keeper with strange abilities, abilities that have arrived since you took that trip to do business for me in Malibu."
"Quinn, do not say that. That is madness. No one wants what that ancient energy could do if it is not fully contained." warns William knowing that secret society`s tablets tell of horrible events about it set loose on their Mortal landscape.
Yet, such being said allows Quinn to say exactly something that she shouldn't. "I do. I want it if it allows me access to my wife in real time and in our current mortal life."
"No, Quinn, nothing is worth such destruction. The warning about it is printed over and over in ancient script." Comes coldly from William as he worries of Quinn becoming unbalanced about things that are beyond serious.
Yet, Quinn gives it very little adherence as she speaks more of her thoughts about what is happening. "Beauty may soon be mine in this mortal life."
As that is spoken William`s desk phone ring of an incoming business call that he expects. Therefore, he interrupts Quinn with relaying that he has business acquiring his attention. So, he shares that their chat must continue another day. Such leaves Quinn to click off her phone to set it on the table with glass before she walks into the Holy Wood room to begin the Divine Dream Circle so that she may make love to her wife.


text:
I often wonder what
made us fall in love
with each other
We are so different
We are so different
from each other
Our strengths
Our strengths
and weaknesses
are so different
Our ways
Our ways
of approaching things
are so different
Our personalities
Our personalities
are so different
Yet our love
Yet our love
continues to grow and grow
Perhaps the differences
Perhaps the differences
we have add to the
excitement of our relationship
and I know that both of us
as a team are stronger
than either of us alone
We are basically different from
We are basically different from
each other
but we have so many
feelings and emotions in common
And it really doesn't matter
why we fell
in love
All that matters to me
All that matters to me
is that we continue
to respect and love
we both aware the differences between us, and we agreed to accept it, bcause nothing wrong with it, we used to it. the differences make us enjoying this relationship. i accept the way he is, and he accept the way i are..he is the one who attract my attention at the first sight. i know i can't say he is the one for me as we dont know about 'jodoh' right. but i can say he is the one who stay with me no matter what and never leave me alone. he is the one who know me exactly who am i. he is the one, i feel ease with, he is the one who always with me through thick or thin. he is the one who make me believe myself. he is the one who make me feel 'someone'. he is the one who make me feel secured.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Models > Russian Hitch Hiking Teen Reveals Her Incredible Rack Of Natural Tits And Gets Fucked
Large natural boobs on this sexy Russian babe who is hitch hiking her way to another city. Once in the car she gets convinced to show off these amazing milk cans. Before she knows it she is with her back on the hood with her legs spread and gets her shaved pussy fucked.
Tags: Blowjob, Hardcore, Natural, Teen (18+)


text:
The use of Drug Recognition Experts in Marijuana DUI investigations is on the rise. Indeed, the numbers of officers with the enhanced training have proliferated over the last few years, influenced heavily by the changes in the laws related to recreational use of pot.
While training of any kind is certainly a good thing, it is important to not place too much reliance on the DRE. Certainly cops who go through the block of extra training and are certified as a DRE are better suited to evaluate a suspected drugged driver, however we must be careful to not place too much emphasis on their conclusions.
Recently, the Press Enterprise published an article discussing these issues. The article can be viewed here Attorney Matthew Ruff Quoted in DUI Marijuana Article.
Monday, June 5, 2017
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text:
I was late to meet some friends at the local coffee shop today. When I finally reached the street I was heading to, a guy decided to stop his car in the middle of the road and chat with a friend who was inside his car.
From what I gathered, he was explaining something about the neighborhood. He spoke, moved his arms around, took his time.
And for a little while I let him. then I grew impatient and honked. And honked some more. And stuck my hand to the horn until the noise was unbearable. Unbearable to me, because the darn driver did not move.
When he finally decided to go ahead, I parked my car and was crossing to join my friends when I looked and had the biggest surprise!
The car was u turning. That man was coming back.
I had no doubts. Just stood in the middle of the street, no giving him any space to pass. Man, did it feel good?
I simply stayed there for as much as I felt like.
When the man turned his engine off, I thought it was enough, so I turned around and entered the coffee shop.
Há 6 horas


text:
Thursday, December 29, 2016
[33C3 TLDR] PUFs, protection, privacy, PRNGs
Takeaway: PUFs are kinda neat and if you're interested check out this talk.
[33c3 TLDR] Decoding the LoRa PHY
Matt reverse engineered the PHY layer of the proprietary and patented LoRa techology and even wrote a GNUradio plug-in for it.
He also gave an excellent introduction to basics of the LoRa technology.
Actually, it was somehow an introduction to basics of radio technology in general and I highly recommend watching his talk.
[33c3 TLDR] Making Technology Inclusive Through Papercraft and Sound
From a technical perspective they had to solve some interesting problems to make the technology fast, cheap and usable. In particular, they have a pretty awesome technique using sound to upload code to the microcontrollers they use.
Takeaway: Pretty cool technology for a societally relevant goal. Check it out.
[33c3 TLDR] Tapping into the core
It is not entirely clear to me if this is "just" another case of somebody forgetting to turn of a debug facility and leaving it as a security hole or if there are actually cases when it cannot be disabled.
[33c3 TLDR] Wheel of Fortune
The takeaway might be that these devices really need a hardware RNG even if it costs a little bit extra.
(Similar to Mathy's talk, maybe only watch one of them.)
[33c3 TLDR] Do as I Say not as I Do: Stealth Modification of Programmable Logic Controllers I/O by Pin Control Attack
For example, switching a pin from output to input will suppress all writing to that pin without any feedback.
[33c3 TLDR] A Tale of Two Skype Calls
- 3 Years After Snowden: Is Germany fighting State Surveillance?
- The Untold Story of Edward Snowden's Escape from Hong Kong
First of all a chilling report on the state of the German surveillance machine detailing how the German intelligence agencies have gotten more money, more capabilities (under the law) and are processing more data. Often without good supervision. It is only because of Germany's attempt at an inquiry, which the two speaking journalists recorded, that we know some of the details of the mass surveillance apparatus.
At the end, instead of the regular Q&A, key witness #1 came and joined us over Skype: Edward Snowden.
Takeaway: things are getting worse, not better and we need to do more to combat this.
Second, a talk detailing the story of the people that kept the very same Edward Snowden safe during his stay as a refugee in Hong Kong, detailing their particular brand of self-sacrifice. Being refugees in Hong Kong, they are forced to live in squalor without rights. Government support was stripped away once their identities were known. These people, these guardian angels, now subsist on the donation efforts of third parties. Further attempts are being made to get these 7 people out of the country and to a safer place.
For the Q&A, Vanessa, one of the people that helped Snowden, skyped in and answered some of the questions pertaining to her recollection of the events as well as her current status.
Takeaway: the seven refugees that helped Edward Snowden stay hidden during his stay in Hong Kong need assistance. If you want to you can donate at the following places:
- https://fundrazr.com/snowdensguardians
- https://www.gofundme.com/snowdenguardians
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
[33c3 TLDR] How Do I Crack Satellite and Cable Pay TV?
Take away: Reverse engineering was made simpler by relatively old design with not too many countermeasures. Never underestimate the effort people are willing to invest to break your system.
Watch his talk on YouTube.
[33c3 TLDR] Everything you always wanted to know about Certificate Transparency -- Martin Schmiedecker
The takeaway message is that Certificate Transparency is great but to make it really effective clients need to check the public logs before accepting a certificate.
Martin tried to introduce the technical concepts but could not go into more detail. For a nice start, watch the Video.
[33c3 TLDR] Predicting and Abusing WPA2/802.11 Group Keys -- Mathy Vanhoef
The take-away message is actually rather short:
People standardize and implement bad RNGs and if those are used to generate cryptographic secrets it leads to vulnerabilites.
It included a few more tricks and gimmicks and I recommend you watch the Video.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Lightweight Cryptography
Over the last decade, numerous lightweight cryptographic primitives have been proposed providing performance advantage over conventional cryptographic primitives. These primitives include block ciphers, hash functions, stream ciphers and authenticated ciphers.
Lightweight Block Ciphers
A block cipher provides a keyed pseudo-random permutation that can be used in a more complex protocol. It should be impossible for an adversary with realistic computing power to retrieve the key even if the adversary has access to a black-box model of the cipher where she is able to encrypt/decrypt plaintext of her choice. Block ciphers are normally based on either Substitution-Permutation Networks or Feistel-Networks.
The components and operations in a lightweight block cipher are typically simpler than in normal block ciphers like AES. In contrast to simplifying the round functions, the number of rounds simply increases to achieves the same security. As memory is very expensive the implementation of a S-Box as look-up table can lead to a large hardware footprint. Therefore, lightweight block ciphers have usually small (e.g. 4-bit) S-Boxes. To save further memory, lightweight block ciphers are using small block sizes (e.g. 64 or 80 bits, rather then 128). Another option is to reduce the key sizes used to sizes less than 96 bits for efficiency. Simpler key schedules improve the memory, latency and power consumption of lightweight block ciphers.
Recently, Banik et. al. showed an implementation of AES requiring just 2227 GE and latency of 246/326 cycles per byte for encryption and decryption respectively. In 2007 Bogdanov et. al. proposed PRESENT, an ultra-lightweight block cipher based on a Substitution-Permutation Network that is optimized for hardware and can be implemented with just 1075 GE. PRESENT is bit-oriented and has a hardwired diffusion layer. In 2011, Guo et. al. designed LED, an SPN cipher that is heavily based on AES. Interesting in that design is the lack of the key schedule, as it applies the same 64-bit key every four rounds to the state for LED-64. The 128-bit version simply divides the key in two 64-bit sub-keys and then alternately adds them to the state. Reducing the latency is the main goal of the block cipher PRINCE. There is no real key schedule in PRINCE, as it derives three 64-bit keys from a 128-bit master key. PRINCE is a reflection cipher, meaning that the first rounds are the inverse of the last rounds, so that the decryption of a key $k$ is identical to an encryption with key $k\oplus\alpha$ where $\alpha$ is a constant based on $\pi$. The block cipher Midori was designed for reducing the energy consumption when implemented in hardware. It has an AES-like structure and a very lightweight almost-MDS involution matrix M in the MixColumn step. In 2013, Simon and Speck have been designed by NSA. Both ciphers perform exceptionally well in both hardware and software and were recently considered for standardization. Compared to all other ciphers, no security analysis or design rational was given by the designers. Simon is hardware-oriented and based on a Feistel-Network with only the following operations: and, rotation, xor. Speck is software oriented and based on an ARX construction with the typical operations: addition, rotation, xor. Very recently, SKINNY has been published to compete with Simon. The main idead behind the design is to be efficient as possible but without sacrificing security. SKINNY is a tweakable block cipher based on the Tweakey framework with the components chosen because of the good compromise the provide between cryptographic properties and hardware costs.
Lightweight Hash Functions
The desired properties of a hash function are:
- Collision resistance: it should be not feasible to find $x$ and $y$, such that $H(x) = H(y)$
- Preimage resistance: given a hash $h$, it should be infeasible to find a message $x$ such that $H(x) = h$
- Second preimage resistance: given a message $y$, it should be infeasible to find $x\neq y$ such that $H(x) = H(y)$
PHOTON is a P-Sponge based AES-like hash function, with an internal state size of 100 to 288 bits and an output of 80 to 256 bits. The state update function is close to the LED cipher. In 2011, Bogdanov et. al. designed SPONGENT, a P-Sponge where the permutation is a modified version of the block cipher PRESENT. SipHash has a ARX structure and is inspired by BLAKE and Skein and has a digest size of 64-bits.
Lightweight Stream Ciphers
A stream cipher generates a key stream from a given key $k$ and an initialization vector $IV$, which is then simply xored with the plaintext to generate a ciphertext. It must be infeasible for an attacker to retrive the key, even if a large part of the keystream is available to the attacker. In 2008, the eSTREAM competition aimed to identify a portfolio of stream ciphers that should be suitable for widespread adoption. Three of the finalists are suitable for hardware applications in a restricted environment.
Grain was designed by Hell et. al. and is based on two finite state registers whose clocking influence each others update function to make it non linear. Grain requires 3239 GE in hardware. MICKEY v2 is based on two LFSR (linear feedback shift registers) that are irregularly clocked. MICKEY v2 requires 3600 GE in hardware. Trivium is also a finalist from the eSTREAM competition that has three LFSR's with different length. Trivium requires 3488 GE in hardware.
Lightweight Authenticated Ciphers
The aim of authenticated encryption is to provide confidentiality and integrity (i.e. data authenticity) simultaneously. In 2014, the CAESAR (Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability and Robustness) competition started with the aim to identify a portfolio of authenticated ciphers that offer advantages over AES-GCM and are suitable for widespread adoption.
ACORN is based on 6 LFSR's and has a state size of 293 bits. ACORN provides full security, for both, encryption and authentication. The hardware costs should be close to that of Trivium according to the designers. SCREAM is a tweakable block ciphers in the TAE (Tweakable Authenticated Encryption) mode. SCREAM is based on LS designs Robin and Fantomas. Bertoni et. al. designed Ketje that is a lightweight variant of SHA3 (i.e. Keccak). Ketje relies on the sponge construction in the MonkeyWrap mode. The internal state size is only 200 bits for Ketje-Jr and 400 bits for Ketje-Sr. Ascon is an easy to implement, sponge-based authenticated cipher with a custom tailored SPN network. It is fast in both, hardware and software even with added countermeasures against side-channel attacks. Another CAESAR candidate is the 64-bit tweakable block cipher Joltik, that is based on the Tweakey framework. Joltik is AES-like and uses the S-Box of Piccolo and the round constants of LED. The MDS matrix is involutory and non-circulant.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Living in a Data Obsessed Society (Part II)
The moral dimension of Cryptography, and its role on rearranging what can be done, by whom and from which data, might come to mind for several readers as well. Since the Snowden revelations, it has become a more and more central debate within the community, which I find best crystallized on the IACR distinguished lecture given by Rogaway on Asiacrypt 2015 and its accompanying paper. Technologies such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption, Secure Multiparty Computation or Differential Privacy can help mitigate some of the problems related with data gathering while retaining its processing utility. All in all, one of Ladyman's conclusions applies here: we should still question who benefits from this processing, and how. A privacy-preserving algorithm that incurs (unintended) discrimination is not a desirable one. As members of society, and as researchers, it is important that we understand the future roles and capabilities of data gathering, storing and processing. From mass surveillance, to biased news, to other forms of decision making.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Living in a Data Obsessed Society (Part I)
The evolution of the data infrastructure
What can go wrong with massive data gathering?
Monday, November 28, 2016
Verifiable Random Functions
Pseudorandom functions (PRFs) are a central concept in modern cryptography. A PRF is a deterministic keyed primitive guaranteeing that a computationally bounded adversary having access to PRF's outputs at chosen points, cannot distinguish between the PRF and a truly random function mapping between the same domain and range as the PRF. The pseudorandomness property in the well-known candidates follows from various computational hardness assumptions. The first number-theoretical pseudorandom functions (PRF), has been proposed in the seminal work of Goldreich, Goldwasser and Micali1. Since then, PRFs found applications in the construction of both symmetric and public-key primitives. Following the beginning of their investigation, various number-theoretical constructions targeted efficiency or enhancing the security guarantees. Recent developments of PRF s include works on key-homomorphic PRFs or functional PRFs and their variants.
A related, and more powerful concept, is the notion of verifiable random functions (VRFs). They were proposed in 1999 by
Micali, Rabin and Vadhan2.
VRFs are in some sense comparable to their simpler counterparts (PRFs), but in addition to the output values, a VRF also produces a publicly verifiable proof $\pi$ (therefore, there is also need for a public verification key). The purpose of the proofs $\pi$ is to efficiently validate the correctness of the computed outputs. The pseudorandomness property must hold, exactly as in the case of a PRF, with the noticeable difference that no proof will be released for the challenge input during the security experiment. Since the introduction of VRFs, constructions achieving adaptive security, exponentially large input spaces or security under standard assumptions were introduced. However, the construction of VRFs meeting all aforementioned constraints at the same time has been proven a challenging academic exercise. Finally, progress in this direction has been made due to the work of
Hofheinz and Jager3, who
An adaptive-secure VRF from standard assumptionsThe scheme by Hofheinz and Jager has its roots in the VRF4 proposed by Lysyanskaya. In Lysyanskaya's construction, for an input point $x$ in the domain of the VRF, represented in binary as $x = (x_1,\dots, x_n)$, the corresponding output is set to the following encoding: $y = g^{\prod_{i=1}^{n} a_{i, x_i}}$, which for brevity we will denote $[\prod_{i=1}^{n} a_{i, x_i}]$. The pseudorandomness proof requires a q-type assumption. To remove it, the technique proposed in the Hofheinz and Jager paper replaces the set of scalar exponents $\{a_{1,0}, \dots, a_{n,1}\}$ with corresponding matrix exponents. A pairing is also needed for verifiability. Therefore, a point $x = (x_1,\dots, x_n)$ in the domain of the VRF will be mapped to a vector of points. Informally, the construction samples $\vec{u} \leftarrow \mathbb{Z}_p^{k}$ (p prime) and a set of $2n$ square matrices over $\mathbb{Z}_p^{k \times k}$: \( \begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \left \{ \begin{array}{cccc} {M_{1,0}} & M_{2,0} & \dots & M_{n,0}\\ {M_{1,1}} & M_{2,1} & \dots & M_{n,1}\\ \end{array} \right \} \end{aligned} \end{equation} \). The secret key is set to the plain values of the $\{ \vec{u}, M_{1,0}, \dots, M_{n,1} \}$ while the verification key will consists of the encodings (element-wise) of the entries forming the secret key. To evaluate at point $x$, one computes: $VRF(sk, x = (x_1,\dots, x_n)) = \Bigg[ \vec{u}^t \cdot \Big(\prod_{i=1}^{n}M_{i,x_i} \Big) \Bigg]$. The complete construction requires an extra step, that post-processes the output generated via the chained matrix multiplications with a randomness extractor. We omit this detail. A vital observation is that the multi-dimensional form of the secret key allows to discard the q-type assumptions, and replace it with a static one.
Proof intuition
The intuition for the proof can be summarized as follows:
- during the adaptive pseudorandomness game, a property called "well-distributed outputs" ensures that all the evaluation queries except the one for the challenge will output encoded vectors $[\vec{v} = \vec{u}^t \cdot (\prod_{i=1}^{n}M_{i,x_i})]$, such that each vector but the one corresponding to the challenge belongs to a special designated rowspace. This is depicted in the figure, where the right side presents the evaluation of the challenge input $x^*$, while the left side presents the evaluation at $x\ne x^*$.
- to enforce well distributed outputs, the matrices $M_{i,x_i}$ must have special forms; for simplicity, consider $x^* = (0, 1, \dots, 0)$ of Hamming weight 1 and the corresponding secret key: \begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \vec{u}^t , \left \{ \begin{array}{cccc} U_{1,0} & L_{2,0} & \dots & U_{n,0} \\ L_{1,1} & U_{2,1} & \dots & L_{n,1} \\ \end{array} \right \} \end{aligned} \end{equation} where $L_i$ stands for an $n$-$1$ rank matrix (lower rank), while the $U_i$ denotes a full rank matrix that map between RowSpace($L_{i-1}$) and RowSpace($L_{i}$). Rowspace($L_0$) will be a randomly chosen subspace of dimension $n-1$, and $\vec{u} \not \in $RowSpace($L_0$) with overwhelming probability. Also, notice the full rank matrices occur in the positions corresponding to $x^*$, in order to ensure well-distributed outputs.
- finally, and maybe most importantly, one must take into account that the distribution of matrices used to ensure well-distributed outputs must be indistinguishable from the distribution of uniformly sampled square matrices. A hybrid argument is required for this proof with the transition between the games being based on the $n$-Rank assumption (from the Matrix-DDH family of assumptions).
1. Goldreich, O., Goldwasser, S., & Micali, S. (1986). How to construct random functions. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 33(4), 792-807. ↩
2. Micali, S., Rabin, M., & Vadhan, S. (1999). Verifiable random functions. In Foundations of Computer Science, 1999. 40th Annual Symposium on (pp. 120-130). IEEE.↩
3. Hofheinz, D., & Jager, T. (2016, January). Verifiable random functions from standard assumptions. In Theory of Cryptography Conference (pp. 336-362). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.↩
4. Lysyanskaya, A. (2002, August). Unique signatures and verifiable random functions from the DH-DDH separation. In Annual International Cryptology Conference (pp. 597-612). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.↩
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Recent research on attacks that "use a little leakage"
In this post, I'll summarize three fantastic talks from what was one of my favourite sessions of the ACM CCS Conference last month (session 11B: "Attacks using a little leakage"). The setting common to the three papers is a client-server set-up, where the client outsources the storage of its documents or data to a server that's not entirely trusted. Instead of using the server just for storage, the client wants to outsource some computations on this data too—keyword searches or database queries, for example. The problem is to find the right cryptographic algorithms that allow efficiently making these searches and queries while minimizing the information leaked from communication between the client and server, or from the server's computations.
- Generic Attacks on Secure Outsourced Databases (paper, talk)
Georgios Kellaris (Harvard University), George Kollios (Boston University), Kobbi Nissim (Ben-Gurion University) and Adam O'Neill (Georgetown University)
- The Shadow Nemesis: Inference Attacks on Efficiently Deployable, Efficiently Searchable Encryption (paper, talk)
David Pouliot and Charles V. Wright (Portland State University)
- Breaking Web Applications Built On Top of Encrypted Data (paper, talk)
Paul Grubbs (Cornell University), Richard McPherson (University of Texas, Austin), Muhammed Naveed (University of Southern California), Thomas Ristenpart and Vitaly Shmatikov (Cornell Tech)
1. Generic Attacks on Secure Outsourced Databases
This paper presents two attacks, one exploiting communication volume, and one exploiting the access pattern. "Generic" means that they apply to any kind of encryption, not necessarily deterministic, or order-preserving, or even property-preserving.
|outsourced relational database (collection of records, where each record has some number of attributes)
|Adversary's goal
|reconstruction of the attribute values for all records
|database system is static (read-only; queries don't modify records), atomic (each record is encrypted separately), non-storage-inflating (no dummy records), and has records of a fixed length
|Assumptions about data
|attribute values are ordered (say, numerically or alphabetically)
|Assumptions about queries
|uniform range/interval queries (for an attribute with $N$ possible values, there are $\binom{N}{2}+N$ possible queries)
|Adversary's knowledge
|set of possible attribute values
|Adversary's capabilities
|passive, observe queries and either access pattern (which encrypted records are returned) or communication volume (how many encrypted records are returned)
The big (possibly unreasonable) assumption is that the range queries must be uniform. However, as the authors point out, the attack model is otherwise weak and the security of an outsourced database shouldn't depend on the query distribution.
Attack using access pattern leakage
The adversary observes at least $N^2\cdot \log(N)$ queries, so with high probability, all of the $\binom{N}{2} + N$ queries have occurred (proof: ask a coupon collector). For each query, it sees which encrypted records were returned. Suppose the database has $n$ records, and assign a binary indicator vector $\vec{v} \in \{0,1\}^n$ to each query. A 1 in position $i$ means that the $i$th encrypted record was returned as part of the query results. The Hamming weight of this vector is the number of matching records.
The attack works as follows.
- Find one of the endpoints. Pick a query that returned all but one of the records (i.e., a query whose associated vector has Hamming weight $n-1$). Let $i_1$ be the index of the 0 in its characteristic vector.
- For $j=2$ to $n$, find a query whose characteristic vector has Hamming weight $j$, with $j-1$ of the 1's in positions $i_1,\ldots,i_{j-1}$. Let $i_j$ be the index of the other 1 in the vector.
This algorithm puts the encrypted records in order, up to reflection, and is enough for the adversary to reconstruct the plaintext! The paper also describes a reconstruction attack for the case that not all values of the domain occur in the database. It requires seeing more queries, about $N^4\cdot \log(N)$.
Attack using only communication volume
The main idea of this attack is to determine the distance between "adjacent" values. The adversary observes $q \geq N^4\cdot \log(N)$ queries. For each query, it sees how many encrypted records were returned. In the case that not all of the $N$ possible values occur in the database, the attack works as follows. (It is much simpler when they do.) Let $r_i$ be the hidden value of record $i$ (i.e., its position in the range 1 to $N$).
- Determine the approximate number of distinct queries that returned a certain number of records. Let $c_j$ be a count of the number of queries that returned $j$ records, for $0 \leq j \leq n$, so $\sum_{j=0}^n c_j = q$. Scale all of the $c_j$s by $\frac{N(N+1)}{2}\cdot \frac{1}{q}$.
- Let $d_i = r_{i+1} - r_i$ be the difference in position of the $(i+1)$st record and the $i$th record, for $i=0$ to $n$, when the $n$ records are sorted. To keep the notation simple, define $d_0 = r_1$ and $d_n = N + 1 - r_n$. Note that $c_j = \sum_{i=1}^{n+1-j} d_{i-1}\cdot d_{j + i-1}$ for $j=1$ to $n$, and $c_0 = \frac{1}{2} ( \sum_{i=0}^n {d_i}^2 - (N+1) )$.
- Factor a cleverly-constructed polynomial to recover the $d_i$s. Replace $c_0$ by $2\cdot c_0 + N + 1$. Let $F(x) = \sum_{i=0}^{n} c_{n-i}\cdot x^{i} + \sum_{i=0}^{n} c_{i}\cdot x^{n+i}$. Then $F(x)$ factors as $d(x) \cdot d^R(x)$, where $d(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n d_{i}\cdot x^i$ and $d^R(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n d_{n-i}\cdot x^i$.
- Compute the attribute values from the $d_i$s: $r_1 = d_0$ and $r_i = r_{i-1} + d_{i-1}$ for $i=2$ to $n$.
The success of this algorithm depends on $F(x)$ having only 1 factorization into two irreducible polynomials. Also, since factorization can be slow when there are many records in the database, the authors also tested a simple, brute-force algorithm for checking the $d_i$s and it performed better than factorizing in their experiments.
2. The Shadow Nemesis: Inference Attacks on Efficiently Deployable, Efficiently Searchable Encryption
These two EDESE schemes work by appending a list of tags (also called "opaque identifiers") to each message or document, corresponding to the keywords it contains. You can think of each tag as a PRF with key $k$ applied to the keyword $w$, so $t=PRF_k(w)$.
|(web) applications that store sets of documents/messages in the cloud and allow keyword search on these documents
|Adversary's goal
|determine which keywords are in a document
|each document/message has a set of tags corresponding to the keywords it contains
|Assumptions about tags
|the same keyword occurring in multiple documents yields the same tag
|Adversary's knowledge
|auxiliary dataset providing frequency of keywords and keyword co-occurrence statistics
|Adversary's capabilities
|passive, sees encrypted documents/messages and lists of tags
What I found most interesting about this work was that the problem of determining which keywords are associated with which documents was reduced to problems on graphs!
The weighted graph matching problem is the following. Given two graphs $G=(V_G,E_G)$ and $H=(V_H,E_H)$ on $n$ vertices, each with a set of edge weights $w(E): E \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{\geq 0}$, determine the mapping $\sigma: V_G \rightarrow V_H$ that makes the graphs most closely resemble each other. (This type of "matching" is about matching a vertex in one graph to a vertex in another graph; it has nothing to do with maximal independent sets of edges.) There are a few different possibilities for what it means for the graphs to "most closely resemble each other"—the one used in the paper is minimizing the Euclidean distance of the adjacency matrix of $G$ and the permuted adjacency matrix of $H$.
The labelled graph matching problem is just an extension of the weighted graph matching problem where each vertex also has a weight.
The two graphs that will be matched to learn which keywords are in which documents are $G$, whose vertices correspond to the $n$ most frequent keywords in the auxiliary data, and $H$, whose vertices correspond to the $n$ most frequent tags in the target data. The weight of an edge between 2 vertices is the probability that those two tags (or keywords) occur in the same encrypted document (or document in the auxiliary data set). To form an instance of the labelled graph matching problem, the vertices are assigned weights that correspond to their frequencies in the target data set or their frequencies in the auxiliary data set.
The authors implemented their weighted graph matching and labelled graph matching attacks on two data sets, based on the 2000-2002 Enron email corpus and the Ubuntu IRC chat logs from 2004-2012. Their attacks accurately recovered hundreds of the most frequent keywords—see the paper for more details about the results. And while you're checking it out, read the authors' observation about how critical it is to properly choose Bloom filter parameters when using them to replace the usual inverted index structure in a searchable encryption scheme.
3. Breaking Web Applications Built On Top of Encrypted Data
This paper is cheekily titled to reflect the particular system that it attacks—it's from the paper "Building Web Applications on Top of Encrypted Data Using Mylar". Mylar is an extension to Meteor, a JavaScript web application platform. The result is a complete client-server system that claims to protect users' data on the way to and at the server. Mylar's back-end is an instance of MongoDB, a non-relational database where the data is a collection of documents, and each document has a number of key-value pairs.
The main ingredient in Mylar is multi-key searchable encryption (MKSE), which allows users to share data. The MKSE scheme used in Mylar was built to satisfy two properties: data hiding and token hiding. One of the results of this paper is proving by counterexample that a scheme that's both data-hiding and token-hiding does not necessarily provide indistinguishable keyword encryptions and keyword tokens.
One of the things I like about this paper is the taxonomy it introduces for real-world adversarial models. A snapshot passive attack is a one-time, well, snapshot of the data stored on a server. A persistent passive attack involves observing all data stored on a server and all operations the server performs during a certain time period. An active attack is one where anything goes—the server can misbehave or even collude with users.
The main part of the paper evaluates the security of a few Mylar apps—one that was already available (kChat, a chat app), and three open-source Meteor apps that were ported to Mylar. The three apps are MDaisy, a medical appointment app, OpenDNA, an app that analyzes genomic data to identify risk groups, and MeteorShop, an e-commerce app. Before summarizing some of the paper's results, it's important to understand principals, which in Mylar are units of access control and have a name and a key pair. Every document and every user has a principal, and a principal can also apply to multiple documents.
The paper's main findings are grouped into three categories: exploiting metadata, exploiting access patterns, and active attacks. First, here are some examples of exploiting metadata in Mylar:
- The names of principals, which are unencrypted to facilitate verifying keys, can leak sensitive information. For example, in kChat, the names of user principals and chat room principals are simply usernames or email addresses and the chat room name.
- Mylar's access graph, which records the relationships between users, access control levels, and encrypted items, can leak sensitive information. For example, in MDaisy, this access graph could reveal that a particular user (a doctor or other health care professional) regularly creates appointments and shares them with the same other user (a patient). A passive snapshot attacker could combine this leakage with knowledge of the doctor's speciality to infer that a patient is being treated for a certain condition.
- The size of a MongoDB document associated to a user principal can leak sensitive information. In MDaisy, each user, whether staff or patient, has its own document. However, staff have only their names stored, while patients have additional information stored, such as date of birth.
Exploiting access patterns of searchable encryption is not new, and Mylar didn't claim to hide them, so I won't say anything further about this. The active attacks, however, are interesting, because Mylar claimed to protect data against an actively malicious server as long as none of the users who can access it use a compromised machine. This claim is false, and the paper describes attacks that arise from properties such as the server being able to forcibly add users to a "tainted" principal. After a user is added to a principal, it automatically computes and sends to the server a "delta" value that adjusts search tokens so documents encrypted with different keys can be searched. Once the malicious server receives a user's delta value for a tainted principal (whose keys it knows), it can then search for any keyword in any of the user's documents!
These three talks are evidence that we still have a long way to go to get secure, usable encryption that still preserves some functionality, whether in web applications, or outsourced databases or documents. It is hard to get things right. Even then, as the authors of the Shadow Nemesis paper point out, careful tuning of the Bloom Filter parameters thwarts their attacks on Mimesis Aegis, but there's no reason to believe that it's enough to defend against any other attack. I hope that these recent papers will inspire more secure constructions, not only more attacks.
P.S. There was some good discussion about attack vs. defence papers in the CCS panel discussion on the impact of academic security research (video).
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Hardware Canaries: Arbiters of Proper Randomness
|Figure 1: Security dependencies.
|Figure 2: RNG architectures with canary numbers.
|Figure 3: Test results of the elementary ring-oscillator based RNG (from the original paper).
Friday, October 28, 2016
soft skills, hard facts
|Ruhr-University seen from Beckmanns Hof
Monday, October 17, 2016
Supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman
Most post-quantum cryptography is based on lattices, codes, multivariate quadratics or hashes. See Gustavo's post for more.
A fifth category seems to slowly establish itself: Isogeny-based crypto.
These schemes are based on the difficulty of finding an isogeny between two supersingular elliptic curves. Isogenies are specific rational maps between elliptic curves which must also be a group homomorphism for the group of points on the curve.
The original proposal [Stolbunov et al., 2006] was to use the problem of finding isogenies between ordinary elliptic curves but this system was shown to be breakable with a quantum computer [Childs et al., 2010]. After that it was proposed to use supersingular elliptic curves instead [De Feo et al., 2011].
SIDH currently has significantly worse performance than lattice based key-exchange schemes but offers much smaller key-sizes. Compared to Frodo it is 15 times slower but the key size is only one twentieth. Compared to NewHope it is over 100 times slower at less than one third of the keysize. This can be relevant in scenarios like IOT where cryptographic computations require orders of magnitude less energy then actually transmitting data via the radio.
Although finding isogenies between curves is difficult, Vélu's formulas allow calculating an isogeny with a given finite subgroup as its kernel. All such isogenies are identical up to isomorphism.
Now, starting with a public curve \(E\) that is a system parameter we have both parties, Alice and Bob generate an isogeny for kernels \(\langle r_a \rangle, \langle r_b\rangle\) respectively. Let \(r_a, r_b\) be any generators of a subgroup for now. This gives us two isogenies
$$ \phi_a: E \rightarrow E_a\\
\phi_b: E \rightarrow E_b.$$
Now we would like to exchange $E_a, E_b$ between the partners and somehow derive a common $E_{ab}$ using the kernels we have used. Unfortunately, $r_a$ does not even lie on $E_b$ so we have a problem.
The solution that was proposed by De Feo et al. is to use 4 more points $P_a, P_b, Q_a, Q_b$ on $E$ as public parameters, two for each party. This allows constructing
$$r_a = m_aP_a + n_aQ_a\\
r_b = m_bP_b + n_bQ_b$$ using random integers $m_a, n_a, m_b, n_b$ appropriate for the order.
Now, after calculating the isogenies $\phi_a, \phi_b$ the parties not only exchange the curves $E_a, E_b$ but also $\phi_a(P_b), \phi_a(Q_b)$ and $\phi_b(P_a), \phi_b(Q_a)$.
Looking at the example of Alice she can now calculate
$$m_a\phi_b(P_a)+n_a\phi_b(Q_a) = \phi_b(m_aP_a + n_aQ_a) = \phi_b(r_a)$$ and Bob can perform the analogous computation. Constructing another isogeny using this $\langle \phi_b(r_a) \rangle$ and $\langle \phi_a(r_b) \rangle$ respectively gives Alice and Bob two curves $E_{ba}, E_{ab}$ which are isomorphic and their j-invariant can be used as a common secret.
I will leave you with this wonderfully formula laden image from the De Feo et al. paper showing the protocol.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Quantum computation, algorithms and some walks.. pt.1
Well, computers aren't made with cats inside. Computers use bits and registers to work. So, how is it possible to compute with a quantum computer? How is it possible to represent bits? How is it possible to take advantage of the superposition?
Quantum NotationFirst, let's learn about the Dirac notation, that is commonly used in Quantum physics and in most of the literature about quantum computers. Since Blogger doesn't allow me to create mathematical equations, I will get some help from physciense blog and pick some images from them:
The Dirac notation could be a little bit different. If you want to check about it, I selected some nice lecture notes in the following links: Lecture 1 and Lecture 2.
So, the bra-ket notation is just vectors and we are going to use this to represent our qubit, yes we call the bit of a quantum computer by this name. In classical computers we represent a bit with 0 and 1 but in quantum computers it is a little bit different. We can represent the states as follows:
As the image show to us, the qubit is 0,1 or a superposition of 0 and 1. However, if we measure, i.e., if we see the qubit we lose the superposition. In other words, our state collapses and we cannot take advantage of the superposition anymore. In the same way that in classical computers we have gates, the quantum computer also has gates. One very famous gate is the Hadamard gate. This gate has the property to put a qubit in the superposition state. We can see the action of this gate in the following image:
Quantum AlgorithmsNow, we know what is a qubit and how we can operate with it. We can move for the next step and create some algorithms to solve problems. The most common and very well-known example came from Deutsch and Jozsa. It is known by Deutsch-Jozsa problem and consist of:
- Input: f: {0,1}^n to {0,1} either constant or balanced
- Output: 0 iff the function f is constant
- Constraints: f is a black-box


text:
"Whenever you see a legend, you can be sure,If you go to the very bottom of things, that you will find history"Vallet de Viriville
Pope Joan is the name of a female pope (also La Papessa) who supposedly reigned for less than three years in the 850s, based on a legend that circulated in the Middle Ages. Pope Joan is regarded by most modern historians and religious scholars as fictitious, possibly originating as an anti-papal satire.
Born in Britain 818, studied philosophy in Athens, moved to Rome and entered the priesthood gained reputation as a brilliant scholar and won a university chair appointed a Cardinal by Pope Leo IV and upon his death in 853 was elected Pope. Pope John VIII
POPE JOAN ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 853 to 855. Pope Joan had a private chamberlain named "Florus". One day, while "On Procession" down one of the streets of Rome, she gave birth prematurely to their son.
The citizens of Rome were so enraged at the deception – John was in reality Joan – that they tied their Pope to the tail of her horse and dragged her through the streets of Rome. They then stoned her and her infant son to death.
The next day a "monument" to the event, a pile of stones, was erected on the spot the Pope "dropped" her baby. The monument remained until the following Pope got tired of having to detour around "the embarrassment".
The history of Pope John (Joan) has been acknowledged by over 150 church historians of the Middle Ages.To "cover" history Pope Leo's death was moved back two years to 855 by the Vatican.
Ever since the death of Pope Joan all of the candidates for Pope have had to submit to an examination to insure the candidate is a man – not a eunuch, and not a WOMAN.
Pope Clement VIII, in the 17th Century, ordered all records of Pope Joan destroyed. He realized that if the Papal chain were broken it would destroy the myth that claims that the Papalhood descended from St. Peter to the current Pope in an unbroken line. If the line is broken the whole project is a sham!
In 1886 Greek author Emmanuel Royadis was excommunicated for writing his book "Pope Joanna".
( 1998 research indicates that in all probability the "man" known in history as "The Englishman – John of Mainz" was indeed SHE )
In the year 1965 I, Donald F. Dutkowski, was walking the streets of Rome with a Doctor Arduini. We came upon the intersection where the "monument", the pile of stones, once stood. This born in Rome, Roman Catholic, told me the story of Pope Joan. This FACTUAL EVENT lives on in the memory of the citizens of Rome.
"Variously known as the sedia stercoraria – which translates as the 'dung chair'– or rather more understandably, as the 'pierced chair', this then was the object used to test the sex of newly installed popes... Any candidate chosen by his peers to occupy the papal throne was required, before his election could be verified, to sit on this elaborate seat while a young cardinal took advantage of the design to touch his testicles." .
Original Caption: "An illustration that accompanied an account by the Swedish traveller Lawrence Banck, of the coronation in 1644 of Pope Innocent X. Innocent is seated in the sedia stercoraria and having his testicles felt by a young cardinal as a way of ensuring that he is a man." The man appears to be exclaiming in Latin, "The pontiff has them," much to the relief of everyone.
Medieval eyewitness accounts give no doubt that at one time, this chair and others like it were indeed an important part of the papal coronation ritual. But why should the cardinals be so concerned that they would go through the embarrassment of publicly probing their new boss to demonstrate that the pope is indeed a male? (It wasn't done quietly, either. If all was as expected, the examining cardinal was supposed to call out, "He has two balls, and they are well hung.") An odd tradition even for such a woman-hating church as that of Rome – unless, of course, they had good reason to worry. Unless, that it, there once was a pope who wasn't a member of the boys' club.


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As promised, I've made two Paris-themed aprons to contribute to the awesome themed-apron collective projects started by Amy Karol of Angry Chicken.
I also recently ate the following deliciousness that I wanted to share with you...
Inspired by Pushing Daisies, pear pie with gruyère baked into the crust
Baguette with spiced garlic olive oil and red wine vinegar
* * *
Okay, now, here's how I made the aprons...
For the red and blue apron, I basically just cut a curve into the corner of a rectangle of fabric that was about the right size.
After stitching the front skirt to the black lining I turned it and ironed everything so it would lay flat.
I wanted to sandwich black piping into the edge of the skirt like I did on the red and blue skirt but I didn't have enough, and, as my car is still in the shop, I couldn't run out to get more. As a substitution, I ironed the skirt so that a bit of black showed all around the edge. I think it looks quite nice.
Well, here're the finished products.


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Oscar appoint new director
Southworth has risen swiftly through the ranks and has played a pivotal part in the creation and development of Oscar Technology.
The appointment follows Southworth's successful career at Oscar, since joining the company as a trainee consultant in 2006.
He will continue working with Oscar Technology teams in the head ofice as they seek to continue their expansion into the European technology recruitment market.
Southworth commented, "I am delighted with my promotion to Director at Oscar. I have almost ten years of experience at the company and I believe that with my knowledge of the recruitment process, my familiarity with the & lsquo;Oscar way,' and a deep understanding of our client base, I can further cement our growing reputation as a recruitment centre of excellence."
Andy Morrell, group director of Oscar, added, "We are delighted to welcome Matthew to the Board of Directors at Oscar. As someone that I have worked with for nine years, it's a privilege to have Matt as part of Oscar.
"Matt and his team have demonstrated an excellent example of success - success which has been achieved by creating a culture of dedicated professionalism and continuous improvement within our Technology team.
"Following our recent rebrand, investment in new technology, attraction of strong talent, and improvement on our already strong retention statistics, the future is incredibly exciting for Oscar Technology and we are very happy that Matthew will play a leading part in its development."


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It surprises me how I can read portions of the Bible, and miss things over and over again. Has that ever happened to you?
It is common knowledge to some that the Jews killed Christ. Isn't that what we hear being preached from some podiums? Isn't that one of the reasons the Jews have had such a tumultuous history? Wasn't that Hitler's (and others') peeve with the Jews?
Yes, the Jewish leaders of that day wanted Christ dead and enticed the people to ask for his death. That is true.
However, it was not by their hand that he died.
The usual punishment of that day for Jews, was death by stoning. For Romans, it was death by crucifixion.
I came across this Scripture today that I've read time and again. This time something stood out.
From the words of Christ (AMP)
Luke 18:31-33
Then taking the Twelve aside, He said to them, Listen! We are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written about the Son of Man through and by the prophets will be fulfilled. (Isa. 53:1-12)
For He will be handed over to the Gentiles and will be made sport of and scoffed and jeered at and insulted and spit upon. (Isa. 50:6)
They will flog Him and kill Him; and on the third day He will rise again. (Ps. 16:10)
This may not be news to you, and it wasn't really news to me. I know how the story unfolds.
However, I had still believed the common teaching that the Jews killed Christ.
In fact, it was a combined effort! The Roman leader Pontius Pilate, with the co-operation of some Jewish leaders in Jerusalem brought about the death of Jesus.
Even the saying in Matthew 27:25 ("His blood be upon us and upon our children") is best taken as referring to the crowd manipulated by the leaders, and to the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 ("our children")~ not to the whole Jewish people for all ages.
As Christians, we need to be sensitive to the tendency to blame only the Jewish people, when clearly the Romans played a direct role.
Most of the Gospels give the impression that the Jewish leaders manipulated Pilate and that they turned Jesus over to him for execution. The Gospel of John even seems to imply that all Jesus' opponents were Jews. You have to remember that at this time Jerusalem had been destroyed and Christians were still adjusting to life within the Roman Empire. When taken out of context, these texts can contribute to, and seemingly justify anti-semitism.
We know Jesus was killed. We know it was a terrible injustice that should never have happened. At this point in His story, what's more important is what His death and His life brought us. Simply stated; through His life, He gave us an example of how we ought to live; through His death He provided an entry into eternal life for all those who would repent of their sins, believe in Him and obey His commands.
" They have eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear."
Jeremiah 5:21; Ezekiel 12:2; Mark 8:18; Acts 28:26,27
Therefore, the aim of this post is to encourage you to read your Bibles prayerfully, with your eyes and hearts open to understand what is written.
Thank you for visiting and have a good weekend!


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And, if her husband and the courts have their way, she'll do so without the benefit of pastoral care.
That's right. Her husband, the man who is eager to collect Terri's settlement fund and move on with marrying his live-in girlfriend, thinks that Msgr. Thaddeus Malanowski isn't "the kind of person" he wants visiting Terri. He's worried about Msgr. Malanowski's "integrity".
It would seem as though there is a singular lack of humanity in the Florida judicial bench. I have never heard of a patient being denied pastoral care before. I can't even imagine the kind of hardness of heart required to take such a position. Never have I witnessed such a concatenation of unjust judges: First there is Judge George "Persistently Vegetative" Greer, who seems almost as eager for Terri to die as her husband. Then there is U.S. District Judge Richard A. "I Wash My Hands" Lazzara, who refused to intervene to even delay Terri's death. And now Judge George "Without Benefit of Clergy" Greer has decided that Terri is so sub-human that she is to be denied even spiritual comfort and consolation.
The monstrosity of the injustice here is underscored by this refusal to allow Msgr. Malanowski's priestly ministrations. Even condemned criminals are given access to clergy. Think of that! Terri Schiavo, who is guilty of no crime, is being denied something we commonly provide to the most heinous of criminals. I cannot think of reprobation severe enough for Judge Greer and his cronies.
Judge Greer has repeatedly demonstrated his bias and unwillingness to entertain new evidence in the Schivo case. He has demonstrated wilfull intellectual dishonesty in continuing to describe Terri as in a "Persistent Vegetative State", when the principal evidence for that is simply the assertions of the husband and his lawyer. And Judge Greer's deprivation of pastoral care can only be described as a despicable abuse of judicial power. Judge Greer is manifestly unfit for judicial office. He is morally unfit for any position fo public trust.
What does it take to remove a judge in Florida? Floridians, remember this come election time! Make the removal of Judge Greer a campaign issue!
As a priest, I cannot imagine being in Msgr. Malanowski's position. I simply could not stand for such interference with my ministry. I would be inclined to seek every means possible to disobey the order and visit Terri. An unjust law is no law at all. Similarly, a capricious, inhuman, unjust and gratuitous judge's order is no order at all.
There is a long standing tradition in the Church of defying Caesar when he trespasses beyond his rightful authority. There is a well-established tradition of resisting Caesar when he attempts to deprive the Church of her legitimate prerogatives. And so, I reiterate the suggestion I made a couple of weeks ago: It is time to consider civil disobedience.
Perhaps it is time for persistent efforts at public pressure. Perhaps organizing sit-ins or human chains in Judge Greer's courtroom?...Maybe public outrage will get through the judge's leathern conscience and atrophied sense of justice.
And finally, if all else fails, do you think that the Schindlers might find, maybe, 500 to 1,000 people to surround the nursing home with a human chain, and prevent the authorities from dispatching Terri? Maybe to fill Terri's room with people on a 24-hour watch, so as to deny access to those who would end Terri's life?
The Florida Bishops have spoken out to slow down the rush to kill Terri. While I could wish their statement was written more forcefully, it nontheless is a good beginning. But the time for beginnings is past. The time for action is here. Several bishops and priests have made headlines by being arrested at abortion clinics. Are there any in Florida willing to risk arrest by picketing or otherwise interfering with the efforts to kill Terri?
Maybe, if nothing else, a determined effort to get a priest in to visit Terri? She deserves at least the same consideration we would give a condemned criminal.


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I am just blown away by the cuteness and the attention to detail in these beautifully handmade hats and plushies!
One of my fave items is the Brain Slug plushies!! They are so cute and you can attach them to your head using a safety pin and a headband or something so you can look like you are infected! lol (^∇^)
Brain Slugs are little parasitic slugs from the TV show Futurama that attach themselves to the heads of intelligent beings (such as humans) and control them.
Dont they just look to cute to be evil?
Cute Storm also makes cute animal themed hats with animals such as owls, pandas, cats, raccoons, penguins, rabbits and more. (. ◕ ω ◕ ) ♡
With the cold season on its way here in Australia i am defiantly putting one of these cuties on my shopping list! Personally i really like the panda! ♡


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The Journey of a Beginning Farmer :: As a child I spent most of my life in town living with my mom, but whenever I visited my Dad and his side of the family it was on the farm. From my earliest memories I have always wanted to be a farmer (except when I wanted to be a cowboy). Now, I am trying to fulfill that dream. This will be a journal of that journey :: my research, my joys, my frustrations, and all of the things that go along with the beginning farmer.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sheep on the Mind...
The other day I went over to the ATTRA website to see if I could find some basic introductory information on sheep. What I found was an article titled, "Sustainable Sheep Production" (you can access and html version of the article by clicking on the title). As I said I was looking for a very basic overview and this short article is just that, but it did give me a few things to think about and process.
The first paragraph holds a couple of sentences that really support my current interest in sheep. The authors write, "Integrating sheep into a farming operation can contribute to the economic and environmental sustainability of the whole farm." And they continue a couple of sentences later, "The relatively small investment required, and the gradually increasing size of the flock, make sheep production a good choice for the beginning small-scale or part-time farmer." This really got my attention because I keep reading about the environmental impact that sheep can have on the farm, whether it is by helping to break parasite cycles or by managing pastures. But, the second sentence was pretty interesting also ... after buying our Dexters (and soon a bull, but more on that later) I'm ready for something that is less expensive and perfect for the "beginning small-scale" farmer. One think that I would really like to learn more about is the market for sheep, whether it be the conventional or niche market. I have been told my family and neighbors that the sheep market is pretty good now, but what exactly does pretty good mean?
On the subject of grazing sheep and cattle together the article through out this tasty nugget of information, "...multi-species grazing with sheep, cattle, and goats is useful in increasing pasture efficiency. It has been demonstrated that grazing sheep with cattle can increase meat production by 24% compared to cattle alone, and by 9% compared to sheep alone." Those are pretty drastic increases when you also factor in the possibility of more income with the added livestock. Also, I remember reading recently in Mr. Logsdon's book that you can keep one you and her lamb(s) for each cow/steer/bull you currently have without increasing your acreage. If you can sell for a profit I don't see why you wouldn't add sheep? Or, if you can sell and break even it may even be worth it when you combine the pasture management and parasite control benefits...
The rest of the article is pretty informational also from the basic, "I don't know anything about sheep," point of view. It briefly mentions the use of three strands of electric wire for fencing and the benefits and possibilities of pasture lambing and culling for good lambing ewes. One thing that I would like to research more deeply is breed/cross selection (besides how to raise them of course). The article has a short section on breeds and the authors state that in the U.S. four breeds make up two-thirds of the sheep. But, are those sheep well suited to pasture lambing and pasture living? I don't really know ... I do know that a large amount of the sheep raised in the U.S. come from rangelands in the West, so maybe those would have traits that are more adapted to living in the regions with less precipitation. That being said, as I have mentioned before I'm not ready to add any other purebred livestock as much as I would love to have heritage breeds. One breed association is enough to deal with!
I would love to hear from anyone with experience raising sheep ... especially if you are in the Midwest. Also, below are a couple of links to threads on Homesteading Today dealing with books about sheep and shepherding.
Good Sheep Books For a Beginner
Sheep Book Recommendations and Reviews
7 comments:
- Yeoman said...
Let me note that, while I come from a region that once had many times more sheep than people, I've never raised sheep. I'm familiar with sheep ranching, but I've never done it myself. So my statement is more or less in ignorance. My experience with sheep ranching is limited to participating in the final gathering of the sheep on my in laws place, as the last of them were sold.
I like sheep a lot. There's some really good things about them. While they were and are condemned by some people for grazing things down to dirt, if you watch them carefully, they're an efficient grazer. They'll eat weeds that cattle will not, and they'll keep pastures free of some nasty weeds (as will goats).
The bad things about sheep, at least in this region, are that they are very labor intensive and they're born looking for a way to die. My wife, who did raise sheep, hates them. She won't even eat lamb (which I really like), just because it brings back sheep raising memories. Cattle do not require anywhere near the investment in time that sheep do.
At least out here, in the West, sheep really have to be watched also. Some do not, but it's asking for trouble. Predators can kill them easily, and they do.
Moreover, there's a lot of things that do sheep in, that are surprising. They're not too hard to stress and accidentally kill. In the last roundup of the sheep we did, an old ewe died simply from stress. It was a hot day, and apparently we were driving them somewhat too quickly, although it certainly wasn't apparent. The ewe simply stopped and died. I've never seen anything else die like that. Ticks will kill them, if they get too many. Spring storms in this region will kill them, and they have some bad instincts in regards to storms that work against them.
All that being said, if I could get a herd of sheep to go with the cows, I'd do so today. I can't, as I don't have the time to watch them.
- 10:14 AM, December 14, 2007
- Steven said...
I was just talking with a guy at work this morning about raising sheep. His family has a Christmas tree farm and also raise sheep, rabbits, and belgian horses (which they use to give rides out to get your tree) He's a young (24 year old) welder in the shop here who raises sheep on his parents farm as a little side business. I kind of figured he did things organic, but I was wrong. He said that he had looked into it but just thought it was too hard to do. He said that sheep were basically hard to keep alive without medicated foods and stuff.
What I was wondering is... can you do "grass fed sheep"?
- 12:35 PM, December 14, 2007
- John said...
May want to take a look at this blog. Archives have quite a bit on sheep farming.
- 1:23 PM, December 14, 2007
- Christy said...
I don't raise sheep yet but have done a lot of research and talked to many people who do raise sheep. I think the comments others left can be true but it depends on the breed. Some breeds are much hardier than others. No real suprise the heritage breeds do better as do the crosses as opposed to purebreed. Shetlands are supposed to be very hardy and easy to raise. I've talked to a few people who have them on pasture and even let them lamb out on pasture and they've had no problems with them. I think you just have to research your breeds very carefully.
- 4:51 PM, December 14, 2007
- Ethan Book said...
Yeoman - Some of the "bad things" that you mention about sheep are things that I have heard also and are the things that make me think twice about them. I wonder if through breeding selection you can create an easy (relative term) flock much like Water Jefferies at Sugar Mountain farm has with his pigs. He farrows sows on pasture year round without losses. Or, I guess we could build that flock like some in New Zealand do ... leave during lambing time...
Steven - Sure you can grassfed sheep. They are ruminants just like cattle and really can thrive on pasture if you have the right breeding and quality pastures. I think there are a few people doing it out there pretty successfully.
John - Thanks for brining that link to my attention. I have visited that blog before, but hadn't searched that far back ... now I'm making my way through it.
Christy - Shetlands are a breed that I have actually looked at. In fact I received pictures from and talked with a guy who was selling 5 ewes and a lamb, but I just wasn't quite ready to jump in yet. I guess I still need to figure out what my market for these is going to be???
- 8:01 PM, December 14, 2007
- Yeoman said...
On grass fed sheep, I've had it.
I like lamb, and in spite of what people will sometimes claim about the taste being too strong, I like mutton too. Locally, it's quite expensive, so we very rarely buy it. And my wife doesn't like it.
However, in our final sheep drive, we had one die, and we butchered it. This was an old ewe, and it had not been fed out. It was fine, quite frankly.
- 10:48 AM, December 18, 2007
- Mellifera said...
I've heard some really good things about Icelandic sheep. They seem to be very hardy, don't need grain, easy lambing, etc. They also have a premium-quality wool, taste good, and apparently give enough milk that you can make some cheese too.
(And no, I'm not on the breed registry's payroll. : )
- 11:46 AM, December 19, 2007


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Our passion of the week is another celebrity home. Tim Bergling, best known as DJ Avicii, and for the hits "Wake me up" and "Addicted to you", has bought this amazing Hollywood Villa last December and we love it! Today, The Most Expensive Homes is going to show one of the most […]
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Pink Yet Lavender: A jam packed party of glitters in a bottle! Large salmon colored hex glitters mingle with smaller silver and holographic glitters. This one is dense and what is shown in the pictures is one swipe of the brush; impressive and goes perfect over Anti-Bleak.
To the left is a picture of 3 of the sands swatched on nail sticks and they have dried over night. You can see the difference between my pictures and the nail sticks- 12+ hours of drying makes a difference. Now while I don't know exactly how long you'd have to wait for these to dry before you started touching stuff, I do know that waiting 5 minutes between thin coats did nothing for me. I got drag with the second coat. My hands were cold too, so that may have something to do with it but just know that if you're going to wear this unique and very cool finish, you will have to be patient. The finishes also remind me of gum drops.... anyone else? It's very cool and worth it - just allow yourself time for it to dry.


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Over the past few weeks, I've attended a few media events who in their preamble, have recognised social media's presence - the fact that people will be checking in, tweeting or instagraming while in attendance. These events were also progressive enough to think of providing social media-savvy guests with the necessary tools (hashtags, handles) in order to generate a parallel online conversation to the offline event.
While it's great to see social media integration recognised for its effectiveness (or at least presence), there is no point doing it if you're doing it badly. Here are a few things I have noticed, Sydney.
Most people still don't know the difference between a Twitter 'handle' and a 'hashtag'. It's really very simple: A 'handle' is another word for 'username'. It's the name by which you are represented and referenced in the Twittersphere. A 'hashtag' is any word or series of words(withnospaces) prefaced by the '#' symbol. The '#' categorises or marks for reference a topic of conversation, like #FoodFilms, or #ShitMyDadSays.
Further to this, there is no point:
- Creating a handle that is so long or complicated that nobody will remember it. How can anyone remember @ConfXbitArtSumm2011? Clearly the longer Twitter is alive, the greater the likelihood your first preference will already be taken, but if you have trouble coming up with something memorable, hire a digital copywriter to come up with some options for you. Or ask for feedback from people outside of your ConfXbitArtSumm2011 for their opinion on whether they'd remember it.
- Using a hashtag that is too general. For example, #food. You might as well use #forgettable or worse, #untraceable: It's not specific enough to actually register any definable interest or conversation in a space where millions of people will be using that same hashtag to reference or describe a billion other things. Where public events are concerned, if you're looking for effective (and traceable) conversation, pick something simple, but specific. The likelihood of someone using #SydArtSummit (instead of #art, for example) for anything other than a Sydney Art Summit is unlikely. And while you can't own a hashtag, the likelihood of other people using it is slim.
Social media is dynamic, conversational and fun. But if you want to take it beyond those things and actually make it effective, relevant and traceable, simple tips like these will at least steer you in the right direction.


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To the Times of Ti:
This letter is in response to Mr. (Tom) Allen's letter to the editor concerning health insurance costs. Unfortunately, Mr. Allen is trying to sway voters with misinformation. Mr. Allen refers to a Post-Star article that discusses rising insurance costs in Glens Falls area schools.
We are fortunate that we do not belong to this health care consortium. In our insurance consortium, consisting of schools in our local BOCES district, there will be a 0 percent increase in health insurance premiums. This is partnered with this current budget year that also has a 0 percent increase in premiums.
The reason for this is in 2009 the Ticonderoga Teachers Association agreed to go to a Plan B health insurance option. Since 2009, the Ticonderoga Central School District has realized a savings of over $460,000 in health insurance premiums. Partner that with three years of concessions that total approximately $900,000. These figures tell me that the teachers association has shown a vested interest in the school district and community.
Mr. Allen goes on to attack the board of education as being pro-teacher. Mr. Allen, I attend most school board meetings. I can tell you that the current board, as well as board members who have preceded them—Dr. William Brennan, Dick Frazier, Jay Fortino, Nan Reale and Gary Davis just to name a few — are not pro-teacher, they are pro-children and pro-education.
Rick Smith
Ticonderoga Teachers Association


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Jude Law & Robert Downey, Jr.: Sherlock Holmes Sequel!
Jude Law and Robert Downey, Jr. share a laugh on the set of the sequel to their 2009 hit film Sherlock Holmes.
Entertainment Tonight caught up with the actors on set and asked why they wanted to make a sequel to the film.
"We said, if I remember rightly, on the last one that we had so much fun, and if everyone else would too, that if they wanted us to do more, we would — and it seems they wanted us to do more, so that's why we're back," Jude shared. "It's gone to the next level."
"The idea this time was to remember what put us in the position to be able to join forces again," Robert added. "The tone of Sherlock and Watson this time around [is darker] — they're actually up against their greatest nemesis, therefore we're afforded a little more levity [in some of the scenes]."
The Sherlock Holmes sequel will hit movie theaters on December 16!


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Here's another layout I created using the Spring Zing kit with an Easter theme this time!
The photo is of the cupcakes I made for Easter! I started by tying a bow in the lovely green ribbon and stuck it down. I clustered lots of the embellishments, like some flowers, a cupcake case, the bird (which I outlined and added form dots the the back to give it some height), a journalling spot, a fabric bow, a crocheted flower and some twisted orange bakers twine. I then added some of the green thread to the paper strip at the end and tied it in a bow and added two paper clip flags on to the top of the photo.
I'm having a problem with what to do with old packets of Thickers that don't have that many letters left and I can't seem to throw them away(!!) so I made up the title using lots of different ones, I'm quite pleased with how it looks too!
I have also added these colourful embellishments to the shop today!
They are only £2.00!!
There won't be a new kit next month as I will be added new products, if you are a Facebook fan you may have and will be seeing some sneaks of things to come!!


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2011 Spartans Recruiting Events
The Spartans will be recruiting at several locations & events throughout the 2011 marching band season.
Come say hello & ask your questions. We look forward to meeting you!
2011 Recruiting events
Oct 9th ? Show at Salem HS, Salem NH at 6pm
Oct 16th ? Show at North Andover HS, North Andover, MA at 6pm
Read the rest of the article here.
Posted by News Editor on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010. Filed under DCI Open.


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Originally posted on my blog but I wanted to share with everyone here.
A character's past influences their decision in the present. Your character may have witnessed his mother killed when he was younger and plans to find the murderer at any cost. This past element will drive all his actions in the present. Every decision he makes is to find this person. Nothing will stand in his way. This character is meeting his past head on.
Last night when I wrote in my novel's journal, I figured out my hero's past element which will take most of the series for him to overcome. My hero is running away from his past because he does not want to make the same mistake. Since I made this discovery, the first few chapter need to be rewritten. The actions my character has taken does not reflect this past element at the beginning.
The conflict will come when the situation for the character puts them against his present course. Let us go back to the first example and add this scene in. The murderer sets a home on fire trapping those inside. The main character must make the decision to keep going after the person who killed his mother or save the people trapped inside. Either choice will weight heavy for the character. And it will influence any future decision he makes.
You should keep these thoughts in mind even with secondary characters, especially if they have any impact on the main plot and/or sub-plots. You do not need to let the reader know their situation, but you need to understand to weave their actions right.
The character's present action must match with their past. Even as the story moves forward, anything that happens during the present in the novel will turn into the past for the character as you continue to write. The past will carry on influencing the present throughout your novel. Future conflicts will be created for your characters based on their present action. And conflict is what drives your story.