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BBC news article Dolphin spectacle baffles experts reports,

“A group of up to 2,000 common dolphins has been spotted off the coast of west Wales. Marine experts said it was ‘massively unusual’ to see so many off the Pembrokeshire coast, and the reason remained a mystery.”

Anyone who’s familiar with the late Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a trilogy in five parts) will no doubt immediately recognise the apparent strange behaviour is, in fact, a warning by second most intelligent lifeform on earth (the mouse being the most intelligent) of the imminent destruction of our planet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. From The Guide,

“On the planet earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.

“Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.”

For those who are less well versed in the inter-galactic hitchhiking parlance, let me put it to you plainly - got your towels ready, our days on Earth are numbered.

Many congratulations Mr. and Mrs. William and Flora Lee, our newly wed couple. The wedding took place yesterday in the glorious weather in the picturesque surroudings of South Lodge Hotel near Horsham, West Sussex. It was a refreshing mix of Chinese and Western (British?) traditions and ceremonies for guests from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the States.

The day kicked off with the ceremony. Gentle harp music provided the backdrop. After a few moments of anticipation, the doors opened, and entered the flower girl. Then, in a white dress, the bride entered gracefully, accompanied by her father. She was received by the groom and in calm voice with a slight hint of nerves, vow and rings were exchanged. Inevitably, a few tears have been shed by those present, not to say the bride. It was all smiles again soon enough when confetti rain as the new couple walked down the stairs. It was followed by hundreads of camera shutter clicks, clanging of champagne glasses and joyous chatter.

Speeches were given after the Chinese tea ceremony and wedding breakfast. The groom’s speech chronicled the moving love story of the himself and his new wife, whereas Fu Ting, the best man, presented what he himself and the groom’s friends have to say about the groom, plus a perhaps one or two pictures that the groom would rather not to have been shown in public.

Later the guests relaxed and conversed merrily, in a soothing atmosphere created the jazz duo who delivered numbers from the likes of Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. Most guests, either weary from the day’s activities or from understandable inhibition, left the dance floor to the bride and groom. The evening ended with The Greatest Love of All (and another song which escaped me since I was busy snapping away), and the wedding concluded with an polite applause to the jazz vocalist and keyboard player.

Truly heartfelt congratulations again to William and Flora, and may you have a happy and prosperous life together.

SPOILER ALERT! Contains storyline of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Read on at your own risk.

It’s been more than a month in anticipation since I’ve booked my tickets. The final countdown began at 22.30 last night after a hasty Nandos dinner. Waving my friends a (temporary) goodbye, I stepped out, alone, of the chicken joint, collected my Master Replicas Force FX Darth Vader Red Lightsaber from my speeder… with wheels, and duly entered the lairs of Vue cinema, Staines, planet Earth. Waving to the ticket guard “You do not need to see my student ID”, I arrived at the Corridor of Darkness where a dozen of like minded creatures have already formed a queue, with a good two hours to go before the beginning of the end of the Saga. Three or four of them were rather enthusiastic and engaged in heated debates and, where diplomacy failed, episodes of lightsaber battles. I, of course, am above all that. My reinforcements arrived in stages and at around midnight, we were allowed into the auditorium.

Let’s fast-forward to the film, skipping the PR exercise put on by the cinema manager (no, I don’t want a raffle, just put the bloody film on!). Overall speaking, I’d certainly give it a thumbs-up. There’s no doubt that it’s the best of the prequels by far.

Through a better screenplay and dialogues than Episode II, you do feel the close brother-like relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, and their mutual respect is apparent. The sequence towards the end of their epic battle on lava was particularly powerful, with Obi-Wan having defeated Anakin, almost in tears, shouting “You were the chosen one!”

The storyline is much what you’d expect, as there’s not many degrees of freedom being sandwiched between Episodes II and IV. Anakin’s descent into the Dark Side was always going to be difficult to portray. George’s attempt is passable but not entirely convincing. This is partly because the “dark forces can prevent death” approach taken by Palpatine lacks subtlety and party due to the unconvincing “love” between Anakin and Padmé.

Visually, the CG effects are by and large top notch as you’d expect from ILM. There are quite a few new planets, spacecrafts and vehicles, robots, and what feels like non-stop wieldings of variously coloured lightsabers. And that’s all good in my book.

In summary, it’s no Episode V quality, but I did enjoy it without having to try to hard. Still, I think I need more time to mull over the film, and how to cope with a post Star Wars (movies) life.

It has taken a few days, but the IPsec vulnerability story has found ts way to the mainstream news sites, including:

• The Register UK.gov warns over VPN crypto flaw
• ZDNet UK Government warns of IPsec VPN flaw
• Slashdot Flaw Found in VPN Crypto Security

Some observers quite correctly note that it has been known for a long time that encryption without authentication (on which the attacks are based) is a bad idea, so these attacks aren’t new. Well, the point is encryption-only configuration of IPsec is still allowed in the current ESP standard (RFC 2406) and the forthcoming standard (ESPv3 Internet Draft), and these new attacks show that encryption without authentication is as good as no encryption. so you might as well not bother. The attacks are highly efficient, and allow recovery of arbitrary encrypted ESP encrypted IP datagrams in full. In addition, the attacks have been implemented and demonstrated to work under realistic conditions. This is in contrast to Bellovin’s previous work Problem Areas for the IP Security Protocols, which is a fine piece of work outlining the importance of integrity protection, but of more a theoretical nature. The attacks presented in that paper required some rather unrealistic assumptions, and were relatively cumbersome and of low impact.

In summary, these attacks are new and significant, but the actual flaw is well understood, but the fix is not mandated by the IPsec standard .

UK’s National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC, pronounced “nicey”) has just published a vulerability advisory concerning IPsec, a set of protocols commonly used in the deployment of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). IPsec, when used under certain configurations, are vulnerable to a number of attacks where an attacker can recover the plaintext corresponding to encrypted IP packets with only moderate effort.

The attacks have been implemented and demonstrated to work. Nice result for the researchers after months of hard work.