Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • September 5, 2012 5:37 PM

@ Friehiet,

He also has no idea how many parties I simply wasn’t invited to because I read Applied Cryptography for fun

When I was “wearing the green” I went to many parties where I’d sit quietly in the corner reading post grad and other material and then when I felt the party was at a point where I could join in safely I would.

There is actually a photo of a regimental do where I was sitting there with a book on group theory chatting amiably to the then Lord Mayor of London in full regalia who likewise had an interest in maths…

The odd thing about the regiment I was in was they had a lot of very smart people and they’d got so used to me doing it some of them would bring along papers etc for me to read if they thought I might be interested (and I usualy was) and we would often sit and chat about the papers after the party whilst waiting for breakfast etc. Perhaps even odder was the majority were from young ladies doing their Masters or Doctorates who would hunt me out to chat about some paper or another and there are one or two PhD theses with my name in the “dedication” bit.

It was all a bit wierd by even the standards of the day, but then the regiment was a bit odd ball any way and “cherised” us odduns because of what we could and did do over and above the basic soldiering.

We were unique at the time in that we designed and built our own radio kit or modified existing kit for long haul HF “special comms” with very low power out stations with low probability of detect and high power home stations where we designed and built the KW+ transmitters etc. The bandwidth of the coms was very narrow (<100Hz) and gave a very reliable 75Baud (10chars/sec) equivalent data comms, in conditions where even the good old tapity tap of Morse CW was unworkable.

I must admit I still have the occasional urge to build the stuff again using modern ultra cheap technology to see if I can squease a dB or so more out of it and then DSSS it across a half meg or so of bandwidth just for the fun of it…

Clive Robinson • September 6, 2012 4:06 AM

@ RobertT,

I can only imagine that this must have been a theme party…DSSS is so 80’s

I stopped wearing the green at the end of the 80’s begining of the 90’s because of the stupidity of Politico’s.

Also it’s a question of tools and parts in the scrap box… Now I know from what you’ve let slip you’ve got a “home shed” equiped out in a way many Unis would chearfully sell their estemed and much venerated chancellors into a millennia of Dante’s inferno to get hold of. So I’m also assuming your scrap box contains a bit more than off the shelf components out of the likes of Digi-Key and Radio Shack?

But I also like longish sequence DSSS as a carrier mechanisum due to the fact it plays much more nicely in places like the HF band or even in “white space” the FCC is desperatly wrestling with. In the ninties I had a nice little system that had “wide notch’ DSSS on the same transmitter as an ordinary ISB-SC system that enabled various interesting user and data modes for low cost tactical type systems (the fact it could FHSS as well was usefull for other reasons such as moving window jamming systems to prevent remotly activated devices but still alow PTT comms).

Now admitadly this could all be done fairly easily and conveniantly in a $5 SOC these days, but not only would it take the fun out of it, the development costs would also be well north of what I’d pay for out of my pocket.

And at the end of day DevlCost not BOM is what limits inovation these days 🙁