Max Wanadoo
max.wanadoo at gmail.com
Fri Jan 15 15:17:39 CST 2010
Leading with my chin here, but I thought that binary chops were the fastest possible search algo. http://www.adit.co.uk/html/binary_chop.html "Well this could be improved and/or simplified in many cases depending upon the data being searched and the nature of the array. The function could also be written as a general purpose tool with the array to be searched being passed as well as the search value - well if we ever see a truly object oriented VB to implement it in." "The algorithm "Although the basic idea of binary search is comparatively straightforward, the details can be surprisingly tricky." - Professor Donald Knuth When Jon Bentley assigned it as a problem in a course for professional programmers, he found that an astounding ninety percent failed to code a binary search correctly after several hours of working on it[3], and another study shows that accurate code for it is only found in five out of twenty textbooks (Kruse, 1999). Furthermore, Bentley's own implementation of binary search, published in his 1986 book Programming Pearls, contains an error that remained undetected for over twenty years.[4]" Wikipedia max -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence Sent: 15 January 2010 20:57 To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Subject: [dba-Tech] Rainbow tables While waiting for a server to install and trying to get into some old XP computers the client had, I ran into the problem of login passwords to these old boxes. The client just wanted me to go into these old computers, clear out any personal information, remove the passwords or make it something super simple and then the client would send the old computers off to a school. The only problem is that no one knows the passwords anymore so I finally found a free brute force password recovery app called Ophcrack. The interesting thing about the app was the technology that it used... the algorithm is using Rainbow Tables. This is new to me but very interesting. I can see all sorts of possibilities such as super fast search routines etc... If anyone is interested in this check out the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table Jim _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com