Hi, I'm a year 3 university student studying Computing, and looking for a software project (excluding web site design related projects). Potential projects might include: - implementation of an algorithm.... - implementing a database with web based front-end.... - creation of a piece of software... could you give me some solid ideas for any potential projects.... thanks

How about a program that will allow me to switch between my Linux and Windows 2000 partitions instantly? Dual load in memory? Or a program to simulate a control board of missile guidance programs so I can run some Ada code on it... (these will satisfy creation of a piece of software... ) Well, you can start with any run of the mill forum or ecommerce site using PHP or Apache to satisfy the "implementing a database with web based front-end...." I would like to see the code for a 1024 bit encryption algorithm/program... maybe you can try that out... or 512 bit. satisfies the "implementation of an algorithm...." I guess its a good thing I didn't pursue a PhD, I would be forced into teaching... and I think I might fall victim to mutiny if that was the case... lol Anyway, maybe you can derive something from the ideas listed above. Good luck. IR

1024 bit encryption algorythm? geez, the 56 bit key from DES has 73,000,000,000,000,000 cobinations...or something like that. i dont even want to know what 1024 bit would have...lol but thats one heck of a way to ensure it isnt found by brute force...(estimated calculation time...aproxamatly 3.2 eons...) eaw8806

"implementation of an algorithm...." It might be interesting to see if you can come up with (or find and implement) an alternative searching algorithm to Google's PageRank. You could also try tweaking PageRank. A free version of PageRank that runs for Linux or Windows and indexes your local drive? Or perhaps you could calculate pi via the BBP(*) algorithm in sequence (So use the algorithm to calculate every digit of pi in order, or out of order). Time the calculation and see if you can't find a way to tweak it (perhaps an alternate sequence). "implementing a database with web based front-end...." Easy. Already done for you in lots of books and Internet articles. You can slack with this one. "creation of a piece of software..." Encryption is fascinating. How about a program that creates and tests passwords based on the contents of a person's hard drive? Pseudo-random almost. The idea could be to make a password that can be remembered (i.e. not completely random looking or sounding) but is also fairly secure. You could have several rounds, where in the opening many passwords are created (even a few user inputted), an elimination of weaker passwords (but still matching the criteria, which could be certain words or phrases the user wants included), and then a final round. Then you can pick the finalists and choose the password you like the best. If you used a few different methods of generation, you could have the program remember which results (and hence which means of generation) the user prefers and cater the results accordingly. Or more simply, a prompt where the user types in three words (like cat, dog, sheep), one of which must be in the password in some form, and the program finds a decent password (like S62h95314E13p) mixed with something random (or perhaps intelligable). Or wouldn't it be great if you could just mix alternative sequences into passwords? So if I put in 3.1415926 and sheep, I would get S62h95314E13p (S h 3 E p, 62 95 14 13). (*)http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Bailey-Borwein-PlouffeAlgorithm.html

eaw8806, brute forcing 1024 bit encryption is system suicide... unless of course you have a beowulf cluster going or access to a supercomputer. ;) IR