If you've never used Linux before I would suggest going to your local public library and getting some books on Linux. It will help you out a little bit, even if the book explains a distro that is different than the one you are running. Basically, keep at it. In the beginning it can be difficult and confusing but the more you use it the easier it becomes.
www.ubuntuguide.org
music: Rhythmbox or Amarok
movies: Xine
games: Enemy Territory, ET:True Combat Mod, Doom III, lots more
open office is great and comes preinstalled, open .doc files and stuff, powerpoints, excel files, etc. it's sweet.
HTH. :)
Well, I finished generating a very small table. Just uppercase letters for MD5 and tested it out and it seems to work quite well. Doesn't handle lowercase and numbers but I guess that will be next. ;)
Is it possible to append or update a rainbow table? For example, let's say I finish the configuration #0 example and have just alphabet characters as the charset. Is it possible to update it and add the numbers in instead of deleting and starting from scratch thus losing everything I've done?
I first heard about Linux back in high school. There was one computer in our lab that had some version of Linux on it but I was too stupid to try it and figure it out. Fast forward a year or two and I started getting into Open Source and trying all kinds of distros. Mostly, I'm a Debian/Ubuntu fanboy, but I wouldn't mind branching out and trying Gentoo. Now I listen to podcasts about Linux, visit forums, etc. I ran Linux as my main desktop for about 6 months but I couldn't stay away from all the games on Windows. So now I dual boot. I think I'll still dual boot for awhile and play games but I'm certainly not getting Vista. After hearing about the price and all the crap they're putting into it, it sounds terrible.
So I've been reading about these rainbow tables and started generating my own for md5. Ugh, gonna take awhile. They probably won't be done until tomorrow morning. Anyway, would it be possible to use this same strategy for the RSA encryption used in the contest?