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adf720c
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Enigma decipherments gave the locations of numerous U-boats, but it would have been unwise to attack every single one of them, because a sudden, unexplained increase in successful British attacks would suggest to Germany that its communications were being deciphered.
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Simon Singh |
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3524d86
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the numerous losses were either the result of natural misfortune or caused by a British spy who had infiltrated the German navy. The breaking of Enigma was considered impossible and inconceivable.
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Simon Singh |
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993d6d7
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Most of the codebreakers returned to their civilian lives, sworn to secrecy, unable to reveal their pivotal role in the Allied war effort. While those who had fought conventional battles could talk of their heroic achievements, those who had fought intellectual battles of no less significance had to endure the embarrassment of having to evade questions about their wartime activities.
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Simon Singh |
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3a21f7e
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If each battalion in the Pacific employed a pair of Native Americans as radio operators, secure communication could be guaranteed. This would be much simpler than a mechanical encryption device and much harder to crack.
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Simon Singh |
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32ef4f6
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There exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans." The Navajos were so eager to fight that some of them lied about their age, or gorged themselves on bunches of bananas and swallowed great quantities of water in order to reach the minimum weight requirement of 120 pounds."
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Simon Singh |
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0ba381e
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They called the Navajo language a "weird succession of guttural, nasal, tongue-twisting sounds ... we couldn't even transcribe it, much less crack it."
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Simon Singh |
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4d3fcf8
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A Navajo message could never be faked and could always be trusted.
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Simon Singh |
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ae11359
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The only people who are in a position to point out my errors are also those who are not at liberty to reveal them.
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Simon Singh |
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890c259
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An expert problem solver must be endowed with two incompatible qualities - a restless imagination and a patient pertinacity. Howard W. Eves
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Simon Singh |
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8394092
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the greatest tribute to the work of the Navajo is the simple fact that their code is one of very few throughout history that was never broken.
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Simon Singh |
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eb074a8
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Spravne pouziti kvalitni sifry je velkou pomoci pro obe komunikujici strany, avsak nekorektni zachazeni se slabou sifrou muze vyvolat velmi falesny pocit bezpeci.
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Simon Singh |
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bc24e9b
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rika se, ze zkratka NSA ve skutecnosti znamena ,,Never Say Anything
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Simon Singh |
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800fe53
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Nez odevzdam tyto dokumenty do rukou verejnosti, chci rici par slov tem, jejichz zajem vzbudi, a udelit malou radu, ziskanou horkou zkusenosti. Zni takto: venujte hledani jen tolik casu, kolik muzete vysetrit vedle svych beznych povinnosti. A pokud nemate zadny volny cas, nechte celou vec byt. ... Znovu opakuji: nikdy neobetujte sve vlastni zajmy a zajmy sve rodiny veci, jez se muze ukazat jako iluze. Avsak, jak jsem jiz rekl, kdyz mate svo..
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Simon Singh |
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a074d04
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The problem looks so straightforward because it is based on the one piece of mathematics that everyone can remember - Pythagoras' theorem: In a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
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Simon Singh |
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c035a4f
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Lide zapojeni do debaty o sifrovani jsou vesmes inteligentni, cestni a jsou pro depozici klicu, ale nikdy nemaji vice nez dve tyto vlastnosti najednou.
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Simon Singh |
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020f5ee
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It is the same with life. Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself. He seeks to uncover the secrets of nature. This is the man I call a philosopher for although no man is completely wise in all respects, he can love wisdom as the key to nature's secrets.
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Simon Singh |
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4d73cd3
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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics. G.H. Hardy
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Simon Singh |
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3e2f861
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The construction of mathematical logic had become the arbiter of truth. This was the Pythagoreans' greatest contribution to civilisation - a way of achieving truth which is beyond the fallibility of human judgement.
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Simon Singh |
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de7a91f
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prove that xn + yn = zn has no whole number solutions for n greater than 2.
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Simon Singh |
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b0c7bab
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A problem worthy of attack Proves its worth by fighting back. Piet Hein
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Simon Singh |
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eb2684a
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Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.
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Simon Singh |
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f294933
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Scientific proof is inevitably fickle and shoddy. On the other hand mathematical proof is absolute and devoid of doubt.
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Simon Singh |
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749ec1c
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Figure 6 The science of secret writing and its main branches.
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Simon Singh |
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699b029
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Number theorists consider prime numbers to be the most important numbers of all because they are the atoms of mathematics. Prime numbers are the numerical building blocks because all other numbers can be created by multiplying combinations of the prime numbers.
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Simon Singh |
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174e2be
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On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanely butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics; her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.
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Simon Singh |
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a7079ba
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Pythagoras, the teacher, paid his student three oboli for each lesson he attended
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Simon Singh |
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9e777c3
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Each member of the school was forced to swear an oath never to reveal to the outside world any of their mathematical discoveries.
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Simon Singh |
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cd9117e
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Even after Pythagoras's death a member of the Brotherhood was drowned for breaking his oath--he publicly announced the discovery of a new regular solid, the dodecahedron, constructed from twelve regular pentagons.
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Simon Singh |
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14816b6
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The Brotherhood was effectively a religious community, and one of the idols they worshiped was Number.
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Simon Singh |
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7edfe57
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although there are plenty of numbers whose divisors add up to one less than the number itself, that is to say only slightly defective, there appear to be no numbers that are slightly excessive.
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Simon Singh |
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fd3d8af
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Euclid discovered that perfect numbers are always the multiple of two numbers, one of which is a power of 2 and the other being the next power of 2 minus 1.
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Simon Singh |
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57e37db
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One way to solve an encrypted message, if we know its language, is to find a different plaintext of the same language long enough to fill one sheet or so, and then we count the occurrences of each letter. We call the most frequently occurring letter the "first," the next most occurring letter the "second," the following most occurring letter the "third," and so on, until we account for all the different letters in the plaintext sample."
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Simon Singh |
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bd32e0e
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destitute.
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Simon Singh |
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b67e5e1
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Lisa Simpson is the kind of child we not only want our children to be, but also the kind of child we want all children to be.
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Simon Singh |
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319cce4
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Q: What is the volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z? 3 points A: pi.z.z.a
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Simon Singh |
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a357fd7
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necessity is the mother of invention, then
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Simon Singh |
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fa3d469
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Jack Good, a veteran of Bletchley, commented: "Fortunately the authorities did not know that Turing was a homosexual. Otherwise we might have lost the war."
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Simon Singh |
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e6e303f
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In my mind, the most noble way to leave your mark on the world is to expand man's understanding of the world.
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mark
world
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Simon Singh |