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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| d845320 | What is the least number of weights that can be used on a set of scales to weigh any whole number of kilograms from 1 to 40? | Simon Singh | ||
| 25807dc | For decades, ENIAC, not Colossus, was considered the mother of all computers. | Simon Singh | ||
| 4d9df00 | NSA employs more mathematicians, buys more computer hardware, and intercepts more messages than any other organization in the world. It is the world leader when it comes to snooping. | Simon Singh | ||
| 6a1cea9 | In the 1970s, banks attempted to distribute keys by employing special dispatch riders who had been vetted and who were among the company's most trusted employees. | Simon Singh | ||
| c331cb0 | dispatch riders would race across the world with padlocked briefcases, personally distributing keys to everyone who would receive messages from the bank over the next week. As business networks grew in size, as more messages were sent, and as more keys had to be delivered, the banks found that this distribution process became a horrendous logistical nightmare, and the overhead costs became prohibitive. | Simon Singh | ||
| 390fa34 | alphabetic scripts tend to have between 20 and 40 characters (Russian, for example, has 36 signs, and Arabic has 28). | Simon Singh | ||
| e4fbd52 | When ships carrying COMSEC material came into dock, crypto-custodians would march onboard, collect stacks of cards, paper tapes, floppy disks, or whatever other medium the keys might be stored on, and then deliver them to the intended recipients. | Simon Singh | ||
| 5ba4c44 | scripts that rely on semagrams tend to have hundreds or even thousands of signs (Chinese has over 5,000). | Simon Singh | ||
| efcef9d | Syllabic scripts occupy the middle ground, with between 50 and 100 syllabic characters. Beyond these two facts, Linear B was an unfathomable mystery. | Simon Singh | ||
| ca5c041 | Quantum cryptography is an unbreakable system of encryption. | Simon Singh | ||
| 8db6821 | one-way functions are sometimes called Humpty Dumpty functions. Modular arithmetic, sometimes called clock arithmetic in schools, is an area of mathematics that is rich in one-way functions. In modular arithmetic, mathematicians consider a finite group of numbers arranged in a loop, | Simon Singh | ||
| 3635671 | in the 1980s it was only government, the military and large businesses that owned computers powerful enough to run RSA. Not surprisingly, RSA Data Security, Inc., the company set up to commercialize RSA, developed their encryption products with only these markets in mind. | Simon Singh | ||
| 4e12dfd | Zimmermann believed that everybody deserved the right to the privacy that was offered by RSA encryption, and he directed his political zeal toward developing an RSA encryption product for the masses. | Simon Singh | ||
| f1c402c | Zimmermann employed a neat trick that used asymmetric RSA encryption in tandem with old-fashioned symmetric encryption. | Simon Singh | ||
| 453f900 | Pliny the Elder explained how the "milk" of the tithymalus plant could be used as an invisible ink. Although the ink is transparent after drying, gentle heating chars it and turns it brown. Many organic fluids behave in a similar way, because they are rich in carbon and therefore char easily." | Simon Singh | ||
| 7d4959d | It has been said that the First World War was the chemists' war, because mustard gas and chlorine were employed for the first time, and that the Second World War was the physicists' war, because the atom bomb was detonated. Similarly, it has been argued that the Third World War would be the mathematicians' war, because mathematicians will have control over the next great weapon of war--information. | Simon Singh | ||
| d130cfc | The Vigenere cipher was called "le chiffre indechiffrable," but Babbage broke it;" | Simon Singh | ||
| 0ba833d | The security of a cryptosystem must not depend on keeping secret the crypto-algorithm. The security depends only on keeping secret the key. | Simon Singh | ||
| 7c9a56f | In June 1991 he took the drastic step of asking a friend to post PGP on a Usenet bulletin board. PGP is just a piece of software, and so from the bulletin board it could be downloaded by anyone for free. PGP was now loose on the Internet. | Simon Singh | ||
| 03b27c4 | Rejewski had no idea of the day key, and he had no idea which message keys were being chosen, but he did know that they resulted in this table of relationships. Had | Simon Singh | ||
| 6b3ac02 | The French had handed the information from Schmidt to the Poles because they believed it to be of no value, but the Poles had proved them wrong. | Simon Singh | ||
| 57e37db | 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." | Simon Singh | ||
| bd32e0e | destitute. | Simon Singh | ||
| b67e5e1 | 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. | Simon Singh | ||
| 319cce4 | Q: What is the volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z? 3 points A: pi.z.z.a | Simon Singh | ||
| a357fd7 | necessity is the mother of invention, then | Simon Singh | ||
| fa3d469 | 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." | Simon Singh | ||
| 07f0c8a | Alan Turing was another cryptanalyst who did not live long enough to receive any public recognition. Instead of being acclaimed a hero, he was persecuted for his homosexuality. In 1952, while reporting a burglary to the police, he naively revealed that he was having a homosexual relationship. The police felt they had no option but to arrest and charge him with "Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885." .. | Simon Singh | ||
| 275de19 | Jestlize nekdy plati, ze nutnost je matkou invence, pak je rovnez mozne, ze ohrozeni je matkou kryptoanalyzy. | Simon Singh | ||
| 1c67f72 | Po prvni svetove valce se Spojenci nebali nikoho. | Simon Singh | ||
| 984d9cc | Polsky uspech v prolomeni Enigmy byl dan tremi faktory: strachem, matematikou a spionazi. | Simon Singh | ||
| dc7f244 | Kolem roku 1790, kdyz byla ratifikovana Listina svobod, mohl soukrome mluvit kdokoliv s kymkoliv - s jistotou, jakou uz dnes nema nikdo - proste tak, ze poposel po ceste kousek od ostatnich a podival se, jestli se nekdo neskryva v kerich. | Simon Singh | ||
| 3bcd35a | The correct use of a strong cipher is a clear boon to sender and receiver, but the misuse of a weak cipher can generate a very false sense of security. | Simon Singh | ||
| 04cab9b | Turing's secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carryin.. | Simon Singh | ||
| f7cd7a2 | Each distinct cipher can be considered in terms of a general encrypting method, known as the algorithm, and a key, which specifies the exact details of a particular encryption. | Simon Singh | ||
| 7f5b6b8 | The best random keys are created by harnessing natural physical processes, such as radioactivity, which is known to exhibit truly random behavior. The | Simon Singh | ||
| 30d653b | Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor. | medicine scinece treatment | Simon Singh | |
| 4205d3c | This special was followed one month later by "Bart the Genius." This was the first genuine episode of The Simpsons , inasmuch as it premiered the famous trademark opening sequence and included the debut of Bart's notorious catchphrase "Eat my shorts." Most noteworthy of all, "Bart the Genius" contains a serious dose of mathematics. In many ways, this episode set the tone for what was to follow over the next two decades, namely a relentless .. | mathematical-secrets the-simpsons | Simon Singh | |
| deb536c | Nao existe utilidade pratica em saber que p e irracional, mas, se podemos saber, entao certamente seria intoleravel nao saber. | Simon Singh | ||
| adf720c | 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. | Simon Singh | ||
| 3524d86 | 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. | Simon Singh | ||
| 993d6d7 | 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. | Simon Singh | ||
| 3a21f7e | 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. | Simon Singh | ||
| 32ef4f6 | 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." | Simon Singh |