Cryptography-Digest Digest #109, Volume #9 Fri, 19 Feb 99 17:13:03 EST
Contents:
Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The (David Vivash)
Re: Bruce's Feb. "CRYPTO-GRAM" (JPeschel)
Re: Where to publish hashes? (David A Molnar)
Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come
From ?!? *** ) ("james d. hunter")
Re: Bruce's Feb. "CRYPTO-GRAM" (wtshaw)
Re: SkipJack vs RC2 (Doug Stell)
Re: Randomness of coin flips (Patrick Juola)
crypton.c (naf)
Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The ("james d. hunter")
Benchmarks ("Michael Scott")
Re: True Randomness ("karl malbrain")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David Vivash)
Crossposted-To:
sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.psychology.theory,alt.hypnosis,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The
Date: 19 Feb 1999 18:46:57 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>David Vivash wrote:
> >
> > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>says...
> > >
> > >David A Vivash wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I really don't see that randomness can ever be considered a human
> > > > concept. Whilst there may be problems that we find hard to
> > > > predict an
> > > > answer for (which we might very well call "random"), I believe
> > > > there are
> > > > problems that do not have an answer in a particular system until
> > > > the
> > > > answer has been found.
> > >
> > > "Randomness" is not a concept. It is "holistic hermenutical
> > > heuristic
> > > oneness with the universe". You will never "observe" anything that
> > > you will call random, simply because of what "observe" means.
> > > Or put it this way, observations are non-random instances
> > > of some distribution.
> > >
> > > I assume that you assume that economics is not random.
> > > That assumption makes economics more random.
> >
> > Sorry, which assumption was it that made economics "more random",
> > mine or yours???
>
> Both, of course. Every statement about economics is a
> randomly generated sample statement concerning the field
> of economics.
>
Hmm... But I don't see how these "assumptions" make economics _more_ random.
It is either random or not random - our reasoning on it bears no relation to
the inherent randomness.
> > I have no idea what you mean by "more random" though, so please explain.
>
> Don't you ever you follow the Stock Market?
> Every new gizmo deterministic computer program predictor
> that those people add increases the total randomness of
> the market.
> If you want to convince me that economics
> is not random, then you'll have to prove to me that
> Van Gogh's paintings are worth $60M+, the Washington
> Redskins are worth $800M, and that a Wintel computer system
> is worth the price of whatever they sell for.
I never said economics wasn't random.I *do* believe in random events y'know :)
Your examples of worth are not examples of randomness though. An item is worth
whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. The cost of the canvas and oils,
and the cost of the time taken to paint the paintings do not make them worth
$60M, but do you really believe it is random as to what items will fetch a lot
of money in the future?
I've completely lost what you were trying to argue to me here though...
> > Also, you say that I will never observe anything that I will call
> > random. This is a bold statement. All I have to do is call something
> > random and your theory's disproved... When I "observe" the balls coming
> > out of the lottery
> > machine I call that random. Strictly speaking it is not, but you are
> > talking
> > more in terms of _apparant_ randomness, rather than exact randomness.
> > That is,
> > something appears to random as we can't seem to predict it.
>
> I like making bold statements, if for no other reason
> than to piss off philosophers.
Well, that's as good a motivation as any...
> When you the observe the balls out of a lottery machine,
> you are observing specific physical objects. They are
> not random.
>
I know they are not random. I said that.
To me it *looks* random. You said I would never observe anything I will call
random. But I just did. Can you predict it?
What I am really saying is that people have different views on what is defined
as random. But randomness isn't based on our consciousness, and so whether we
think something is random is neither here nor there. It's only when something
can be proved to be random within a particular system that I will believe it
is. Some people think something is only random if they can't predict it. What
would be more correct would be to say that it *appears* to be random.
David
PS. What number am I thinking of?
-0.02... did you get it???
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JPeschel)
Subject: Re: Bruce's Feb. "CRYPTO-GRAM"
Date: 19 Feb 1999 19:35:53 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (wtshaw) writes:
>I left it open to interpretation. It seems that anything goes on the
>internet, even attempted identity theft; I simpy draw your attention to
>the chance of dishonesty in the situation, and offer him a way out of it.
>--
So you accuse of him of dishonesty for not coming up with a more
clever name for his newsletter? My god, man, what are you thinking?
Joe
__________________________________________
Joe Peschel
D.O.E. SysWorks
http://members.aol.com/jpeschel/index.htm
__________________________________________
------------------------------
From: David A Molnar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Where to publish hashes?
Date: 19 Feb 1999 19:06:39 GMT
dan schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thanks for the response. I'm looking for a solution that could
> ultimately be used as convincing legal evidence. For that purpose,
> I would consider dejanews marginal in terms of both permanence and
> resistance to manipulation.
Have you considered publishing it as a classified ad in a widely
circulated paper journal -- preferably one with an electronic
archive ? _Applied Cryptography_ mentions that someone does this
(Bellcore?) for hashes from their time-stamping service.
-David
------------------------------
From: "james d. hunter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.psychology.theory,alt.hypnosis,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness
Come From ?!? *** )
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 13:04:31 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dan wrote:
>
> > >
> > > In reply, not quite about randomness, but:
> > >
> > > Lately, I've encountered problems with people
> > > recognizing hypothetical situations, questions,
> > > and dialogues.
> > >
> > > Have any of you been experiencing problems with others
> > > recognizing hypotheticals?
> > >
> > > If-then-else is such a simple and effective way to dialogue,
> > > but in the recent past, I've encountered some "resistance".
> > > It really sucks, and makes other people appear
> > > quite stupid, although I know they aren't.
> >
> > There are two different types of if-then-else.
> > The problems that I've encountered have to
> > do with people who only do computer programming
> > forgetting that there is such a thing as a time
> > component in a machine.
> >
> > There is a logic if-then-else
> > and there is a logistic if-then-else.
> >
> > The logistic "if-then-else" has a non-removable random component.
> >
> Sounds like bullshit to me.
> If "The logistic "if-then-else" has a non-removable random component."
> is True, then please explain it further,
> else it is false, ...
Well, if you're going to put it that way.
Piss off, figure it out yourself.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (wtshaw)
Subject: Re: Bruce's Feb. "CRYPTO-GRAM"
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 12:08:28 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] () wrote:
>
> I regret any offense I may have caused, but that was not at all my
> intention. Some snake-oil _is_ obvious, even if one can never be truly
> sure about what seem to be quality products.
A little snake oil might grease the skids of a debate.
>
> I just thought that, as Bruce also "named names" of a sort a poor amateur
> like myself had *absolutely no possibility* of divining through his own
> unaided efforts, that this was ... even more exciting than what you had
> mentioned. So I noted the omission. There was no more to it than that.
>
I government is guilty of hype in all this stuff, perhaps he has begun to
pick-up their ways by osmosis through close association. I suppose, as a
person of high profile, he could even be sued by someone unhappy with his
pronouncements, not a problem for government it seems.
--
A much too common philosophy:
It's no fun to have power....unless you can abuse it.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Doug Stell)
Subject: Re: SkipJack vs RC2
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 20:03:32 GMT
On Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:10:11 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(John Savard) wrote:
>I remember that RC4, which was kept secret, was alleged to have been
>revealed, but I must have missed it when that happened to RC2.
John, if my memory serves me right, RC2 was reverse engineered and
published, as RC4 was earlier. There was some brief argument about how
owned the revealed RC2 source code. However, the published source code
did not contain any of the buzzwords used in RSADSI's code. My
conclusion was that this was truly reverse engineered code and not
publication of RSADSI's code, several versions of which I had licensed
access to at the time.
Once the cat was out of the bag, Rivest did publish the RC2 algorithm
as an Internet RFC. To my knowledge, this had yet to happen with RC4,
although Rivest did have the "alleged RC4" code on his web site.
doug
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Juola)
Subject: Re: Randomness of coin flips
Date: 19 Feb 1999 14:27:21 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
R. Knauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On 19 Feb 1999 12:03:46 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Juola)
>wrote:
>
>>>The Law Of Large Numbers, which is what is behind your assertion, does
>>>not claim to be certain, or even "nearly certain" for finite runs. You
>>>could experience skewed runs and still have a Uniform Bernoulli
>>>Process (p=1/2).
>
>>Actually, it does. There's a very precise formulation of the
>>chance of getting any particular degree of skewedness from a FINITE
>>run on a uniform Bernoulli process; "nearly certain" has a particular,
>>quantifiable meaning.
[snip]
>>So I can make a statement such as "there is only one chance in 1,000
>>that a uniform Bernoulli process would have produced such a skewed
>>distribution" and therefore reject the hypothesis that it was
>>produced by a u.B.p.
>
>Although you will call this nitpicking, I point out that a probability
>of 1/1,000 is not the same as "very probable". Convergence to the
>expectation value in the law of large numbers only occurs when the
>number of trials is close to infinite (whatever that means).
I won't call it nitpicking -- I will instead point out that you
aren't using "convergence" properly.
Pick a small number (which we'll agree to call 'espilon') that
adequately captures your idea of what "nearly certain" means
in probabilistic terms.
One chance of failure in a thousand? Fine.
One chance of failure in a hundred thousand? Fine.
One chance of failure in a hundred billion billion billion? Fine.
Once you've defined what your acceptable chance of failure is, then
the Law of Large Numbers tells me that there is an N past which
a certain degree of skewed runs is even more improbable than that
(given a uBp).
In the case that started this; if Mr. So's (see, I got the
gender right this time) coin flips aren't independent, but instead
are correlated to some degree, then, given enough data, then it's
"nearly certain" (in the sense defined above -- e.g. tell me what
your threshhold for certainty is and I'll match it) that there
will be a divergence between the number of runs expected and
the number observed.
-kitten
------------------------------
From: naf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: crypton.c
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 20:10:10 +0100
when i compile crypton.c (availible under
www.seven77.demon.co.uk/aes.htm )
visual c++ 6.0 returns error LNK2001 (unresolved external symbol _main)
can anyone help me?
plz. email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
thx
------------------------------
From: "james d. hunter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.psychology.theory,alt.hypnosis,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Randomness based consciousness?. (Was: Re: *** Where Does The
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:07:05 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
David Vivash wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
says...
> >
> >David Vivash wrote:
> > >
> > > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >says...
> > > >
> > > >David A Vivash wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I really don't see that randomness can ever be considered a
human
> > > > > concept. Whilst there may be problems that we find hard to
> > > > > predict an
> > > > > answer for (which we might very well call "random"), I
believe
> > > > > there are
> > > > > problems that do not have an answer in a particular system
until
> > > > > the
> > > > > answer has been found.
> > > >
> > > > "Randomness" is not a concept. It is "holistic hermenutical
> > > > heuristic
> > > > oneness with the universe". You will never "observe" anything
that
> > > > you will call random, simply because of what "observe" means.
> > > > Or put it this way, observations are non-random instances
> > > > of some distribution.
> > > >
> > > > I assume that you assume that economics is not random.
> > > > That assumption makes economics more random.
> > >
> > > Sorry, which assumption was it that made economics "more random",
> > > mine or yours???
> >
> > Both, of course. Every statement about economics is a
> > randomly generated sample statement concerning the field
> > of economics.
> >
>
> Hmm... But I don't see how these "assumptions" make economics _more_
random.
> It is either random or not random - our reasoning on it bears no
relation to
> the inherent randomness.
Well, there are no universally accepted assumptions about
economics, so I think that might be an indiction of
possible randomness.
>
> > > I have no idea what you mean by "more random" though, so please
explain.
> >
> > Don't you ever you follow the Stock Market?
> > Every new gizmo deterministic computer program predictor
> > that those people add increases the total randomness of
> > the market.
> > If you want to convince me that economics
> > is not random, then you'll have to prove to me that
> > Van Gogh's paintings are worth $60M+, the Washington
> > Redskins are worth $800M, and that a Wintel computer system
> > is worth the price of whatever they sell for.
>
> I never said economics wasn't random.I *do* believe in random events
y'know :)
> Your examples of worth are not examples of randomness though. An item
is worth
> whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. The cost of the canvas
and oils,
> and the cost of the time taken to paint the paintings do not make
them worth
> $60M, but do you really believe it is random as to what items will
fetch a lot
> of money in the future?
Yes, the worth is random, because what buyers are willing
to pay for most items is random.
The future worth is also random. The price of a Van Gogh
with a big yellow steak in the middle of it may be less
than an unstreaked Van Gogh.
In your travels throughout life, did you ever come across
that old saying, "The future is uncertain"?
> I've completely lost what you were trying to argue to me here
though...
>
> > > Also, you say that I will never observe anything that I will call
> > > random. This is a bold statement. All I have to do is call
something
> > > random and your theory's disproved... When I "observe" the balls
coming
> > > out of the lottery
> > > machine I call that random. Strictly speaking it is not, but you
are
> > > talking
> > > more in terms of _apparant_ randomness, rather than exact
randomness.
> > > That is,
> > > something appears to random as we can't seem to predict it.
> >
> > I like making bold statements, if for no other reason
> > than to piss off philosophers.
>
> Well, that's as good a motivation as any...
>
> > When you the observe the balls out of a lottery machine,
> > you are observing specific physical objects. They are
> > not random.
> >
>
> I know they are not random. I said that.
>
> To me it *looks* random. You said I would never observe anything I
will call
> random. But I just did. Can you predict it?
Looks can be deceiving. As you are looking at the balls in motion,
doesn't mean that you are observing an ensemble. The balls
are simply moving too fast for the eyes to get a "fix" on.
That's just blurring vision, not randomness. If you watch
those balls indirectly with a high speed camera and an
image processor you start to increase your odds of
predicting the outcome correctly dramatically, that's
what all this technology stuff is for.
The "real" randomness comes in when you get into the
Schrodenger cat type experiments.
> What I am really saying is that people have different views on what
is defined
> as random. But randomness isn't based on our consciousness, and so
whether we
> think something is random is neither here nor there. It's only when
something
> can be proved to be random within a particular system that I will
believe it
> is. Some people think something is only random if they can't predict
it. What
> would be more correct would be to say that it *appears* to be random.
You're right. What most people call "randomness" is
more along the lines of subjective confusion,
chaotic or complicated systems, or things not being
lined or placed like they think they should be.
But even in those cases, if the system is sufficiently
complicated, treating it as pseudo-random can give some
imformation about it.
> David
>
> PS. What number am I thinking of?
>
> -0.02... did you get it???
Yes, that was deterministic. ;>
------------------------------
From: "Michael Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Benchmarks
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 21:01:38 -0000
I was just looking at some benchmarks for the Pentium Pro comparing
Diffie-Hellman (DH) with its Elliptic Curve equivalent (ECDH), supplied
courtesy of Certicom at http://www.certicom.com/ecc/ipsec.htm
They must have been delighted to find such an appallingly slow
implementation of Diffie-Hellman to compare with their elliptic curve method
with!
If there is anyone from Certicom out there: -
(1) Exactly which Elliptic Curve variant is being used here?
(2) What exactly do you mean by "Key Generation" and "Shared Secret"?
(3) You say that "Pentiums have a built-in math processor that is used to
speed up modular exponentiations such as those in traditional DH. The Math
coprocessor is not used to speed up ECDH operations in this benchmark".
Please explain.
(4) Would you maintain that these benchmarks accurately reflect the innate
performance differential between DH and ECDH?
Mike Scott
------------------------------
Reply-To: "karl malbrain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "karl malbrain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: True Randomness
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 13:49:53 -0800
Herman Rubin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:7akljp$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>Even if one has a "perfect" result of a quantum process, it gets
>somewhat distorted through the measuring or recording equipment.
I'm a little rusty after 30 years, but wasn't EISENBERG's point that
<<perfect>> results are absolutely/completely distorted??? Karl M
------------------------------
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