Cryptography-Digest Digest #861, Volume #11 Thu, 25 May 00 20:13:00 EDT
Contents:
Re: Is OTP unbreakable?/Station-Station ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: AEES Advanced ("Paul Pires")
Re: Matrix key distribution? ("Michael Brown")
Re: Anti-Evidence Eliminator messages, have they reached a burn-out point? (Steve)
Re: bamburismus (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: Crypto patentability (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: list of prime numbers (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: list of prime numbers (Dan Day)
Re: More on Pi and randomness ("Trevor L. Jackson, III")
Re: More on Pi and randomness (Richard Heathfield)
Re: Yet another block cipher: Storin ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
NTRU Anyone? (Greg)
Re: Crypto patentability (Jerry Coffin)
Re: RSA/PK Question (Jerry Coffin)
Re: Crypto patentability (Jerry Coffin)
Re: NTRU Anyone? (tomstd)
Re: Is OTP unbreakable? (Greg)
Re: Is OTP unbreakable? (Greg)
Re: Is OTP unbreakable? (Greg)
Another sci.crypt Cipher (tomstd)
Re: Is OTP unbreakable? (Greg)
Re: list of prime numbers ("Lyalc")
Re: Crypto patentability ("Lyalc")
Re: Is OTP unbreakable? (Greg)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?/Station-Station
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 19:15:05 GMT
"Tony T. Warnock" wrote:
> If more than one pair of people have a one time pad, then oneness is
> violated.
No, the criterion is that the key is used only once, not that there
are only 2 copies of the pad.
------------------------------
From: "Paul Pires" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: AEES Advanced
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 13:28:03 -0700
I followed the link and downloaded your description of the algorithm in
MS Word format.
I was a little troubled to find that your file has active Macros in it.
I am not sophisticated enough to determine if it is toxic so I just won't
read it.
What's wrong with PDF?
Paul
------------------------------
From: "Michael Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Matrix key distribution?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 21:31:11 GMT
Mark Wooding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Am I missing something? Can you not just use the fact that you know kf
> + lh and m(kf + lh), both in CB above, to find m?
Absoloutely correct. Stupid me. Sorry for bothering you.
Are there any other matrix encryption things around?
Michael Brown.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steve)
Crossposted-To: alt.privacy,alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Anti-Evidence Eliminator messages, have they reached a burn-out point?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 21:34:09 GMT
On Thu, 25 May 2000 20:03:18 +0100, EE Support
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>EE Tech Support here.
>
>Greetings to those genuine people who continue to support our
>wonderful Evidence Eliminator software.
Let's see, its closed source software, its makers brag endlessly
on endorsements from unqualified hucksters, and they make
unrealistic claims that they can't back up. That eliminates
"security" from any reasonable description of Evidence
Eliminator.
And it obviously has nothing to do with PGP.
I wonder when these spammers will realize that alt.security.pgp
does not exist to serve as a private advertising forum for their
product?
Steve
---Support privacy and freedom of speech with---
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.epic.org/
http://www.cdt.org/
PGP keys: RSA - 0x4912D5E5 DH/DSS - 0xBFCE18A9
Both expire 5/15/01
RSA key available on request
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: bamburismus
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:47:28 +0200
"Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
> Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> > I conjecture from the tenor of what you wrote that there is a
> > probability that you are free to publish part of your ideas
>
> Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to get research published
> if it hasn't "produced results", no matter how interesting the
> ideas might be. I have communicated via e-mail with a few people
> who were interested in pursuing such work, and actually there was
> some progress many years ago by a fellow who seems to have since
> vanished.
I understand. But you could at least publish some of the key
ideas on a webpage. Maybe oneday some readers would be able
to combine these with some of their own to obtain certain concrete
significant results. If you could develop the ideas with your own time
and energy, that's of course the best. Otherwise I suppose it is also
satisfying for you, if you see oneday some published papers where
the authors acknowledge your contribution.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Crypto patentability
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:47:16 +0200
Runu Knips wrote:
> Jerry Coffin wrote:
>
> > _Precisely_ the opposite is actually true: patents are one of the few
> > ways for a small company, or even one smart person, to level the
> > playing field and be competitive against a big company.
>
> So you have the 60.000 deutschmarks to buy an european patent ?
> Even if I'll find something nifty tomorrow I'll hardly be able
> to patent it. Its just too expensive for me. Its also too
> expensive for small companies.
>
> Too, the big companies have masses of patents, valid or not.
> They know that many of them are problematic, and it is hard to
> detect which of them are valid and which aren't. So they just
> make pacts to share their patents with the other big companies
> in that business. This way they can suppress the newcomers,
> which don't have the money to fight against these masses of
> patents, even if many of them are not real inventions.
I personally believe that it is very difficult to dispute on such an
extremely general level. In initiating the present thread, I have thus
instead attempted to confine the scope to a narrow field, namely
crypto, and also in my original post concentrated on the technical
issues, i.e. the practical question of what is really novel and worthy
of being rewarded in the contents of a patent application according
to common judgement of the crypto community from purely scientific
point of view. I certainly recognize the significance of considerations
from other points of view, e.g. social, economical, political,
philosophical, etc. However, I am afraid that, if we follow these latter
viewpoints, we wouldn't be able to achieve anything in foreseeable
future in the direction of improving the present status of crypto patent
practices. Thus I like to strongly suggest that we limit our goal to a
a sufficiently small 'practical' extent in the hope that there could
eventually be some realistic chances of success.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: list of prime numbers
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:54:19 +0200
Daniel wrote:
> I don't know if this is public domain or not, but can we get a list
> with the (recent) prime numbers (up to 150 digits)?
I am curious to know for what kind of applications do you need
list of prime numbers of this nature.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dan Day)
Subject: Re: list of prime numbers
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 21:50:00 GMT
On Thu, 25 May 2000 12:22:02 -0700, tomstd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>>I don't know if this is public domain or not, but can we get a
>list
>>with the (recent) prime numbers (up to 150 digits)?
>>
>>All help greatly appreciated
>
>Why not just read up on the subject? According to the prime
>number theorem there are about 2^489.86 150 digit primes. So I
>sincerely doubt any list of that size exists.
>
>Try getting the HAC and reading it.
Since he's asking for "recent" primes, it looks to me that
he's not asking for a list of all prime numbers up to 150 digits,
he's asking for a list of all *known* primes.
Needless to say, that's a much smaller list.
However, that's still an impractical question, given that
a home PC can crank out "new" 100-digit primes all day long.
Daniel, what were you hoping to do with the list? If you'll
explain your application, we can help you address your problem
more directly, since keeping a "list" of primes is likely to
be a poor way to get the job done, whatever it is.
--
"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the
plain Meaning of Words!"
--Samuel Adams (1722-1803), letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 18:15:50 -0400
From: "Trevor L. Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: More on Pi and randomness
Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> "Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
>
> > Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> > > I am a complete outsider. But I conjecture that interval arithmetics
> > > might be useful in the present issue.
> >
> > The trouble with interval arithmetic as it is usually applied
> > is that the intervals rapidly grow as operations are combined.
> > A better (not perfect) approach is to perform arithmetic with
> > distributions replacing values. (The simplest useful method
> > would be to approximate every distribution as a Gaussian.)
> > This still tends to degenerate into total noise after a while,
> > but retains significance longer than does worst-case interval
> > arithmetic.
>
> Question: Is this idea of your own or could you give pointers to
> literature? As far as I know, interval arithmetics continues to be
> a field of active research in applied mathematics today. Some
> time back, I happened to have a chat with one of the research
> scientists. I didn't have the impression that he knew of any new
> directions of the kind you described.
As an example of interval expansion, a complex interval, which defines a
rectangular region in the complex plane, expands by a factor of up to 535
during a revolution driven by interval multiplication.
Recent results in interval math can be found at
http://serv1.imm.dtu.dk/~km/int.html
http://www.cs.utep.edu/interval-comp/icompwww.html
http://www.ti3.tu-harburg.de/Software/PROFILEnglisch.html
A good way to avoid the interval explosion effect is to employ Affine
Arithmetic, which models values as polynomials with a term for each error
source. More info can be found at
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/EXPORT/projects/affine-arith/Welcome.html
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:28:08 +0100
From: Richard Heathfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: sci.math
Subject: Re: More on Pi and randomness
"David C. Ullrich" wrote:
>
> On Sat, 20 May 2000 09:17:07 +0100, Richard Heathfield
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Guy Macon wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>wrote:
> >>
> >> >I understand the Nth hexit of pi, irrespective of the value of N, to be
> >> >calculable using the equation derived by Borwein, Borwein and Plouffe.
> >> >The 400 billionth hexit of pi has been thus calculated.
> >>
> >> Really?!? (not questioning you, just suprised). Does the time to compute
> >> the answer get larger as N gets larger? Linearaly? Exponentialy?
> >
> >
> >pi = sum (values of n from 0 to infinity) of (4/(8n+1) - 2/(8n+4) -
> >1/(8n+5) - 1/(8n+6)) * (1/16)^n
>
> Could be, I suppose.
>
> >In other words, the nth hexit has the value (4/(8n+1) - 2/(8n+4) -
> >1/(8n+5) - 1/(8n+6)).
>
> Huh? That's not "in other words" at all! For this
> to be the same as the the coefficients 4/(8n+1) - 2/(8n+4)
> - 1/(8n+5) - 1/(8n+6) would have to be integers between
> 0 and 15. They're not.
Well, I did say I'm not a mathematician! Sorry about that. I did the
same math and got equally puzzled about the lack of integers in that
expression.
>
> >Source: "The Joy of Pi".
>
> That's a source for the first statement(?), not
> for your "in other words" part (I hope).
Yes, the (presumably) correct equation is to the credit of "The Joy of
Pi", and the responsibility for its misinterpretation is entirely my
own.
--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
37 K&R Answers: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/kandr2/index.html (60
to go)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Yet another block cipher: Storin
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 22:51:16 GMT
In article <8gjph4$fc0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (David A. Wagner) wrote:
> In article <8giahk$gvv$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Under what circumstances can a 448 bit yield 14 zero subkeys in
> > Blowfish?
>
> Here the notes I wrote on it at the time.
> I haven't re-checked them for accuracy. Let me know if I made some
mistake.
>
> The first 384 bits of the key will be chosen to be the first 384 bits
of pi.
>
> The key schedule starts by deriving initial subkeys
> (they'll happen to be zero in the first 12 rounds, with the choice
above)
> and encrypting X_0 = 0 (the all-zeros plaintext) to get a result X_1.
> The key schedule replaces the first two round subkeys with X_1 and
> encrypts X_1 with the new subkeys to get a result X_2, and then
repeats.
>
> Our strategy will be to look for a fixed point.
> If we can sure ensure that X_1 = 0, we'll have X_2 = X_3 = .. = 0,
too.
> (Why? Well, replacing the first two round subkeys by X_1 causes no
effect,
> because they are already zero, and thus encrypting the all-zeros
plaintext
> gives the same result as before, namely the all-zeros ciphertext.)
> And this can be ensured by choosing the last 64 bits of key
appropriately.
>
Mr. Wagner,
Clever indeed. So Blowfish also has a few keys weaker than the average,
things are looking up for Storin!
--Matthew
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: NTRU Anyone?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 22:59:33 GMT
Anyone know anything about NTRU public key encryption? Is it
strong? Is it useful? Is it much faster than RSA or ECC?
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Jerry Coffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Crypto patentability
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 17:09:44 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> There is a legal question as to if patenting a computer program
> is even valid!
There may be question about patenting a computer program, but there's
little room for question about patenting things like algorithms for
computer programs, at least in the US.
> Some argue that copyright is sufficient.
Some argue that time travel and perpetual motion machines are
possible too...
> With an NDA, it seems rights can be protected.
NDAs work quite well for some particular situations, but simply do
not (and cannot) cover the same sorts of things as patents do.
> There is other argumentation for having a "soft patent." A special
> class of certificate for computer programs.
There's argumentation for almost anything you'd care to name.
> I don't think the courts will uphold patenting computer programs.
Courts have upheld patents on algorithms for quite some time now.
--
Later,
Jerry.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
------------------------------
From: Jerry Coffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: RSA/PK Question
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 17:09:53 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
[ ... ]
> No one who knows what they are doing will use 8kbit RSA keys
> saying "they must be more secure then 2kbit keys". If we
> *can't* factor 2kbit keys, then it doesn't matter right?
WRONG! This has been explained to you before, but you persist in
burying your head in the sand and refusing to listen. I'll try ONE
more time.
For security, you have to look at two things: first of all, the
period of time for which the information you're working with will be
valuable. Second, based on that, you must choose a cipher (including
key size) that you believe will remain secure for at least that long.
For example, if you want some information to remain secure for at
least the next 50 years, you'd _better_ not depend on an RSA key of
768 bits, even though that's (AFAIK) unbreakable at the present time.
In 50 years, an average hand-held calculator is likely to have more
than enough resources to break a 768-bit key.
For MOST purposes, picking a key size cannot and should not be based
strictly upon what is possible right now. Key sizes (and ciphers in
general) must be picked to give a reasonable degree of assurance of
security for some period of time. Since we don't know what's going
to happen in the future, it's MUCH better to do so conservatively
than otherwise.
It's true that some people go overboard with this, but there can
still be _excellent_ reasons to go well beyond what is necessary to
maintain security at the present time.
--
Later,
Jerry.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
------------------------------
From: Jerry Coffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Crypto patentability
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 17:09:47 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
[ ... ]
> So you have the 60.000 deutschmarks to buy an european patent ?
> Even if I'll find something nifty tomorrow I'll hardly be able
> to patent it. Its just too expensive for me. Its also too
> expensive for small companies.
Nonsense -- if you've got a good invention, finding money to get it
patented is really _quite_ easy. Of course, here in the US, the cost
is a lot lower, to the point that it's hard to imagine anybody being
unable to get one due to cost (if you're careful to ensure that what
you've written doesn't take a lot of work by the patent attorney
before submission, you can do the job for less than a thousand
dollars).
> Too, the big companies have masses of patents, valid or not.
> They know that many of them are problematic, and it is hard to
> detect which of them are valid and which aren't. So they just
> make pacts to share their patents with the other big companies
> in that business. This way they can suppress the newcomers,
> which don't have the money to fight against these masses of
> patents, even if many of them are not real inventions.
This is sheer nonsense. Big companies simply don't bother with tiny
startups like this because there's no reason to do so. First of all,
they're well aware that over 90% of new companies will go out of
business all by themselves, so initiating lawsuits against newcomers
is nearly always a waste of time -- the company is likely to be gone
before they even finish filling out the paperwork.
Second, most companies know they have competition, and they're going
to continue to have competition no matter what. Even if they could
eliminate one puny startup, it wouldn't make any real difference
anyway.
In the VAST majority of cases, they simply sit back and hope the new
company does well. When/if they do, the big company points out that
they owe a tiny percentage to the real owner of the invention being
sold.
Even this is quite rare though: if you do some searching, you'll
quickly find that the VAST majority of lawsuits involving two
companies of widely disparate sizes are initiated by the _smaller_
company, not the larger one. Big companies simply don't care about
other companies until they're also pretty big -- yes, a company with
revenues in the billions _might_ think about going after a company
with revenues of only hundreds of millions, but that's typically
about the lower limit. The only way they're going to go into court
against a really little company is if the little company has already
sued them, and they want to countersue.
--
Later,
Jerry.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: NTRU Anyone?
From: tomstd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 16:14:37 -0700
In article <8gkb8c$1as$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Greg <ciphermax@my-
deja.com> wrote:
>Anyone know anything about NTRU public key encryption? Is it
>strong? Is it useful? Is it much faster than RSA or ECC?
Well all good PK has use... anyways. It's a new method but
looks very sound. I would give it sometime before using it
though. Seems easier to implement as compared to RSA/ECC though
(in terms of instruction set requirements). It also seems much
faster. However is it more secure? Or just as good?
To me it seems a bit confusing the whole method, but that's
ok...hehehe
Tom
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:09:23 GMT
> Is it possible to prove theoretically that OTP using a
> truely random key is unbreakable?
yes and here it is-
Since there is no way to identify the correct key, you cannot
identify the correct key nor the correct plain text.
Pretty straight forward, hey?
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:15:13 GMT
> The OTP does not offer any authentication.
How rediculous. OTP offers the same level of authentication as
most other private keys in a public key cryptosystem. If you have
the key, then you can sign the document. That is all authentication
means.
>From a practical point of view, it is far more difficult to maintain
the security of the OTP from use by others unawares because you cannot
memorize it and destroy it.
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:10:40 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (DJohn37050) wrote:
> OTP is information theory secure. There is a proof. Any message (of
hte right
> length) is equally likely. Only knowing the right one-time key
reveals the
> message. Not used much as the key is SOOOOOOOO long.
> Don Johnson
So there really is life after vice, just like Tubbs said?
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
Subject: Another sci.crypt Cipher
From: tomstd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 16:22:41 -0700
The cipher I was talking about earlier was not broken by my
attack because I used an invalid model (counting sboxes). So I
updated my paper, cleaned up the source code and voila.
The rerefence source is at
http://www.tomstdenis.com/tc1ref.c
And the paper in word97 format (sorry I can't get to the TOM
site to make it into .ps or .pdf format) here
http://www.tomstdenis.com/tc1.doc
I made some observations but I have yet to break the cipher.
Tom
[adam: If you can add it to the list asap, that would be
nice...]
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:22:39 GMT
> 1. An eavesdropper can figure out the length of the message. This
> can be countered by adding random garbage to your actual message.
> 2. An eavesdropper can figure out that a message has been sent.
> This can be countered in two ways: either by steganography (which
> hides the message somehow), or by sending many extra messages
> containing nothing but garbage.
Both these are thwarted by a continuous (or near continuous)
stream of random data in between messages. There are ways to
do this effeciently.
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Lyalc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: list of prime numbers
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 09:35:59 +1000
One simple explanation may be:
With enough primes, the chances of being able to factor any 'n' used in
someones Public key increase.
But then again, I'm paid to be paranoid.
lyal
Mok-Kong Shen wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>
>Daniel wrote:
>
>> I don't know if this is public domain or not, but can we get a list
>> with the (recent) prime numbers (up to 150 digits)?
>
>I am curious to know for what kind of applications do you need
>list of prime numbers of this nature.
>
>M. K. Shen
>
------------------------------
From: "Lyalc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Crypto patentability
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 09:42:27 +1000
An interesting analysis on the benefit of a patent, and how they often get
used commercially.
Lyal
Jerry Coffin wrote in message ...
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>[ ... ]
>
>> So you have the 60.000 deutschmarks to buy an european patent ?
>> Even if I'll find something nifty tomorrow I'll hardly be able
>> to patent it. Its just too expensive for me. Its also too
>> expensive for small companies.
>
>Nonsense -- if you've got a good invention, finding money to get it
>patented is really _quite_ easy. Of course, here in the US, the cost
>is a lot lower, to the point that it's hard to imagine anybody being
>unable to get one due to cost (if you're careful to ensure that what
>you've written doesn't take a lot of work by the patent attorney
>before submission, you can do the job for less than a thousand
>dollars).
>
>> Too, the big companies have masses of patents, valid or not.
>> They know that many of them are problematic, and it is hard to
>> detect which of them are valid and which aren't. So they just
>> make pacts to share their patents with the other big companies
>> in that business. This way they can suppress the newcomers,
>> which don't have the money to fight against these masses of
>> patents, even if many of them are not real inventions.
>
>This is sheer nonsense. Big companies simply don't bother with tiny
>startups like this because there's no reason to do so. First of all,
>they're well aware that over 90% of new companies will go out of
>business all by themselves, so initiating lawsuits against newcomers
>is nearly always a waste of time -- the company is likely to be gone
>before they even finish filling out the paperwork.
>
>Second, most companies know they have competition, and they're going
>to continue to have competition no matter what. Even if they could
>eliminate one puny startup, it wouldn't make any real difference
>anyway.
>
>In the VAST majority of cases, they simply sit back and hope the new
>company does well. When/if they do, the big company points out that
>they owe a tiny percentage to the real owner of the invention being
>sold.
>
>Even this is quite rare though: if you do some searching, you'll
>quickly find that the VAST majority of lawsuits involving two
>companies of widely disparate sizes are initiated by the _smaller_
>company, not the larger one. Big companies simply don't care about
>other companies until they're also pretty big -- yes, a company with
>revenues in the billions _might_ think about going after a company
>with revenues of only hundreds of millions, but that's typically
>about the lower limit. The only way they're going to go into court
>against a really little company is if the little company has already
>sued them, and they want to countersue.
>
>--
> Later,
> Jerry.
>
>The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
------------------------------
From: Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Is OTP unbreakable?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:31:07 GMT
> Yes; the proof is given in Communications Theory of
> Secrecy Systems, C. E. Shannon, Bell System Technical
> Journal, Vol 28, Oct 1949. Specifically, pages 679 to 682.
> See http://www3.edgenet.net/dcowley/docs.html
I read that proof and it was quite surprising that it said
exactly what I said, but I took only a line or two to say it.
Well, if you want a math look to the proof, there it is. If
the obvious is self explanatory, see my proof.
--
There is only one gun law on the books- the second amendment.
The only vote that you waste is the one you never wanted to make.
RICO- we were told it was a necessary surrender of our civil liberties.
Asset Forfeiture- the latest inevitable result of RICO.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
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