At 11:27 AM -0400 6/7/00, David Honig wrote: >At 12:40 AM 6/7/00 -0400, Jim Choate wrote: >> >>Ever hear of 'DNA computing'? I thought not. > >Yes and I've watched your posts here too. DNA computing >is a cute trick for mole bios to demonstrate their >craft, but the mega-moles of custom chems per problem >keeps it a parlor trick. Your quantum computing >references are relevent but IMHO your DNA computing >posts are not. > >Not that I imagine anything would influence your posting behavior. And DNA computing--such as it is--has been discussed and dismissed here many times. A cute trick, and maybe someday useful as a general purpose computing tool, but of little interest for cryptographers. And, yes, we've "heard" of DNA computing. Some of us even heard Len Adleman first describe it several years ago. Cf. the usual points that it doesn't take a very large key before a swimming pool filled with DNA can't finish in the age of the Earth. And not much larger than that before all of Jupiter's oceans converted to DNA computers couldn't do the job in the age of the Universe. And not much larger than that before.... Unless there are breakthroughs in factoring, either via a fundamental breakthrough in algorithms (unlikely) or with Deutsch- and Shor-style quantum computers, longer keys always beat brute-force factoring. As for Choate's crankish ramblings and endless forwardings of long articles when URLs would be more efficient, nothing has changed. He has crankish views on electromagnetism, on number theory, on the Constitution, and on just about any other subject. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
