Operating System: SunOS 4.1.3 Site: netcom4 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1796 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- | From: Ben Goren <ben@Tux.Music.ASU.Edu> | Date: Sat, 23 Jul 1994 10:24:48 -0700 (MST) | Subject: Travelling ants | | A recent RISKS digest had an article that described a computer that | simulated a colony of ants with independent software units that | interacted in certain ways. The article said that the "ants" were able to | find an efficient solution to the traveling salesman problem. I bought Rudy Rucker's Hacker and the Ants (0-688-13416-5) in May. Jerzy Rugby's an artificial life hacker who battles millions of "strange viral pests appearing from out of nowhere to wreak havoc throughout the net" in his quest for truly intelligent robots. I really enjoyed the story. Like Stephenson, Rucker makes cyberspace a blast. Recommended buy. Remember folks, don't allow 0xdef6 as the Godel sentence if you're into this kind of thing. | Wouldn't such a system be perfect for a public key cryptosystem? It seems | that mechanisms already designed for knapsack algorithms would work; it | would remain to be worked out if the traveling salesman problem has the | same cryptographic problems as the knapsack problem. I wonder if e$ fundraising could support grants to investigate good ideas? | b& Sheldon - -- sheldon glass | "... if you think ah *enjoy* steppin an fetchin an sglass@netcom.com | talkin this way, you crazy." #include <std.disclaimer> | finger for PGP key from _Wetware_ by Rudy Rucker -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLjFfPDl9PRHQ3ZZVAQHJvQP+ILCjhhJ8wixQum85yGzEVU8/R69ZGBXl RuOgLIIaVf/uajgl3B3/ILBRUR3n2W7iZpniTX4zQaTtkkcJPINE9iLHpVK+D0jK 40dkxeLP2q4Iz42NetBlvd4Ud+AXO5rl9lc1KUbOUY2O5SpEEV74XL72cNiXF0bd ESk0gUda4TU= =TOrZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----