Perry says;
Yup, you have it on me. I guess it is important to lower the possibility of someone cracking your key by brute force from lower than the odds that all the oxygen atoms in the room you are in will spontaneously end up on the wrong side of the room to lower than the odds that all the oxygen atoms in the world will end up on the wrong side of the planet. After all, we are fooling with lives.
Perry, I don't know the probability of oxygen atoms moving to Japan or anywhere else. (who said Japan was the wrong side of the planet) And, I don't think that anyone will attack my keys by brute force. I do think that someone will be trying to crack messages on a random basis. That is by trying IDEA keys with otherwise idle cpu time on a large base of message trafic. (not my one little pathetic message). Given estimates that the IDEA algorithem is equivlent to a 3000-bit rsa key. I am bringing the rsa part of PGP up to par with the IDEA part of PGP. (just hitting on the weakest link first) So, call me paranoid or joe, I will strive to reach MY crypto comfort level. And that seems to be a higher level of crypto than you have. Who cares ! Use whatever crypto you want. tom