While dousing yet another "chaos encryption" rumor, Perry says-
All this "encryption with chaos" stuff just adds up to "look at my fancy PRNG"...
I think that's a very clear handle on chaos for people who know about PRNGs, or vice-versa. Chaos = PRNG. I wonder if there's any good cross-fertilization of the two fields beyond the obvious.
I am especially interested in the "strange attractors" aspect of chaos theory. A good article on strange attractors appeared in Scientific American in the early/mid '80s. (Mail/post me if you want me to look up the issue.) Douglas Hofstadter was the author (of Godel, Escher, Bach... an awesome book!). Strange attractors use feedback to "lock in". I have used strange attractors to find special points in n-dimensional spaces. It may be far-fetched, but strange attractors or some similar statistical/experimental method may be the means by which large numbers are factored some day.... Cort.