Anyone that missed or was unable to get the UK TV programme Equinox might like to take a look at:
http://www.cityscape.co.uk/channel4/big_bytes/cybersecrecy/cyber000.html
- Andy
Thanks for the pointer. I was reading through their nicely organized gentle introduction to basic concepts, when I nearly sprayed coffee all over my monitor from laughing so hard at the following gaffe: "...most modern codes rely on the intractable mathematical problem of 'factorisation'. This is the process of trying to find the two prime factors that, multiplied together, would give you a third prime number. [JT: Yes, I'd call that an intractable problem, all right.] For example, if you take 3337 - a prime number (i.e. a number that has precisely two divisors) - how would you find its two prime factors? (They are, in fact, 47 and 71.)" A little unclear on that "prime" thing, it sounds like... :-) - Tunny ______________________________________________________________________ James A. Tunnicliffe | WWWeb: http://www.inference.com/~tunny Inference Corporation | PGP Fingerprint: CA 23 E2 F3 AC 2D 0C 77 tunny@Inference.com | <--finger for key 36 07 D9 33 3D 32 53 9C ======================================================================