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. 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. b& -- Ben.Goren@asu.edu, Arizona State University School of Music net.proselytizing (write for info): We won! Clipper is dead! BUT! Just say no to key escrow. And stamp out spamming, too. Finger ben@tux.music.asu.edu for PGP 2.3a public key. du says to finger remailer-list@chaos.bsu.edu and

that account does not exist.

Chael Hall changed operating systems on chaos and hasn't reinstalled the finger thing yet. You can get the list by sending mail to mg5n+remailer-list@andrew.cmu.edu