Faustine wrote: Tim wrote: (snip)

You are now backpedaling furiously away from your "common to newbies" claim that fast computers might be used to break ciphers. Here's a chunk of dialog from an August 8 post of yours: (comments after ">" are from Tim)

...

Except when was the last time you heard of a Cypherpunks-interesting cipher being broken with _any_ amount of computer crunching? "Since when did people stop trying? The last time I heard a researcher talk about trying to break a Cypherpunks-interesting cipher was last Thursday." This, and similar comments you made about the Sandia and IBM supercomputers, clearly imply you think one of the uses of these supercomputers is to "try" to break what I called Cypherpunks-interesting ciphers.

If I had known that to you "computer crunching" is synonymous with "brute forcing large keys" I certainly would have expressed myself differently.

Many who are exposed to crypto to the first time, and who haven't thought about the issue of factoring large numbers, simply "assume" that a worthwhile goal is to "try" ("Since when did people stop trying?") to break such ciphers with faster computers. (To be sure, there are interesting projects on faster factoring methods, better quadratic sieves, searches for Mersenne primes, all that good number theory stuff. Some of it is even being done at Sandia. But this is a far cry from the common belief that Cypherpunks-interesting ciphers may fall to attacks with mere supercomputers. Do the math on what a trillion such Sandia computers could do if they ran for a billion years...then realize there are keys already in use today which cannot be attacked by brute-force (or probably any other direct means) with all of the computer power that the universe could ever support. Mind-boggling, but I realized this via some calculations just after starting to look closely at RSA.) You are now backpedalling, claiming you never meant this.

Backpedalling has nothing to do with it. "trying to break Cypehrpunks- interesting ciphers" does not equal "using supercomputers to brute-force large keys." "Interesting cryptograhic applications" does not equal "brute- forcing large keys". Why is this so difficult.

Similar to the way you claimed "if someone else is convinced it's interesting enough to be willing to foot the power bill (as I had anticipated would be the case)," well AFTER I posted an article pointing out that the power bill alone for running older Pentiums and G3s would pay for faster new CPUs to make the old DIY machines a waste of time. Fact is, you HADN'T "anticipated" this...you saw my calculations of watts and MIPS and only _then_ did you retroactively "anticipate" that power concerns make such arrays of old machines a lose. Check the archives.

The "as I had anticipated would be the case" refers to being allowed to build it in someone else's facility, on their dime. I never said the first thing about having done any of the calculations mentioned in your post. It's their facility, I anticipate they find it interesting enough to let me build it there, they foot the power bill. What's so tricky about that. In fact, I meant for the passage to serve as a sort of explanation of the circumstances in which power costs weren't enough of a central issue for me to have considered them. The end of the sentence you omitted, "where's the downside?" might make this clearer. Obviously, not clear enough.

When some adds a gratuitous "As I had anticipated would be the case" under these circumstances we know we are in the presence of a faker.

You interpreted it as referring to what you thought it ought to in order to bolster whatever view you want to have of me. Nothing new. ~Faustine.