Cracking DES or building a DES cracking machine?

[Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM]

> If we are talking about convincing 100,000 people to donate a lot
> of their CPU time, would not it be possible to convince the same
> 100,000 people to donate $10 each and build a $1,000,000 DES cracking
> machine?

Or enough magnetic tape or CD-R to pre-compute a lookup table,
accessible via the Internet? Hmm, taking one byte and running it
through 2^40 keys will produce exactly 1024GB values. Mag tape
is dollars / megabyte: it seems possible to take a known clear
text (like "cypherpunks") and compute a lookup table that would
take a look at the encryption and list the key(s) that match.

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Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps