Re: [tlug] TLUG RC5

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

On Fri, 2002-12-27 at 16:58, YAMAGATA Hiroo wrote:

> You know, this thing is gradually losing it's original charm.

I sort of agree with this, but I'm not sure what's worthwhile in the
distributed computing field.  I'm not interested in looking for space
aliens that IMO don't exist anyway, and if it's a project that is not
open and free and maybe for the benefit of humanity in some way, I would
want to be paid for my CPU cycles, regardless of whether they found
anything or not.

> this RC5-72 will be cracked in, what, about a century from now?

The one point of original charm it still has is that it could be cracked
tomorrow.  There's no way of knowing where in the keyspace the key is,
but we do know that 1) Every day could be the day, and 2) For every day
that is not the day, the chance that tomorrow will be the day increases
by some very small amount.  So it keeps me crunching keys until
something better comes along?

> Maybe some project with a more tangible benefit might generate more
> interest. UD, maybe? 

What's UD?  If we can benefit humanity with our CPU cycles, I'm all for
it.

Jonathan