h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Trouble With Ciphers - A62394131
Author: Devonseaglass-dsg - U13965605

A bit more history.

For the morning!

hi dsg

I think this will make a fine entry - I've just looked at the contents of the 'Communication' section in The Edited Guide, and it is mostly to do with modern technology. So for choosing to write about this!

You write:

People have, and always will have, reasons to write messages, and wish to keep them secret from everyone except for the intended recipient.


People have, and always will have, reasons to write messages. They may also wish to keep them secret from everyone except for the intended recipient.

( I think it reads better if you split this into two sentences)



>>>
To name a few: diarists (including Pepys), governments, drug dealers, dictators, terrorists, revolutionaries, lovers, corporations, and bankers all want their messages to be read only by the recipient, or remain secret until the consequences of wider publication are trivial<<<



Diarists (such as PepysHis diaries were written in an unusual shorthand which kept them from being read for many years</FOOTNOTE&gt, governments, drug dealers, dictators, terrorists, revolutionaries, lovers, corporations, and bankers are some examples of people or organisations who may want their messages to be read only by the intended recipient, or to remain secret until the consequences of wider publication become unimportant.

Keep the link in to the Pepys entry!


>>>Unfortunately, and perhaps fortunately, secret writing has had a chequered history. <<<

How about just plain?
However, secret writing has had a chequered history.

>>>
Its limitations have usually been discovered by a cryptanalyst, the one that would try to use various means, to decipher the message, and expose its meaning to people prepared to pay. The sometimes hero is the cryptologist, who invented ciphers and techniques for using them, and whose endeavours protect the innocent, and sometimes the guilty.

<<<

I think these two sentences are a bit confusing. I'm not quite sure I precisely understand your inferences here. I think you are trying to explain the difference between cryptanalyst and cryptologist?
As it is the introduction section I think you should just simplify it to a bare bones explanation. Make these sentences direct and in the present tense too.

I'll read a bit more and come back with some more comments!

Thanks, will cogitate and rewrite.

Are we embarking on a carpet project? If so

Ooh, this looks interesting! I'll have to have a read later.

"In 1586, Walsingham"
You need his first name here. If memory serves, it was Thomas.

"The messenger, who smuggled the enciphered messages to Mary, one Gilbert Gifford, turned out to be a double agent, working for Walsingham."

I think this would read better as "The messenger, Gilbert Gifford, who smuggled the enciphered messages to Mary turned out to be a double agent who was working for Walsingham."

"For example ‘q’ (apart from Qantas, and qwerty)" I'm not sure about this, as these aren't really words.

"In 1863 Friedrich Kasiski also made the same discovery, but published his work, because he was not involved." I presume you mean not involved in the Crimean War, but I think you need to specify.

"(Independently Ellis, Cocks and Williamson discovered the same process" Again, first names needed.

I'd like to see a sentence or two on the importance to the war effort of breaking the Enigma code.

Good job.

Have you seen this? BBC News today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8492762.stm

Elentari, thanks for your comments and the link to the Colossus demonstration. It's amazing what they achieved with such limited means.

(The unsung heroes were the radio station operators listening out for, and logging miles of tapes with encrypted morse code signals!)

I've taken your suggestions and modified the entry. Found another 'q' word without a 'u'too!

You're welcome.

Just watching!

I'm surprised at your statement that someday someone will discover a fast way of factoring and the cycle will start again. There's no evidence for this. All current research shows that it is impossible to factorise these numbers quickly, so the code is unbreakable. They can't yet prove it, though.

Shouldn't you say something like, the code makers have finally found a way of making unbreakable codes, and then cover the other aspect of code-breaking - that people fighting crime can no longer spy on the criminals.

Gnomon, I believe that history tells us that it is probable, that one day, someone will find a way. It may take hundreds of years. (Computers, in their current basic form have only been with us around 60 years). It took centuries before Fermat's Last Theorem was solved.

However, I have changed the relevant paragraphs to address your comments.

Thanks!


To make this flow better, can you change:

Leon Alberti... proposed

to:

Leon Alberti... had proposed

Can you put a grave accent on the second e of Vigenere, please, as follows:

Vigen&egrave;re

(apart from Qantas, Qaeda and qwerty...) there are other words in the dictionary with a lone q, so you should rephrase this as:

(apart from a few words such as Qantas, Qaeda ....

There are a few other things I spotted but I haven't time to record them now.

Thanks Gnomon, have done those, and a few I hadn't seen.

In fact, says Aspuru-Guzik, a computer of “only” 150 qubits or so would have more computing power than all the supercomputers in the world today, combined. See http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/56259/title/Quantum_on_Quantum

>>>And while most of the publicity received by quantum computers has marveled at the potential power to break immense numbers into their prime factors — a key to cracking secret codes and thus an issue of national security — “this has major implications for practical uses with very broad application,”>>> ibid

Nice work

Nitpicks:

"His first cipher disk could be used to encrypt a message with a simple Ceasar shift" --> you don't say what a Caesar shift is (oh, and you swapped the first two vowels in the emperor's name, I believe). Is it sufficiently well-known? Plus, a link to Julius's biography: A531767

" The RSA cipher technique, as it is known, after the three researchers who invented it," Ach, maybe you should mention their names (Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman).



Some typos: once 'Vigenere' is spelt without accent (in the Poly alphabetic ciphers section, second paragraph)

"because his country (Prussia)was not involved in the war" --> needs a space after the closing parenthesis

"They called it Enigma . " --> there is an unwanted space before the full stop.

A link for prime numers: U14075709.

Oh wait, sorry, I meant A26107751