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

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

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Quick fix: all those curly apostrophes and quotation marks are coming up as little black boxes on my browser, which puts me off reading. Please change them to straight ones.

TRiG.

Previous PR thread here:-

F15905443?thread=7251373

Hi dsg, you need to change all the curly apostrophes to straight like so '

I'll have a proper read later, why was it removed from PR first time?

BMT, I cannot see any curly apostrophes on my PC.

I removed it in a fit of pique, then relented.

Hi DSG, Example nelow of the curly apostrophes:-

In English the frequency of the most common letters in plaintext are ‘e’ at 12.7%, ‘t’ at 9.1% and ‘a’ at 8.2%. (In German the letter ‘e’ has a very high frequ..............


and what they should look like:-

**In English the frequency of the most common letters in plaintext are 'e' at 12.7%, 't' at 9.1% and 'a' at 8.2%. (In German the letter 'e' has a very high frequ.............**

Not sure why you're not seeing them, they're clear in IE, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari browsers.

Ooops, example nelow:- read as below... preview is my friend.

A copy bit ...

In English the frequency of the most common letters in plaintext are ‘e’ at 12.7%, ‘t’ at 9.1% and ‘a’ at 8.2%.

Can you see the curly bits that the folks don't like?

Yes ‘e’ should be 'e' and so on.

It's not what folks don't like, it's that as already previously mentioned, the curly apostrophes don't always show up correctly plus it's house style in the writing guidelines too.

Thought i was answering dsg then, sorry.

Thanks, I have edited the article and hopefully removed those pesky curls.

looks like you've covered all the stuff from the previous pr thread as well so looking good.
See if anyone else has any comments on the content but it looks good for me. Well done.

This is looking good, Dsg


One little nitpick:

>> and lived around 1200 years ago <<

As this is not a date, the House style would be:

and lived around 1,200 years ago

lil x

Thanks lil. Which button do I need to use for commas?

Only joking comma of course full stop smiley

Ok, nice article on the history of cyphers... However:

I have slight issues with the title, considering that 'The trouble with ciphers' makes one assume there is a problem... But the problem itself is covered only briefly in the conclusion. I'd extend the conclusion a bit...

You could cover aspects such as:

- A lot of classified information is generally time-sensitive... The idea of a cipher is not to keep it secret forever, it's simply to keep it secret for long enough for it to be of no use to an enemy.

- An important part of breaking ciphers is the 'human error' aspect:
For instance, 'brute force' checking every combination of a cipher may take years... But if your enemy gives you a clue, a foot in the door, that time can be cut down to just days...

Examples of this would be:

Enigma - U-boats sending out pre-formatted weather reports...
If you know the format they're using and you know what the weather is like where the U-boat is, you can re-construct the plain text weather report... From there, when you pick up the enciphered version, you have a direct comparison to work from.

Another standard error is:

A sends messages to B using an 'unbreakable' cipher.
One of the messages sent using that cipher is actually unclassified and not of any importance either strategically or tactically (wishing someone happy birthday for example)

B then re-transmits the same message to C, either in plain text or using a 'breakable' cipher, or the message might even be released to the press, word for word. (This has happened!)

Suddenly they've given you a 'way in' to breaking the 'unbreakable' cipher

What I'm getting at is that:

The trouble with ciphers is that they can (and almost certainly will) _eventually_ be broken.

The advantage of ciphers is that if you're disciplined in their use, they keep the information secret for long enough that it is of no use to an enemy by the time they can figure it out.

I agree with everything you say, and will consider how to incorporate it. The trouble with ciphers is that they always seem to be vulnerable, for whatever reason.

It's very much the same in most military fields, it's a constant race between technology and counter-technology.

ah, thought I'd find you here Whisky, and you said everything I would have said. This all takes me back

My first reaction on seeing the entry title was to think "boy, that's going to be shorr since the trouble with ciphers is that they can be broken"

Er... since Whisky said it all I've nothing to say except, great idea for an entry and I'm looking forward to seeing it on the front page.

Thanks.

Hi dsg. Just wondering where you were with this. This, I think, has come up in Peer Review before, but there might be a bit of work to be done on the title. Or maybe you need to explain that a cipher is a form of secret writing right off the bat. I think the trouble might stem from the fact that most people would call this form of writing 'code' rather than a cipher, but we're willing to be persuaded on this. Cheers.