Slashdot Mirror

Submarine writes: "Researchers from the CRPP ( University Bordeaux 1 (France) / CNRS) have produced knotted nanotubes. See a short description of their work, complete with images."

Erik Moeller writes "David Madore, mathematician at ENS, describes a method that might be the ultimate weapon in the battle against Internet censorship. In his paper A method of free speech on the Internet: random pads he introduces a system of so-called pads, chunks of random data that are used to encrypt controversial information.(Read More)

Every byte in the source file is XOR'd with exactly one byte in the random file. The result file, by itself, is totally indistinguishable from white noise, provided that the pad used is truly random. Madore now suggests that users store pads on different servers and use several of them in combination to encrypt data.

A FTP or WWW site that stores one of the pads could argue that they are only storing random noise, and another might do the same. It would be mathematically impossible to prove them guilty of storing illegal information (unless there is a way to prove that one pad was created after the other). Only by the combination of the two (or more) files I am able to retrieve the original controversial information. The critical parts are the links to the pads I need to obtain the information, but those might be traded on a distributed system like Gnutella or FreeNet. Plus links take very little space and can be relocated easily to freespace ISPs.

The concept is a little more complicated than my summary here, so please read the paper (and mirror it, it's GPL'd!). There are already scripts and programs to create pads and restore the original files (including a GUI program for Win32). I might add that the idea of pad encryption is fairly old, already used in WWII -- its advantage is that it is mathematically safe if the pads are truly random and only used once, thus its name "One Time Pad"."

Erik Moeller writes "David Madore, mathematician at ENS, describes a method that might be the ultimate weapon in the battle against Internet censorship. In his paper A method of free speech on the Internet: random pads he introduces a system of so-called pads, chunks of random data that are used to encrypt controversial information.(Read More)

Every byte in the source file is XOR'd with exactly one byte in the random file. The result file, by itself, is totally indistinguishable from white noise, provided that the pad used is truly random. Madore now suggests that users store pads on different servers and use several of them in combination to encrypt data.

A FTP or WWW site that stores one of the pads could argue that they are only storing random noise, and another might do the same. It would be mathematically impossible to prove them guilty of storing illegal information (unless there is a way to prove that one pad was created after the other). Only by the combination of the two (or more) files I am able to retrieve the original controversial information. The critical parts are the links to the pads I need to obtain the information, but those might be traded on a distributed system like Gnutella or FreeNet. Plus links take very little space and can be relocated easily to freespace ISPs.

The concept is a little more complicated than my summary here, so please read the paper (and mirror it, it's GPL'd!). There are already scripts and programs to create pads and restore the original files (including a GUI program for Win32). I might add that the idea of pad encryption is fairly old, already used in WWII -- its advantage is that it is mathematically safe if the pads are truly random and only used once, thus its name "One Time Pad"."

Thanks to David A. Madore who wrote to us regarding seven math problems that have rewards of one million dollars. The project is being done by the Clay Mathematics Institute, and is modeled after Hilbert's list for the 20th century which was announced also in Paris, but in 1900. Read more for more information from David.

"The Clay Mathematics Institute has just (May 24-25, 2000) organized a big meeting in the Collège de France in Paris, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the International Congress of Mathematicians meeting in August 1900 (also in Paris) during which the great David Hilbert (a serious candidate for the greatest mathematician of all times, perhaps after Gauss and Euler) announced his list of 23 celebrated problems for the XXth century.

First the Clay Mathematics Awards were given, one two Laurent Lafforgue for his proof of the local Langlands correspondence, and one to Alain Connes for his work on von Neumann factors and noncommutative geometry. Then a list of seven problems for the third millennium was revealed by John Tate and Sir Michael Atiyah. If you solve any of the following problems, you win $1,000,000.

The problems are:

• The Riemann hypothesis: prove (or disprove!) that all the non-trivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function lie on the critical axis (real part of s = one half).
• The conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer: prove (or disprove!) that the algebraic rank of an elliptic curve over Q (the rank of the group of its rational points) equals its analytic rank (the order of cancellation at 1 of its L function).
• Is P=NP? In other words, is it possible for a deterministic Turing machine to solve in polynomial time problems which are solved by a nondeterministic Turing machine in polynomial time, or, on the contrary, is the traveling salesman problem truly "hard" in the sense that no polynomial-time algorithm exists to solve it?
• The Poincaré Conjecture: prove (or disprove!) that any simply connected topological manifold of dimension 3 is homeomorphic to the three-sphere.
• The Hodge Conjecture: prove (or disprove!) that on projective algebraic varieties, all Hodge cycles are rational combinations of algebraic cycles.
• Yang-Mills theory: develop a mathematical foundation for the quantum theory of Yang-Mills fields; specifically, account for the "mass gap" hypothesis.
• Navier-Stokes equations: prove (or disprove!) that the Navier-Stokes equations have smooth solutions for all positive times, given reasonable initial conditions.

Naturally, if you solve any of these, you get to be famous, too.

During the meeting we even got to hear a recording of Hilbert's voice speaking his famous "Wir müssen wissen; wir werden wissen" ("We must know; we shall know") just a hundred years before. It's also engraved on his tomb in Göttingen. Cool. "

David A. Madore asks: "Every once in a while, I decide to try out IPv6 (on my local PC network that isn't connected to the Internet). And every time I'm disappointed. Now that the kernel supports it, and libc (glibc 2.2.1) supports it, and that I've recompiled the net-tools with inet6 support (why doesn't RedHat do that by default, I'd like to know), I would expect to be able to type 'telnet ::1' and get a connection to localhost, prompto! Instead, I get '::1: Unknown host.' Isn't the whole point of' IPv6 support of the libc to make program support completely transparent? And isn't the whole point of dynamically linked libraries so that we get it without even having to recompile anything? Or am I being incomparably naïve here? Will we have to rewrite and recompile any network-aware program so as to get IPv6 support? By the way: How will X11 DISPLAY strings work with IPv6 ':0' is kindda confusing in relation with IPv6 addresses)? Can anyone clarify the matter?"

Nothing I like better than post X-Files quickies. Oh wait. That came out wrong. (rimshot) I should post some links quick to cover up my terrible joke: Eduardo Silva sent us a link to the online version of At RMSs Essay from Open Sources. It's on the past, present and future of the FSF. Jaws sent us a link to a Katz article at Mercury Center called The End of the Microsoft Age. Dan Guisinger sent us a link to some new Rio Accessories including a remote control that plugs into the headphone jack. Andy King sent us a link to the Web Reference entry for the Slashdot Effect Elphin sent us a link to a nifty poster of the Netscape color palette. GtHS sent us a link to an article that the trillions of you who continue to submit the hamster dance will like: It's the Penguin Dance. Pete Rijks sent us a link to the Scary Squirrels for all you conspiracy nuts. GTM writes The Net Wars Trilogy, a strange net parody of a certain trilogy you might like. baegucb sent us a link to another site on the hot topic of furby mutiliation. This time with a microwave. jchildress@netspeak.com sent us a link to another scary patent. How does this stuff get in the system?