ECCp-109 Solved

Daerk writes "ECCp-109 has been solved. A week ago. Now wonder my stats haven't updated. Now what am I going to do till climateprediction.net goes live..."

Comments

What will you do?

[Charlton Heston]

Folding!

Re:What will you do?

[circletimessquare]

or, make math history (and possibly win a couple of grand)

find the 40th Mersenne Prime

Re:What will you do?

[Omnifarious]

I dropped SETI and started doing Folding because I think it will be more directly relevant sooner. It'd be neat to find signals from another civilization, but I'm more interested in learning the details of how the fanstically intricate machine that is a human being works so we can do a better job of fixing it.

Re:What will you do?

[nackrm]

What about curing cancer? Try this.

Re:What will you do?

[roybentley]

Unable to resolve target system life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness.

Re:What will you do?

[cwis42]

Google cache here.

ars

[tymellon]

Guess what

You guys here at /. got beat by Ars Technica. (in more ways than one)

We ought to get the people here behind some distributed computing project. I bet we could beat any other team.

Re:ars

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

We ought to get the people here behind some distributed computing project. I bet we could beat any other team.

And if we can't....well, we will show impressed we are by posting a link to their website hehehe....

Re:ars

[mjp9055]

or better yet, slashdot should start a feature dedicated to worthwhile distributed computing projects.

Re:ars

[MadCow42]

>> We ought to get the people here behind some distributed computing project

We have... it's called "DOS-a-server-randomly", and we solve that problem several times daily.

q:]

MadCow.

What I'm gonna do

[cordsie]

Now what am I going to do till climateprediction.net goes live...
Figure out what the hell an ECCp-109 is?

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can go to sleep.
You don't know how much this has been keeping me up.
None of you know.

Re:Finally!

[Xzzy]

next week i'll be releasing a distributed computing screensaver for all major operating systems to try and figure it out, we're just putting some finishing touches on the code.

we WILL know.

OGR 25

[garglblaster]

check distributed.net for example!

What are you going to do? Beat cancer!

[Lancer]

Here you can donate your CPU cycles to help discover a cure for cancer. If that's not a noble cause, no telling what is.

I will admit there's some irony in my being a member of the alt.smokers.pipes team for this though :)

Re:What are you going to do? Beat cancer!

[Puggles]

I'd *love* to switch from SETI to the cancer research program, but I'm definitely not switching to Windows to do it!

*mumbles something about installing Windows would be spreading cancer*

Re:What are you going to do? Beat cancer!

[Anonymous Coward]

So post in the UD Forums suggesting a Linux client. If enough Linux users do this, I'm sure they'll eventually seek to please them.

Re:What are you going to do? Beat cancer!

[FreeUser]

Here [ud.com] you can donate your CPU cycles to help discover a cure for cancer. If that's not a noble cause, no telling what is.

Fine. I'll consider it, so long as any research benefitting from my donation signs a legally binding agreement not to patent the resulting cure (if any), or any other useful knowledged gleaned from our 'donations.'

What, you say no way? Then this isn't a charity, it is just another profiteering company looking for a free handout, and playing people's heartstrings to get it.

Most of the patented pharmaceuticals have significant contributions of public funds (taxes) as well as private donations (charities), which they then patent and sell back to the very people who helped underwrite their research at often unaffordable monopoly prices. AIDS is the perfect example of this, where treatments developed in no small part from publicly provided funds are patented and cost upwards of $20,000 year for each patient in the United States, while Brazil, which has chosen to ignore these very same patents, can offer the same treatment to AIDS patients down there for $200 / year (the government often picking up that tab and providing the medicine at no cost to the patient).

Until the researchers involved stop patenting and locking down the knowledge they are gaining in no small part from our donations and our tax dollars, I'll keep my money, and my CPU cycles, thank you very much.

Uh... What?

[abhinavnath]

*What* has been solved? EP-what?...

NOOO!!!!
Why have I never heard of this? I must be getting dumber!

Now I'm sure all these uber-geeks are laughing at me.
Must sit still. Must...find...something...cogent...to...say...

Re:Uh... What?

[unicron]

Must sit still. Must...find...something...cogent...to...say...

That wasn't it.

Re:This is Dilution of Distributed Compute Power!

[seanellis]

Having all these different crypto challenges, protien folding challenges, SETI searches etc, just dilutes the pool of available computers for each task

Not necessarily. Each potential user is likely to be interested in only a few of these projects. I an runnning SETI, and if (when) that ends, I will probably go over to protein folding or the cancer drug search instead, as long as they have command-line clients. I'm not interested in crypto busting; it doesn't actually discover anything!

The number of projects is optimal where the average number of projects of interest to each user is a bit above 1. That probably means one crypto, one SETI, one biology, etc.

Why it took a week

[1155]

From the site, they haven't even confirmed if this is true or not..

"The announcement is being made now, a week later because we had to wait for comfirmation from Certicom that this is the solution. (Which we still haven't gotten, by the way)."

Cancer?

[Penguinoflight]

Cancer is one of the medical institutions major source of income, if it were cured, what would we do with all the stupid research centers? Many people think that cancer can be cured by using good food, lots of greens, no meat, etc. But really nobody considers this because it doesn't make money.

Re:Cancer?

[Spoing]

Cancer is one of the medical institutions major source of income, if it were cured, what would we do with all the stupid research centers? Many people think that cancer can be cured by using good food, lots of greens, no meat, etc. But really nobody considers this because it doesn't make money.

Another datapoint. I used to date an Otolaryngologist (ears, nose, and throat) who worked at NIH (a (the?) main US national medical center).

In normal conversation, she would talk about the large number of cancer patients she had and how hard it was for them to stop smoking or drinking alcohol even after they were diagnosed.

One day, curious, I asked how many cancer patients she had over the years that didn't smoke, drink, or both. 30 seconds went by. A frown developed on her face. "I think, maybe, two over the past 10 years. One I know was the wife of a smoker." She went on to explain that most were both alcoholics and 1+ pack a day smokers, though nearly all the rest were either heavy smokers or drinkers.

While cancer treatment and diagnosis wasn't her primary responsibility, it was a large part of the practice's business and (when money was available) research. Other problems they encountered were related to smoking -- especially cronic childhood ear/throat infections where one or both of the parents were heavy smokers.

Take it for what it's worth. Me, I love going out with friends for a good beer or two (quality over quantity) and snacks. Her observations keep me out of the smokey bar area, though.

Re:Cancer?

[scotch]

Well, I think your nose and throat are really susceptible to cancer if you smoke. But plenty of people get prostrate or breast or bowel or brain cancer who don't smoke or drink.

These things obviously decrease the risk, but I believe that you can't eliminate the risk of cancer via environmental factors entirely. Cancer is one of those "shit happens" things about life. Our bodies aren't perfect, cancer is really a product of this fact.

Re:Cancer?

[Penguinoflight]

That's just the thing though, I know of many people who have been cured by eating their vegetables, and they didn't die. Doctors may tell people to eat right, but often they don't themselves. In fact, the average lifetime for a doctor is 58, almost 20 years lower than the average person. Not only are they the most informed about healthcare, but doctors don't usually have the problem of not being able to pay for perscription drugs, like other seniors.

The pool is not a fixed size

[Charlton Heston]

The more projects there are, the more interest in the projects that there will be, and the larger the available pool of people willing to donate cycles.

A little story to illustrate:

There was once a lawyer in a town. That lawyer didn't have any business, and he nearly starved to death. Then one day, another lawyer moved to town and there was more than enough business for both of them.

Here's a real math mystery

[goldspider]

Can anyone here prove the theory first suggested by Beavis that "the angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the beat"?

or join the God existence proof seekers

[Anonymous Coward]

No client to download. Just write "God, if you can see this, please show yourself!" in a large font on your screen using the blink-tag. If enough people do it, God will see it.

Note that once we make contact with God, He can cure cancer for us, factor larger integers, or tell us where the aliens are, so this distributed computing project subsumes every other one.

If anyone's interested

[ksplatter]

they can join my distributed project. Just download my program and it runs in the backround. It will be busy computing the number of Distributed Projects in the world. We currently have 30,000 users. We expect to know the exact number in 100 years.

FAQ:
Why will it take so long to figure out:
Short Answer: The number of Distributed Projects out there grows exponentially.

Why would anyone want to do this:
Short Answer: Nobody does

Attack an algorithm that matters!

[jlcooke]

An MD5 attack can be accomplished in O(2^64) or roughtly 2.5 d.net years.

RC5-64 was a O(2^63).

ECC-109 was a O(2^54).

JLC

Re:Attack an algorithm that matters!

[CynicTheHedgehog]

Is that standard O-notation or something different? O(2^64) = O(k) = kO(1) = constant time, which would be kind of strange for encryption. 2^64 instruction cycles (or whatever) wouldn't be all that heavy on typical hardware. Regular O-notation would be O(2^n), where n=64, 63, and 54, respectively.

Yes, but is Certicom going to pay the reward?

[DmitriA]

I hear that they are in huge financial trouble and barely have enough money in the bank to last them a couple of months. The last thing they probably want to waste it on is paying for this

when I was little

[shren]

When I was little, I loved to write computer programs that would count. They'd start at one and count upward, and I'd keep track of when it gained decimil places.

Pointless, right? Well, does this cryptography cracking have a point? We know that the algorithm will be cracked when the right key is hit. It's just as much electrowanking as jumping up and down when your
computer counts to a million, with a bit of cryptography politics thrown in.

I don't get why people are drwan to these projects over more significant problems like OGM or protein folding.

Re:when I was little

[Waffle Iron]

Well, does this cryptography cracking have a point? We know that the algorithm will be cracked when the right key is hit.

I think that the point is that a lot of PHBs and policymakers won't believe that a given encryption technology will ever be crackable until they see that it actually has been cracked. There are a lot of people in this world who refuse to believe that anything that is still "theoretical" is either possible or important.

Re:when I was little

[Dr Caleb]

I don't get why people are drwan to these projects

Because they say it can't be done. Breaking encryption was touted as impossible ten years ago. "It'll take the fastest computer in the world a kajillion years to break 56 bit encryption" It actually took quite a bit less. 64 bit encryption took less than 5 years to be broken.

Distributed.net may be partially responsible for relaxing the laws on exporting encryption. Perhaps it'll take a billion years to break 8192bit encryption with todays technology, but give it 5 years, and newer computers will be able to break it in minutes.

Why not protien folding or cures for cancer? Some because there is no Linux client. Some because the result may not be made public domain. Some I do.

I have 6 machines running at home, some are running dnet, some are Seti. Some have one project running on one processor, and another project running on the other processor. But more than 50% of my cycles go to Dnet.

A suggestion

[Greedo]

How about a distributed project where millions of people around the world can correct spelling mistakes in Slashdot articles. Or cancel previously posted stories.

Re:It's been asked before, but...

[jeblucas]

At least make it something at least a little interesting, like my proof that 1 + 1 = 3.

Here's my proof:

a = a
a^2 = a^2
a^2 - a^2 = a^2 - a^2
Factor both sides, one by binomial, the other by a
(a + a)(a - a) = a(a - a)
Divide by the common (a - a) factor...
(a + a) = a
2a = a
2 = 1

Therefore 1 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3.
QED

Re:Spelling

[GreyWolf3000]

I think you would have done better with a goatse link.

Re:This is Dilution of Distributed Compute Power!

[Zathrus]

Oh, you're right. We should only run one at a time. Which one? RC-128 cracking? Go for it. Not interested. SETI@Home? Ok, but seeing as how I knew about it for years and never bothered downloading the client I suspect that would've continued for, oh say, eternity.

The UD Cancer project is what finally got me into the distributed computing bit. Is it useful? Dunno. I hope so. But it's far more interesting to me than trying to brute force encryption (which is a known solution, and for which the time estimate can be accurately determined ahead of time), or search for signals in space (which, while I believe in extraterestial life and intelligence, I also believe in the laws of physics and seriously doubt the likelihood of any other race wasting the time and energy in broadcasting when listening is far easier, not to mention light speed constraints, diminuation and attenuation of signals on stellar scales, etc.), or finding prime numbers (useful for crypto, but current crypto is either way secure or hopelessly insecure based on quantum computing).

My wife is running the UD agent on her computers now too. At some point I'll mention it to the rest of my family and they'll probably run it - curing cancer takes on a much higher priority after your father dies from it and your mother is diagnosed with it.

I'm not going to try and force anyone run UD though. To each their own. Which, of course, is the little thing you seem to have forgotten here.

Journalism at its best!

[Stonehead]

Sigh. Insert obligatory sulky comment about tired Slashdot editors who were again too lazy to do any homework and include a description or background on ECCp-109. Instead, "What is it!?" screaming readers all over the place. Well, thanks. You want that Slashdot effect to happen to them, don't you?

Let's try this instead

[laigle]

So now we know distributed efforts can solve great big math problems. Don't get me wrong, that's good to know and all, but.. aren't there any math problems that would be of more use than giving people with 210 IQs something else to bicker over during Star Trek conventions? Really, I'm an engineer, and sometimes I actually have to use math to do things like MAKE A FRIGGIN CAR OR SOMETHING.

There are plenty of nontrivial engineering problems out there, especially when you take a trip into thermodynamics and fluid flow. Let's solve those. Or sequence the human genome to grow an extra arm or something. Or better yet, let's put the computing power of mankind to work to randomly generate a script for Episode 3 that won't make us want to beat Lucas senseless with our plastic lightsabers. Why can people scrape together all these prizes for pointless pseudo-intellectual drivel but nobody can get some money behind something worthwhile, or at least interesting?

Here's an idea: Instead of using distributed computing for all this junk science, let's start a central distributed network. This network would have a basic interface element for all the major OS configurations, and would be able to update from the web with whatever mathematic formula and trial space it was supposed to run at a given time. Everyone everywhere could download the client, and set it up to run with whatever processor load they wanted, update on a schedule, maybe vary processor load on a schedule so it works extra hard when you're not using the system. Not much of an interface really. Then some organization, say the NSF or better yet an international science conglomerate, could alot portions of the system load to projects they deemed worthy, depending on complexity and value. The cost is basically nothing, in fact since you could get somebody on the planet to write the code for free one weekend, and the bandwidth would likely be rather low, you would most likely not be talking about the cost of funding a minor research project. Users could still run other distributed clients if they wanted, and the system would be completely voluntary. But it would attract a lot of attention and users, do some good for mankind, and direct our computing power in positive directions.

Re:Let's try this instead

[Dirtside]

Maybe you should do a little research before spouting off about how there are no useful distributed computing projects out there.

Re:It's been asked before, but...

[kwan3217]

Bad math! BAD! You divided by zero! no donut for you.

(a-a)=0 for all values of a

!SPOILER WARNING!

[t0qer]

The answer is.

k=281183840311601949668207954530684

Great movie, really hard to understand ending.

YOU FOOL!

[Kenja]

Don't you realize that once we contact the aliens they can cure all earth diseases with a flick of a tentacle?

Re:YOU FOOL!

[Omnifarious]

Except, then they'll also start consuming us for food. That's another often overlooked disadvantage of SETI.

Re:YOU FOOL!

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Or maybe they'll die of a common human cold, saving us from the brink of destruction at their cruel martian hands.

Time will tell.

Re:YOU FOOL!

[Asprin]

Except, then they'll also start consuming us for food. That's another often overlooked disadvantage of SETI.

+1 ***INFORMATIVE***?!?!?!

WTF?!?!?!

+1 Funny, sure. +1 Interesting, maybe. Hell, I'll even buy +1 Insightful when I'm on Nyquil, but +1 INFORMATIVE?!?! Who's moderating today -- Art Bell?

Re:YOU FOOL!

[Anonymous DWord]

Ever consider that maybe he knows something you don't? Hmm?

Wow...

[delta407]

To everyone who particpated: Thank you for helping, and not letting those CPU cycles go to waste. Projects and challenges like these are very important to really, really know what the state of the art is in computation.

Frankly, I don't see how brute-forcing an elliptic curve encryption algorithm is productive in any way. We know it can be broken by scanning the keyspace, and we don't need trillions of CPU cycles to prove it. So, practice has proven mathematics right again. The result was known beforehand, so how does this help anyone?

Oh, and want to see what is "state of the art computation"? See here.

Is it just me ...

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

... or does anyone else picture some guy at the distributed computing sorta places going, "Their cycles ... all their cycles ... ARE MINE ... ALL MINE! BWHAHAHAH!" while these programs are going on?

ECCp-109 has been solved

[mrroot]

now we can finally start working on ECCp-110. Excitement abound.

Damn, it sucks to be a moderator at times like ths

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm searching for the "-1 Too fucking stupid to get the joke," but it's just not there. Neither is "-1 Irrelevant nitpick." It's just sad.

God is busy

[Glonoinha]

Actually right now he is in custody, explaining the ballistics of a fully laden .223 round.
Later on he goes to tryouts for the goatse.cx cover model, sponsored by the Federal Bad Guy Rehab Prison.

Yea, I'm going to hell for that one.

Will slashdot please hire an editor?

[neurojab]

"Now" and "No" are not the same word. They vaguely sound the same and have much the same spelling, but CANNOT be used interchangeably. In fact, such interchange could be disastrous given the worst-case context. Imagine the questions "Should I shoot?" or "Is the building clear for demolition?" or "Is Windows ready for mission critical applications?". Clearly "now" and "no" are not the same word, and I trust slashdot editors will check for this in the future.

Distributed Computing Projects

[SparkyTWP]

For those who are looking for worthy projects to donate to, here's a good list of what is happening in the field of distributed projects, sorted by subject.

can i have your cycles

[paradesign]

ive had this same rendering going for like 15hrs now and its only half done on my P4 1.4 box. just a few of your cycles would really help.

but seriously, what if Pixar did a distributed thing to get its movies rendered faster, wveryone gets like a fraction of a few frames at a time, which are then rendered and sent back to be composited to form an image? id be down.