I got it. It says, 'Please don't show this message to Slashdot, they'll slashdot the CIA server and obsess about it!'
Actually, my theory, and I don't know if it's naive or besides the point... It seems likely that the last portion was encrypted by a one-time pad, at least according to Kryptos. As we know, a one-time pad is unbreakable if the sequence of characters is truly random.
I don't think the artist meant for the cipher to be unbreakable. That means using a truly unbreakable cipher would be besides the point. So, we are left with two theories:
1) The one-time pad used is not truly random, and understanding the pseudo-randomness of the sequence is part of the deal. My guess is, the one-time pad used was something like an encoded message. Perhaps even a previous part of the encoded message?
2) (More plausible, but less interesting) The one-time pad is actually buried at the coordinates specified in the first parts. Has anyone tried to dig there?
Anyway, I bet this is one of those things that'll basically say something inane like, 'Congratulations! You broke the code.' Hey, there's a few crib ideas...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
People, there's healthy paranoia, and lunatic rambling. When cryptographers say, 'this algorithm is unbreakable by brute force', there's no point in answering, 'yeah, but what if the NSA has quantum computers/omniscience/an infinity of monkeys on typewriters'.
It's possible that the NSA has superior tech, but the orders of magnitude we're talking about in strong-encryption would require computers light-years ahead of our own.
As for NSA being more advanced in cryptology than the general public: I very much doubt it. Why do you think they created strong-encryption export policies? It's because they can't decrypt it all, and they're scared of a foreign power being able to use unbreakable ciphers.
For instance, I doubt they ever proved P=NP. If such a proof is made, it'll come from Universities, not a Government agency.
Government cryptanalysis may have been ahead in WW2, but this is a drastically different time. Now, crypto is in the hands of Universities and hackers. We've literally taken the field of cryptology from the hands of the NSA, and they're annoyed. That's why they come up with insane ploys like Echelon.
Hence my subject header: public cryptography is to the NSA what GNU is to M$. It's a revolution, and it's taking the adversary by surprise.
In both cases, the NSA or M$ has tried to impede the progress made by individuals with a desire for freedom around the world, but they're being overtaken by sheer freedom of communication and exchange of ideas.
I'm not saying the NSA is behind in crypto; I'm saying they're losing ground fast. And even if they hand-pick the finest scientists and cryptologists, there's still many, many more out there in Universities or in their basement, being paranoid, and creating stronger and stronger algorithms.
The NSA claims it invented public-key crypto ten years before PGP, but they never came up with proof. Even then, they were being beat.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The idea was to use a captured German bomber, crewed by German speaking British special forces, which would crash into the channel after sending a distress call. When a rescue boat (which had an Enigma and codebooks on board) arrived, the 'bomber crew' would overpower the crew, and sail back to Blighty.
That would have been stupid, too. If the British had seized codebooks, one-time pads and a working Enigma machine, the Germans would have switched the codes in no time flat.
It was much better to break Enigma and never tell the Germans about it, which is what they did.
A more Bond-esque plot would have been to screw Hitler's wife.:)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Well! I know where I'm going on my next visit to the UK! This is so cool...
By the way, I found this nifty link on Bletchley Park's site. It's a Java simulation of the Enigma machine (the rotor cipher scheme used by Germans in WW2.) It's really cool and educative.
I think I'm gonna devote some time to this... Have a friend encipher a few messages, then try a few modern attacks. It's nice to see how far we've come in crypto since WW2. Though I bet Enigma is still a pain to break on your own.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
That's supposed to raise hope that primitive life may exist on the Red Planet? Heh.:)
I think it makes it sound as if the Red Planet is even more hostile to complex life than we imagine. Still, if microbes are able to thrive there, it doesn't mean they have.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I admit members of Team Slashdot of cheating in half-veiled words was uncool. I didn't read it to say that all of/. was cheating, but hey. We're a big bunch, the creation of teams and the publication of results has turned the thing into a big competition, so it's natural that some of us would go out and exploit loopholes.
I don't think the guys at SETI said they were pissed off at it, though. They just said it was a big headache. I think the whole point is that they're feeling overwhelmed with what has become a big fat Slashdot Effect.
SETI has been surviving all these years through abysmal funding, squatting radiotelescope time, and the only reason they haven't fallen through is because everyone recognises their research as being fundamental, although the chance of positive results are practically nill.
So I say: give them a break, guys. It's normal they take a little while to organise, and at least they're being honest about it.
What would you have done with idle CPU time, anyway? Run Life simulations to generation Googol?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
My GOD, this looks like a car crash between the geek and fashion world. Can you say fashion victim?
BunnyPeople? Neo-postmodern design cases with cards poking out? What were these people thinking?
It sounds as if they let loose a Versace-wannabe on a few computer cases. You know the kind. "Oh, what the hell is that mouse thingie for? Didn't computer geeks learn to accessorise? Off with the mouse thingie! And what about that TV? TV is sooo eighties, pumpkins!"
This seems as natural to me as a cross between Bill Gates and Pamela Anderson. The percentage of malleable plastic is about right.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Remember, it's not because Microsoft doesn't touch Linux (unless the rumours of MS Office for Linux are to be believed) but it doesn't mean Inprise won't. It seems sensible for any rational-minded company nowadays to invest in Linux. It's not that they believe in the so-called "OSS Revolution", but an investor recognises potential for money when he sees it.
I suspect we may still see Linux ports of Inprise software in the future. Microsoft telling Inprise not to touch Linux would be insane and against shareholder's interests. I mean, it's one thing to tell users they should use this or that OS, but it's another to prove it's not worth the money invested in a particular platform. And so far, it is becoming as short-sighted to ignore Linux development than it is to ignore Win32 platforms.
Didn't Inprise revert their name to Borland?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
> Everything is shit. Hmm. That would be, what, anti-relativism or deconstructionism? I think us geeks have a culture. It's not made of The Matrix and Revenge of the Nerds like Katz likes to think, but rather of Lord of the Rings and Isaac Azimov. Having a culture doesn't mean it has to be self-referential.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
...is to install Linux. Sure, it doesn't cost a penny more to install Linux, but you can stop being paranoid about Micro$oft poking around your hard drive.
I bet the software piracy ratio would drop radically as Linux gains supporters. And then, big companies will no longer be able to justify to sell us outrageously expensive software by saying they have to compensate for software piracy.
I mean, come on! Ok, so my copy of Photoshop is pirated, but do you really think I would pay $600 for a license? I prefer to switch to GIMP (which is what I did.)
Bottom line: companies claim prices are high because of piracy. I say it's the other way around.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Problem with terms like "grokker" is that the general public won't have a clue what it's supposed to mean. Grokker would be a nice term to refer to ourselves, and indeed, if we didn't have terms like hacker and cracker to refer to our activities, it might eventually catch on. And if it were to catch on with hackers, it would eventually with the general public. However, we know plenty well what a hacker is and what it implies so we won't change. The non-geeks need a pretty word that evokes hacking, geeking out and obsessing over code. In that aspect, code poet was a nice suggestion but I doubt non-hackers will grok it.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Sure, it was a heck of a stigmata while in highschool to be called a geek, but nowadays, I proudly refer to myself as a geek extraordinaire. Adults see other geeks as high-tech specialists with a knack for science, so non-geeks look to geeks with a mix of admiration and lack of understanding. And that's fine with me.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Slashdot Mirror
The one-time pad has to be as long as the encrypted message. So that's not a possibility. The last part has 81 characters.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Actually, my theory, and I don't know if it's naive or besides the point... It seems likely that the last portion was encrypted by a one-time pad, at least according to Kryptos. As we know, a one-time pad is unbreakable if the sequence of characters is truly random.
I don't think the artist meant for the cipher to be unbreakable. That means using a truly unbreakable cipher would be besides the point. So, we are left with two theories:
1) The one-time pad used is not truly random, and understanding the pseudo-randomness of the sequence is part of the deal. My guess is, the one-time pad used was something like an encoded message. Perhaps even a previous part of the encoded message?
2) (More plausible, but less interesting) The one-time pad is actually buried at the coordinates specified in the first parts. Has anyone tried to dig there?
Anyway, I bet this is one of those things that'll basically say something inane like, 'Congratulations! You broke the code.' Hey, there's a few crib ideas...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Oooooooh...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
It's possible that the NSA has superior tech, but the orders of magnitude we're talking about in strong-encryption would require computers light-years ahead of our own.
As for NSA being more advanced in cryptology than the general public: I very much doubt it. Why do you think they created strong-encryption export policies? It's because they can't decrypt it all, and they're scared of a foreign power being able to use unbreakable ciphers.
For instance, I doubt they ever proved P=NP. If such a proof is made, it'll come from Universities, not a Government agency.
Government cryptanalysis may have been ahead in WW2, but this is a drastically different time. Now, crypto is in the hands of Universities and hackers. We've literally taken the field of cryptology from the hands of the NSA, and they're annoyed. That's why they come up with insane ploys like Echelon.
Hence my subject header: public cryptography is to the NSA what GNU is to M$. It's a revolution, and it's taking the adversary by surprise.
In both cases, the NSA or M$ has tried to impede the progress made by individuals with a desire for freedom around the world, but they're being overtaken by sheer freedom of communication and exchange of ideas.
I'm not saying the NSA is behind in crypto; I'm saying they're losing ground fast. And even if they hand-pick the finest scientists and cryptologists, there's still many, many more out there in Universities or in their basement, being paranoid, and creating stronger and stronger algorithms.
The NSA claims it invented public-key crypto ten years before PGP, but they never came up with proof. Even then, they were being beat.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
That would have been stupid, too. If the British had seized codebooks, one-time pads and a working Enigma machine, the Germans would have switched the codes in no time flat.
It was much better to break Enigma and never tell the Germans about it, which is what they did.
A more Bond-esque plot would have been to screw Hitler's wife. :)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I wonder if the NSA Museum has a "trophy hall" of busted crypto-buffs... I bet the Export Law wing is pretty cool too!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
By the way, I found this nifty link on Bletchley Park's site. It's a Java simulation of the Enigma machine (the rotor cipher scheme used by Germans in WW2.) It's really cool and educative.
http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rus sell/classes/enigma/
I think I'm gonna devote some time to this... Have a friend encipher a few messages, then try a few modern attacks. It's nice to see how far we've come in crypto since WW2. Though I bet Enigma is still a pain to break on your own.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I think it makes it sound as if the Red Planet is even more hostile to complex life than we imagine. Still, if microbes are able to thrive there, it doesn't mean they have.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I don't think the guys at SETI said they were pissed off at it, though. They just said it was a big headache. I think the whole point is that they're feeling overwhelmed with what has become a big fat Slashdot Effect.
SETI has been surviving all these years through abysmal funding, squatting radiotelescope time, and the only reason they haven't fallen through is because everyone recognises their research as being fundamental, although the chance of positive results are practically nill.
So I say: give them a break, guys. It's normal they take a little while to organise, and at least they're being honest about it.
What would you have done with idle CPU time, anyway? Run Life simulations to generation Googol?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
BunnyPeople? Neo-postmodern design cases with cards poking out? What were these people thinking?
It sounds as if they let loose a Versace-wannabe on a few computer cases. You know the kind. "Oh, what the hell is that mouse thingie for? Didn't computer geeks learn to accessorise? Off with the mouse thingie! And what about that TV? TV is sooo eighties, pumpkins!"
This seems as natural to me as a cross between Bill Gates and Pamela Anderson. The percentage of malleable plastic is about right.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I suspect we may still see Linux ports of Inprise software in the future. Microsoft telling Inprise not to touch Linux would be insane and against shareholder's interests. I mean, it's one thing to tell users they should use this or that OS, but it's another to prove it's not worth the money invested in a particular platform. And so far, it is becoming as short-sighted to ignore Linux development than it is to ignore Win32 platforms.
Didn't Inprise revert their name to Borland?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I bet the software piracy ratio would drop radically as Linux gains supporters. And then, big companies will no longer be able to justify to sell us outrageously expensive software by saying they have to compensate for software piracy.
I mean, come on! Ok, so my copy of Photoshop is pirated, but do you really think I would pay $600 for a license? I prefer to switch to GIMP (which is what I did.)
Bottom line: companies claim prices are high because of piracy. I say it's the other way around.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."