Re: encryption with pi

From: Jeff Williams (frostback_at_canada.com)
Date: 07/31/04 

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 10:24:31 -0500

Bob Silverman wrote:
> Sigh.
>
> I get tired of this. I am competent to judge.
>
> The proposed cipher is easily broken. Computing the
> n'th digit of Pi can be done in constant time (without
> computing prior values) by an algorithm of
> Simon Plouffe. The algorithm is quite fast.
>
> Even if it were not constant time, generating 100
> million digits of Pi is TRIVIAL.
>
> I suggest searching the literature next time before
> shooting your mouth off. You do know how to do
> a Web search, don't you?
>
>
> "You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think."

Thanks for the update. As I noted in a prior post, it's been over 25
years since I was interested in PI - I hadn't heard of Plouffe's work (8
years old).

BTW, it's much more efficient to google the reference if you use Bailey
Borwein Plouffe rather than Plouffe. Searching for the latter took me
more than 15 minutes (to get a reference to BBP). Searching for the
former took scant seconds. I live in Canada, so I have no means of
shooting my mouth off :)

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