Home > Author > Simon Singh
101 " NSA employs more mathematicians, buys more computer hardware, and intercepts more messages than any other organization in the world. It is the world leader when it comes to snooping. "
― Simon Singh , The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
102 " In the 1970s, banks attempted to distribute keys by employing special dispatch riders who had been vetted and who were among the company’s most trusted employees. "
103 " dispatch riders would race across the world with padlocked briefcases, personally distributing keys to everyone who would receive messages from the bank over the next week. As business networks grew in size, as more messages were sent, and as more keys had to be delivered, the banks found that this distribution process became a horrendous logistical nightmare, and the overhead costs became prohibitive. "
104 " alphabetic scripts tend to have between 20 and 40 characters (Russian, for example, has 36 signs, and Arabic has 28). "
105 " When ships carrying COMSEC material came into dock, crypto-custodians would march onboard, collect stacks of cards, paper tapes, floppy disks, or whatever other medium the keys might be stored on, and then deliver them to the intended recipients. "
106 " scripts that rely on semagrams tend to have hundreds or even thousands of signs (Chinese has over 5,000). "
107 " Syllabic scripts occupy the middle ground, with between 50 and 100 syllabic characters. Beyond these two facts, Linear B was an unfathomable mystery. "
108 " Quantum cryptography is an unbreakable system of encryption. "
109 " one-way functions are sometimes called Humpty Dumpty functions. Modular arithmetic, sometimes called clock arithmetic in schools, is an area of mathematics that is rich in one-way functions. In modular arithmetic, mathematicians consider a finite group of numbers arranged in a loop, "
110 " in the 1980s it was only government, the military and large businesses that owned computers powerful enough to run RSA. Not surprisingly, RSA Data Security, Inc., the company set up to commercialize RSA, developed their encryption products with only these markets in mind. "
111 " Zimmermann believed that everybody deserved the right to the privacy that was offered by RSA encryption, and he directed his political zeal toward developing an RSA encryption product for the masses. "
112 " Zimmermann employed a neat trick that used asymmetric RSA encryption in tandem with old-fashioned symmetric encryption. "
113 " It has been said that the First World War was the chemists’ war, because mustard gas and chlorine were employed for the first time, and that the Second World War was the physicists’ war, because the atom bomb was detonated. Similarly, it has been argued that the Third World War would be the mathematicians’ war, because mathematicians will have control over the next great weapon of war—information. "
114 " The Vigenère cipher was called “le chiffre indéchiffrable,” but Babbage broke it; "
115 " In June 1991 he took the drastic step of asking a friend to post PGP on a Usenet bulletin board. PGP is just a piece of software, and so from the bulletin board it could be downloaded by anyone for free. PGP was now loose on the Internet. "
116 " Rejewski had no idea of the day key, and he had no idea which message keys were being chosen, but he did know that they resulted in this table of relationships. Had "
117 " The French had handed the information from Schmidt to the Poles because they believed it to be of no value, but the Poles had proved them wrong. "
118 " destitute. "
119 " Lisa Simpson is the kind of child we not only want our children to be, but also the kind of child we want all children to be. "
― Simon Singh , The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
120 " Q: What is the volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z? 3 points A: pi.z.z.a "