Cryptography-Digest Digest #353, Volume #13 Sun, 17 Dec 00 09:13:01 EST
Contents:
Re: Visual Basic Source Code (Paul Schlyter)
Re: Visual Basic Source Code (Paul Schlyter)
Re: Visual Basic Source Code (Paul Schlyter)
Re: Visual Basic Source Code (Paul Schlyter)
Re: Software PRNG.. (Jorgen Hedlund)
Re: does CA need the proof of acceptance of key binding ? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Elliptical Curve Math Question ("Mike Vaughn")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Schlyter)
Subject: Re: Visual Basic Source Code
Date: 17 Dec 2000 12:25:14 +0100
In article <3a3b8e0e$0$17731$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Jason Bock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Schlyter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:91fe1i$c8v$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> In article <3a3a3338$0$90271$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> Jason Bock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> First, define "real programming language." What are you criteria?
>>
>> A language which doesn't get in the way for what you want to do even
>> if you want to do less common things, e.g. implement crypto
>> algorithms, or an operating system.
>
> You can implement crypto algorithms in VB. Try it.
>
> Also, I would never use VB to create an OS. Nor would I use Eiffel or Java
> or PowerBASIC or Perl for such an endeavour. Just because you can't write
> an OS with a language doesn't mean it's not a "real programming language."
> Some languages are meant to be used at a higher level than C/C++ for shorter
> development cycles or for other specific needs. Not everyone needs a
> language that can create an OS.
Of course not, however a "real programming language" is a language
which will allow the programmer to do virtually anything that's
possible on that particular hardware. Interpreted languages like
Eiffel, Java and Perl are obviously not "real progrmaming languages",
because there is an interpreter in the way between your program and
the bare metal - you could never write e.g. a device driver in such a
language.
As you correctly pointed out, not everyone needs such a language.
But this particular discussion wasn't about the average programmer,
but about real programmers. Now, what is a "real programmer"?
>From the Jargon file we can read:
The archetypal Real Programmer likes to program on the bare metal and
is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine
he has ever programmed, thinks that HLL's are sissy, and uses a
debugger to edit hos code because full-screen editors are for wimps.
................
Real Programmers can make machines do things that were nevery in
their spec sheets; in fact they are seldom really happy unless doing
so.
Although this should be considered somewhat exaggreated and ironic,
it nevertheless catches some of the spirit of being a Real
Programmer. And it immediately becomes very obvious that Real
Programmer's would never tolerate to program only in VB. Of course a
Real Programmer will use scripting languages if it's practical, but
that's not where their spirit is.
Now back to Real Programming Langauges: these are languages which
are appreciated by Real Programmers.
>>> What makes VB not a "real programming language"?
>>
>> Ever tried to e.g. build an OS in VB? No? Why not?
>
> Because it can't be done. Doesn't mean it's not a "real programming
> language." You can't write device drivers in PowerBASIC either. Doesn't
> mean it not a "real programming language."
PowerBASIC is just another Basic.....
>> BTW below you argue that VB isn't even a programming language at all.
>
> OK, I said it's technically not a language. I'll correct myself and say
> it's a hybrid. You can create VB programs without the VB IDE; it's just
> harder to do so.
You can create programs in most programming languages without an IDE
(the only exceptions I can think of now are Smalltalk and Logo). Does
that mean these languages all are "technically not a language"?
>> So don't you agree that something which isn't a programming language
>> definitely cannot be a real programming language?
>
> Nope.
>
>>> BTW, technically VB isn't a language, it's a tool (I admit in this
>>> thread I've been calling it a language, but it's more of a
>>> language/tool combo).
>>
>> VB has a syntax which compiles in some sort of executable code.
>> That makes it a language. Of course all languages are tools.
>
> Above you said it's not a language. Which is it?
I never said it was no language -- you said it wasn't! Please don't
try to put your words in my mouth!
>>> You type in some code, you compile it, it runs on a Windows-based
>>> workstation. I fail to see how that disqualifies it from being a
>>> "real programming language."
>>
>> A real programming language can do more than just build everyday
>> bread-and-butter applications. Ever tried to build an OS in VB? Or
>> a crypto library of the most common encryption algorithms?
>
> Yes. I have implement RSA and RC4 in VB. That's two common encryption
> algorithms in VB, wouldn't you agree?
>
>> Or a
>> bignum library?
>
> Yes. See
> <http://www.devx.com/premier/mgznarch/vbpj/2000/03mar00/bb0300/bb0300.asp>.
> You may not have Premiere access to view this on DevX's site, but it's the
> Black Belt article in the March 2000 issue of VBPJ.
You don't have an URL to an article which is accessible?
>> It's stuff like that you need real programming
>> languages for, instead of toy programming languages.
>
> We're obviously not going to see eye to eye on this issue. I don't
> think you're correct, you don't think I'm correct. Feel free to
> call VB a "toy" language. I'm out of this discussion - it's become
> a waste of time.
Yep, when you're starting to claim I've said thins I've never said,
it's indeed a waste of time.
--
================================================================
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at saaf dot se or paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW: http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch http://welcome.to/pausch
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Schlyter)
Subject: Re: Visual Basic Source Code
Date: 17 Dec 2000 12:25:45 +0100
In article <jQM_5.3315$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Schlyter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> A real programming language can do more than just build everyday
>> bread-and-butter applications. Ever tried to build an OS in VB? Or
>> a crypto library of the most common encryption algorithms? Or a
>> bignum library? It's stuff like that you need real programming
>> languages for, instead of toy programming languages.
>
> ARGH! Yes, that's it, just ARGH! ;)
>
> You ever try and build an OS in cobol? What about python? sh? perl?
> forth, pascal, logo, prolog, fortran?
forth gets quite close though: the forth OS is in large part written
in forth.
Logo though is THE toy language of all, as it's so focused on writing
cute animations quickly.
The others are a mixture of application languages and scripting
languages. Of course they have their uses, but they will get in
your way if you want to program on the bare metal. True, many
programmers need never do that, OTOH Real Programmers enjoy doing
just that - that's why they need Real Programming Languages.
> Seriously, are we to conclude that _all_ of those are also imaginary
> programming languages because they're less suited to writing operating
> systems than C? Or is your argument basically that hammers are
> intristically better tools than screwdrivers, because you can also
> pound screws into wood at a slower rate with more effort using one?
--
================================================================
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at saaf dot se or paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW: http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch http://welcome.to/pausch
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Schlyter)
Subject: Re: Visual Basic Source Code
Date: 17 Dec 2000 12:26:31 +0100
In article <3a3b9fe8$0$90278$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Jason Bock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Schlyter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:91fe34$ccn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> In article <3a3a348d$0$90273$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> Jason Bock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
..............
>>>> 2. VB is non-standard
>>>
>>> So? Neither are a lot of languages. Doesn't bother a lot of people.
>>
>> I'm fully aware that this doesn't bother a lot of people, but those
>> who later will want to port their code will then regret their earlier
>> ignorance.
>
> It's not ignorance. I know full well that VB is controlled by MS. But
> that doesn't bother me for the tasks at hand.
Why are you so uninterested in having your code somewhat more
portable? Do you know in advance that your code will be so ephemeral
that porting it will never become an issue?
>>>> 3. VB is non-portable
>>>
>>> Again, that's a personal taste.
>>
>> No, that's not "personal taste"; that's a fact. Try to port a
>> VB application to a non-Microsoft platform !!!
>
> That's not what I was trying to say. What I meant by "personal
> taste" is that, given a certain situation, it simply doesn't
> matter that something is portable.
Very true -- sometimes it does not matter. For instance when:
1. your programming project is a failure -- no-one would be
interested in porting such code.
2. your code will have a lifetime so short that you'll know it'll be
obsolete when a different OS or environment becomes popular.
To me it seems quite discouraging to settle for any of these
alternatives though....
>> When your favourite OS gets old fashioned and you're forced to
>> move on to another OS, it's a pity if you must throw away all that
>> software for your old OS, isn't it?
>
> Sigh. OSes come and go, and I'll make the change. Of course, if we all
> wrote code in standard ANSI C++, the world would be perfect, right? Ain't
> going to happen, ever. Tools will come and go. OSes will come and go.
> Languages will come and go. If we could all just use one OS and one
> language, this wouldn't be an issue. But that's never going to happen. The
> key in my mind is that the communication between n systems is the same.
> Because this industry changes so much, that's about the best you can do.
Perhaps that's a strategy to make sure you'll get jobs in the future:
make sure your applications are short-lived and need to be rewritten
from scratch once every few years..... <g>
Now imagine if these principles were applied to other industries:
a) you could only live in your house only for a few years, because
after that it would break down and would need to be rebuilt. No,
there's nothing you can do about that, that's just the way it is.
No builders want to build more endurable buildings, because if
they did, there would be too few jobs for them in the future.
b) all your electrical appliances would need to be replaced every
few years or so. Today they run on 100 Volts, but next year
there's be an upgrade to 220 Volts, and a few years later to
400 Volts. In between there'll be switches between 50 c/s,
60 c/s, 100 c/s and DC !!!
c) The new Car-2000 you bought yesterday cannot be driven because
it's incompatible with today's highway's -- you'll need to wait until
the Highway-2000 system has been opened -- unfortunately it's late
but it'll open "real soon now".... but that's OK really, because
then you'll have time to upgrade to Drivers-License-2000, since
your current driver's license won't authorize you to drive Car-2000....
Just imagine.....
--
================================================================
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at saaf dot se or paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW: http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch http://welcome.to/pausch
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Schlyter)
Subject: Re: Visual Basic Source Code
Date: 17 Dec 2000 12:27:26 +0100
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Simon Best <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>>
>> In article <3a3a348d$0$90273$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> Jason Bock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> Paul Schlyter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>>> news:91cov5$75j$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> [...]
>>>> 1. VB is based on BASIC, a programming language which ought to have
>>>> become extinct long ago. But thanks to Bill Gates it's still here,
>>>> more widespread than ever. Bill Gates once started out with BASIC
>>>> (he wrote the first BASIC interpreted for the Mits Altair back in
>>>> 1976 or so), and he returned to BASIC, incarnated as VB, ASP,
>>>> WordBasic and possibly something else as well. "Basic forever".....
>>>
>>> You need to do your homework on this one. First, saying that BASIC
>>> "ought to have been extinct long ago" is purely a matter of opinion.
>>
>> It's an opinion, yes, but it's a well-founded opinion. E. Dijkstra
>> expressed this decades ago: "The teaching of BASIC, in schools,
>> should be considered a criminal act!" -- admittedly that opinion is
>> somewhat extreme. Beginner's All Symbolic Instruction Code (=BASIC)
>> does has its use though, as an easy introduction to simple
>> programming for people who won't become programmers.
> [...]
>
> Wasn't BASIC originally devised as a language to be used for teaching
> programming?
Quite correct.
> It's a bad programming language, and hence a good tool for teaching
> programming,
Well, you'll have to think back to 1964 to get the rpoper perspective.
The generally available programming languages back then was FORTRAN,
COBOL and Algol -- the latter was the most elegant, however there were
hardly any Algol compilers available.
BASIC as a language was really a stripped-down FORTRAN, with line
numbers added for editing your program. However the original
Darthmouth BASIC wasn't merely a programming language, but also a
programming environment: it introduced the time-sharing terminal
which was a great improvement: the student of programming could now
get feedback in just a few seconds. Before BASIC he would have to
punch his card deck, hadn it in for processing, wait a few hours, and
then read his printoput which many times was very short because the
compuler complained over some trivial syntax error. Being able to
correct these errors after a few seconds instead of a few hours was
a great improvement, don't you think so?
> _if_ the teacher is a good programmer and a good programming teacher.
...and in particular if the environment provided feedback within
seconds instead of within hours.
Also, the programs written by students in the 1960'ies were by today's
standard very simple programs. And for such simple programs, the
bad structure of BASIC didn't matter that much.
> Because BASIC makes it so easy to do things very badly, and get in a
> hideous mess, learning good programming with it is something that has to
> be conciously and explicitly done. If that's how the teacher makes use
> of BASIC in lessons, then the pupils benefit. Pupils can be guided to
> learn various valuable lessons on good and bad programming (they can be
> lead to find out the hard way very easily with BASIC, if necessary).
> With some other language that imposes various constraints 'for the
> programmer's own good' there isn't so much opportunity for that.
If one would apply that principle to all teaching and not merely
teaching of programming, then one should show bad examples rather
than good examples to the pupils. In literature they should read
badly-written stories; in math they should be presented to mostly
erroneous computations, and those computations which happened to be
correct should at least have been done in a clumsy way; in foreign
languages they should be presented to bad grammar and mis-used words;
in physics they should be lectured by e.g. people trying to construct
perpetuum mobile machines; in biology creationists should be teachers
and in astronomy astrologers should lecture the pupils.
Is that the way you'd want to run the school system?
> So, I suggest that BASIC really belongs where it was originally
> intended: in schools, but with good programming teachers.
The problem with BASIC isn't that it merely makes it easy to do
things very badly (it's easy to do things badly in e.g. C/C++ too!),
but that BASIC makes it difficult to do things in a good way.
However, BASIC ought to have been put peacefully to rest in
1975 or so, when Pascal became readily available.
--
================================================================
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at saaf dot se or paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW: http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch http://welcome.to/pausch
------------------------------
From: Jorgen Hedlund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Software PRNG..
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 13:56:51 +0100
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Terry Ritter wrote:
>
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:57:58 +0100, in
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, in sci.crypt Jorgen Hedlund
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >.. I feel like it's way too much to dig into at
> >this point.. but eventually.
>
> [snip]
> > [snip]
>
> >This leads to the suggestion about some tarball containing many
> >different topics.. available for offline reading..
>
> If you just want to read about different things in cryptography, I
> have many, many pages on my site. But I make no attempt to cover the
> universe of cryptography. Various other sites are available.
Yes, that's just the problem; too many pages to "click-save-click-save".
I suggested a tarball of your crypto-site. Available for download.
This is really easy to accomplish with a CRON command and a small script
that tar:s the site to a file, that is available for download. (in that
way you won't have to bother about "updating" the tarball)
BR/jh
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: does CA need the proof of acceptance of key binding ?
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 13:33:37 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> when someone applies a digital certificate from a certificate
>> authority (CA), does the CA need the proof of acceptance for the key
>> binding from the applicant?
> Quesition of my ignorance: What do you mean by 'proof of
> acceptance for the key binding'? Thanks.
sorry for the confusion: I assume the 'proof of acceptance for the
key binding' is the applicant's analog signature or analog fingerprint
on an agreement that specifies the binding of the applicant's unique
identity to a public key.
Vincent
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
------------------------------
From: "Mike Vaughn" <vaughnmt@@home.com>
Subject: Elliptical Curve Math Question
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 14:03:21 GMT
Hi,
I wish to use the following formula to generate elliptical curves:
y^2 = x^3 + A x + B
or similarly:
y = sqr(B + A x + x^3 )
>From what I've been able to learn is that these are fairly standard formulas
for such.
I can play around with A, B and X all day to solve for Y, that part is easy.
The problem that I am having is that I am having a dilly of a time solving
for X once A, B and Y are known.
Assuming that:
A = 10
B = 20
X = 8
Y = Sqr(B + (A * X) + (X ^ 3))
Y = Sqr(20 + (10 * 8) + (8 ^ 3))
Y = 25
=============================
Inversly:
A = 10
B = 20
Y = 25
Y = Sqr(B + (A * X) + (X ^ 3))
25 = Sqr(20 + (10 *X) + (X ^ 3))
X = ???
Can anyone help with this? The solution for X must not only solve for this
set of variables but for any reasonable values A, B and X.
Thanks!
------------------------------
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