Accurate to 6%, there are 2**25 seconds in a year. Worth remembering: it makes certain kinds of computations much easier. (It follows there would be about 2**35 seconds in a thousand years, or 2**45 seconds in a million.)
E.g., let's say you want to brute-force an 64-bit key on a CPU that can do a million (2**20) attempts per second. This requires, on average, 2**63 attempts. 2**63 / 2**20 = 2**43 seconds: 2**43 / 2**45 = 2**-2 = a quarter of a million years. I don't know why it took me so long to notice that: seems like the sort of thing I should've noticed a decade ago. It makes certain kinds of computations so much easier. Anyway, figured I'd throw it out on the off chance there were others who hadn't noticed it. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
