just for fun...just for fun...Electronic encryption is fascinating, complicated and very important as information is transmitted on the Internet. The Pretty Good Privacy encrypting program available for free from Massachussetts Institute of Technology allows anyone with a personal computer to encrypt data as securely as any international spy needs. The documentation with it explains two-key encryption and it's vulnerable spots.
On the other hand, you do have to read some of the documentation and have some understanding of the principles to even decode or encode any message. Therefore, anyone who can decode this message must know how two-key encryption works. I'll give a Coca-Cola to the first person to show me the correct decoded message below:
Pretty Good Privacy ProgramThe short program PGP262.ZIP is what I used, though newer software may be more user-friendly.
"The trick in life, isn't getting what you want, my dear, ... it's wanting it after you get it. - a line spoken by Katherine Hepburn in the movie, "Love Affair."
Determined to "take it with him" when he died, a very rich man prayed to until finally the Lord gave in. There was one condition: he could bring only one suitcase of his wealth. The rich man decided to fill the case with gold bullion. The day came when God called him home. St. Peter greeted him, but told him he couldn't bring his suitcase. "Oh, but I have an agreement with God," the man explained. "That's unusual," said St. Peter. "Mind if I take a look?" The man opened the suitcase to reveal the shining gold bullion. St. Peter was amazed. "Why in the world would you bring pavement?" from The Rev. Warren Keating in The Joyful Noiseletter
You might enjoy the fun page by Physician's Guide to the Internet.
This observation from A piece of My Mind in JAMA, February 19, 1992 - Vol 267, No. 7, by Howard J. Bennett, MD in Washington, DC.
Medical pictures are kept at the National Library of Medicine's image file.
A king was pleased with his subject who invented the game of chess, according to a legend retold by Bill Gates in his book, The Road Ahead. Given his choice of rewards, he asked for a grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two for the second, four for the third and so on, doubling the number of grains for each of the 64 squares of the board. The king, thinking this a modest request, ordered it done. After the first row of 8 squares, they counted a total of 255 grains. By the second row, there were 65,535 grains. The court sage then determined it would take 584 billion years to count them all at one grain per second, and the king beheaded the tricky inventor!
The total number of grains required would be more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000. Strangely however, the number Mr. Gates wrote in his book was imprecise. The number written in Bill Gates' book was 18,446,744,073,709,551,600. Why?
I will buy a Coke® for the first person to e-mail me the exact sum of grains, and then I'll write an explanation here! - Wesley Eastridge 11/2/96
Michael Bullard correctly replied that the total count of grains for the chessboard was 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 . The reason for the discrepancy is at answer.html. I finally gave Michael a Coke®.
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