I've been reading this graduate textbook in Number Theory and Cryptography, and it's surprisingly readable. Cannon wants to start a reading list for some of these crypto books to help build some more levels for his homegrown crypto challenge, this is a good one to throw in the mix. I should start populating my wiki with my notes from re-reading my crypto books. It might be useful to other people and perhaps will answer some of my questions. Oh yes, Handbook of Applied Crypto is now downloadable in PDF format.

Sometimes my blog is more stream-of-conciousness than I'm sure some of you appreciate. mmmm.. pie.

By the way, the thought of using a big huge string in order to make sure that you're the only hit on a search engine when you search for that string is ridiculous and that namespace deserves to be polluted. [Steve's Note: I self-censored the "uid-lamportwritingproofs minus the -" string. My critic was right, it's not my place to pee in the pool just beacuse I don't agree wth it. The criticism still stands. wrong. bad. eviluidstring.]

fyi, if you're looking for the papers, here you are

This whole uid-lamportwritingproofs issue has made me rather irritated. Lamport's a smart guy but this is really moving boundaries in a way that is not only unnecessary but excessive. Google will still find his paper if one searches for "Lamport Writing Proofs". I refuse to acknowledge it any other way. Trying to control information flow is like trying to herd cats. C'mon Lamport, give into the emergent properties of the web, don't be a Hypertext Caveman.