6.1

1. I hate to be like this, but I have gone over RSA several times. Stay tuned for attacks, though. I'm sure I'll have questions.

2. I'm going to once again bring up the "invented" vs. "discovered" notion of mathematics. It seems like the math climate today is that things are defined and then we see what follows, and this strikes me as an "invented" viewpoint. I fall in the both camp but there are a lot of things--identities and elegant results--that I think are discovered. To that extent, I feel like I'm surrounded by atheists. Except for our author who mentions that it's conjectured that the NSA discovered the RSA algorithm before, well, R., S., and A. did. Now I have mixed feelings. I think this is an algorithm that was invented. It's sort of like when you find the balance (religiously) between what's possible and what's realistic (like miraculous healing), and then someone attributes an everyday empirical result to a miracle. You don't want to suggest it's not intervention, but you don't really think it is. And by you, I mean me. Sorry, this isn't very topical. This is my only blog, though.