[4940] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Bridge
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Russell Nelson)
Wed Jun 23 12:03:14 1999
From: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 10:52:04 -0400 (EDT)
To: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <v04011700b3960167090f@[24.218.56.100]>
Arnold G. Reinhold writes:
> Would a public seed selection session immediately prior to the tournament
> be acceptable? (I have in mind publiclly scanning in the morning's stock
> market report or some such)
The need for randomness in a card game is different than the need for
randomness in cryptography. If an algorithm lacks sufficient entropy
in crypto, the cryptanalyst gets to search less. Insufficient entropy
in ordering cards just means that the quality of the hands might not
be evenly distributed.
Plus, the source of the entropy and algorithm used to create the
bridge hands merely need to be auditable. As long as the hands are
based on some public source of entropy (e.g. the day's stock market)
plus a letter publicly chosen by each of the participants (that's four
bits of entropy on a good day), run through an OSI certified(tm) Open
Source algorithm, everyone can calculate for themselves what the hands
should be.
It's almost a non-issue.
--
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com> http://crynwr.com/~nelson
Crynwr supports Open Source(tm) Software| PGPok | Government schools are so
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