[5751] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: having source code for your CPU chip -- NOT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Sommerfeld)
Fri Sep 24 10:47:51 1999
Message-Id: <199909241431.OAA28587@orchard.arlington.ma.us>
To: "Matt Crawford" <crawdad@fnal.gov>
Cc: crypto list <cryptography@c2.net>
In-Reply-To: Message from "Matt Crawford" <crawdad@fnal.gov>
of "Fri, 24 Sep 1999 08:44:58 CDT." <199909241344.IAA26402@gungnir.fnal.gov>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 10:31:05 -0400
From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us>
> There are no Turing machines. Real computers are finite, and real
> source codes are finite. I'm sure that if you set a limit on the
> length of the source code which is recognized by the supposed trap, a
> sufficiently large FSM can decide in a finite time whether there's a
> trap.
mere finiteness doesn't help much in practice if you're up against
algorithms which take time exponential in some parameter (like the
size of the 'trap' region) which is likely to get even moderately
sized..
- Bill
