Proof isn't always possible

 Artificial Intelligence is a new frontier for machines. There is some hope that machines will eventually learn for themselves. There is a dancing robot , and a dog that walks . Atheists can fall to the trap of thinking that this proves that man is just a complicated machine. He might be, but this isn't sufficient to prove it. The hope is that Artificial Intelligence can learn to teach itself. For some people this is actually a fear. That would be a big step in arguing that machines are like humans. Because Christians doubt that humans are machines, they are uniquely suited to question this hypothesis. For an experiment, take two Chess engines; start them at a reasonable level, and watch them play each other. If neither has been "trained," by playing against a human, they will play to a stalemate. Repeating the process does not improve their play. This is because Chess engines are designed to start learning from scratch. Some Chess engines are programmed to never excel ...

Recently, a TOR network was compromised. This means that, at least for a time, even a person using the most powerful anonymizing tools of the internet was vulnerable to having their identity stolen. Postulate the following: An A(dvanced) P(ersistent) T(hreat) steals an email address. They have already been stealing contact lists, so they could actually arrange to have the email delivered to an address in their own country. They parcel out each address from the contact list - (junk mail self-segregates,) and assign a different provocateur to each contact. New contacts are added as they trickle in. Thereafter, the person whose email address has been thus compromised, innocently passes out their contact info, and sends emails to people near and far, trying to promote his business. For a week or two, emails go back and forth as normal. But after time has passed, when he goes to reconnect with old contacts, he finds that their efforts to contact him have been supplanted by a foreign agent. ...

The Stock Market is where the wealth of America is stored. As such, it is best when the stock market faithfully reflects the ups and downs of the economy. Stock market corrections are how the stock market reflects setbacks to the economy. This is good, as far as it goes, but in fact, when a stock market correction occurs, it is not well understood where the value of labor, goods and services stored in the stock market goes.  The whole idea that rising stock prices reflect improvements in the economy, is that this is the result of good investments. Investing is an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result. An investment is proven to be a good one, when it pays off after a duration of time. If you buy a stock, you wait for it to rise in price, and sell it at the appropriate time. "Buy low, Sell high," is how stock brokers explain their craft. How long should you hold a stock? This has always been up to the ow...

There are a well known group of Casino games. Craps, Roulette, Blackjack and so on. But new, playable Casino games don't come up that often. I have the blue-print of a Casino game that relies on factorization for its entertainment value. Alpertron's ECM is a well known number sieve, and will serve to illustrate my example.. The ratio and proportions of my numbers are not fixed. Rather, it would be necessary to test them with real equipment, to see how feasible a set of numbers would be.  Here is the example: First, choose 100 true random Base 10 digits, and concatenate for a random 100 digit number. 10 casts of ten-sided dice would do, since ten sided dice can be fair, if order is not dictated. The player places a wager.  The ECM does a highly deterministic probable prime test. If the number is prime, the player wins outright. If it factors in the first n seconds (5 mins) the player loses. If it doesn't factor within the next o seconds (5 mins) then the player wins. Few num...

 ************************************** *    SHA-256 is 256 bytes long     * *************************************** This is not intended to be competitive with other algorithms - Rijndael, Blowfish, IDEA, etc. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *  Vigenere is x1 Time Pad secure up to the length of the Unicity distance by Mathematical proof*. It is not a Matrix "Group" *  The thesis that Vigenere is not a "Group" is that there is no equivalence class of grids such that A = A and IF A = B   then B = A and IF A = B and B = C then A = C                                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 127 + 113 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 255 127 * 113 * 3 * 5 * 7 = 1,506,855 bytes unicity distance for an x5 encrypted Vigenere 1,5...

In middle school, I learned a version of the Vigenere Cipher from a paperback by a German author. It was a 25 x 25 grid, with the letters of the alphabet across, up to "y," and dropping the "z," for column headings and rows. The grid was constructed by writing the rows as the entire 26 letter alphabet, beginning with the letter "a," and pushing the columns over one column to the right, every row. The next row began with , "z," and the rest of the rows followed suit. I recall that there was supposed to be a way to implement a Salt in the book, but I am unable to duplicate it. I learned of lossless Vigenere from Simon Singh's book, "The Code Book." My early experiment was to double encrypt with various passwords in an attempt to increase the Unicity distance, although I did not know the term. By experimentation, I found that the Unicity distance was equal to the product of the unique prime factors of the password lengths. This is triv...

I don't have rules about what I intend to post. I expect it will be a conglomeration of topics, developed without access to a good editorial process. As it develops, the reader can decide whether it is worth coming back to see what I will post or not.