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Re: a breakthruogh in cryptography



> i know it's a little of topic,
> but i feel you guys need to
> see this.
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/02encr.html

To anybody who didn't read it: It is about the famous Adi Shamir.

Well, maybe for the New-York Times and Slashdot it is a "scoop" and
a "breakthrough", but if my memory doesn't confuse me, it is based
on an old project (before at least a few months) that Adi Shamir led
with two doctorants at the Technion (although Adi Shamir himself is
from Weizmann). As mentioned, Shamir is the "S" of "RSA", which is
in my humble opinion, the biggest math breakthrough of the century.
But some other interesting details are missing:

1. Thanks to the popular books of his father, Dani Shamir, thousands
   of Israeli pupils succeeded to pass the "Bagrut" examinations in
   math. Of course, Adi took the excellence in math A LONG WAY
   FURTHER.
2. The encoding technologies of Sky-1, Roopert Merdock's company,
   are based on his algorithms. He was the chief scientist of News
   Datacom Research, the Israeli company which developed these
   technologies, which allow Sky-1 to charge for satellite
   broadcasts.
3. He was the first man in the history, who was limited by BOTH
   Israel and the U.S. (!), from spreading technologies. I don't
   know what he did for the IDF (except for the "traditional" things
   like lecturing for Talpiot etc.), but I'm convinced that we all
   owe him a lot.

-- 
Eli Marmor