Peter Hendrickson

Thanks for your improvements to Diffie-Hellman key exchange; I'll try and read up again some of the accounts of the invention of public key cryptography and the key-exchange algorithm, and see if I can clarify Merkle's exact role with some more detail. On a different note, and if you're interested, we've recently launched a project to create a so-called "WikiReader" in cryptography — a selection of articles from Wikipedia on a single topic, and bundled up into a printable document. We're currently trying to survey the articles, and see which would be suitable: Wikipedia:WikiReader/Cryptography. If you've any time to browse through the cryptography articles and give feedback on which might be good, which need a lot of work, and so on, it would be much appreciated. — Matt 01:04, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all the pointers! This book has pretty complete coverage of the invention of public key cryptography:

• Singh, Simon (1999) The Code Book: the evolution of secrecy from Mary Queen of Scots to quantum cryptography New York: Doubleday ISBN 0-385-49531-5

(I'll add it to the Diffie-Hellman key exchange page.) I'll continue to look around and add things (hopefully) where appropriate. Peter Hendrickson

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Welcome to the WikiProject Cryptography. In our attempts to provide solid crypto content on the WP, we crypto corner folk need all the help we can find. Glad to see you're willing to lend a hand. We also have some fun as well, check out the discussion on cypher v cipher on the Project page, and the pointers therein to various earlier discussions on the point. Jump in, the water's not too shark infested, though there is of course the occasional less than fully informed but quite firmly opinioned person. Few of them bite though. ww 14:01, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome! The Wikipedia and The Project are great things. Peter Hendrickson

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Peter, I've been lurking intermittently during the discussion you've been having with Matt about D-H or D-H-M (or as my suggestion is, WDHM) and have just noticed your comment about Babbage first stating the Church-Turing thesis. I'm fascinated. Can you tell me more? ww 17:27, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Cryptography mailshot

Hi, quick note to let you know about what's happening with the WikiReader in Cryptography. There's now a provisional Table of Contents to work with, and for the next 68 days or so there'll be an "Article of the Day" scheme: each day there'll be a particular article highlighted for reviewing and fixing. There's two templates for this purpose: Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD and Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD-Verbose. The smaller one looks like this:

WikiReader Cryptography — article of the day MRR Sunday, 24 July Playfair cipher (Talk) (History) Monday, 25 July Message authentication code (Talk) (History) Tuesday, 26 July Digital signature (Talk) (History) Wednesday, 27 July Block cipher modes of operation (Talk) (History) Thursday, 28 July Export of cryptography (Talk) (History) Notes: If you find problems that you can't fix (or it's too much effort), it would be very helpful if you could place a note on the Talk: page. Articles need to be checked for 1) Accuracy (Factchecking: Are there any mistakes? Is the writing precise? Are sources cited?), 2) Completeness (Any obvious omissions? Does it need illustration?) 3) Quality of writing (Copyedits: Grammar and spelling, phrasing, structure) 4) Neutrality (Is it written from the NPOV? Do we document all relevant points of view?) — Thanks! — To-do list for Digital signature Describe cryptanalysis of digital signatures -- what are the various notions (See all to-do lists for this WikiReader)

These articles are likely to be some of the earliest English Wikipedia content to get turned into a print version, and any help in making them as good as possible would be much appreciated. Thanks! — Matt 01:52, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Alice and Bob postal analogy

Thanks for the tip on Matt's talk page. Now that I know where to put it, I will assemble an illustration post-haste. -- Wapcaplet 02:39, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ad hoc gathering Friday eve?

I'll be in Palo Alto Friday, and would love to meet some wikipedians in the area... +sj+ 21:32, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thimerosal Request

For the most part it has been removed by switching to single vial storage. The problem with replaceing it is that we don't really have anythinmg else that works as well. I has been midely interesting watching the anti vac groups trying to expalain the lack of a fall in autism rates in the US but I'm sure they will come up with something eventualy.

Is there a problem with single vial storage? It probably increases the cost a little, but it seems like a straightforward and easy solution for people who feel uncomfortable with thimerosal. If this is wrong, I would suggest putting the information on the thimerosal page, with a reference. (That is, there might be some more serious problem with single vial storage that isn't obvious to me.) If you happen to have a reference which states that thimerosal is the best preservative for vaccines, that would be good to add to the page as well. (I realize I'm being lazy here, but I would have to do a great deal of research to answer these questions myself. ;-) Peter 04:44, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nobs Redux at Talk:VENONA project

Someone, not I, has consolidated the discussion over the Venona documents and how to represent them (prompted by the text written by Nobs on many pages) onto a single page: Talk:VENONA project. I hope you will join us in trying to resolve many of the issues that keep cropping up across Wikipedia in this matter. Thanks.--Cberlet 13:07, 22 September 2005 (UTC)