November 2007 Archives

Dewey Defeats Truman

| | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow is Saturday, but I'm working.

Australia is holding its federal election, and I'm a polling official.

Obviously, as a polling official, I cannot and will not discuss party politics on this blog. However, I can talk about how it works behind the scenes.

Read on for more.

\left( \begin{array}{c} n \\ 2k+1 \end{array} 
ight) = \sum_{i=k+1}^{n-k} \left( \begin{array}{c} i-1  \\ k \end{array} 
ight) \left( \begin{array}{c} n-i \\ k \end{array} 
ight)

The proof is left as an exercise.

The BBC reports that a rebuilt Colossus is cracking codes again at Bletchley Park.

COLOSSUS was the world's first programmable electronic computer, so this is considered something of an achievement. However, COLOSSUS was really only built to do one job.

Read on for details.

Time Piece

| | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An experimental film from 1965. Written, directed and starring Jim Henson.

(h/t Ze Frank)

Lambdacats is the Haskell rendering of an Internet meme, lolcats. I did a few of them, but several didn't make it to arcanux, on the grounds that they're too much of an in-joke. I can respect that.

This one isn't Haskell-specific, but it is based on a perennial Haskell discussion: The efficient computation of Fibonacci numbers.

So without further ado...

lolrabbits?

Original photograph by MyRabbits

Shamir's secret sharing

| | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at Lard Bucket, Andy Schmitz looks at Adi Shamir's secret sharing method. He identifies what he considers a possible flaw in the method, using an example from the Wikipedia entry, and invites readers to critique his reasoning.

The executive summary: Andy's reasoning is 100% correct, and so is Shamir's assertion (in the paper) that the method does not leak information.

Read on for details.

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from November 2007 listed from newest to oldest.

October 2007 is the previous archive.

December 2007 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Powered by Movable Type 4.1