Cryptonomicon

[Winston Smith]

I'm reading it for my third or fourth time and it's still awesome!

I love the writing style, borrows from Faulkner and Vonnegut and is just plain amazing.

I also love how Stephenson has a wide base of knowledge; and he knows what he is talking about, even in the mundane stuff. THe way he describes Californian Academics, spot on, and he even displays obliquely his knowledge of the california highway system

Paraphrased:
"He drove down the coast, the slow way, the beautiful way."

Highway 1, baby...

See, he doesnt describe the highway system in great depth including dates like tom clancy would, he just implies knowledge. I like it.

For you math whizzes, how does his math look?

[RevDisk]

For you math whizzes, how does his math look?

Heh.  His crypto was done by Bruce Schneier.  The listed code in perl is actually a crypto system named "Soltaire".   http://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html

It's a decent crypto system, but I'd heard a few negative comments about it from analysts.  As a 'physical' cypher, it's not bad for its limited key length.   Would you want to use it on your computer?  Absolutely not.  It's designed more with stegnography in mind.  Hiding the information in a deck of cards rather than a piece of paper with near random codes on it.

Yes, I know how much of a geek I am.


Edit : His material about SIGINT is mostly spot on.

[Happy Bob]

Yes, it's definitely Good Stuff.

You've also read Zodiac (whose main character is a chemist for Greenpeace - no, it's not really a pro-G'peace book, though), Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, right? More good stuff.

I also liked his first book, The Big U, but apparently Stephenson himself doesn't think much of it.

Just wait'll you get into the Baroque Cycle (his latest, in three volumes):
Quicksilver;
The Confusion; and
The System of the World.
He's done his homework on those, too.  

[Wildalaska]

Read all his books, hes OK..Winston time for you to dicover Pynchon..

Do em in order


WildthenyouwillbeliterateAlaska

[Phantom Warrior]

Yeah, read Snowcrash.  (I can't type more cuz I just bashed my knee on my desk...)

[Winston Smith]

Hope you feel better Phantom. I've read Snowcrash... it was awesome. And I've started diamond age, couldn't STAND it. Same with Zodiac. But for some reason I loooove Cryptonomicon

[Telperion]

Hmm, I found Diamond Age to marginally better than Snowcrash, except for the characters.  I didn't care much for its ending, but then again Stepheson couldn't write an ending to save his life.

[RaggedClaws]

I loved Snow Crash, and now I think I'm going to give Cryptonomicon a go (all of your comments helped pushed me there!), once I finish James Clavell's Asian saga (the first two in that series were just plain great!  I'm reading the third now).

Winston time for you to dicover Pynchon..

Another vote for Pynchon!  Vineland is one of my favorite books of all time.  His thinner books are generally more approachable, FYI.  I bought Mason & Dixon a while back when it came out, read the first few pages and slowly put it down.  One of these days I'll work up the courage to try again (that's going to be one heavy book to lug around on the train every day, heh heh).  It's just that a thousand or so pages in 18th century slang didn't seem so appealing at the time I first picked it up.

[Wildalaska]

Vineland? Masion and Dixon? The last gasps of a once great writer.

Gravity's Rainbow.

Nothing will ever top it.

WildithinkillreaditagainAlaska

[cordex]

I enjoyed all of Stephenson's stuff I've read to date.  Haven't gotten my hands of System of the World yet.

Cryptonomicon was excellent.  Hope he puts out that sequel he was making noises about.

(it's scary how interconnected Cryptonomicon and the Baroque cycle are - I mean, you notice things at first but as you read it gets just absurd how many connections there are)

[RevDisk]

Baroque cycle, how is it?   I usually wait until I can hunt used book stores for what I want.   Exception is for good that people tell me are excellent.

[Control Group]

Anyone who likes Stephenson needs to read In the Beginning Was the Command Line (link is to a ZIPped .txt of it). Even if you're not into computers, there's a lot of excellent insight in that essay (though it will be more interesting if you are into computers, as the title implies).

RevDisk: as far as Solitaire is concerned, I'm under the impression (gained from those who know more than me; I don't pretend to expertise in encryption) that it's a bloody good cipher if one can't use a computer. That aside, I don't see how it's steganographic - the information isn't stored in the deck, the deck and the algorithm combine to form a key. Unless I'm missing something, the deck is output-only; it doesn't receive any information from the message. Given only the deck's original configuration and the algorithm, I don't see how you could extract the message.

[RevDisk]

RevDisk: as far as Solitaire is concerned, I'm under the impression (gained from those who know more than me; I don't pretend to expertise in encryption) that it's a bloody good cipher if one can't use a computer. That aside, I don't see how it's steganographic - the information isn't stored in the deck, the deck and the algorithm combine to form a key. Unless I'm missing something, the deck is output-only; it doesn't receive any information from the message. Given only the deck's original configuration and the algorithm, I don't see how you could extract the message.

The key is meant to be hidden in a deck of cards.  It's not a complete steganographic system, just a partial.  And as I said, as a hand cipher, it's pretty good indeed.  

With a deck's original configuration and the algorithm, you could possibly brute force the message.  If you have any fragment of the cipher text, you can break it rather easily.   Tis why the military is so fussy about handling of sensitive documents and especially crypto related stuff.   It's easier to grab one time sheets out of the trash or photograph documents than actually breaking the code.   The math is the easy part of cryptography.  Implimentation is always the hardest part.

[cordex]

Baroque cycle, how is it?

I found the first book (Quicksilver) to be pretty slow, but the second book (The Confusion) was very good - unfortunately it would be hard to get into without reading the first.  Haven't read the final book yet.  I definitely recommend reading Cryptonomicon in conjunction with the Baroque cycle.  Either before or after.

It'll help you understand Enoch Root better if you read it before.