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From: jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (James Wilbur Lewis)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Fermat's Last Theorem apparently proven
Message-ID: <23349@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 20 Mar 88 03:53:46 GMT
References: <977@thumper.bellcore.com> <7440@brl-smoke.ARPA> <26797@linus.UUCP> <7449@brl-smoke.ARPA> <26822@linus.UUCP> <1009@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jwl@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <1009@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU> ln63wgq@sdcc13.ucsd.edu.UUCP (Keith Messer) writes:
>Supposing
>I find some regularity in a mathematical system by induction (but in a case
>where mathematical induction is not adequete proof) and decide to write a
>program to do analysis based on that regularity.  Either the program will
>succeed and be useful to me or it will fail, disproving my hypothesis.  The
>point is that I win either way.

Unless your program fails without you realizing it, in which case you may
lose *big*.  I hope you warn people about any hidden conjectures your programs
rely on, before they have the opportunity to bet their money, their data, or
their lives that your hypothesis won't fail at the most inopportune moment...

Factoring is *probably* hard, but crypto aficionados still take pains to
characterize their algorithms as "secure if factoring is hard", rather
than "secure".  Otherwise, a lot of people might be SOL if factoring
*does* turn out to be easier than we thought...  The same pains should
be taken with ALL other unverified conjuctures, like RH, FLT(?), or
P <> NP.  

-- Jim Lewis
   U.C. Berkeley