On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 07:41:06PM +0100, Benjamin Donnachie wrote: > David Shaw wrote: > > For paper to last 100 years is not even vaguely impressive. Paper > > regularly lasts many hundreds of years even under less than optimal > > conditions. > > All seems rather academic to me as I would expect the current encryption > algorithms to be rendered useless by then.
Your point does not follow. There are many "useless" algorithms that are still vastly stronger than the attack that most people can bring to bear. Let's say that I printed a DES (1970s era single DES) key on paper. DES is "useless" today, but unless I wanted to invest significant money and time in key cracking (even though it would eventually succeed), I should really keep that paper around and not rely on DES being useless. Even so, you snipped part of my comment in your reply. The point is not only that paper lasts effectively "forever", but also that optical disc doesn't last long enough. For many key-on-paper uses, it doesn't matter much if paper lasts 100 years or 1000 years. It only matters that it lasts longer than I need it to last (e.g. will it last longer than I will). Optical disc doesn't last that long. David _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
