From: Ben Goren <ben@Tux.Music.ASU.Edu>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 94 10:31:13 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Travelling ants
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9407231054.B6362-0100000@Tux.Music.ASU.Edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


A recent RISKS digest had an article that described a computer that 
simulated a colony of ants with independent software units that 
interacted in certain ways. The article said that the "ants" were able to 
find an efficient solution to the traveling salesman problem.

Wouldn't such a system be perfect for a public key cryptosystem? It seems 
that mechanisms already designed for knapsack algorithms would work; it 
would remain to be worked out if the traveling salesman problem has the 
same cryptographic problems as the knapsack problem.

b&

--
Ben.Goren@asu.edu, Arizona State University School of Music
 net.proselytizing (write for info): We won! Clipper is dead!
 BUT! Just say no to key escrow. And stamp out spamming, too.
 Finger ben@tux.music.asu.edu for PGP 2.3a public key.


du says to finger remailer-list@chaos.bsu.edu and
> that account does not exist.

Chael Hall changed operating systems on chaos and hasn't reinstalled the
finger thing yet.  You can get the list by sending mail to
mg5n+remailer-list@andrew.cmu.edu