User talk:Ciphergoth

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Please don't take discussions here Please don't take discussions from other pages to this page. I know it's usually done to be helpful, but I find it more helpful when the whole discussion is in one place. I reload my watch list frequently, so I'll almost certainly see what you've said and reply to it. If you're waiting for a reply from me and you don't get one for a while then feel free to poke me here as a reminder, but I'd prefer if it wasn't a first resort in general. Thanks! — ciphergoth 21:33, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

Hi! The term Parallel Feedback Shift Register (PFSR) is not a new term. Look it up on google. The NL added to it for Non-Linear is perfectly natural, same with L for Linear (LPFSR, some times also known as PLFSR). Just because Trivium and VEST are the first publicly known ciphers to rely on it, it doesn't mean that it's a new term. Of course it's not something you can find in books on cryptology, but there's a lot you can't find in books on cryptology. It doesn't seem to me like a wise decision to revert Wikipedia back to the stone age when it's just as easy to keep it up to date, so you may want to consider reverting the page back to the way it was. I could probably throw in a few more "new" terms that are only known to a very closed group of people and are not found in books on cryptology, but those may be invoking disclosure of classified information. If you want my cooperation here, you may want to open your mind a bit more... And if you don't like NLPFSR, PNLFSR is another viable option to call it, but for the sake of public education, I would have both pages up linking to each other. Same with LPFSR and PLFSR. Parallel feedback in shift registers is simply one of those things that are on the cutting edge of [publicly available] technology. Welcome to the secretive world of cryptology! Cheers! Ruptor 08:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to add pages to Wikipedia for any term, such as PFSR, which is verifiably already public currency. However, a Google search confirms my suspicions that NLPFSR is not so. It may be a plausible construction from well known terms, but that is not sufficient reason to give it a page on Wikipedia. If the term is only known in the classified literature, it is not verifiable, so it doesn't belong here; publishing classified information through Wikipedia counts as original research. Wikipedia is not open minded about its policies on Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research.

VEST and Trivium are part of the open research on crypto, and that is by and large anything but a secretive world. It's a very open, friendly and fun world and I'm glad to welcome you to it. For my own part in it, see [1].

On another note, you accused me of bias, and I provided full disclosure. Will you do the same? — ciphergoth 08:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Ciphergoth is entirely correct here; if a term has not yet gained widespread use within its field, then we can't include it within Wikipedia. — Matt Crypto 09:39, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for welcoming me [at last], but somehow you've managed to make me feel like you need to read this Wikipedia policy on welcoming people here. I agree that the NLPFSR acronym itself may not have an easily verifiable source, and I do not mind people calling it whatever they chose - it's a very rare and a very special cryptographic primitive. Just like I do not mind the terms ECB, CBC, ABC, etc, that someone has invented at some stage, I don't mind them choosing a certain acronym for a complex "non-linear parallel feedback shift register" tongue twister. I have accumulated enough knowledge and enough experience in cryptology and cryptanalysis to want to and to be able to share at least some of it with the world. Wikipedia seems like a good place to do it, but it's full of lame articles written mostly by crypto amateurs, which are largely misleading. Comparing its quality and its technical correctness with the quality and with the technical correctness of other cryptographic literature, it's not the kind of encyclopedia I would want to learn cryptography from in my next life, but I wish it was on the same level as other sources. It's much more accessible than anything else. I wonder if there's a policy on technical correctness of what is stated in the articles. A lot of the time it's not even a matter of opinion... Ruptor 12:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

PS: And to a question of "full disclosure", I did not sign up to disclose anything about myself besides the fact that most of that information is either classified or NDA. Is it a Wikipedia policy? No, I am not biased towards or against any cryptographic designs and I do not know anyone in the "scene" personally, besides a few e-mails exchanged with a few people, if that's what you were after. Bias you say? Call me biased. I only find solid unbreakable efficient designs attractive, even though both strong and weak designs are worth studying. For example, I never liked MD5 or SHA, but that's only because I've seen MD5 hashes forged back in 1995 on a single Pentium-100 in 3 days by appending or replacing a block, but as far as the rest of the world is conserned, it's a [reasonably] secure hash. I'm gonna have a hard time here making my crypto-related articles sound neutral, whatever I write about. It's the code-breaker's opinion that matters at the end of the day... Ruptor 12:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

PPS: Why didn't you rename/redirect the NLPFSR page to PFSR? PFSR is a good idea. We need it.

I don't mean to bite the newcomer! In fact, I think I did extend a welcome on the page about VEST: "Though I'm laying into VEST here, I don't mean to lay into you. I'm glad you've come onboard and started improving Wikipedia's coverage of crypto!", I wrote. I agree that Wikipedia's coverage of crypto has flaws and needs improving, that's what we're both meaning to do. Unfortunately, whatever you know about classified research isn't going to be so useful here, for the reasons I've explained: Wikipedia can only cover what's public and verifiable.

PFSR does sound like a good idea, that does seem like standard terminology, if rarely used. Feel free to write that page and change the redirect, with my encouragement!

As for bias, if you remember it was not me who first raised the idea. But actually bias shouldn't be a problem here in Wikipedia - there's no reason the authors of a cipher shouldn't contribute to improving the article on it just as much as anyone else, for example. I was just curious because it seemed as if you found my dislike of VEST personally hurtful, so thanks for satisfying my curiosity on this point.

— ciphergoth 14:06, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[2] [3]

[edit] Bookmarks

Special:Recentchangeslinked/List_of_cryptography_topics

[edit] Sandbox

Test — ciphergoth 18:24, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Ciphergoth

Special:Contributions/Ruptor

⊕

[edit] Usage of var to simplify the equations

Would you be so kind of restoring your usages of "var" back to E{..} in the Kalman article, because the usage of "var" is not in accordance with the standard Kalman notation found in the litterature.

I'm sorry if you got the impression of me approving for such a change from the talk-page. I didn't read the whole of you're post, and only responded to the question regarding curly brackets around the expectation operator.

[edit] Regarding your attempts to simplify

I've reacted quite stongly to some of your attempts to "simplify" the Kalman article, like "inventing" your own matrix covariance notation and restructuring the Kalman filter equations for the updated estimate covariance.

I've got the impression that you really don't know what you're talking about, and your attepmts only leading to the paper diverging from the established notation used in the field. This is, at lest for me, a very frightfull development, rendering the article useless for profesionals using the Kalman filter in their work.

I think that the goal should be to create an introductory article of high technical quality, simmilar to the one found in many textbooks; while at the same time being well written and easy to understand for the persons with sufficient background.

What about begining to read a good textbook on Kalman first? I would personally recommend "Introduction to Random Signals and Applied Kalman Filtering" by Brown & Hwang.

I didn't invent that notation. I substantially rewrote the equations in the derivation - have I introduced any errors there? — ciphergoth 23:13, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Your usage of "var" for covariance matrix is not common pracise (probably also incorrect), and can therefore be considered as a flaw. ("cov", on the other hand seems to be used). --Fredrik Orderud 23:22, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cburnett's admin nomination

I was nominated for administrator and I'd like to hear your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cburnett. Cburnett 07:26, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] var(X)

Standard notation:

ALSO standard notation:

ALSO standard notation:

(the "cross-covariance" between two random vectors)

Unfortunately the first two of these usages jar with each other. The first and third are in perfect harmony. The first notation is found in William Feller's celebrated two-volume book on probability, which everybody is familiar with, so it's surprising that some people are suggesting it first appeared on Wikipedia. It's also found in some statistics texts, e.g., Sanford Weissberg's linear regression text. Michael Hardy 20:25, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

... so in view of the fact that this notation simplifies things, but that it also may cause confusion due to divergent conventions, I'd go ahead and use it, but with conspicuous notices about which convention you're following, and the fact that there are others. Michael Hardy 21:11, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You wrote:

For gaussian noise independance also implies uncorrelated - I think this has to be wrong. I can easily generate two uniformly distributed variables which are uncorrelated but not independent, if their values have to fall in the squares marked X in the grid below:

You're right that it's wrong, but uniformly distributed random variables are not Gaussian! So that's not a cogent example. Michael Hardy 23:36, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Read on - I later suggest applying Φ^-1 to the uniformly distributed variables to generate gaussians. My later example is simpler though.

[edit] Copy-edit-type stuff

In re Kolmogorov's zero-one law: you don't need to capitalize an initial letter merely because it's the first letter of a link. The first one, unlike the later ones, is case-insensitive. Michael Hardy 23:38, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Actually I knew this but got it wrong in this instance, so thanks for fixing it! — ciphergoth June 28, 2005 12:55 (UTC)

The monkeys can't type out the contents of the British Museum; most of the exhibits are not text. Is British Library meant here?

For now, I'll remove "others replace the National Library with the British Museum or the Library of Congress" altogether, since I don't think it does any useful work anyway. — ciphergoth 09:29, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monkeys & the British Museum

"all the books in the British Museum" is what the story by Russell Maloney said (cited in the article, in the "popular culture" section). Michael Hardy 01:48, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Buncha taffers

In your haste to repair Jo and Mike 194.168.45.250 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log)'s nonsense injection into Wikipedia, you may have been a bit overzealous. Rhayader Town F.C., for example, appears from Google to be an actual if rather minor-league sports team. Collabi 08:32, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hiigara

I have deleted Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hiigaran Interceptor because the nomination had not been completed. If you recreate it, it should refer to all five of Special:Contributions/67.173.248.66. -- RHaworth 18:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not speedy

Re Plastic Surgery in Venezuela - surprised by that decision. If you say that because there's already an AFD, I'd like to discuss it further because I have some concerns about that. If you just don't think it's a speedy candidate, I'm surprised but fair enough, that's what the AFD process is for. — ciphergoth 21:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

It is unrelated to already being on AFD. Speedy deletes have a fixed set of criteria, and while it is obvious that Plastic Surgery in Venezuela should be deleted, it simply doesn't match any of the criteria. So instead of letting the article hang around in CAT:CSD, I removed it. Thue | talk 08:43, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, that answers all my concerns. Thanks! — ciphergoth 08:48, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Answers.com

Oops...thanks for the info! I'm only marginally familiar with that site and never realized that it was a mirror. Thanks again. - Lucky 6.9 17:06, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Moved discussion that was here to Talk:Padding (cryptography)

[edit] Peter Fincham

Owe you another round of thanks. Sometimes, good info gets inadvertently tossed out with mangled rewrites and vandalism. For that, I apologize for creating extra work for you. I didn't detect a single syllable of hostility on your part and I really want to thank you for your graciousness and concern. Wonderful new bio-stub, BTW. Have a great weekend! - Lucky 6.9 20:37, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] One Day Remains (band)

Hi, I noticed this article while going through speedies, I see that it was tagged as an A7. That's meant for real people and not bands so I removed the speedy and placed it on AFD. Bands don't fall under the non-notable bios section of CSD...I just wanted to let you know so that you could make your feelings known in it's AFD discussion. Thanks! Rx StrangeLove 16:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks!— ciphergoth 17:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Modifications on "Solar chimney" page

why this edit on Solar chimney? Thanks! — ciphergoth 18:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

It was a sentence I added about the natural temperature gradient that can be used by solar chimneys. On reflection, though, I realized that solar chimneys don't use a natural gradient, but they create one using the greenhouses at the base. StefanoC 07:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR

The 3RR does not apply to vandalism, which adding POV material repeatedly is. ed g2s • talk 13:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I understand the temptation, but I think that's wishful thinking. The usual meaning of the word "vandalism" includes obviously destructive acts with malicious intent: blanking pages, inserting goatse images, adding random gibberish etc. A user who persists in adding POV material can be said to be POV pushing and acting like a twonk, but he's not vandalising. But we can handle such users quite happily using our normal processes, and Ciphergoth's action is spot on -- call in other users to help. — Matt Crypto 16:30, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Operation Clambake

I've added them to my watch list. References to the Heathen Society are not necessarily incorrect, but should be backed up with sources and written in a way that's more NPOV. (Entheta 21:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC))

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Infobox Biography

Template:Infobox Biography has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Infobox Biography. Thank you. DreamGuy 07:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whidden Hall

I see a number of longstanding users such as W. marsh, Capitalistroadster, et al who were in favour of keeping. Even ignoring the anonymous and suspicious "votes", there are far from enough "votes" to delete. Johnleemk | Talk 15:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD

As a contributor to Robert Moog, you may wish to comment on the following: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moog records. -- Krash (Talk) 20:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Would you consider a redirect to Moog Cookbook? Small mention of Moog records there and it makes sense as a redirect as they are probably the only tribute band in existance for this "genre".--Isotope23 21:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Hi, if someone has made edits that are clearly vandalism please use {{subst:bv}} or {{subst:test4}}, otherwise it just lets the user continue to vandalize for a lot longer before people realise that the user should be blocked and gives a lot of unnecessary work for people dealing with more vandalism from that user. Thanks Arniep 17:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I personally use {{test4im}} and {{test4im-n}} quite a bit. This allows even faster blocking of vandals. Computerjoe 14:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Civility

You are been civil, I've seen much worse. You seem to care about civility so I suggest you join my organisation: WP:CJ. Thanks. Computerjoe 14:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment please

Your opinion is valuable to me: Talk:Keyboard instrument#Merging discussion. -- Krash (Talk) 14:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moog records

We're on the threshold of a no consensus here. I've moved relevant text into the appropriate section of Robert Moog. I continue to contend that "Moog records" is protologism, but I do agree that the style is perhaps worth mention. Would you support a merge and delete? -- Krash (Talk) 23:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hare Coursing

Ya sorry about that!I actually didnt mean to delete it but valuable stuff i had wrote was deleted too.Ya we can work together.I have tidied it up a bit.You must remember that coursing is made out to be a lot worse than it is.Again sorry and lets get this article up and running! Ian Davies Friend 18:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)Ian Davies friend I was just trying to give a npov on the LACS page.I think that it was fair obvioulsy you dont.In Ireland we do not use dogs such as beagles,greyhounds et. to hunt the hare.We hunt them ourselves and do not use dogs who as you probally know would kill the hare.Did you know that we do not use dogs when trying to catch the hares?Ian davies friend 17:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blood sport animal welfare/liberation, cultural contributions

Howdy Ciphergoth! I was just over at blood sport and noticed that you had made some recent changes to the last paragraph regarding the distinction between animal welfare and animal liberation activists, which I think is a pretty important one in this case. The purpose of this final paragraph was to tease out the distinction and note the cultural contributions of "blood sports" in modern times (especially here in the area of pets). Although the paragraph could perhaps be worded more eloquently, I thought it worth noting the reason for its existence here. If you feel strongly about it, please delete it again and I will happily try to incorporate the point elsewhere into the article, rather than leaving it hanging there at the end. Thanks! - Rorybowman 17:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your report to WP:VIP

Actually User:JimmyT didn't try and pose as David Gerard- he was simply copying a comment David Gerard make on JimmyT's talk page, back over to David's. Now of course the comments were personal attacks, and JimmyT has been blocked by Freakofnurture for that reason. Hope that clears things up! Petros471 15:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect

I had considered your proposal for a speedy deletion, actually, but disagreed with them (I also corrected the wrong redirect...) If those people are cited in the other article, I see no reason why not having a redirect. But I will leave your speedy tag in place: if someone else agrees with you, that's fine with me. Bye. - Liberatore(T) 17:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why were Bisexual RIghts Activists deleted?

So far we notice the following people have definitely been erased: Luigi Ferrer, Wendy Curry, Gary B. North & Margaret Rood.

When we questioned the person who did actual removed them user:Paolo Liberatore they directed us to you as the person who had asked that they be speedily removed. CyntWorkStuff 19:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, the people are fine, only their Wikipedia entries have been erased :-) The articles were deleted under Wikipedia's Criteria for speedy deletion A7 "An article about a real person, group of people, band or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject." The bar for significance is pretty high: see WP:BIO for details, but "about the significance of a full college professor" is the usual rule of thumb. It seemed to me that these articles didn't meet that bar, so I added a flag to the articles to bring it to an administrator's attention. The administrators agreed, and deleted the articles.

No slight on those people or their achievements is intended; it's just that if people don't meet a certain threshold of fame, then it's unlikely an article will attract enough editors to keep it accurate and WP:NPOV. I hope they all shoot to activist stardom and do us all proud. And there's no argument that people like Lani Ka'ahumanu meet that threshold. It's the nature of Wikipedia that your work doesn't always meet the fate you'd like for it - please don't let it put you off continuing to extend and improve Wikipedia, and let me know if I can help. — ciphergoth 20:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Being somehow involved in this "case", I'll place a suggestion here. If you do not reach an agreement on whether these articles should exist as before, exist as redirects, or not exist at all, you may undergo the WP:AFD process, where the issue would be discussed with other editors. - Liberatore(T) 19:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Since you asked for the speedy deletion (with no notification or discussion - I refer you to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion -- 2nd paragraph: It would be friendly to notify the author of the article as well; everyone was new once. ) AND you added the note: FTR I'm a bisexual activist and I've never heard of the guy. I've heard of Klein, Kaahumanu, Hutchins and others . . . . with respect sir, unless we have mixed you with someone else, you would be more active in the Bisexual Community within the UK.

As such you may not be as knowledgeable of the history, activists, organizations, etc. with the USA. CyntWorkStuff

True. However, speedy deletion decisions are made in the basis of what the article asserts, not on domain-specific knowledge; it's unlikely the deleting admin had ever heard of the bisexual community anywhere in the world. The notification of which you speak would usually take place after deletion; speedy really is speedy! Sorry your work was deleted. — ciphergoth 09:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I am confused to see this topic again brought up as I felt it had been put to rest after extensive discussions with Liberatore on 7 March 2006.

In brief the conclusions come to were that it was my error to put in such as short stub that did not adequately reflect the depth, breadth and importance of the people in question in a number of different fields.

Having found that here, as in many other facets of life, that the bisexual community is either dismissed, invisible, written out of the story or our accomplishments incorrectly attributed to others, we have launched a concerted effort to correct the situation.

A prime example in the US of this erasure of bisexual people from the record would be what occurred when prominent Bisexual LGBT-rights Activist, Author [most notably of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World by Robyn Ochs, Editor & Sarah Rowley, Editor ISBN: 0-9653881-4-X] and Professor, Robyn Ochs married her fience of seven years Ms. Peg Preble. As this article in a well known American newspaper, the Washington Post announced Lesbian Pair Wed After 7 Years Together.

It was our intention, keeping in mind the guidelines we have now learned more about, to write and post the biography's of key US Bisexual Right's activists who we feel are of significant prominence to warrant mention in the Encyclopedia. Among them would be a rewrite of the Bio of Luigi Ferrer. However it was not our intention to start an edit war with you.

Are you saying that after reviewing the same data that you continue to disagree with us and Liberatore and do not feel these US LGBT-rights activists rise to the level of "notability"? CyntWorkStuff 19:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] No Personal Attacks

Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on the contributor; personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks may lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you.

(This unsigned edit was made by PunchingBag (talk • contribs), a probable sockpuppet of GoldToeMarionette (talk • contribs), in response to this edit. — ciphergoth 20:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Did you know? {{prod}} takes a parameter.

Hello there. You have proposed the article The American Youth Harp Ensemble for deletion without providing a reason why in the {{prod}} template. You may be interested to know that you can add your reasoning like that: {{prod|Add reason for deletion here}}. This will make your reasoning show up in the article's deletion notice. It will also aid other users in considering your suggestion on the Proposed Deletions log. See also: How to propose deletion of an article. Sandstein 17:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Integer Factorization

Moved to Talk:Integer factorization — ciphergoth 12:08, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Markus Kuhn

You might be interested to learn that someone has proposed this article for deletion. You'd discussed it on the article's Talk page at one point, so I thought I would mention it to you. Evertype 16:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Xenaandgabrielle-cropped.jpg

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[edit] Your self revert

on Bushism, combined with your edit summaries on BOTH edits shows a level of integrity and honesty not often found. I salute you.--Blue Tie 21:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)