Updates from Favonia

Recently I've been busy preparing all the stuff related to my graduation, application and life. Being an exchange student for one year truly inspire a new way of handling troubles in my life, in an unexpected manner! My journey has come to a point that too many choices are all over there. However, I believe that everything will turn out alright no matter what I may choose. :)

Last Update from Favonia

Alright... I've left the blog alone for (more than) a month and I think it's time to give everybody an update: I've gotten submerged in the preparation of some ETS examination (like hell) for weeks but still can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's true that I did hang out with some friends but nothing is comparable to the pain and anxiety I felt in this work. Hope the nightmare would soon be terminated and I can have a decent, nice graduation.

Photos of National Tour Uploaded

I had a concert tour in Taipei and Kaohsiung, for which I've prepared for weeks right after coming back. (It's so tiring.) After that we had a trip, moving along the west side of Taiwan, and having lots of fun! Here's the link! ;)

http://picasaweb.google.com/favonia/20070706Ntuchorus (with Chinese description)

Hello! Taiwan!

I came back to Taiwan about 2 weeks ago. The temperature was shocking. It was raining but still freaking hot and I couldn't help sweating all day. I always felt that I hasn't take a bath for more than two days after walking out, and the sun is dizzying. I never felt cold even in strongly air-conditioned rooms.

Eating out with friends, preparing for a concert and doing research are making me deadly busy. I wish I would be able to enjoy my summer vacation very soon. :)

BTW, when did the number of readers jump to 11? It seems mysterious to me.

How do You Measure a Year in MIT?

How do You Measure a Year in MIT?

In p-sets? In papers?
In hacking? In fire alarming?
In scribe notes? Seminars?
In daylight saving?
In...

How about friends?
How about friends?
Measure in friends...
Seasons of friends
Seasons of friends

RSA seems OUTDATED?

Recently I was excited to learn some encryption schemes and concluded that RSA seems outdated. Briefly speaking, RSA is easier than factoring, and we might be able to break RSA without knowing how to do factoring. Moreover, there are many schemes provably as secure as factoring! In addition, some schemes seem even more efficient, or at least very practical and immune to the distribution of messages.

(In order to encrypt messages of any distribution, we have an uniform way to do it given an one-way function. The original RSA scheme (and many others) will suffer from non-uniform message spaces and the uniform construction framework I've learned is not good for RSA. However, even though there might be some other efficient constructions based on RSA, the security of RSA itself is still in question.)

The really question is that, why are people still using RSA? The TA, Alice, answered this question (if I got it right) by "Because people don't want to change! They have already coded all the programs. Usually it takes 20 years to go from theories to practice. For example, one guy keeps complaining to me that we all know how to build an energy-efficient building but the construction is still 30-years behind." God bless our cryptosystems.

Remarkable Personal LaTeX Record

I've completed 2 LaTeX-typeset homework of 43 pages in total in 5 days!! I've never produced so many pages in 5 days before. I was pleased to know that I can finish them with so many beautifully typeset mathematical equations. Through it's tiring, no one can shake my confidence in LaTeX typesetting anymore! ;-)