4 comments

  • classichasclass5 hours ago
    Although he&#x27;s trying to avoid using floating point, the dirty secret in many Microsoft-derived BASICs, including Commodore&#x27;s, is that <i>everything</i> is floating point. In fact, even if you explicitly declare a variable as integer, it actually gets truncated and expanded: the native format for calculations is still 40-bit MBF. The only advantage integer variables have is smaller array storage. Every variable in his program is actually internally handled as a floating point value even though they&#x27;re all integrals.
  • teo_zero6 hours ago
    I think the author is too quick to dismiss the impact of the plugboard.<p>&gt; IC attacks only the rotor settings [...] Once you’ve found the right rotors and positions, you can solve the plugboard separately using frequency analysis.<p>So two steps: first solve for rotor settings with IC analysis, then solve the plugboard.<p>But IC analysis can&#x27;t find the solution, just propose a lot of candidates among which a human can spot the correct one by looking for intelligible German text. And how can you spot intelligible German text if some letters are swapped by the plugboard?
  • serious_angel7 hours ago
    Freaking awesome... thank you very much!<p>Have you seen the film about Enigma, named &quot;The Imitation Game&quot; of 2014? I once or two asked about one of the main points of the film stated in there, yet no one still responded. Yes, I do sure rarely see films&#x2F;movies nowadays (but wish so much...) for the time availability sake, but some may find the film interesting for that main point stated, I believe.
  • bediger40004 days ago
    The fact that Index of Coincidence works against Enigma at all is the real puzzle.