That one would make a perfect April 1st article, except it's dated 24 March.
As it is, it sort of vaguely annoyed me. That discovery, if it is one, can bring down the whole structure of modern cryptography we've founded and send ciphermakers back to the drawing board. But instead it's full of "not really trained in number theory", "no real mathematical proof", etc. So they've noticed patterns---that's worthy of publication in Nature? Gimme the histograms, at least.
I'd hoped the full text of the paper would make things clearer, but I hadn't read the paper itself yet because I've got so many browser windows open that I dared not try to fire up Acrobat Reader. Well, I just went ahead and tried the "full text" links at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/0303110 (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/0303110), which claims "14 pages, 6 figures", but all I get in either the PDF or the PS versions is just another copy of the abstract. Bleah.
That prime-numbers-not-random one...
As it is, it sort of vaguely annoyed me. That discovery, if it is one, can bring down the whole structure of modern cryptography we've founded and send ciphermakers back to the drawing board. But instead it's full of "not really trained in number theory", "no real mathematical proof", etc. So they've noticed patterns---that's worthy of publication in Nature? Gimme the histograms, at least.
I boggle.
Re: That prime-numbers-not-random one...