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The name was coined by
Norbert Wiener [pron. whiner], who was a professor of mathematics at
MIT, and did radar and firing-feedback mechanisms for the U.S. in
World War II. Cybernetics describes the complex of sciences dealing
with communication and control in the living organism AND in the
machine. Its application is sometimes called operations research.

I personally rank Norbert Wiener above Albert Einstein.

Operations research is a difficult discipline --- I certainly don't understand
it --- but when it was desperately needed during World War II, the U.S. Dept.
of War went for it gung-ho, rightfully. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the
first step...the NSA grew out of these wartime operations research efforts.

To seek out information from noise, then act on the information.

Target accuracy for precision high altitude bombing requires
a complex feedback mechanism to control deployment (pre-GPS WW II).

I've just finished the review phase of my 2nd book [see my website for
details, I won't link it here for obvious reasons].

It's a text covering software developer problems with cryptography, and
is based for the most part on my experience as a developer and from
supporting my projects. I think the book is a decent read and for the
software developers out there stuck doing crypto work it should prove
useful.

It's not a "handbook of applied crypto" style book, so please don't
think of it as a re-run book :-)

The text hits the printers tomorrow and should be in stock within a
month [starting in the states of course...].

I recommend picking up my 1st book on large integer math, not just
because it's my book but because it covers the math in more depth than
this book does. I also recommend the "Guide to Elliptic Curve
Cryptography" as I don't cover ECC in a huge amount of depth. The
three books fit well together as they were written in that frame of
mind (they sit on my desk at the office).