There are several angles which could be taken on this, including
- idle cycles over the Internet would have a 1 in 4 chance of cracking
a secret message in X amount of time
- we're halfway to the average, or expected, completion time, and our
keyrate continues to grow
- SGI and DESCHALL together would have a better than 50% chance of being
done by now, if they had worked together; they "would probably" have
cracked DES already
If AP picked up on DESCHALL (which is probably unlikely, but you never
know...) I think the keyrate could get a pretty nice boost.
--
Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of
commanding. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous,
pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade.
-- Mikhail A. Bakunin (thanks to Rabbi Albert Axelrad)