For example, they have not used the standard Rock Ridge CD format, so when mounted on a Unix system (and not using flags available only to root) it simply doesn't work: the filenames are treated as lower case, and all the links on the CD are in upper case. On a system like Windows, that can't distinguish between upper and lower case in filenames, this isn't a problem. But for those of us who don't use Windows it's a serious problem. I ended burning a copy of the CD with all upper-case file names, and that works -- but people who use Unix (including Linux) and don't have a CD burner are going to have some real problems.

Secondly, the scanned pages are all in the standard Springer-Verlag small page format, but for some reason the scanned images are much larger with lots of whitespace at the bottom. That means that my standard acrobat setting of "fit page" has the text about 2/3 of the size that it should, and it's hard to read. It seems like any editorial person reviewing the scanned material would have recognized and tried to fix this problem.

Finally, the book that accompanies the CD is just ridiculous -- it duplicates material on the CD, and simply adds to the production (and so retail) cost, and wastes paper.

Overall, this is a valuable resource, and I'll hold on to it. I just wish the publishers had made some more intelligent choices along the way....


CD-ROM Collection of most major academic papers in crypto   February 1, 2000
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This CD-ROM contains an excellent collection of academic referreed papers in the area of cryptography. The papers are highly technical -- beginners would do better with a book like Handbook of Applied Cryptography or Applied Cryptography.

For researchers and people learning the mathematics of cryptography, this collection assembled by Kevin McCurley is unquestionably the best purchase available.


I don't know, i haven't looked it yet   October 29, 1999
 0 out of 14 found this review helpful

Dear sir, I am just wondering does this book (ISBN #3540650695) include a CD?? If yes, I will buy this book right away, and please reply me ASAP. Thanks for your time.