Cloud Security, For Real This Time

Cloud Security, For Real This Time: Homomorphic Encryption and the Future of Data Privacy. That's the title of my presentation at the next Central Ohio OWASP Quarterly Seminar, on 27 February at 1:00 p.m. Dan King, from Microsoft, will be talking about single sign-on for federated Dynamics CRM, very practical stuff which is in real world use today. I, on the other hand, will be talking about technologies which don't quite exist in fully practical forms today, but which I predict will change the Internet in the decade to come and which I find mind-expanding to even read about.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with some decidedly weird Python code:

>  def my_factorial_less_than_20(n):

..   result = 1;

..   for i in range(2, 20):

..     result *= 1 if i > n else i

..   return result

>  my_factorial_less_than_20(4)

=> 24

>  my_factorial_less_than_20(100)

=> 121645100408832000L

>  my_factorial_less_than_20(1000)

=> 121645100408832000L

This looks both limited and inefficient! Is there any reason at all to write such a strange function?

In what significant way does the behavior of code written in such a style differ from more standard factorial implementations? (Hint: The answer can be found in Gödel, Escher, Bach.)