If possible I'd like to get anyone's opinion on the "security", (for lack of a better word), of the rand command, used to generate random numbers or integers. Lately, if you've seen some of my recent blog posts you may have noticed that I've been curious about cryptography, but I still consider myself a novice, if that. My question is, does any of the brilliant and talented people that I've met on mapleprimes think that it may be possible to "cheat" maple's random number generator ? Would it be possible by some sort of manipulation to predict this command's output with some reasonable amount of confidence ?

I'm using Maple 11, and I have a question on switching between the input modes. In the user manual it only states that one should go the 'tools' drop down menu, select the 'options' choice, and apply the 'maple input' mode to the current worksheet or globally. However, after doing this I still find myself having to click on the "text" button directly above the worksheet area to have the input text stay permanently in the red colored maple input. Is this how others also choose to permanently use the maple input in worksheets ? Is this actually the only, or correct way ? v/r,

View 285_maple11introductoryprogrammingguideexercise1.6.mw on MapleNet or Download 285_maple11introductoryprogrammingguideexercise1.6.mw
View file details I'm going through the introductory programming guide for maple 11, and I recently worked on some exercises. Instead of just computing, I tried to create a procedure for the first exercise of exercise set 1.6 on page 21.

Does anyone know how to do commutative matrix multiplication ? I'm doing a worksheet with the classic worksheet of Maple 10. To clarify further, I just want to multiply corresponding elements of two square matrices, NOT multiply the matrices using the proper rules of matrix multiplication. respectfully, Dan

Recently I tried to verify or expand on a recent biological statement that I read. It had to deal with 50 billion neurons each having about 10 thousand different connections each. After trying to discover the number of operands in the combination of 50 billion things chosen 10 thousand at a time, using the choose command, maple basically crashed. Approximately, what are the computational limits of maple in general, and combinat commands in particular ? For example, what is the biggest integer one can take the factorial of ? v/r,