Correct.
I then correctly pointed out that to achieve that feat, that she would need both a Key and an Algorithm.
Incorrect.
You did indeed challenge her to provide a "cryptographic" transformation that could change one into the other IN ONE SINGLE TRANSFORMATION, but since that's not what she was talking about, you were flat wrong in your claim that "to achieve that feat, she would need both a Key and an Algorithm".
But thanks for playing.
For one thing, Windows XP was designed by intelligent beings, not naturally evolved.
Which is beside the point, since the issue that was raised was whether it was *possible*, theoretically, to get from one to the other via a sequence of small bitwise changes.
Designs can skip evolutionary steps; Evolution can't. That's post #557 in a nutshell.
No, post #557 in a nutshell was that you were trying to change her suggestion (huge number of serial bitwise changes) into something else entirely (a single gigantic cryptographic transformation that makes the transition in one single step).
It's pure apples and oranges. The fact that you think your post is relevant in any way to hers shows that you either fail to understand her example, or that you don't understand your own (i.e., the nature of cryptographic transformations).
Don't be simpleminded. A cryptographic algorithm does not have to be all one step. One can encrypt an already encrypted file, that was itself already encrypted. Likewise, one can decrypt a file that has already been decrypted. Triple DES does this everyday, in fact.
You erred. You assumed that extracting the Windows XP message from DOS had to be performed in a single step. That sort of oversimplification of cryptography either means that you don't really know much about the field, or that you are deliberately setting up a strawman to knock down later, perhaps by claiming that since what I asked "had" to be performed in a single step (when it doesn't), that I was changing the game (when I demonstrably was not).
You do get credit for having a bad attitude, but not for being clever.