Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!varol From: varol@cwi.nl (Varol Akman) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: NSA advertisment Message-ID: <139@piring.cwi.nl> Date: 7 Dec 87 08:59:02 GMT References: <4781@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Organization: CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 22 Summary: Somewhat naive, huh? palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) writes: >I just read a magazine add seeking people to work at the NSA (pg. 80R of >Dec. 1987 IEEE Spectrum) >The graphic is 10,000,0... (100 zeros) written on three lines. The first >paragraph of the text reads: > You're looking at a "googol." Ten raised to the 100th power. > One followed by 100 zeros. Counting 24 hours a day, you would > need 120 years to reach a googol. Two lifetimes. It's a > number that's impossible to grasp. A number beyond our imagination. >... material deleted ... This strikes me as quite odd. I mean, if something can be done in two lifetimes then, darn it, it is well within my imagination. If it can be done within 20 lifetimes I can still grasp how difficult it should be. A real difficult thing would be something that takes say 10^100 lifetimes. In short, I find the above ad quite naive. NSA guys should probably have something better than this for the inspring encryption student. What do you say? -Varol Akman