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