tl; dr
Am I missing something?
Am I missing something?
Am I missing something?
Oh, hang on.
Am I missing something?
Once there were a million A&B stories on the Naked Web. Now there are a million-and-one. Alice and Bob are two commonly used placeholder names. They are used for archetypal characters in fields such as cryptography, game theory and physics – Wikipedia I had caught the H[redacted] bus heading east (via Turd Park, Central …
Yes, the story is a slightly amusing but extremely long-winded allegory for the futility of controlling the dissemination of shared information.
The key word being "shared". Once someone (be it one person or a million) other than you has your formerly private information, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and you have no reasonable expectation of cramming him back into it.
This is a fact that neither cryptography users, the copyright lobby, nor Elton John seem to comprehend.
As an impoverished undergraduate, I once bought a copy of The Way of the World for a penny from Amazon using the free Prime trial. It was missing pages 69-104 and pages 121-150 were repeated where pages 170-199 should be. Neither Stob or Congreave bore the treatment particularly well.
Reg's allegorical use of language paints an opulent image of a corroded steampunk landscape, bringing an irridescent yet simultaneously jejune perspective to the deceptively traditional denizens of stygian cryptographical mythos. Coyly concealed beneath an intentionally pellucid framework of the familiar "London Bus" we see the unfolding of a breathtaking panorama of quantum
[contd. p.94]
I tried differential analysis on the double-transmitted apparently plain-text that begins "to secure my gotta-getta-double seat" but there's no hidden message to decipher - just unfixed errors of typographical composition like missing "to her" in " to invite her to her next Anne" and a missing "to" in "not to write his password on a post-it,"
Shame, I was looking forward to throwing hashcat at it. Right, back to re-implementing keccak style sponges to hide some more secrets in plain sight.
Quite enjoyable, really. My only gripe is that it seemed to end abruptly : I really wanted to know what else the nutter had to say.
I normally loathe 'Alice and Bob', but there were some lessons in this story. The main one being that there's no point in having the shit-hottest communications security if you don't really know the person you're communicating with.
And the bit about gossip in the smoking shed - spot on. I was always surprised at how open people were in their conversations, as if socialising amongst fellow outcasts was for some reason a timeout from normal confidentiality rules.
Even before coffin nails were made illegal indoors there were plenty of organisations where the smokers had their own private communication network, which sometimes was more important than the official one.
It was where some people got to hear about jobs going ( in both senses) before anyone else, as well as that latest gossip, management plans and so on.
It kind of depends/ed on whether the important boss was a smoker or not.
Smokers were, and often still are apparently, entitled to take regular addiction breaks together while other workers have to keep on with the job. And while they are enjoying their sanctioned extra breaks they share all the organisation's confidential information with whoever happens to be around.
Why is there no icon for " embittered and resentful"?
I wouldn't put scumble in thimbles if I were you!
It eats through the metal ones, and what it does to the glazes of ceramic ones (swiftly followed by your insides) is best not thought about.
Stick to swigging it neat out of the bottle. Much healthier.
Alice, Bob, Carol, Dan, Erin, Faythe... how about the security guard George, the human resources expert Harry, the CTO Ian, the night-cleaning supervisor James, the networking administrator Kathryn, the sales manager Leon, the parking lot security guard Mike, the accountant Nolan and his assistant Olivia, that Irish translator Patrick, the intern Quincy (nobody knows what he's supposed to do), the new hire Roberta (what department does she work in again?), the systems administrator Simon (what a bastard, and watch out for his PFY assistant), the CEO's executive assistant Tina, Ulysses the cook (who seems to specialize in Greek tragedies), Victor and Xavier, twin business analytics, Yvette the receptionist, and Zach the product manager?
Alice had a brand new pair of roller-skates
Bob had a brand new key
Bob put the key in a strongbox and padlocked it - he kept the Key
Bob sent the box to Alice
Dick intercepted the box but couldn't open it, so sent it onwards
Alice double-padlocked the box and kept her Kkey
Alice sent the box to Bob
Dick intercepted the box but couldn't open it, so sent it onwards
Bob took off his padlock with his Key
Bob sent the box to Alice
Dick intercepted the box but couldn't open it, so sent it onwards
Alice opened the box with her Kkey
Alice took out the key and put on her roller-skates
The rest is musical history ffolks.