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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:18:48 ADT
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Fri, 19 Jun 1998 22:53:21 -0400
At 9:06 PM -0400 on 6/19/98, Tom Weinstein wrote:
> How about an annual "Gold Snake Awards"? Make up little trophys, and call
> a press conference.
Hmmm. I agree with Perry. "Golden Snake" sounds like, well, "Golden
Banana"... :-).
We could just call it the "Cryptographic Snake Oil of the Year" award, and
gild an old patent medicine bottle for the (perpetual) trophy, yes? Or,
more crudely, said bottle sans gilt, with a pickled snake inside? (Reminds
me of the W.C. Fields joke with a small snake in it, that does...)
So, anyway, Tom, does this mean we can sign Netscape up for the publicity
fund? :-). Do I hear an (almost, but not quite) matching offer from
Microsoft? ;-).
I figure we should start an organization to give it away, and have a
function to give it away at, of course. I love parties.
How about this for a leading paragraph on the press release:
The Cryptographic Herpetology Association today announced the "Cryptography
Snake Oil of the Year" award to ZotSecure's
PatentedGuaranteedRepeatingOne-TimePad. The CSOTY is awarded every fall by
the members of the CHA to the most innumerate cryptography on the market
this year. (and so forth...)
I figure we have a banquet, charge way too much money for it, and give it
all to charity, like, say, the Jim Bell legal defense fund, ;-), or some
other worthy cause. The "Members" of the Association are those who buy
seats to dinner for said exorbinant price, with their vote accompanying
their check.
Nothing like a little capitalism, eh?
Of course, the "membership" will only have three or four choices to vote
for, and we put together an august panel of cryptographers (who get free
dinner, obviously) who'll pick those choices from the most aggregiously
reverse engineered and busted-wide-open crypto found every year. The
presenter of the award, of course, will be the cryptographer who
busted-wide-open said crypto snake oil...
Yup. An idea a minute, here on Farquhar Street...
Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Philodox: <http://www.philodox.com>, e$: <http://www.shipwright.com/>
<mailto: rah@philodox.com> <mailto: rah@shipwright.com>
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:18:48 ADT