What has really changed ...

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 12:59 PM 8/12/1999 +0100, Ian G Batten wrote:
>You write:
>> data the value of whose contents is by definition unknowable?  Users who
>> leave files on their PC called "where I hid the gold bars.pgp" are just as
>> likely to be exercising their sense of humour as hiding the map, and
>> perhaps more so.
>
>Turing bought a number of bars of silver, which he hid and recorded the
>information in a code of his own devising.  When, some years, he came to
>dig them up, he couldn't find them.  I don't have my copy of Hodges'
>biography to hand, but my memory is that he couldn't decrypt properly.

There is no suggestion in the book that he couldn't decrypt the
instructions, and some suggestion that the landscape had changed so that
the instructions no longer identified the right spot.

I feel my example survives this delightful counter-example:  Turing was
surely a one-off anyway.

Regards,

Nicholas Bohm

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
Takeley, Bishop's Stortford CM22 6SX, UK

Phone		01279 871272	(+44 1279 871272)
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PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF