Re: Encryption

[Shimpei Yamashita <shimpei@example.com>]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 08:51:52PM +0900, Frank BENNETT wrote:
> Last week, I posted a query about the encryption system behind Adobe Acrobat
> "encrypted PDF" files.  I was working on a little piece of writing for a
> general-circulation Japanese law journal, and in the end I said very little
> about encryption (safer, in any case, because I do NOT understand how that
> stuff works!).
> 
> I promised to post a link to the text when it was finished.  There's nothing
> in the piece of technical interest.  The main point of it is to whinge about
> the use of "unprintable", "uncopyable" encrypted PDF files as the medium for
> "publishing" Japanese law on the Web, a simple issue about which I have very
> strong feelings.
> 
> A colleague has kindly translated the article into Japanese, and it will
> appear in a column 「詳細の窓」, in the journal ジュリスト in the beginning
> of January.  (Any expressions of surprise that I am actually publishing
> something should be sent by PRIVATE mail, please :-)

Some people I work with *will* express surprise that a lawyer would know
enough about computers to admit that they don't know enough about encryption!
If I could count the number of hours I've wasted because the f*cking lawyers
we've had the displeasure of being abused by know nothing about computer
systems [1]....

Just venting,
Shimpei.

[1] This job is heavily NDA'ed, so I can't say very much about it. Let's just
say I didn't know APL [2] was still in active duty in some parts of the
planet that dealt with a terabyte of data before Microsoft ever dreamt of
the Terraserver.

[2] For those of you who don't know what APL is, see
   http://www.izap.com/~sirlin/apl/index.html
Looks like you can run the free version on Linux! I'm not sure why you would
want to, though, unless you collect languages as a hobby.

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita                               http://www.shimpei.org/