Friday, October 19, 2007

A cobbler should stick to his last.

Yesterday I felt really sick and decided to stay in bed. It turned out to be an excellent idea and I could really use some hours of additional sleep below two blankets. (Initially, I had three, but when Hobbesy joined me, she demanded her usual underlay.)

Inevitably, after some hours I felt much better and started to get bored. So I picked up the Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and started to read. I quite liked his previous books. I understand that a novel author has got a poetic license and didn't mind when I found him using his before.

This wasn't the case in the digital fortress. It may be that he was covering an area of my expertise, but my impression is that he simply understands much more of history (Angels & Demons, and the Da Vinci Code), or natural science (Deception Point) than of computer science and mathematics. In fact, the reading was amusing at best. The idea that you can catch the exponential powers of a "million bit key" by a linear increased number of CPU's. The impression that a firewall can be "weakened" by consecutive attacks like a true wall. But the best one was most possibly the "X Eleven transport protocol".

Well, I hope that Mr. Brown returns to his last when the Solomon Key is published. :-)

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