[7948] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: human failings question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton)
Wed Oct 11 09:37:14 2000
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 17:21:16 +1000
From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@samba.org>
To: Paul Crowley <paul@cluefactory.org.uk>
Cc: Rick Smith <rick_smith@securecomputing.com>,
"Nina H. Fefferman" <feferman@math.princeton.edu>, coderpunks@toad.com,
cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <87og0suvau.fsf@hedonism.subnet.hedonism.cluefactory.org.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.05.10010111712410.4035-100000@samba.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
[hey, ppl? dis on-topic for coderpunks? dunno, but i'm posting it
anyway :)]
On 11 Oct 2000, Paul Crowley wrote:
> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@samba.org> writes:
> > psychological avoidance of certain letters not commonly used in english
> > words - such as z - i vaguely remember as the reason given...
>
> Odd, when I'm trying to write "random letters" (when explaining what
> crypto is, for example) I find I tend to prefer these letters; "ZQRJW"
> looks "more random" than "ENBHT".
ah, but then again, crypto experts etc. are a skew on the norm, neh?
*grin*
i remember a news report on radio 4 about the national lottery, six or so
years ago. some statistics expert had written something that was read
out, that basically went something like this:
"currently, people are selecting sequentially-increasing lottery numbers
that are far apart, e.g. 1 5 20 29 41 60 instead of 1 2 3 45 46 47.
therefore, as things stand, if anyone was to choose numbers that are
closer together, they stand more chance of winning a higher jackpot [if
people pick the same 6 numbers, the prize is split between them].
_however_, if, as a result of this broadcast, _everyone_ decides to choose
numbers closer together, then this will result in a _decrease_ in the
chances of winning a higher jackpot."
:)
not long after, camelot introduced a "random-ness" option: the POS
computer would generate 6 random numbers _for_ you, if you so chose.
