Anil Das wrote:

Rick Osborne wrote:

...

He triumphantly exclaimed that the encryption was 128-bit, but when I said "128-bit what?" he cowered and muttered that he didn't know and went on with his little speech. The rest of my crypto-specific questions met with equal dark stares. And these are the people setting industry standards...

I should be happy that you are bashing a competitor and all, but give them a break, OK? The marketing dweeb who has to do product pitches on roadshows is not the same as the design engineer who designs the system and sets technical standards. There can be a big difference in technical knowledge about the product, and even basic competency, between the two.

HP in their first 17 years of making personal computers always sent real engineers along with salespeople to their product rollouts. Starting in late 1983 with their first MS-DOS computer, they did a 180-degree and eliminated the engineers, and started sending people who knew nothing about HP products, which is bad in the sense that some folks wanted to know "Why should I buy HP when I can get the real thing, i.e. IBM"? As a sales manager, I always had a hard time with that one. I blame HP in retrospect, for a moron mentality in their marketing department.