On Thursday, August 9, 2001, at 06:32 PM, Faustine wrote:

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Faustine:

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I think it's dangerous and entirely to your disadvantage to dismiss everyone doing government work in computer security as a donut- chomping incompetent Barney-Fife-clone imbecile.

Anyone can laugh at the department heads on C-SPAN, but did you ever stop to think about who's really doing the hardcore research for the NSA at Ft. Meade--and elsewhere? I know of an old-school NSA red teamer who's been teaching programming and engineering since before either one of us was born. An honest-to-god mathematical genius. Some of those old wizards could teach us all a

Jim wrote: thing or two.

Since I have no idea how old the "Jim" you cite is, and since I suspect you are less than 25 years old, your claims are not very impressive. We have had (and may still have) list members who were developing systems for the NSA in 1963, fully 37 years ago. (Cf. "Harvest" in Bamford's 1983 book. A hardy reader will known what I'm talking about.) You twentysomething grad student should be very careful when talking about 'before either one of us was born." While probably true, of little significance. --Tim May