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Unread 08-01-2004, 10:02
Joe Johnson's Avatar Unsung FIRST Hero
Joe Johnson Joe Johnson is offline
Engineer at Medrobotics
AKA: Dr. Joe
FRC #0088 (TJ2)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: May 2001
Rookie Year: 1996
Location: Raynham, MA
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Perceptions matter...

Here is YET ANOTHER reason why this thread is a bad idea:

Perceptions MATTER!

I believe that FIRST has used a good encryption scheme -- good enough that noboby will get to the data before it is worthless to get to.

I understand that, but my MOM wouldn't (unless she asked her son).

My Mom would think, "Hey, I don't know anything about this whole encryption business, but here are these hacker guys saying they can crack the code in minutes, they are probably wrong, but they just might be right, I can't tell."

This is a reasonable thing for a lot of people to think -- even people associated with FIRST who are more techinically savy than my Mom, but still don't appreciate the implications of the difficulty of factoring large integers.

If enough people believe that FIRST's secrecy has been compromised and that the game is fixed or rigged or whatever, this is not good for FIRST.

In the absense of more reasonable folks (Dave Lavery, et. al.) telling people the real deal, I honestly believe that FIRST's reputation would have been damaged by all this talk of how easy it will be to crack the code.

Bottom line: FIRST is really important to me (and a lot of others) and we don't like it when WE have to take steps to do "damage control" so that THEY can "entertain" themselves.

Joe J.

Last edited by Joe Johnson : 08-01-2004 at 14:30. Reason: Grammar... ...I am working on it Sister Margarette, I am working on it...