
The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (1984) - alexwebb2
https://urbigenous.net/library/alicebob.html
======
alexwebb2
> So you see Alice has a whole bunch of problems to face. Oh yes, and there is
> one more thing I forgot so say - Alice doesn't trust Bob. We don't know why
> she doesn't trust him, but at some time in the past there has been an
> incident.

> Now most people in Alice's position would give up. Not Alice. She has
> courage which can only be described as awesome. Against all odds, over a
> noisy telephone line, tapped by the tax authorities and the secret police,
> Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn't trust, whom she cannot
> hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns
> and to organize a coup d'etat, while at the same time minimizing the cost of
> the phone call.

> A coding theorist is someone who doesn't think Alice is crazy.

~~~
shagie
This reminds me of Mr. Fart’s favorite colors.
[https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-
colors-3177...](https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-
colors-3177a406c775)

> By the time you land an engineering gig at Apple, you are a twitchy,
> tinfoily mess. When your giggling date pokes you in the side and asks your
> favorite color, you shout: “WHO WANTS TO KNOW?!”

> But at work, you’re in good company. Your peer code reviews look like a
> meeting of the Flat Earth Society:

> What if they steal our data using electromagnetic waves or focused ion
> beams?

> What if they cut power at the exact instant our security kicks in?

------
textaural
I recently went to a conference presentation that attributed this CS in joke
as indicative of how the field is deeply gendered. This paper isn't by the
researchers I saw, but speaks to that.
[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3017794](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3017794)

~~~
malvosenior
Would it not be the exact opposite of "deeply gendered" since it it has 50/50
gender representation, presents Bob and Alice as equals trying to communicate
and contains exactly zero references to gender sterotypes?

------
gabythenerd
> One time I got really mad at it. Like all computers, it knew precisely what
> I wanted it to do. It knew exactly what I MEANT. So why does it have to go
> and DO what I SAID?

> How do you get even with a dumb machine like that?

> First I tried slapping it around a little. I pushed its buttons a bit hard.
> I threatened it. "How would you like a busted display" I said.

> But it did no good. It just said "I am virtually unbreakable - and I'm not
> going to take any notice till you enter the data nicely, like you used to
> do."

This is beautiful. I loved how it explained processing delay with "real" world
examples. Funny and interesting speech.

------
pards
The phonetic alphabet is gold

> L for Leather

> U for Mism

> Y for Lover

The last one took me a while, I had to say it out loud a few times.

~~~
pards
I can't figure out if the lack of an 'R' is an omission or a joke that I don't
understand.

~~~
gowld
omission, possibly also a joke:
[https://dangerousminds.net/comments/a_surrealist_alphabet_as...](https://dangerousminds.net/comments/a_surrealist_alphabet_as_explained_by_two_comedians)

------
hapnin
Obligatory:

[https://xkcd.com/1323/](https://xkcd.com/1323/)

~~~
AlphaWeaver
I thought of this one, actually:
[https://xkcd.com/177/](https://xkcd.com/177/)

------
mundo
(possibly incomplete, can't get to original) mirror:
[http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/alice-and-
bob](http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/alice-and-bob)

------
Numberwang
Anyone care to comment on why this is interesting (I don't want to read it
before I know what it is about)?

~~~
kbenson
_About_ to read it, so not sure, but if I had to guess from Alice and Bob it's
something to do with Diffie-Hellman key exchange, some variation thereof, or
some other security fundamentals explanation.

Edit: So, much more meta than that. Looks like a fun read though. :)

~~~
emmelaich
From the article:

> _Perhaps it would be a better idea if we looked for strong keys. In fact,
> why not look for THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE KEY. Then we could all standardize
> on it._

I think that's what Debian did with their OpenSSL :-)

