On 19/10/11 01:51 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:
On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:10 AM, ianG wrote:
Another meta question: I seem to have missed the news that RSA has stopped
their factoring challenge in 2007!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
Has anything replaced it? This is a great loss, what on earth where RSA
thinking?
Can you say more why it is a "great loss"?
Well, it gave us a reliable benchmark.
It's also a very strong message, an easy to understand event. Cracking
the code was easy for the media to grasp. There are very few such easy
to explain events. In comparison, if you look at all the other crypto
news, it's very hard to get a grasp of what it means .. to laymen.
Also, it was great advertising for RSA. It was a tradition, an event...
part of crypto culture almost. The price paid in prizes was well worth
it, it had much better mileage than any other sort of dry purchased
media event.
iang
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