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September 4, 2007
It's like a double yellow line
From Worse Than Failure, a story of public key cryptography:Near the end of a technical interview, Paco H. was asked a rather blunt question from the candidate he was interviewing: "Hey, be straight with me. How am I doing?" Paco replied with the truth: not too well. The candidate was a bit disappointed, so Paco gave him a chance of redemption.Paco: So, tell me, what are you great at?
Candidate: What am I good at?
Paco: No, no. What are you *GREAT* at?
Candidate: Hmmm. (a few seconds pass) Cryptography!Fortunately, Paco knew a thing or two about cryptography, and knew where to begin a line of questions.
Paco: Ok. Well let's just start with the basics. Tell me the difference between asymmetric and symmetric cryptography.
Candidate: Well, the way I see it is like this. The symmetric cryptography is like when you're driving down the road and there's a dotted line down the middle and cars are going both ways. Asymmetric cryptography is like when there's a double yellow line.
Outstanding!
Posted by ekr at September 4, 2007 10:56 PM | Filed under:
Comments
That's not the difference?
Posted by: Dan Simon at September 5, 2007 8:19 PM