RSA Animate - 21st century enlightenment
via boingboing.net
The top 10 festival funnies were judged to be:
1) Tim Vine "I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."
2) David Gibson "I'm currently dating a couple of anorexics. Two birds, one stone."
3) Emo Philips "I picked up a hitch hiker. You've got to when you hit them."
4) Jack Whitehall "I bought one of those anti-bullying wristbands when they first came out. I say 'bought', I actually stole it off a short, fat ginger kid."
5) Gary Delaney "As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn't afford a dog."
6) John Bishop "Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day."
7) Bo Burnham "What do you call a kid with no arms and an eyepatch? Names."
8) Gary Delaney "Dave drowned. So at the funeral we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt. Well, it's what he would have wanted."
9) Robert White "For Vanessa Feltz, life is like a box of chocolates: Empty."
10) Gareth Richards "Wooden spoons are great. You can either use them to prepare food. Or, if you can't be bothered with that, just write a number on one and walk into a pub…"
Wow. Well worth sticking with it until ~10 minutes.
The author of my Cryptography exam has a habit of weaving elaborate stories into the questions to liven things up a little. Here's an example:
You are the holder of a two-part key in a 2-out-of-n secret sharing scheme. Strangely, you have two friends, who find themselves in a similarly privileged position. Unfortunately, one of your friends has the mental capacities of a concussed duckling, and has not actually lost their key, but lost track of which of the two parts is which. If an attempt is made to log on in the morning using the key parts in the wrong order, the usual unfeasibly large stone ball rolls out of the wall and squashes everyone. Equally, if they own up to their supervisor, they will be ejected from their job, and discarded on the scrapheap of humanity. A little harsh, some may say, but that's capitalism for you.
So you decide to try and rectify the situation. By getting together with your other friend (the less careless person) you reckon that if you two pool your key shares, (itself a massive breach of security, but that's what friends are for) you will be able to untangle the problem, and save the day.
Explain your cunning plan.
