[3090] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: DES Applicability Statement for Historic Status
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (C Matthew Curtin)
Mon Jul 27 10:57:05 1998
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:22:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: C Matthew Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>
Cc: "William Allen Simpson" <wsimpson@greendragon.com>,
Marc Horowitz <marc@cygnus.com>, cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980726230618.00b5d9f0@127.0.0.1>
Reply-To: cmcurtin@interhack.net
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your reply. I hope that my message didn't sound as though
I was whining, that I was bitter, or that one single comment was the
reason for our paper's rejection. Perhaps my last message wasn't
sufficiently self-explanatory. (Certainly possible; I was being
pressured to finish so I could go pretend that I'm not an introvert
for a few hours. I hate that.)
My (strong) statement about "...who was *he* to make..." was meant to
demonstrate my initial (knee-jerk) reaction, to contrast it with what
I thought after giving the matter further consideration.
Based on the comments from the program committee as a whole, I was
mostly under the impression that it was a workable paper, but that it
was more likely to be of interest in the context of a more area-
specific conference. In fairness to the program committee, two of the
three referees provided useful comments, one in particular offering
very nice remarks. And the sheer number of submissions dictated that
there would be many more papers rejected than acceptions.
(Not submitting the paper to a more appropriate conference is my own
"fault", as I had that option, but was unable, due to circumstances
well beyond my control.)
What I was really getting at was that in the contexts of scientific
research and of large-scale engineering, we have to understand that we
can't turn the tide of prevailing opinion on a dime. I believe that
this is a Good Thing in general, but leads to specific instances of
disappointment in the case of individual researchers and engineers
whose opinions aren't (yet) widely held.
--
Matt Curtin cmcurtin@interhack.net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/
