You didn't hear it from me.


It's probably some sort of military secret, so please don't pass this on to anyone. And considering that I don't know, or can't remember, my sources, I suppose that we can even claim it's some sort of urban legend and sneak by.

Somewhere along the line I learned that many military codes are written by people, as opposed to being randomly generated. I would assume that someone with the task of preparing a code (let's just refer to a set of codewords here, rather than a full fledged code) would unavoidably use some sort of logic, purposefully or not, in doing so, and if he or she did this, then someone trying to penetrate that code would be able to imitate that logic and thus break it. Thus, to my mind, it makes more sense that machines (though not inherently illogical, they're not humanly logical) be used to construct codes.

And of course when it comes to the strings of words that show up in spam, it's pretty difficult to imagine a group of people trying to create them.



Go to: My own private Oprah book club, or
Go to: Spamming me softly with his song