[Gllug] [OT] Technobabble

[will]

Tom Schutzer-Weissmann wrote:
> Today's Guardian, someone called Kitty Ussher bigs up the need for 90
> days:
> 
> "Computer hard drives have to be decoded (in one instance, I am told,
> the data involved, if printed out, would be 66,000ft high)."
> 
> Surely this is technobabble - would one have any more of a chance
> breaking strong encryption on a hard drive in 90 days than in 14? 
> 
> Since it's the Guardian perhaps I should "ask Jack"...

Well a better measure of hard-drive capacity would surely be 'foot-high 
zero metres", or if a disc was filled to capacity with zeroes, how many 
metres they would stretch to if they were all 1 metre tall and stacked 
on top of each other.

The Feedback column of New Scientist regularly features all new units of 
measurement, many made up to make the subject seem bigger...

Will
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