Financial Fiasco [Donald Knuth stops sending checks]

Donald Knuth Recent News ^ | 10/31/08 | Donald Knuth

[antiRepublicrat]

Leading banks and investment funds have been foundering, because of bad debts and lack of trust; and other, less well-known kinds of fiscal chaos are also on the horizon. For example, due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write personal checks. A criminal who sees the numbers that are printed at the bottom of any check that you write can use that information to withdraw all the money from your account. He or she can do this in various ways, without even knowing your name --- for example by creating an ATM card, or by impersonating a bank in some country of the world where safeguards are minimal, or by printing a document that looks like a check. The account number and routing information are all that international financial institutions look at before deciding to transfer funds from one account to another. (See, for example, Grant Bugher's comments.) More and more criminals are learning about this easy way to acquire money, and devising new schemes to conceal their identities as they steal the assets of more victims.

Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The once venerable system of checking accounts is irretrievably broken. Before long, companies will find it impossible to give out paychecks without exposing themselves to unacceptable risk.

One consequence of this debacle is, alas, that I can no longer write checks to reward the people who discover errors in my books. The system that I've been using has worked well for almost forty years; but recently I have had to close three checking accounts, and the criminal attacks on those accounts have caused significant grief to my bankers. (Certainly I do not believe that anybody who received one of my checks has been in any way a culprit. But all such recipients are entitled to bragging rights; therefore the numbers printed on those checks inevitably become known to random members of the public.) I cannot in good conscience continue to traumatize the people at my bank, who obviously have plenty of other things to worry about.

After painful deliberation I've come up with a new plan, which I hope will be acceptable to all concerned, and perhaps even welcomed as an improvement. Instead of rewarding heroic bug-finders with dollars, I shall henceforth award brownie points, otherwise known as hexadecimal dollars (0x$). From now on it will be kudos, not escudos.

Instead of writing personal checks, I'll write personal certificates of deposit to each awardee's account at the Bank of San Serriffe, which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus.

It turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I've sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached. So this change in policy will probably not affect too many people. On the other hand, I don't like to renege on promises, so I shall do my best to find a suitable way to send money to anyone who really prefers legal tender.

Everybody who has received a reward check or a hexadecimal certificate from me since 1 January 2006 automatically has an account at the Bank of San Serriffe, and these accounts are listed on the bank's website. All of these people have my undying gratitude for the invaluable help they've generously provided in order to improve the books and the software that I've written. I ask friendly readers to keep sending those precious bug reports, and to let me know if my new policy displeases you in any way.

[antiRepublicrat]

That Knuth paid anyone who spotted an error in his books (not much, a hex dollar) has been an example of striving for perfection in academia for decades. Now he has to stop because of the criminals, but you still get the kudos with bragging rights if you catch one. Still, sad.

Funny, now I find out almost nobody ever cashes the checks. They keep them for show.

[NVDave]

I worked with a guy who had received a check from Professor Knuth for finding an error in Vol 2. He had it framed. Said he was never, ever going to cash it, the honor of having a check for an error from Don Knuth was worth more to him than a check of 10X the amount.

We should all hope that Professor Knuth finishes his efforts on the reference volumes before he gets too old. They are timeless classics of true computer science.

[ShadowAce]

[ken in texas]

I agree with the sentiment of your friend. What a treasure to receive!!!

[sionnsar]

ping

[Old Professer]

Haven’t we seen this in a DiCrapio movie???

[Old Professer]

Knothing to worry about - knough, already.

[AdmSmith]

Anybody remembers this:

In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the “Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures”, developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth, later a famed computer scientist. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm. A standardization in terms of the wavelength of the red line of the emission spectrum of Cadmium is also given, which if the 1927 definition of the Angstrom is taken for the value of that wavelength, would equal 2.263347539605392 mm.

Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halavah, which is “a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416”), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 “clarke”). The system also features such units as whatmeworry, cowznofski, vreeble, hoo and hah.

According to the “Date” system in Knuth’s article, which substitutes a 10-clarke “mingo” for a month and a 100-clarke “cowznofski”, for a year, the date of October 29, 2007, is rendered as “To 1, 190 C. M.” (for Cowznofsko Madi, or “in the Cowznofski of our MAD.” The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) as “B.M.” (”Before MAD.”) The ten “Mingoes” are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie

[dayglored]

Wow, what a blast from the past... I was a MAD fan as soon as I could read (late 1950's). Never knew Knuth was the author of the Potrzebie System, though.

Thanks for this wonderful post!