>and one conversation about mexican beer limes being interrupted with questions about NSA encryption
This intrigued me so I dug around until I found the original Usenet discussion and that guy is just making a bad pun about "key" limes referring to encryption "keys". Part of the conversation was about whether you could even buy key limes, and he said that you can't get "key" limes because the NSA wants to protect the encryption "keys", har har.
Thread:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.urban/c/wBnU-iTWBbA/m/sdMAbZ9IbOIJ
Earlier post:
>Is there any truth to the rumor that there are no key limes at all? The
"key lime" juice bottles everyone thinks they can buy in Florida or wherever
isn't really key lime juice, but a mislabeled concoction, etc. I believe you
can't get key limes anywhere, except for some private grove or something.
If you drive down to the keys, there are places that sell what is presented
as key lime pie, and it does taste rather good.
Later, the post making a pun about "key" limes and encryption "keys"
>If the trees are in parks, etc, they are in public.
>Now in the US, but not overseas, Public Key stuff is typically
covered by the RSA patents.
>Even if it's not covered by their patents, chances are the NSA
will be after you - they don't want the secret getting out of the
country.
>So the reason you can't find any is they are all kept locked up
in a hangar at Wright-Patterson…
The next post recognized it was a joke and refers to GNU (which is free software) meaning this will be a freely usable key lime pie recipe, and continues the programming joke by saying you won't be able to find one of the ingredients, which is a Linux fuction
>I'm sure that someone outside of the US will write a GNU Key Lime Pie
recipe, except that nobody will be able to use it because the ingredient
called alloca can't be found.
Hopefully that makes sense.