"Who knows this guy?"

[Timothy C. May]

At 12:39 AM 9/14/95, don at cs.byu.edu wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>Just saw this on Usenet, was wondering who knows this guy. Obviously not
>a cpunk or it would have hit the list right away. Not in the mood to run
>code on my account without knowing that I know what it will do.
>
>
>From: bobs at mathworks.com (Bob Silverman)
>Newsgroups:
>sci.math,sci.crypt,alt.security.pgp,sci.math.num-analysis,comp.arch.arithme
>tic

It's funny, this thing about names and reputations.

You see, I know the name "Bob Silverman," and his company, Mathworks, a
whole lot more than I know the name "don at cs.byu.edu". Mathworks was heavily
in the news last fall during the Pentium debacle (including someone I used
to know from Intel, Cleve Moler).

I've only seen the posts of "don at cs.byu.edu" since 8-29-95, just the last
two weeks. (I don't claim to have a complete archive, as I delete a lot of
stuff. But this is the earliest don at cs.byu.edu post I can find.)

Certainly I am not impugning the reputation of don at cs.byu.edu, just noting
the irony of him asking for if anyone knows who Bob Silverman is. Strange
days.

--Tim May

---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."