PC Expo summary!!

[rarachel@photon.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)]

i

PC EXPO

Perhaps one of the great lessons to be learned from this is that you 
should not rely on others to always be there to help you in your endeavors, 
even if they are cypherpunks and have already volunteered.  Out of all
the cypherpunk folks who have "volunteered," to help out at PC Expo 
precisely zero came through.   Like having assholes, everyone also had 
an excuse.  Still this was my idea and as such I refuse to give it up
without trying.  In light of this blatant rats-fleeing-the-ship
syndrome, a great load of kudos goes to my friend Sal, who although
not a cypherpunk, and although short on time, and although he is the
CIO of his company, and although I did not run into him at the pre-
arranged place, did show up and did distribute diskettes as promissed.

I would strongly suggest that you send him "Thank you" notes as he
is not on the cypherpunks list, but helped enourmosly.  His address
is denaro09@darwin.poly.edu.  Also much thanks to Tung Ming Wong
whose email address I don't have.  He also helped out even though he
knew nothing about Clipper, Digital Telephony, the NSA, or the
Cypherpunks.

Now as with all disasters, the blame is partially my own.  I should
have kept a whip on you guys and made sure you'd come. :-)  But I am
at a greater fault (more on this later.)

Now before you accuse me of being lazy, let me remind you that I
have taken a great deal of time out of my schedule to even go to
PC Expo.  Luckily my boss wasn't able to say "no" because he was
too busy in meetings the day before, and even if he did say "No"
I'd rather give up my job than give up my principles.  As a result
of my endeavors, I hope that I have at least set forth an example
for the rest of you, and that you will do well to sacrifice some
time and money on disks and distribution at Comdex, Software 
Developer's Expo, or whatever expo.  And make copies out to others 
as well.

With the exception of Sal, Tung, Greg Broiles (sent 25 disks for
this project!), Dave Mandl, Perry Metzger, and Susan Fullar, I am
pretty disappointed in you guys.   Dave and Perry weren't directly
involved in this project, but their Feb 17 speech which I taped
and had Sue transcribe (not a cypherpunk) was the centerpiece of
the articles.  (I want to add an extra load of thanx to Perry for
not showing up to do a speech for my crypto class as since he didn't
I had to get over my crowd-shyness and did a killer, informative
speech.)

I did the hard work for you already.  I've set the precedent, I've
built the disk, I've written the software. Yes, I wrote software,
even while pressed for time, I wrote a professional looking 
installer program, a file lister program, and a menu program, 
all of which are mousable, and have windows, buttons, menus, and
all the other neat features of modern software.  The disk looks
and feels fairly professional.  With the correct style of label
the disk looks like its a free demo from some company, when in
actuality it is free software.   Now if it sounds like I'm
congradulating myself and patting my own shoulders, it's because
I am!  Also, all of the above software is "freeware" and as such
is copyable.  So if you'd like to get your greedy little hands
on it, and use it to make a fortune, feel free.  There are
no restrictions on use other than that you send me free
copies of any package you include my 'wares in.

Although on the surface this may indicate a "failure" it was actually
a far greater blessing in disguise.  I didn't need much help, and it
turned out I didn't have to do much work.  I still believe that 
between Sal and myself, we made a little, albeit important grass-roots
dent in Clipper's armor (not that it wasn't already dented and as well
built and solid as swiss cheese.)

I was supposed to meet Sal infront a diner near PC Expo at 9:00am.
Borland's Marketting engine decided to give me a call and make an
offer I couldn't refuse.  The woman wouldn't get off the phone even
after I told her, "Yes, put it on my Visa Card, I gotta run!"  So I
wound up at the meeting place at 10:14AM, with Sal already departed.

Luckily, as I got out of the subway station I ran into an old
buddy of mine, Tung.  He tagged along the whole day and helped out
quite a bit.  I gave him some diskettes to take home, and gave some
out to a few of his friends we ran into.  Not a biggie there. However
as I was in line waiting to get my badge holder, I noticed an arrow
pointing up to the fourth level with the words "Press Resource Office"
imprinted!  What luck!  I dragged Tung with me and started hounding
the press.  I gave out about ten or so disks to the press dudes.  It
seems that I did well to pick male press folk as when I approached a
femme reporter with disk in hand, she loudly yelped "No, no!" as if
I was carrying a bomb....  But all the other reporters took it in
with great interest. 

I caught the eye of Ephraim Schwartz, and he gave me his card so
now I have a press contact for cypherpunk info.  After deciding that
I had depleted a fifth of my diskette supply on the media, and
well knowing that the media did plenty of Clipper stories I decided
to hand some out to the exhibitors.  I hit MacAffe and a couple
of other companies... anything with "security" on their products
list.

Then, the biggest most fortuitus slop of luck decided to land on top
of me.  WIRED was there.  And to my joy, the just dumped about a
thousand or so magazines on a table, and didn't have anyone watching
it.  Just freebies for all to take.   Sniffing out the territory, I
spread about five diskettes on the table next to the magazines and
retreated while keeping an eye out.  Within two seconds they were
all consumed!  What luck!  I came back about two or three times,
and by the time I had realized it, all my PC Expo cypherpunk 
diskettes were gone.  Wired turned out to be a good target because
those familiar with WIRED, even in passing are far more of the
type to be interested in crypto software than the average Joes. 

Let this be a good lesson for the future my droogs!  When the next
Expo arrives, be it PC Expo, Unix Expo, or whatever, pick an empty
table, or a table which isn't being watched too closely and deposit
your eggs there.  The cookoo's egg deposit method worked VERY well
for me.  Even if the Wired table had been watched, the disks I
placed there vanished so quickly, it would be unlikely that the
"watcher" would catch on fast enough to stop the majority of the
disks from being distributed.  And if he "confiscated" them, he'd
be likely to have a look for himself anyway, which is the point!

But mind you, don't get caught.  If you do, you might get kicked
out of the Expo, but even so, in that case you hit the folks
entering and leaving the Expo and give them disks directly. We
can't be stopped.  Clipper WILL BE STOPPED.

Having finished my job I enjoyed the rest of the day.

Meanwhile Sal, (good thing I didn't run into him or we'd probably
not have hit as diverse a crowed as we did) hit the fourth level
near where the press people were.  He didn't have it in mind to
give out disks to the press.  Good thing as I had done that
already.  Instead he gave out disks to all sorts of PC USER GROUPS!
Most of which promissed to distribute/carry the disk as part of
their catalog!!!!!   One of the groups he targeted was cyberqueers
and he rightfully did so.  Being straight didn't stop him from
realizing that this group would be very likely to value their
privacy.   He also handed out some diskettes to the exhibitors.

Between the two of us, we threw out about 80-90 diskettes.  With
the press, this number would remain the same, but the added
noise will help a bit.  With the users group, this number of
diskettes will likely reach the thousands within six months,
a few hundred within a month.  With the users which picked up
the freebies from the Wired table, they will probably give out
some copies. I'd guess on the average that half of them would
make copies for their friends (using software piracy as a model.
here, though this of course is freely copyable.)

I unfortunatly found out (here comes the blame part!) that the
installation script I had written had a typo in it.  Now this is
no ordinary typo mind you, but a severe and fairly fatal one.

The installer script that I have given out won't install any
of the articles!  Ugh!  I wish I caught it before the fact,
>BUT< I had spent all Sunday from 12:30PM to 1:00am (yes, that
is twelve and a half hours,) writing the software, and from 4:30am
on Monday to about 1:00pm putting the script and selecting the
articles for the disk.  Now mind you I do have a full time
job and I did risk being fired for coming in four hours late, 
and taking off a whole day for PC Expo!  So before you start
with the flames, fuck off right now as you did almost nothing
to help.

For those who don't notice the missing articles, they weren't
interested anyway.  For those who do, I hope some of them
are technically oriented enough, or know someone who is
technically oriented enough to type in:

  C:
  CD CRYPTO
  MD ARTICLES
  A:ARTICLES
  
Which will run the self extracting LHA articles archive. For
those who have email availble to them, can email either me,
or Sal, or the list and I will tell'em how to get at the
articles.  Unfortunatly most of the punch of the disk was in
the articles... But no use crying over what's done... I'll
just make sure that I'll be ready next year.

Anyone who wants a copy of this disk should let me know and
I'll send'em a disk image (made using the DIM Disk IMage 
archiver program which I've also written.)  Guys, please get
out there and start making a difference.  Being keyboard
cryptographers and keyboard politicians won't help our cause
at all!

I've lost about twenty hours of sleep overall on this project,
a day and a halffrom work, the price of printing labels,
cost of diskettes, etc.  A small sacrifice, and a really big
effect in the long run.  So come on, join in.