I've never been a big fan of MP3s, and I do my best to avoid them when
and if I can. But I must confess, oh loyal readers, that this latest
Rubi Con Newsletter is being scribed to the thumping ambiance of 131.8
megabytes of digital Moby. As has been said, I don't really like MP3s,
but I do like Moby, and so my compromise was to stream all data from
another box, effectively keeping the accursed files off-site, in a
manner of speaking. I usually like to write in silence, and we will
just have to see if the aforementioned thumping Moby does anything to
that infamously recondite puerility that is my writing.

As is evident from the third line, this is yet another Rubi Con
Newsletter. The sixth one, to be exact. This issue comes at the heels
of the last installment, even though we all know that number five will
be hard to beat. Number five was rather late, as many of you went out
of your way to inform me of, and so I could be seen as trying to
compensate for past transgressions via the timing of this issue. Read
what you will into my actions, but please afford me the dignity imbued
in a purely chaotic and random existence. I don't like the idea of
basing my life around the perceptions of others, although that is quite
clearly what I am doing with this newsletter.

Enough! Confusing personal introspection can wait until later. Right
now we have to get on with the newsletter. That is the pressing
concern. That is the NOW.

For those of you who are still reading, and as has been said already,
this is the sixth Rubi Con Newsletter. Each newsletter is my
contribution to the collective consciousness of Rubi Con devotees.
Recent happenings, current events, and timely issues are discussed with
great fan fair and enthusiasm. I also like to subject the masses to
stories and anecdotes which show us Rubi Con organizers as the cruel
and hapless bastards we are. Apparently it's a good formula, as people
seem to like it. As may be evident to some of you, this little
newsletter system has been growing in popularity since its inception.
The number of subscribers gets bigger with time, which is great for me
because that just gives me more people to psychologically terrorize
with my Prose Bazooka. "Whip it out," sings the rhythmic chanting,
"Whip it out... Whip it out." And because I'm only here to serve you,
the gentle reader, this is exactly what I shall do.

For the especially brave among you, we offer subscriptions to this
newsletter. Every time a new issue comes out, which occurs
approximately whenever I feel like it, it can be ferreted off to your
very own in-box where you can either read it, or use the added 800k of
pure text every month to impress your friends. Example: Open on a
heated exchange where overall geek supremacy is at stake. Geek A:
"...oh yeah? Well my email in-box weighs in at a whopping 8.6 megs!
Beat that!" Geek B: "Ha! You call 8.6 megs impressive? My email in-box
is so large that it cannot be properly expressed because the function
would exceed the limits of IEEE double-precision 64-bit floating point
values. So there, mother fucker." Then, to himself, "Thank you Jim. God
bless you and your Prose Bazooka." Feeling the bitter sting of harsh
defeat, Geek A goes and downloads hardcore pornography of the Internet. 

So you see? You only stand to gain from subscribing to the Rubi Con
Newsletter. It's funny, and the psychological scaring doesn't last all
that long! Email me at tantalo@mail.id.net to subscribe. Include some
reference to this newsletter and how cool you think I am to get
yourself included. 


EVERYONE STAND BACK A FEW FEET, AND YOU KIDS OUT THERE NEED TO PUT ON
YOUR SAFETY GOGGLES, BECAUSE IT'S TIME FOR ACTUAL CONTENT! YEAH! JUMP
UP AND DOWN!


1. This note is being written April 3rd, which puts us less than two
months away from Rubi Con. That being the case, there is only about one
month left to get advanced tickets. We will not offer advanced tickets
after April 28, so you only have a few weeks left if you are going to
buy them. You can purchase tickets at the door, of course, but they are
an additional $5.00 and I don't get the satisfaction of forcing people
through my stupid advanced ticket form. Due to some complaints we've
received, we will no longer be requiring a snail mail address to get
advanced tickets. I've all but abandoned my dream of issuing physical
Rubi Con tickets, and thus, we only need some vague indicator that any
given ticket holder is, in fact, who they say they are. 

The problem is that the hacker community, much like beany baby
smugglers or hired assassins, operates mostly on the energy derived
from paranoia. They go to great lengths to shield their identities and
otherwise act sneaky, and the predominance of black clothing is just
the beginning. What illustrates this better than anything else is the
pseudonym; the false name; the handle.

Virtually all hackers select pseudonyms for themselves, partly in the
interests of anonymity, and partly to make people think they're cool.
To this end, most people try to come up with dark and intimidating
sounding names like "Black Vector" or "Dark Chaos" or "Deathmobile" or,
well, I'm sure you get the idea. The problem is, of course, that there
are only so many combinations of darkish sounding adjectives like
"demonic" and computerish sounding nouns like "matrix." The end result,
as I'm sure you saw coming a couple hundred words ago, is a certain lack
of uniqueness within this hacker institution.

My only problem is that, because we will no longer be issuing physical
tickets, and thus have stopped asking for a physical mailing address,
there is no really good way of verifying that the person who is using a
ticket actually bought the ticket.

To put this into perspective, consider that physical tickets would
carry their own verification of authenticity with them: the fact that
they exist. Nonphysical "tickets" rely on us believing that the person
sobbing like a woman and pounding at the pearly gates of Rubi Con is,
in fact, an actual ticket holder. Anyone can come in and say that they
are "Shadow Rift" and that they already paid for a ticket, but what's
to prove that they are not one of the 11 other "Shadow Rifts" floating
about? Or for that matter, just someone hedging their bets that someone
named "Shadow Rift" bought a ticket and hasn't registered yet? My
particularly elegant solution was to institute a password-like system
into the equation. People signing up for advanced tickets will be asked
for their name or handle, which is the first part of the equation, and
then some manner of secret word or phrase which we can use to validate
that they are who they say they are. Thus, at registration, people can
come up and tell us their name and verify it with the password, at
which point the account can be "closed" and we can go back to drinking
and making fun of all the people playing "Magic."


2. In keeping with my love of smooth transitions between thoughts, we
shall now segue into the issue of Rubi Con games. The connection is
rather obvious, I should think. The bit about "Magic" moving into Rubi
Con games. Well, I thought it worked.

Anywho, I'm starting to hash out all the details for the Rubi Con
games. We will be having all kinds of cool contests and games with
which to eat up time and energy, and I'm looking for input.

There will be the proverbial "hacking" contests in which individuals or
teams compete with each other to root different boxes on our network. We
will set up specific computers with weird configurations and give out
prizes to whoever can get into them. Our version of this game will be
somewhat unique in that the Rubi Con Hack Contest will have only one
rule: there are no rules. You can do anything in the world to steal
access on the computers. It can be obtained through the network.
Physically stolen. Coerced out of Rubi Con staff members through sexual
favors or chocolate. Make sacrifices to Satan, or whatever else you can
come up with to help you along.

The only "rules" for the hacking contest are procedural. As in, the
goal of the game, and what you are trying to do. Also, winning teams
will have to get up and explain to people how they broke in to the
boxes before we give them their prizes.

We will also be doing a programming contest at Rubi Con. Participants
will spend some time writing a little program or whatever that does
something weird, cool, or entertaining but that messes with their OS of
choice. A "hack" as it were. Details remain sketchy, and it remains
unclear at this point what criteria we will use for judging or even
what we are looking for in these programs. Suffice to say, there will
be a lot of latitude for submissions, and we will just look for cool
programming that screws with operating systems. Look for cool prizes
and "props" of "mad" proportions.

There will also be a cool scavenger hunt for people with too much time
on their hands and access to live ducks. I'm putting together a list of
items for people to run around metro Detroit looking for. The winner
will get something cool as a prize, but will have to explain to the
hotel why they took their front door.

Anyway, there will be a few other games and contests, but I'm hoping
that some of you have a few idea for what we can do. Perhaps some
trivia games like the TCP/IP Drinking Game, ala DefCon. How about a
couple of rounds of paint ball? 52 pick up? Well, if you have a good
idea for a game feel free to pass it along to me. We'll give you credit
and whatnot, if you really want. Maybe we can let people who invent
games be on stage and give out the prize or announce the winners or
something. I'm not sure, but I'm confident that I can come up with
something clever. 


3. And while I'm on the subject of The Stage and other things involving
microphones, there are a few issues regarding speakers and presenters
that people may be interested in. Firstly, there has been a slight
change in the artistic vision for speakers at Rubi Con. We will be
trying to create a noticeable contrast between what is presented on
Saturday and what is presented on Sunday. Saturday will consist of big
events and speaker topics of an extremely broad nature. We will be
expecting very large groups and, thus, little or no audience
participation for most things. On Sunday we will be offering much more
specific and obscure subjects that we think will only be of interest to
a handful of people, if that. Given this, all Sunday speakers will
present in small group settings of no more than 30 or 40 people. With
this arraignment we hope to provide a classroomish atmosphere with
active participation from the audience on Sunday, and the feeling of
being in a single-minded mob on Saturday. It'll be cool. 

Also of particular note, on Sunday we will be offering six, count Ôem
SIX speaker tracks simultaneously. Six different rooms or partitions
will have sessions in them for about six hours straight. Speakers on
Sunday will be offering their sessions two times, in case you can't
make it to the first one. In the end there will be something like 18
different speaker topics on Sunday, which we hope proves to be overly
daunting to most people.

I should mention that if anyone out there would like to speak at Rubi
Con they should contact us SOON. Slots are filling up quickly, and we
want to get as many qualified people in as we can. We are looking for
people who can speak on technical topics of a hackerish or computerish
nature for an hour or so. Are you interested in anything obscure or
technical? Do you know anything well enough that you could teach it to
people? If so, you should seriously consider speaking at Rubi Con.
Speakers get "props" in quantities that could only be described as
"mad," in addition to being able to order around the lowly attendees.
Imagine: You: "Hey you! Yeah, you in the black t-shirt! Jump!" Loser
attendee: "Yes mas'er! How high, mas'er?" So you see, being a speaker
not only helps us out a great deal, but can be a lot of fun too. If
you're good at messing with cell phones or land phones, we can use you.
If you do Novell, we can use you. If you do NT, we can use you. If you
do anything especially geeky like lasers or EMP weapons, we can use
you. 

Also, if you think any of your friends might be capable, please point
them our way.


4. Faithful readers of the Rubi Con Volunteer Newsletter (you're
reading the Rubi Con Volunteer Newsletter right now, for the
less-than-faithful) know my love of weird segues and smooth shifts in
thought. This is not news. What I thought I might mention though, is
that I almost went 3 for 3 in the segue department for this newsletter.
First there was the reference to "Magic: the Gathering," which blended
into a note about some Rubi Con games. Then there was some mention of
people being on a stage, which shifted into a bit about speakers which,
obviously, would involve a stage in some capacity or another.

I hate to disappoint my adoring fans, but I slipped quite noticeably on
this last one. I had it all planned out too. I was talking about how
speakers might belittle and push around the Rubi Con attendees. Some of
you may even have chuckled at my use of the word, "mas'er." I was
planning on making yet another "Magic: the Gathering" joke, perhaps
something along the lines of, "...Speakers even get to sit with the
Rubi Con organizers in our special floating observation platform
designed especially to locate people playing ÔMagic: the Gathering,'
and then make fun of them..." So you see, I had a good juicy joke all
lined up and ready to go. After I used it I would have gone into a note
about our volunteer gatherings and made some similarly witty joke about
"Volunteer: the Gathering." Well, it would have been funnier in
context. But you can clearly see the potential for a quality segue
right there. From "Magic: the Gathering," right into "Volunteer: the
Gathering." Or maybe, "Rubi Con: the Gathering." I hadn't really made
up my mind yet, but that's not the point.

The only reason that I didn't go ahead with that transition was that I
had already used a "Magic" joke for my first one, and I was concerned
that doing it again might be cheating. I was only thinking of you, the
reader. Honest.

So for those of you keeping score, I am 2 and 1 on this newsletter. Not
too bad, considering the competition, but I went in expecting to sweep
this sucker. Oh well.

Anyway, the subject of this last note was supposed to be about the
volunteer gatherings we've been having lately. Basically, the idea is
to plant down somewhere with a few volunteers and hang out with them
for a couple of hours, try to get to know them a little bit, and teach
them how to properly wield a staple gun. All it is is an attempt on our
part to meet those people who have agreed to help us out during Rubi
Con, so as to make the actual conference run somewhat smoother. The
idea is that if we are somewhat familiar with the volunteers, we will
have some idea of what they are into, what they appear capable of, and
where we think we might want to put them. Not that it's a good idea to
make those kind of decisions based on a few encounters, but it is
better than nothing. Also, participation in these little volunteer
gatherings ends up being some indicator, at least for those of you who
are local to the area, of how much dedication there is to The Cause. We
are very interested in knowing who gives a damn, and who simply doesn't
care, and this appears to give some indication of that.

So for the local volunteers among us, please try to make it to our
gatherings. You will receive notice through email a week or more before
we get together, and you should try to make it if you can.

I might also take this opportunity to thank those of you who have taken
the initiate to actually show up. Your concern is duly noted. It might
also be stated that we have had noticeably more participation from
people who do not even live in Michigan than from those people who live
20 minutes away from where we meet. As has already been said, local
volunteers have little or no excuse for not dropping buy at least once.
At least try, for Christ's sake... That's all we're asking...


THAT'LL DO IT FOR TODAY'S NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN ALL GO BACK TO
DOWNLOADING PORNOGRAPHY NOW! SORRY TO DISTURB YOU LIKE I DID.


Jim Tantalo
Mentat Master of Assassins, Rubi Con 1999