It is with violently trembling fingers and a cold, nervous sweat spreading
across my forehead that... It... happens again. I realize the undeniable
necessity of what I must now do. Not for the emotional betterment of myself,
nor those that I love and hold dear. Not even for the advancement of those
under who's toil I now write. Indeed, only under the exquisite simplicity of,
and for no other purpose than that it *must happen.* And so with that I humbly
present to you, the gentle reader, yet another installment of the Rubi Con
Volunteer Newsletter. The only volunteer newsletter in the whole Midwest.

As is always the case, this newsletter comes to you by way of one Jim
Tantalo, a pale young man in the backward hole that is Plymouth Township. Mr.
Tantalo can be contacted at tantalo@mail.id.net in order to bestow him with
praise, love, and adoration. But don't feel restricted in those things which
you may bestow on Mr. Tantalo, he is also currently looking for chocolate
chip cookies and recordings of music by a band which refers to themselves as
"the Sugar Cubes." Additionally, because this newsletter system is of Mr.
Tantalo, those people who wish to attach themselves to it and receive his
periodic expulsions of four-page text documents should send an email message
to tantalo@mail.id.net indicating as such. For those who fear that Mr.
Tantalo may be slowly taking over their brains by way of patterns of subtle
verb usage which over time implant bizarre subliminal commands directly into
your hypothalamus and seize the little knot at the base of your spine which
controls all your sexual and involuntary bodily functions, then send some
manner of negative message to Mr. Tantalo, rejecting his mad scheme to assume
total control of your brain. Likewise, any alterations of email address should
also be directed to said email address. Recordings of music from bands
referencing themselves as "the Sugar Cubes" can be sent to, Jim Tantalo, 1087
William, Plymouth MI, 48170.


GUYS, HOLD ON TO YOUR GIRLS. AND GIRLS, JUST HOLD ON!! IT'S WHAT YOU'VE ALL
BEEN WAITING FOR... ACTUAL CONTENT:


1. Currently under debate by various concerned Rubi Con organizers, and
possibly of interest to you, is whether or not we should be providing time
for established, commercial computer entities rather than what are often seen
as unrecognized, underground hacking institutions. An example: should we
pursue an organization such as Microsoft in an attempt to get them to send
several public relations officials or programmers to speak at or participate
in Rubi Con, or should we attempt to win the hearts of organizations like
2600 or L0pht? Strong arguments for both exist, but for me the question comes
down mostly to whether or not people would be turned off by such commercial
organizations. The issue is not whether or not we could convince Microsoft to
show their face, because we couldn't, it is only that giving time to companies
as structured and established as they are would send a message to attendees
and non attendees alike that we recognize their existence and respect their
significance in the universe. The problem with that, if no one minds me
getting too analytical, is only that the hacker community is an *underground*
one, and not at all dissimilar in that respect to other counterculture
subgroups such as punks or bikers. These underground groups have a tendency
to reject many of values capitalism and commercialism are based on such as
profit motives, public relations departments, predatory business practices
(that's you, Ron), and an active use of legalistics. To see my point one only
has to look at some of the organizations or axioms that have come out of the
hacker community: freeware, The Hacker Ethic, "information wants to be free,"
and the intentionally non-malicious nature of most hacker attacks. Given this,
we must decide whether or not people would feel betrayed by the organizers of
Rubi Con if it provided an opportunity for these companies and organizations
to present their side of the argument. That is, for purposes of open
mindedness I would like to hear what they have to say, but would other people
see it as evidence that we, that Rubi Con, was embracing those corporate
values as well?

Obviously, if there is one corporate value we actively embrace it is an
almost paranoid concern as to how we will be viewed by the population at
large. But this should come as not surprise, after all, we *are* trying to
sell something here.

Please don't think that we are not pursuing these underground hacking
institutions, in fact many notable references have already pledged their
commitment without us even asking. These true hacking organizations and
talented representatives of the hacking community will end up providing the
majority of our content, actually. Commercial organizations, on the other
hand, are valuable to us for several insidious reasons and a handful of
legitimate ones. For starters, if people look at our references and see that
we will be showcaseing representatives from Apple, SGI, Ameritech, Media One,
Cisco, 3Com or other large, monolithic computer companies than they would most
sureedly be struck with the notion, inaccurate though it may be, that Rubi Con
is actually an established event and is more significant than previously
assumed. The downside is that if we managed to persuade those sort of
organizations to participate, and we offer no assurances that we will be,
than Rubi Con ends up being more like the COMDEX which we are trying to
distance ourselves from, and less like the DEF CON to which all other hacker
conferences are judged.

Our interest in these large organizations is only for purposes of open
mindedness, really. "Information wants to be free," and all that other
nonsense. But we worry about the repercussions of our invitations and the way
people will interpret that action.

We would like to hear from people on this issue, if they have an opinion. If
you have any thoughts on the subject send an email to me or another
organizer. Of course, this rather elegantly brings me around to my second
issue...


2. The Rubi Con mailing list is capable of sustaining two-way communication.
That is, I retain and maintain the ever-growing list of subscribers to this
mailing list, but people should feel free to reply to the entire group with
their own comments. This is supposed to be a real mailing list, after all. My
biweekly musings can't be *that* entertaining.

So that said, if people want to get the entire group involved deeper into an
issue or tangent of some sort, they should feel no restrictions against such
an action. All you have to do is reply to this message, append or replace my
"thoughts" with your own queries and statements. Your new message should, and
I remind everyone that I do not, in fact, know what the hell I'm doing,
redistribute across the entire list and inundate every last person with your
contributions. And so now, without a proper segue in place, we move on.


3. I wish to remind the members of our Legions of Terror, also referred to as
our "volunteers," that those who may have registered as being part of our
volunteer group can not be counted as Official Volunteers until they go
through my complicated and bureaucratic Official Volunteer Signup Process.
Not all of those people who had pledged their allegiance prior to the
implementation of the new signup system have formally registered, and while I
have no problems with people changing their minds about committing to Rubi Con
1999, if you want to be a volunteer you *must* go through the new process,
regardless of what may have been originally expressed regarding our volunteer
policy! People will not be allowed to register as a volunteer at the door, so
do it now if you want to sign up.

The appropriate form is located at http://www.id.net/~tantalo/volunteer.html
within what I remind everyone is a *transitory* website, but more on that in
a bit.


4. In the glory days of Rubi Con, back in the autumn of its youth, there
existed a small band of nameless patriots who scurried about like squirrels
foraging for and stockpiling the sort of ultra k-rad and hyper-elite items
that we would need for prizes during the Rubi Con Games. They called
themselves the Rubi Con Prize Patrol, and operated under the shadowy auspices
of the Rubi Con Black Ops Division, a substructure within the Rubi Con Central
Command chain of operation that is so secretive that even us organizers didn't
know about until very recently. 

The Black Ops Division has a history of elusion, actually. Although often
sought after by private citizens and government agencies, no one has yet come
close enough to shine the piercing light of exposition onto its shadowy
designs. Many thousands of FoIA requests from private citizens, an 18 month
congressional probe, exhaustive investigations by both the New York Times and
the Washington Post as well as the painstaking examination of high resolution
spy satellite images taken of South Eastern Michigan all proved fruitless.
The FBI threw up its hands in frustration, and the NSA spent nearly twice
their annual operating budget in only the first three months of their tedious
investigation. The President was about to declare martial law in the region
when it was decided by officials that madly running through the dark being
chased by invisible monsters was not an appropriate use of government
resources, and the pursuit of the Rubi Con Black Ops Division was put on
hold. Of course, the Black Ops Division has a few subsidiaries that stick
their necks out somewhat more than perhaps they should. Among them the Rubi
Con Propaganda Division, and of course, the Rubi Con Prize Patrol.

The Prize Patrol, as I started off trying to say, was first established in
early October of 1998 after it became apparent that we would be needing cool
prizes to give out to winners of contests or just to hurl at unsuspecting
members of the audience. We started to amass great stores of weird old
hardware, of which Ron "The Machine" Ulko has always been king. We were also
getting donations of other cool items that people would find worthy as
trophies for the time and talent which brought them to the top of the "pile."
But then sometime in November, a certain car accident rendered "The Machine"
inoperable, and the Prize Patrol had to be moth balled. But we want people to
know that we are now attempting to restore the Prize Patrol to its former
state of opulence and glory, and would benefit greatly from any donations
they could offer for The Cause.

We've been getting good responses from various individuals already, but if
you have anything that might seem like it could be given away as a prize and
you don't mind getting rid of it we could really use it. We're looking for
weird old hardware or other interesting items of some redeeming value.
Hardware, software, t-shirts, books, stolen telco items like signs and vans
and telephone polls, or any other cool weird junk. As Dark Cube likes to say,
donators will receive "mad props" and other such public recognition for their
contributions.

Anyway, if anyone has anything they think they might be willing to donate or
acquire for the Prize Patrol please drop us a line. We might end up being
able to give donators a special t-shirt or something, depending on how we end
up doing our shirts. That's another thing that we're working on right now, and
with any luck we'll be able to end up with lots of different shirts for
different situations, but we'll see. And, of course, speaking of t-shirts,
that brings me right to my next point...


5. I think shirts may end up being a more important aspect of Rubi Con than I
at first thought. They will probably end up being among the most important
souvenirs for people after the con, and will serve as a symbol separating the
people who actually attended the damn thing, from those who only *wish* they
had. Also, and as an obvious added benefit for us, people walking about in
Rubi Con 1999 shirts for a year after the event will serve as a certain kind
of advertisement for next year. Along those lines, we will soon be printing
out 25 or 30 shirts to give away to various people as a means to advertise
for this year. We are especially looking for people who do not live in the
area so that they might, "spread the word." We're going to reserve about 10
or so for people in this area, but if people in surrounding states and other
parts of the country and even the few people in Canada want a cool Rubi Con
shirt to wear around for us then send us a message indicating as such. Your
address might also be helpful for this project. Details are very sketchy
about this right now, we do not know how many shirts we will be getting, who
will get them, which design we will be using, or when they will be available,
but we are certain that we want lots of people to act as walking billboards
for us. Just in case my offer ends up being more popular than I think it will
be, we will be operating on a first come, first served basis. I will, as
always, be accepting bribes if people want to jockey for position on this. 

The design we will probably end up using will appear similar to the large
green logo after the splash page on the website, and with a date and URL
somewhere on it. We're not asking people to wear these things around all the
time or anything, but just to have something with which to publicly present a
concept and demonstrate involvement. We'll let people know where this idea is
going if it ends up being canceled or drastically altered in the coming days.


6. And so here I am again, stranded at the cusp of the sixth segment without
a decent segue or transition in sight. It might seem as if I painted myself
into a corner with this last one. I can only hope and pray that it doesn't
confuse people too much, having to bridge this chasm of thought on their own.
Anyway, I just wanted to let people know that the web address we have been
using for the past few weeks will be retired in the next few days, or
whenever the clowns in the Internet Connectivity and Distribution Department
at the RCCC get their act together. At this point we will either be serving
our site locally off of a 500k coaxial connection, or end up taking advantage
of an offer made by TDYC! to host for us. Either way, we will be located at
http://www.rubi-con.org as soon as we get going. The current website at
http://www.id.net/~tantalo/rubicon will continue to operate, but we will
attempt to direct people to the new site as vigorously as possible. Anyway,
stay tuned and be prepared to adjust your bookmarks accordingly. The mailing
list address will also be migrating to something along the lines of
newsletter@rubi-con.org or something like that. Prepair yourself.


THIS CONCLUDES THE RUBI CON VOLUNTEER NEWSLETTER FOR TODAY. GO HOME, HUG YOUR
WIFE AND KIDS, AND JUST BE HAPPY THAT IT'S OVER FOR NOW.


Yeah, but did you actually *read* the whole damn thing?

Jim Tantalo
Director of Operations, Rubi Con 1999
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to