you're a female cashier or a corporate officer at Wal-Mart, age 18 and over, and you're not afraid to shed your inhibitions in front of the camera, Playboy wants you.

Playboy wants Wal-Mart women

] In response to widespread expressions of concern from the
] Internet community about the effects of the
] introduction of the wildcard, ICANN has requested
] advice from its Security and Stability Advisory
] Committee, and from the Internet Architecture
] Board, on the impact of the changes implemented
] by VeriSign. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory
] Committee is expected to release an objective
] expert report concerning the wildcard later today.
]
] Recognizing the concerns about the wildcard service,
] ICANN has called upon VeriSign to voluntarily
] suspend the service until the various reviews
] now underway are completed.

ICANN Speaks!

] This document contains a number of observations on
] the implications of the use of wildcards in DNS zones,
] and makes some recommendations concerning their use.

] The Robustness principle tells us that in some (not all) of
] the problems detailed above, both parties could be
] construed as being at fault. In some cases this is hardly
] surprising: spam filtering in particular, by its nature,
] tends to be extremely ad hoc and somewhat fragile.
] No doubt there are lessons here for all parties involved.

] The Principle of Least Astonishment suggests that the
] deployment of wildcards was disastrous for the users.
] It had widesweeping effects on other users of the
] Internet far beyond those enumerated by the zone
] operator, created several brand new problems, and
] caused other internet entities to make hasty, possibly
] mutually incompatible and possibly deleterious (to
] the internet as a whole) changes to their own
] operations in an attempt to react to the change.

] Proposed guideline: If you want to use wildcards in your
] zone and understand the risks, go ahead, but only do so
] with the informed consent of the entities that are delegated within your zone.

Internet Architecture Board - Architectural Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards

] I also have to admit that I was amused by the formal language
] of the KGB document. For example, it ends with a final
] paragraph which reads, "As a result of measures taken, the
] hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled." So now I
] and my friends are using that line in daily speech. Like if
] we go to a restaurant and argue about what to get on the menu,
] someone will call out, "The hostile plans of the adversary
] have been foiled!" :)

Elonka: Do you have the original Russian of this phrase? I would very much like to use this in normal speech, and I doubt I can translate it back and maintain the soviet flair.

RE: KGB Document in the Sanborn Files

The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and
lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Fcuknig amzanig, huh?

naet ltilte ticrk!

] WASHINGTON - The new peach-hued U.S. $20 bill will be
] introduced at U.S. banks and businesses Oct. 9, officials
] plan to announce today, Tuesday's Wall Street Journal
] reported.

New Peach-Colored $20 Bills to Make Debut Oct. 9 - Sep. 9, 2003

As part of my research into Kryptos and the other works of its sculptor, James Sanborn, I have been having art galleries all over the country send me copies of their files, with information that I can add to my James Sanborn webpage (http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/sanborn.html).

A few weeks ago, I received a couple envelopes with a complete set of copies of the files from a section of the Smithsonian Archive. These were from a series of "Jim Sanborn" folders, which had been received from one of his prior agents, the Nancy Drysdale Art Gallery.

As I dug through the files, I found a lot of the usual stuff: price lists, articles, pictures, exhibition catalogs and whatnot, but then ran across something that I *wasn't* expecting to see: A classified KGB document!

It appears to be a document from 1982, about the Soviet dissident Sakharov. There was no explanation as to why the document was in those art gallery files. My speculation is that perhaps Sanborn received some KGB documents from the CIA when he was doing work there, and he gave them to his agent to have translated. Perhaps some extra copies of the document got lost in the paper shuffle somewhere, and when they resurfaced, they were identified as, "Oh yeah, that's for Sanborn, put it in his file" and then they were forgotten?

My favorite theory is that the cyrillic from the KGB document may give a clue to the plaintext of Sanborn's encrypted Cyrillic Projector. Especially because that ciphertext is also on Sanborn's Antipodes sculpture, and Sanborn was quoted as saying that the cyrillic side was about "KGB Operations".

I also have to admit that I was amused by the formal language of the KGB document. For example, it ends with a final paragraph which reads, "As a result of measures taken, the hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled." So now I and my friends are using that line in daily speech. Like if we go to a restaurant and argue about what to get on the menu, someone will call out, "The hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled!" :)

Enjoy,

Elonka :)

KGB Document in the Sanborn Files

] Utilities Solve Everything. Just Producing Some Easy
] EnKryption.

Nice little straightforward puzzle that uses steganography. Good for a quickie brain stretch.

Steganography Puzzle

] An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by
] the US Department of Defense could blur the critical
] distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The
] work has also raised fears that weapons based on this
] technology could trigger the next arms race.

New Scientist: Gamma Bombs

I know this is lame, but after years of using unix machines this find exec syntax has never stuck in my brain. Recommending it to Memestreams will make it easy to find again.

Unix find - grep command