The Official Cypherpunks Screen Saver?

At 5:11 PM 8/17/95, Jim Gillogly wrote:

>I would hazard a guess that 90% of the compute cycles in the world are used
>running screen savers... this gives a <lot> of slack for people who would
>like to harness them to perform productive work like making points about
>the strength of security.

It would really be cool to have a screen saver that did useful work while
displaying pretty pictures.

Imagine a screen saver, maybe with code modules running in "After Dark,"
that updates the screen with keys tried...could be a nice demonstration of
bignums in crypto, etc. Every now and then the user would get lucky and
alarms would go off...

(Details: getting the modules to automatically divvy-up keyspace...or maybe
just let user pick his own key, or from a list, or whatever. A la the
"Chinese lottery" keycracking scheme, where set-top cable boxes (containing
computers) crunch on keys and try to match to signals sent over the
air...Schneier may have something on this in his book.)

Just a thought. The "Official Cypherpunks Screen Saver"? I'd rather have
this running on my Mac than have a t-shirt.

--Tim May

(Berkeley Systems, makers of "After Dark" for Macs and Windows, supports
third-party modules. Maybe the "Flying Toasters" could swoop down, pick up
a "key" laying on the "ground" and proceed to munch on it...the mind
boggles.)

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tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:

>At 5:11 PM 8/17/95, Jim Gillogly wrote:

>>I would hazard a guess that 90% of the compute cycles in the world are used
>>running screen savers... this gives a <lot> of slack for people who would
>>like to harness them to perform productive work like making points about
>>the strength of security.

>Just a thought. The "Official Cypherpunks Screen Saver"? I'd rather have
>this running on my Mac than have a t-shirt.

What an incredibly cool idea.  Go for it...
-- 
Simmons' Law Of Alcoholic Expectations:
  The best stuff always happens after the meeting, when everyone goes to
  the bar.
Correlary: Any meeting which doesn't adjourn to the bar isn't worth going to.