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Need To Know 2003-11-28: ">> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Since his retirement to an underground volcano hideout in Switzerland, briliant ex-Autodesk founder JOHN WALKER is rarely seen. Sunlight reaches him only when he throws his enemies into the lava pits, and releases small but - in the words of his arch-enemy Rudy Rucker - gnarly advice and utilities. The pre-Atkins geek health regiment of choice, the 'Hacker Diet' was one. The latest is JAVASCRYPT: a set of Javascript programs designed to do the fiddly work of a home-brewed crypto conversation on whatever machine you need it. Code book generation, AES encryption and (weird) textual steganography are all implemented in downloadable, browser-runnable applets. Being in Javascript, the code is slow, but source-viewable and locally run, which gets it double-points for the trad standards of trustworthiness. For those of you who believe in it, Javascrypt's non-standard formats also make it as securely obscure as you can get. Then again, do you really trust a man *known* to be an evil archcriminal mastermind? http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/ - ah, but that's just what he wants you to think http://www.4w8w.com/bookrucker4.html - the full story of his evil genius http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/example.html - and he has the cheek to use it as his book key!"

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