Chip Rosenthal

Photos

The question I get asked more than any other is, "Chip, are you a dog?" The answer is, "No!" and now I have the photographic evidence to prove it. photo of Chip teaching

The photograph on the right, taken August 2001, was part of a publicity shoot during a class I taught at a community Internet training program. The photographer is Donna Clancy-Goertz, who, I later learned, is a well known erotica photographer here in Austin. She didn't ask me to take my clothes off, so I didn't realize it at the time.

The photo below is not a wookie. This is a digital photo of me, taken in 1988. Facesaver Project: Winter '88 Usenix Convention, Dallas

You probably blew by that last sentence without realizing the significance. How many digital cameras had you seen in 1988? Right, probably none. This photo was taken as part of the FaceSaver Project, which catalogued attendees at several conferences of the Usenix Association. They had an awesome setup with a professional photographer, and we all got to go home with a laser printed sheet of stickers with our face on them. It was all quite nifty for its time.

Press Clippings

I am employing the Internet and other space-age technologies in an attempt to stretch my fifteen minutes of fame into a full half hour. So far, the project is going pretty well.

I talked to the Washington Post about the overwhelming magnitude of the spam problem. (March 13, 2003)
The Austin Chronicle published my photograph in an article about weblogging. The article got mangled pretty badly in editing, so you won't have any idea what that photo is supposed to illustrate. Fortunately, the director's cut is available online. (February 28, 2003)
I was involved in a reverse domain hijacking lawsuit which got a bit of press, particularly on the weblog circuit. I've posted a page that indexes all the media references. The Open Directory Project has a category dedicated to the lawsuit. (February 2002)
I talked to News 8 Austin about Free Internet Classes at Austin-Area Libraries. (October 6, 2001)
I've got a voter's registration card, and I know how to use it! Wired News talked to me about Election '98 on the net. (Novemeber 3, 1998)
Porn spammers took Chrysler for a ride. I talked to the Detroit Free Press about how that could happen. (June 18, 1998)
The Austin Chronicle awarded me "Best Usenet Watchdog & Helpful Guy" in their "Best of Austin '97 Critic's Poll". (They've got it listed down towards the bottom of the page.) The public record they mention is available on this web site. (September 26, 1997)
Just two weeks earlier, the Chronicle published my letter regarding the proposed closure of the Riverside Drive branch library. (My letter is the third one down entitled "Riverside Follies".) You can visit the Save Riverside page to find out the history of our successful campaign. (September 12, 1997)
I helped persuade Boston Globe technology columnist Hiawatha Bray that junk email ought to be outlawed. (June 6, 1997)

Résumé

Do you know the best part about posting your résumé on the net? Once you do, you start getting all this spam from headhunters who trawl the net looking for warm bodies to stuff in their databases. Hmmm ... wonder what would happen if I posted a vita for my cat?

Jan 2003 Update - The bright side to the dotcom bust ... the recruiter spam has trailed off significantly.

Bookmarks

You may take a gander at my browser bookmarks. This list is updated periodically. And (sigh) the more I keep switching browsers, the more periodic the updates seem to get.

Amazing believe it or don't fact: this list does not contain any links to the Dilbert Zone. Wow!

Collected Items

Here are some pieces I've collected off the net over the years. They are too good to throw away, but I'm not quite sure what to do with them. Sounds like perfect web page fodder, eh?

More than you could possibly ever want to know about the timing of bitcount algorithms. (C program source)
A Turing machine implemented as a vi editor macro! (3KB gzipped tar archive)
The official Usenet standardized bonehead reply form.
A guide to understanding Usenet help-wanted postings.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." (29KB GIF image)

Once upon a time, a long time ago, back when the web was cool, you actually could list everything new on the web that day. In fact, such a list existed. It was called the What's New page, a service operated (initially) by the NCSA Mosaic team, the folks who invented the graphical web browser. On June 1, 1994, it carried the first public announcement that this server was in operation.

PGP Key

Take my PGP key. Please.

Type:        pub
Bits         1024D
KeyID:       6BBCCFCD
Date:        2002-01-29
User ID:     Chip Rosenthal <chip@unicom.com>
Fingerprint:
    A85E 0AEE 37D0 136D 8547  AFFA C334 72FF 6BBC CFCD

I also have an older RSA key (ID 0x1B039351). However, because the encryption algorithm it uses fails the Richard Stallman purity test (patented in Europe), I can no longer use it.

Web Sites

I'm not a real web site designer, but sometimes I play one on the net. Here are some of the sites I've designed:

Of course, there is this very web site.
I designed the web site for the Riverside Library Internet Training Center.
The web site I ran at my old job appears to be in operation still.
MAPS Transport Security Initiative - The TSI web site educates mail administrators (and their managers) about the Internet spam relay problem, and provides them the tools to stop spam relay.
Some of my older sites, since retired, live in the Home for Crufty Pages on this server.

Unicom Systems Development