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William Gibson's AGRIPPA Recovered and Revealed

Posted by kdawson on from the gripping-hand dept.

Bud Cook writes "While the text of William Gibson's elusive electronic poem AGRIPPA is widely posted around the Web, it has not been seen in its original incarnation — custom-built software designed to scroll the poem through a single play before encrypting each line with an RSA algorithm — since 1992. Today is the 16th anniversary, to the day, of the poem's initial release. A team of scholars at the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara used forensic computing to restore the code from an original diskette loaned by a collector and have placed video of the complete 'run,' as well as never-before-seen footage from the night of AGRIPPA's public debut in 1992, up on a Web site called the Agrippa Files. There's also a detailed essay documenting the forensic process, plus a mess of stills, screenshots, and a copy of the disk image itself."

7 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Could this be.. by contra_mundi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could this be the first DRM? It's much more draconian than the 3 activations and buy a new game from EA.

    1. Re:Could this be.. by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's much more draconian than the 3 activations and buy a new game from EA.

      And apparently just as ineffective.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  2. Re:So by Maguscrowley · · Score: 1, Funny

    If only most "first posts" did that ...

  3. The 2008 /. version of the poem ... by krou · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The 2008 incarnation of the poem consists of custom-built software that, when /. readers try to read the poem, it is encrypted in a weird Web-based algorithm that transforms the text into a message saying 'Error establishing a database connection'.

    --
    'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
    1. Re:The 2008 /. version of the poem ... by mazarin5 · · Score: 3, Funny

      "The 2008 incarnation of the poem consists of custom-built software that, when /. readers try to read the poem, it is encrypted in a weird Web-based algorithm that transforms the text into a message saying 'Error establishing a database connection'.

      Sorry, that was my fault. I was the first one to visit the website, and it consequently encrypted itself. I should have mirrored it.

      --
      Fnord.
  4. Re:Yawn by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    it is a 5th grade programming project

    So, let me get this straight. You were writing programs that RSA encrypt data embedded within its own executable in the 5th grade?

    Wow. And here I was just writing programs in LOGO that made a turtle move around the screeen. :(

    You were a gifted child, weren't you?

    --
    My blog
  5. I've studied Agrippa by benwiggy · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is only news if your opponent has studied his Agrippa.... which I have.