Re: About Themes for Fake Names

[Sandy Harris <pashley -at- storm -dot- ca>]

Peter wrote:
> 
> Dick Margulis wrote:

> >
> > Here's a thought: Why don't we create an OFFICIAL TECHWR-L LIST OF FAKE NAMES ...

Not a bad idea.

I rather like the imaginary MIT students used in Abelson, Sussman &
Sussman
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs": Ben Bitdiddle,
Alyssa P.
Hacker, Eva Lu Ator, ...

I sometimes use Anne O'Nymous.

Cryptographers and coding theorists conventionally use Alice and Bob,
which
can be conveniently abbreviated as A and B. If there are more than two 
players, use Carol and Dave.

There's a hilarious biography of Alice and Bob on the web:
http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html

Bruce Schneier extends this with a bunch of names for other roles:
	Eve the evil eavesdropper,
	Trent the trusted third party,
	Mallory the malicious person interecepting messages,
	...
There's a list in Applied Cryptography. I'd suggest anyone writing about
security, coding theory or crypto use that. Some of your audience will
already know the characters.

One might also use "J Random User", "J Random Administrator", etc.,
based
on the classic "J Random Hacker":

http://tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Appendix-B.html

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