Erlkönig: Group Talisman

History

Group Talisman, also known as Talisman Research, was founded in 1986 or so by Christopher Alexander North-Keys and David Weinstein at the University of Texas at Austin in an attempt to gain access to more disk space than the 1 MB currently allotted to the average user at that time.

In the following years, four more people joined, and several others are currently associated with the group.

Our members have created several interesting pieces of software, including

• Ytalk - a more-than-two-user talk program.
• X++ - a complete reimplementation of the client side of X in C++.
• Talisman Color Database - 10762 named colors in RGBi for X11.
• Xcmdpanel and Xcmdmenu - part of the BSDI distribution.
• Xancur - a cursor animation program, also in BSDI.
• An 1.8 million word password cracking dictionary for use with:
• Password - which hamstrings attempts to use Crack.

We have also made extensive investigations into security problems with the coöperation of the University of Texas Computation Center Unix staff.

As a complication, other Internet-connection organizations have since taken names based on the same base word, giving a current list of:

• Talisman (domain talisman.org), which is us.
• Talisman Dynamics (domain tal.com)
• Talisman Group (in Colorado) (domain talisman.com)

Members

• Christopher Alexander North-Keys (picture)
• David Weinstein
• Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik (bloodsister by mutual adoption), also at her own website Sukipot
• Christopher Hudnall (picture)
• Harlan Shirey Britt Yenne IV (picture) (Palm Pilot work)
• Robert Mayoff (picture)

Associates

• Philip Glockner (picture)
• Dawn Alicia Patterson
• Sarah Wendy Herbst (picture)
• Robert Jones
• Alexander Vercingetorix von Kluge
• Noah Friedman (picture)