A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (1955/2001)

“Not long after research began at RAND in 1946, the need arose for random numbers that could be used to solve problems of various kinds of experimental probability procedures. These applications, called Monte Carlo methods, required a large supply of random digits and normal deviates of high quality, and the tables presented here were produced to meet those requirements. This book was a product of RAND’s pioneering work in computing, as well a testament to the patience and persistence of researchers in the early days of RAND. The tables of random numbers in this book have become a standard reference in engineering and econometrics textbooks and have been widely used in gaming and simulations that employ Monte Carlo trials. Still the largest published source of random digits and normal deviates, the work is routinely used by statisticians, physicists, polltakers, market analysts, lottery administrators, and quality control engineers. A 2001 article in the New York Times on the value of randomness featured the original edition of the book, published in 1955 by the Free Press. The rights have since reverted to RAND, which reissued a new edition of the book in its original format, with a new foreword by Michael D. Rich, RAND’s Executive Vice President.”

Originally published by Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1955
With a foreword by Michael D. Rich
Publisher Rand Corporation, 2001
ISBN 0833030477, 9780833030474
628 pages

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PDF (47 MB, updated on 2018-3-17)
PDF (a file containing the Table of Random Digits in plain text form, TXT)
PDF (a file containing the Table of Random Normal Deviates in plain text form, TXT)

James Grimmelmann: Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law (2012)

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II antiaircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast. There, they launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo’s founders were opposed to governmental censorship and control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to create a “data haven” for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other country. This Article tells the full story of Sealand and HavenCo—and examines what they have to tell us about the nature of the rule of law in the age of the Internet.

The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio, shotguns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skateboarding special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of State. But its implications for the rule of law are even more remarkable. Previous scholars have seen HavenCo as a straightforward challenge to the rule of law: by threatening to undermine national authority, HavenCo was opposed to all law. As the fuller history shows, this story is too simplistic. HavenCo also depended on international law to recognize and protect Sealand, and on Sealand law to protect it from Sealand itself. Where others have seen HavenCo’s failure as the triumph of traditional regulatory authorities over HavenCo, this Article argues that in a very real sense, HavenCo failed not from too much law but from too little. The “law” that was supposed to keep HavenCo safe was law only in a thin, formalistic sense, disconnected from the human institutions that make and enforce law. But without those institutions, law does not work, as HavenCo discovered.

Published in University of Illinois Law Review, No. 2, Vol. 2012
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 U.S. license
80 pages
via gnd

Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world’s smallest nation (by the author, March 2012)

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Cryptomorphosis (2012)

This is a basic intro to hacktivism, the surveillance industry, online anonymity, encryption, filesharing, and darknets mainly intended for activists, occupiers, and all others passionate about using code and information for social change or just avoiding the seemingly all-seeing eye of the authorities.

Published in January 2012
BY-NC license
54 pages

PDF
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