Daniel J. Bernstein

Daniel Julius Bernstein (sometimes known simply as djb; born October 29, 1971) is a German-American mathematician, cryptologist, programmer, and professor of mathematics and computer science at the Eindhoven University of Technology and research professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of the computer software programs qmail, publicfile, and djbdns which he released as license-free software, later as public domain software.

Early life

He attended Bellport High School, a public high school on Long Island, and graduated at 15 in 1987. The same year, he ranked fifth place in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In 1987 (at the age of 16), he achieved a Top 10 ranking in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Bernstein earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from New York University (1991) and has a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley (1995), where he studied under Hendrik Lenstra.

Bernstein v. United States

Boers and Bernstein

Boers and Bernstein is an afternoon drive-time sports talk show on Chicago's WSCR hosted by former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Terry Boers and Dan Bernstein. The program airs weekday afternoons from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m CST. The pairing debuted in 1999 and originally aired from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., then aired from 10a-2p and 2p-6p until moving to its current 1p-6p time slot in 2009, making it the longest-running sports talk program in Chicago.

Segments

Who Ya Crappin'?

The program is best known for its signature segment, "Who Ya Crappin'?" that usually airs on Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. unless preempted. The segment takes its name from an interview that co-host Terry Boers did with then-Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka, in which Boers criticized Ditka for being resigned to his imminent dismissal, and Ditka responded that Boers previously chided Ditka by saying that having a fiery demeanor was "the wrong thing to do, so who ya crappin?" In the spirit of the initial confrontation, listeners are asked to expose—by calling, emailing, or TEXTING (you have to scream that)—a member of or beyond the sports world who has "lied, misled, told a half-truth, a complete falsehood" or, best capturing the essence of the segment, "engaged in an act of verbal hypocrisy." Participants try to earn the hosts' tacit or sometimes overt approval through well constructed and presented entries, with the key catch phrase concluding each entry. As in everything else on the show, Terry always defers to Dan on the callers' statements. Callers who fail to approach the exercise correctly (callers must focus on something someone said, not something someone did) or take too much time to arrive at the conclusion are taken off the air and chided for their inability to complete the task, usually with the gunshot sound effect previously employed during High Noon.