problem while trying to fetch 0.2.1.8-alpha

[coderman]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Scott Bennett <bennett at cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>     I appear to be getting an SSL connection error when using wget(1) to
> fetch 0.2.1.8-alpha using the links from the tor project's download page...

is it possible you have an old openssl cacerts package without the
newer ev signing and root ca's?
(you can tell wget to use an explicit trusted ca cert file if necessary)

does:
 openssl s_client -connect www.torproject.org:443 -showcerts

indicate anything unusual during session negotiation?

best regards,