What’s with all the to do about the NSA leaving cookies? It was fun to watch the story grow from a small post on Google Watch all the way to the NY Times, but, really, is it a story? There are very few websites that don’t cookie their users. And let’s not forget who this story concerns – as R. A. Hettinga said on the Cypherpunks list: “Exactly what part of “spook” do people not understand at this stage?”
I wonder if this would have made it any further than Google Watch had the NSA not previously been in the news.
Please, folks, tell Firefox to ask you every time a website tries to cookie you, and deny it most every time. Particularly when you’re visiting government sites.
While it’s a little too 1980s sounding for my taste, Gary Numan’s Exile Extended isn’t a bad album. It’s a something of a industrial-goth-rock thing. Sort of Blade Runner, sort of The Cure, sort of Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk. Most of the songs would be at home on The Crow soundtrack.
The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.
The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.
Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.
But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details.
The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student's uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.
But when Dr. Williams went to the student's home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.
...
Last week I placed an order with Eden Foods (more on what I ordered later). On the 19th, I received a notification from them that my order had shipped and a FedEx tracking number. Actually, the notification said that the order had shipped on the 15th (one day after I placed my order) – I don’t know why they waited so long to inform me. I went to FedEx’s website to track the package and, to my surprise, it was scheduled for delivery that same day.
Despite the scheduled delivery, FedEx drove right past the house that day without delivering anything. At about 9PM that night, FedEx stopped saying that it was scheduled for delivery on the 19th.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered that my package had actually been “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” since 6:31AM on Dec 17th. About this time I decided that they had probably lost the package and didn’t want to admit it. Why else would the package be sitting on the truck for delivery for over 3 days?
The following day, the 20th, the package was still “On FedEx vehicle for delivery,” but there was no scheduled delivery. I saw FedEx drive past the house again.
Today, the 21st, the package was finally delivered, but FedEx still says the package is “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” and has no scheduled delivery.
They really need to work on their tracking system.
Leaded Unleaded is an Indymedia documentary, freely available online, about a military riot in Beirut, Lebanon in May 2004. I don’t remember hearing anything about this as it happened last year so, for me, it was quite educational.
Apparently, it’s a piece of cake to walk out of the NSA with classified materials.
Dents shown in NSA armor
At the National Security Agency, removing classified
material from its secured Maryland complex may not be as hard as it
should be.
The surprising revelation from federal prosecutors came as the
government brought to trial a former agency employee accused of
illegally storing highly sensitive NSA computer manuals in the kitchen
of his home, which was raided by the FBI in January 2004.
The employee, Kenneth W. Ford Jr., 34, of Waldorf, was charged in U.S.
District Court with possessing classified information and making a
false statement on a job application for a government contractor.
Attorneys made their closing arguments to the jury yesterday
afternoon. Jury deliberations are expected to resume this morning.
Given the secretive nature of the nation's largest intelligence
agency, the trial has provided a rare look inside NSA's Anne Arundel
County complex at Fort Meade.
Evidence showed surveillance cameras that didn't record, a lack of
security guards and a policy of less-than-routine searches of
employees' cars. The accused, a former Secret Service agent who once
guarded the White House, was reported by a woman he met on an Internet
dating site who turned out to have an extensive criminal record.
NSA is one of the state's largest employers, with an estimated work
force of 15,000 people. The exact number is classified. Analysts focus
on eavesdropping, tapping into electronic communications around the
world. They live in a closed society where secrecy is a way of life.
The acronym has been laughingly referred to as No Such Agency.
"It's not called the National Security Agency for nothing," Assistant
U.S. Attorney David I. Salem told jurors, adding that the agency held
"some of the most sensitive secrets of the United States of America."
Like pages torn from a spy novel, testimony showcased the
cloak-and-dagger nature of the agency. Some NSA witnesses testified
anonymously, using their first name and initial of their last name.
Heavily edited documents were shown to jurors, who then had to swear
they would keep mum about them. Ford worked for the agency for more
than two years, but the exact nature of his job was not revealed
yesterday.
But two weeks of testimony in open court has shed some light on some
alleged gaps in NSA security procedures.
At least one witness testified there were no security guards at the
"tech" building where Ford is accused of removing the classified
documents, according to federal prosecutors. The surveillance video
cameras at the building didn't work either, according to court
testimony.
Vehicles leaving the secured NSA compound are searched randomly but
rarely, one witnesses said. And it was entirely possible, prosecutors
said, for an employee to have a key to open a gate to a rear loading
dock, carry boxes of classified documents into a waiting pickup truck
and drive the material home unnoticed.
"There isn't enough [security] to stop you from taking out [documents]
if you want to," Salem said. Ultimately, the NSA has to trust in the
integrity of its employees, he added.
...
I went to the Winter Solstice Celebration in Seattle Center today (I don’t know why they couldn’t get the date right). The fire dancing wasn’t very impressive. There was one person with a flaming sword, which was cool, but, other than that, they just spinned staffs around their heads and had poorly synchronized drummers.
But, the World Meditation Ensemble were cool and I got fudge, so it was worth it.
The Senate today refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.
I emailed my Senator yesterday, asking her to shoot it down.
Last night I finished reading Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America by Dennis McNally (perhaps better known for his biography of the Grateful Dead), a book which I picked up for a few dollars this year at Bumbershoot.
I never knew Kerouac had such a depressing life. In fact, it was pretty much over by about 1960. He sure was one strange antisemitic, christian-buddhist, hippie hating, drunk.
The City of Lost Children is a cyberpunk film about a mad scientist who kidnaps children to steal their dreams, in hopes of slowing his aging. It’s French, and it’s excellent. In fact, if it wasn’t for the drugs, strippers, and murder, it would be a good children’s film. Go watch it.
From what people have been telling me, it’s a whole lot of work – should be interesting.
I packed by bag tonight and I have a feeling it’s going to get really heavy after the first hour or so, but most of the weight is water, so there’s not much I can do about it, save drink.
What I’m wearing:
1. Wigwam INgenius hiker socks
2. ECWCS polypropylene long underwear
3. UnderArmour ColdGear mock-t
4. Acrylic watch cap
5. Polarmax zip mock-t
6. Normal cargo pants
7. 5.11 HRT Waterproof boots
8. Best Defense ECWCS GORE-TEX Pants
9. Normal snow jacket
10. Patagonia Lightweight Capilene Glove Liner
11. Blackhawk Hellstorm ECW gloves
12. Patagonia Neck Gator
Everything in layers. Everything but the pants are moisture-wicking, synthetic fibers.
About a week ago I went back to using Electric Sheep, a screensaver which uses your idle CPU cycles to generate animated fractals – the collective dream of sleeping computers.
As a government employee, you've heard it all before * lock your computer screen, protect your computer password, shred unwanted government documents, be careful about what is discussed in unclassified phone calls and e-mails, and practice vigilance in all matters related to workplace security.
Government employee? These are the bare essentials that any one who’s in contact with technology for more than 10 minutes a month should practice. Of course, you’d replace “shred unwanted government documents” with “shred everything but the newspaper”, “unclassified phone calls and e-mails” with “anything that isn’t encrypted with a 2048 bit key”, and “workplace security” with “personal security”.
As of this very minute, my blog has been running for 1,462 days (4 years and 2 days). That is, my blog has been running on some sort of automated software for that long (blogger.com lead to b2/cafelog which lead to wordpress). If you count updates via static html, you can add another couple years onto that count.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been watching Michael Badnarik‘s 8 hour Constitution Class available on archive.org. It’s an excellent video series that introduces you to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights – what it says, and how the government has bastardized it. He focuses on privileges vs. rights, property, the legality of the IRS and Federal Reserve, inflation and deflation. I’m not even a Libertarian (although I agree with him on more than one issue) and I’m giving two thumbs up.
I’ve finished reading R. U. Sirius’ Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, as per recommendation of Douglas Rushkoff. It’s an excellent book, which covers, as the title suggests, counterculture from the early counterculture of Socrates, Tao and Zen to the Enlightenment, Transcendentalism, Beats, Hippies, Punks, Hackers, Ravers, and even mentions S.P.A.Z.. The second part of the book (it’s split into three parts – defining counterculture, pre and post Hiroshima) reads more or less as a condensed history of the Western world.
It seems Western‘s proxy is down, or something else is preventing me from accessing the internet without going through Tor.
Update: Apparently the problem was thus: “An upgrade of a piece of equipment, during which the netmask was incorrectly defined in such a way that certain IP addresses (for example google, yahoo) were thought to be on the local network (i.e. No Route to Host as people saw).”
Apparently my phone called 911 a little bit ago. (At least, that’s their story.)
The phone vibrated once in my pocket. When I took it out to look at it, it was in a call. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hello?
911: This is 911. Do you have an emergency to report?
Me: No...
911: No, this is 911. Do you have an emergency to report?
Me: No.
911: Did you call 911?
Me: No.
911: Who had your phone?
Me: Me.
911: Where was it?
Me: In my pocket.
911: We received a call and then it sounded like buttons being pressed.
Me: It must have dialed you itself.
911: So you have no emergency to report?
Me: Nope.
911: Do you know how to lock your phone?
Me: Yes, but when you lock it, it can still dial 9 1 and 0, noob.
911: STFU noob. You can disable that.
Me: I'll look into it.
911: Do you have an emergency to report?
Me: No. Bye.
I’ve done some searching online and I’ve yet to find anything about how to disable the 9, 1, and 0 keys when the phone is locked. There’s also no mention of it in the manual, nor can I find any option in the phone’s settings (It’s a Sony Erricson t616). If anybody has any ideas, feel free to enlighten me.
The call log is where it gets interesting. It shows me receiving a call at 5:23PM from 1-425-551-30800 (that extra zero is supposed to be there and the area code of this phone is 425) and then, after that, me placing a call to 888888 at 5:23PM.
I’ve often noticed that the call log on this phone will reverse calls, so it’s possible that I dialed 888888 before the 551 number called me, but, in any case:
1) I never dialed 911.
2) I cannot use the 8 key when the phone is locked.
3) That number that called me is pretty strange looking.
Odd occurrences all around. I think those shifty bastards called me.
Today, I went down to The Savvy Traveler in Edmonds to attend a seminar on Thailand.
It ended up being a bunch of old people talking about 4-star hotels, which was slightly depressing, but they mentioned what sounded like a few interesting places to visit, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Today was the last day of medic training. We went over athletic injuries, fractures, splinting, dislocations, heat and cold injuries, lightning, anaphylaxis, and altitude illness.
Overall the course was designed for expedition leaders and guides. It focused on what was wrong with the patient, deciding if it could be easily fixed, and, if not, maintaining the patient until they could be evacuated. So there wasn’t a huge amount of healing involved, but I think I can stop most people from dying.
I spent a good hour trying to figure out how to get Wordpress excerpts to work decently only to find there’s a more button in the Quicktag bar that does exactly what I want. Oops.
I need to check the Codex before Google next time.
I’ve finally watched New Rose Hotel, the movie based on William Gibson’s short story of the same name. It’s a really good movie and even manages to compare to the short story, although it really isn’t Cyberpunk. I don’t know why it isn’t more popular with the masses.
I got there at 8 (when the doors were supposed to open) and it took about an hour and a half to get in, during which time it was cold and I had to pee. While I was in the mob outside, I think I about died of second hand smoke (inside it was second hand pot and rogue kissing booths).
I must have looked like a dealer because people were asking me for drugs all night, starting with the guy running the parking lot asking me for ecstasy. Normally they try to sell them to me.
Oakenfold was the highlight – I haven’t listened to him in years. Crystal Meth could have been better.
The projected visuals were very disappointing (although the green laser was pretty sweet). They were the same at all areas and started to repeat about 45 minutes in. Not only that, but they weren’t that creative in the first place – mostly just clips from old horror movies.
I suppose I also should mention that this was my first indoor rave. All in all I think forest and desert parties are better. PhoenixFest was $35 (as opposed to Freaknight’s $40), had twice as many stages, was 5 nights, and had way better visuals. Not to say I didn’t enjoy Freaknight, but give me tents and geodesics over parking garages and warehouses any day.
I saw Doom yesterday. It was pretty bad, but the FPS part entertaining – they should have cut out the first hour or so of the movie and skipped straight to that.
All in all, they successfully bastardized the game.
I’ve been messing around with Jabber a lot the past few weeks. My new account is now pm@pig-monkey.com (the same as my email), as opposed to the old pigmonkey@pig-monkey.com.
I can also be found at pigmonkey@jabber.ccc.de (sometimes).
I have all my backups restored and most additional software installed, but I’m still having two rather large problems. One, the Firestarter tray icon will not launch at login and two, running SSH via Startup Programs is broken.
All in all, I’m not as impressed with 5.10 as I thought I would be – it does feel a little rushed. That said, there are many improvements over 5.04 and none of the problems I’m experiencing are enough to make me pop the Slackware disc back in.
If you’re currently running 5.04, I’d recommend holding off upgrading for a few weeks till some patches come out.
I thought Breezy Badger was supposed to be released on the 15th, not the 13th. Oops.
I downloaded the iso this morning, which was interesting – I’m always worried now that whenever I wget large files at high speeds, I’m going to get another call saying that I’m eating up 25% of the bandwidth (this time it looks like my average bandwidth consumption was only about 2.1Mb, so I’m safe).
I’ve been planning on using this new release as an excuse to format instead of just upgrading with apt, so I did a backup during class.
Since Dreamhost doesn’t support any sort of secure SMTP, I’ve been tunneling it through ssh for the past month or so.
ssh -f -N -L 9999:mail.myserver.com:25 myserver.com -l user
9999 is the local port, mail.myserver.com is the mail server, 25 is the remote port, myserver.com is where your shell is, user is your username on the server. Then, just tell Thunderbird (or whatever mail app you use) that your smtp server is localhost:9999
I have this run at bootup, so that all I have to do is type in my key when I boot up and all my mail is encrypted (Dreamhost does support IMAPS).
You could, of course, setup your ssh account to have no key, but this is a rather large sacrifice of security (as soon as the attacker acquires your private key, he has access to your ssh account)– especially if your primary computer is a laptop, like mine.
I seem to have acquired a cold, so I decided that this was the perfect time to try the random drugs I picked up on a street corner in a nondescript brown paper envelope.
Ok, so it was a street corner – it was red square. And the women who gave it to me was wearing a lab coat (at least she looked like a doctor).
They’re supposed to be a homeopathic cold remedy. The envelope says it includes Echinacea, Calendula, and Chelidonium. We’ll see if it works.
I picked up a Max Headroom poster today. The guy who was selling the Max Headroom poster on ebay also happened to have a Network 23 patch, so I bought that, too.
I’ve finally finished reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo. It’s been on my bookshelf for over a year, and I’ve been reading it for about a month. For some reason it was really slow reading for me, but overall it is a good book – if slightly dated (pre Seattle and pree 9/11).
I went home today and picked up a couple posters I’d found on ebay. One is Equilibrium and the other is Max Headroom.
I’ll take some pictures tomorrow.
I’ve been here for over a week now and I’ve yet to discuss the network. Surprising.
When you first plug into the network, the DHCP server (66.165.10.35) gives you a 10.242.. IP. This is for unregistered or quarantined computers (if someone is spreading a virus to all the poor Windows users, they’d be bumped to this network, which has no internet access and limited network access).
Opening up a web browser will take you the registration page, which basically just asks for your name and student number, throws that into a database with your MAC address, and gives you a 66.165.. IP, a registered address. (It should be mentioned that this is a public IP – “a few ports are filtered” but I don’t know which.) Windows users, though, have an extra step (so don’t spoof your user agent when trying to register). They have to download the ResTek Security Detector (not based on NetReg), which checks to make sure you have all the latest Windows updates and an updated virus scanner (it doesn’t actually scan your computer for viruses). If you lack either of these things, the proxy server (webproxy.restek.wwu.edu) will allow connections to certain addresses such as Microsoft, McAfee and the like (I smell a security hole), so that you can get the latest updates on your 10.242.. computer. The school will also provide you with a free copy of McAfee Anti-virus, if you’re lacking.
Students who wish to use dialup can dial extension 5255 from their modems and enter their Novell username (the scheme for the username – which is the same as the name for the @cc.wwu.edu email the school gives out – is in the form of lastnamefirstinitial. I think if you have a long last name it is only the first six letters of your last name. I don’t know if first initial is included in that case) and password. This is the same username and password students use for their email, myWestern, blackboard, lab computers, etc.
I assume students can access the dialup off-campus, but I don’t know what the full phone number is. Most numbers here seem to be 360-788 or 360-650. Somebody should do a scan.
Each student is allowed “as many IPs as you need”, but only one per MAC address. Unused IPs are eventually unregistered. You are allowed to run an access point or router in your room, simply spoof your already registered MAC.
During your normal online browsing, you are encouraged to use the proxy server (running Squid), which does no filtering, but caches data so that others can retrieve it quicker. This is done through an algorithm called Least Frequently Used with Dynamic Aging (LFUD), which “keeps popular objects in cache regardless of their size and thus optimizes byte hit rate (file size) at the expense of target hit rate” (more info here). The caching, of course, implies that they have the capability to log – and do probably log quite a bit. But the sheer amount of traffic must make it impossible to log everything, or even start to filter through that which they do log. (They claim that “the content accessed by individual users is not monitored.”) Port scans and other questionable data probably go unnoticed. High bandwidth traffic – such as me downloading 10gb at 1505.97kb/s – might set off a few flags. Public and private statistics are available to view your daily, weekly, and monthly bandwidth consumption and bandwidth usage for the residence halls and the entire campus.
There’s another range of addresses I haven’t mentioned, which is the academic network. I believe they’re 140.160... I think these addresses are also given out to those connecting via the wireless, but I’ve yet to try that out (it’s either the 140 or 66.168..). Apparently the main difference between the academic network and the normal 66.165.. is that the academic is more heavily monitored.
As far as bandwidth goes, there are no caps. Everybody has full access to the 28mbit pipe (this is lowered down to 3mbit during the summer), but bandwidth prioritization does occur via Packeteer. This is the most interesting part of the network. Peer2peer traffic, instead of being outright banned, receives the lowest priority, making it a rare thing to see more than 4kb/s. This is understandable since p2p does take up a lot of bandwidth and the school wants to discourage students from committing copyright infringement, but it’s also really annoying – it makes it impossible to download the latest linux iso torrents and the like (yes, there are legitimate uses for p2p). Changing the port of your p2p server won’t subvert the system, as Packeteer actually analyzes the traffic. Proxying the traffic through something like Tor may work, but that’s really cruel to the Tor network and, as Tor is rather low latency itself, you won’t see much improvement in speed. The easiest solution is to simply tunnel your p2p connection through ssh to an off-campus computer, but this obviously isn’t very feasible for most students. I’ve yet to come with any other ways to get around the prioritization. Any ideas?
Another interesting note: there’s a whole lot of RAdmin traffic on the lan (port 4899).
Here’s the output of a traceroute from the campus network to this site:
Here’s the output from an nslookup done on my public IP:
Server: 66.165.10.35
Address: 66.165.10.35#53
Non-authoritative answer:
65.2.165.66.in-addr.arpa name = student-x-xx.na.reshall.wwu.edu.
Authoritative answers can be found from:
2.165.66.in-addr.arpa nameserver = viking.wwu.edu.
2.165.66.in-addr.arpa nameserver = kulshan.restek.wwu.edu.
2.165.66.in-addr.arpa nameserver = henson.cc.wwu.edu.
henson.cc.wwu.edu internet address = 140.160.240.12
viking.wwu.edu internet address = 140.160.242.13
kulshan.restek.wwu.edu internet address = 66.165.10.24
Here’s the output of a whois (done from nwtools) on my public IP:
This Registry database contains ONLY .EDU domains.
The data in the EDUCAUSE Whois database is provided
by EDUCAUSE for information purposes in order to
assist in the process of obtaining information about
or related to .edu domain registration records.
The EDUCAUSE Whois database is authoritative for the
.EDU domain.
A Web interface for the .EDU EDUCAUSE Whois Server is
available at: http://whois.educause.net
By submitting a Whois query, you agree that this information
will not be used to allow, enable, or otherwise support
the transmission of unsolicited commercial advertising or
solicitations via e-mail.
You may use "%" as a wildcard in your search. For further
information regarding the use of this WHOIS server, please
type: help
--------------------------
Domain Name: WWU.EDU
Registrant:
Western Washington University
Computing Services
P. O. Box 29480
Bellingham, WA 98228-1480
UNITED STATES
Contacts:
Administrative Contact:
Robert Schneider
Western Washington University
Computing Services
P. O. Box 29480
Bellingham, WA 98228-1480
UNITED STATES
(360) 650-3502
bobs@wwu.edu
Technical Contact:
J. Scott Williams
Western Washington University
Computing Services
P.O. Box 29480
Bellingham, WA 98228-1480
UNITED STATES
(360) 650-2868
scott@wwu.edu
Name Servers:
VIKING.WWU.EDU 140.160.242.13
HENSON.CC.WWU.EDU 140.160.240.12
APPLE.UW.WA-K20.NET
Domain record activated: 14-Apr-1987
Domain record last updated: 19-Aug-2002
(The ‘x’ that appear in my IP and hostname are censored, because I feel like it. The first ‘x’ in the IP corresponds to the first ‘x’ in the hostname and the ‘xx’ in the IP corresponds to the ‘xx’ in the hostname.)
I’m looking forward to the 2.6.14 kernel. Both FUSE and Centrino support are now in the kernel, which should make life a little easier (although, due to licensing, the centrino firmware cannot be included in the kernel).
The site was down today, as was all of Dreamhost, due to the power outage in L.A.
Serious electricity problems in the Los Angeles area have taken our entire network off-line.
The backup power for our data center initially failed, but is expected to be back up soon. Our technicians are waiting for the go ahead to start flipping switches. General power in the Los Angeles area is still out and we have no information about when it will be restored.
Today I finished reading The Black Pullet, a book which discusses various amulets and rings that give the bearer power to become invisible, conjure spirits, punish their enemies – you know, the usual. An entertaining read.
I just got back from watching Transporter 2. It was good, but not as good as the first. The cool oil-slick-trick made a guest appearance, but there was nothing as neat as the two guys with the axes in the small hallway in the first movie.
The plot was predictable a tad predictable.
The new Doom trailer was sweet. I’m liking the first person view they’re doing. Apparently it is more of a ride than a movie. I hope they have it at the Cinerama.
Speaking of trailers, there was one for some movie about a life-long gamer who moves in with his grandmother, or something like that. It’s really depressing how mainstream geeks and gamers are. Most people in the movie seemed to be wearing Jinx t-shirts.
…I’m going to have to start finding even more obscure clothing.
I’ve just finished reading John Shirley‘s Crawlers. I picked it up expecting it to be a cyberpunk book, but it turned out to be more horror than anything else. It takes about 200 pages to get actually get into the book, but I ended up enjoying it. It reminds me a lot of some of Sean Kennedy‘s fiction.
Last night I completed reading Sybil Leek’s Diary of a Witch. Although I’m not a fan of Sybil’s writing style, the book is very interesting. It’s part biography, part rant. She covers everything from her time living gypsies in New Forest to her thoughts on reincarnation.
I’ve been progressively cleaning my room for the past couple days – tackling a different section each day. Yesterday I got rid of 4 old computers that hadn’t worked for years, plus an old laptop that was probably almost as old as I am. I’ve recycled thousands of pieces of paper and shredded at least that much.
I just started watching Welcome to the Scene. It’s a pretty good show. Entertaining, at least.
It’s about a group of pirates. The group encompasses everybody from the source at the dvd plant to the person who writes the nfo for the release.
I really, really hope that the people who made the show have nothing to do with the real pirate “scene” because, if they do, they’re all a bunch of noobs and don’t stand a chance against the MPAA/RIAA.
They share files via ftp. That’s right. Good old, unencrypted, cleartext, ftp.
They communicate via email. No, not PGP/GPG encrypted. Oh, and the email addresses are linked to their real names.
They chat via irc. No, not i2p irc. Just plain old, cleartext irc.
Their browsing is far too fast for them to be proxying with Tor, or anything like it.
Did I mention they use FTP?
After all my technical griping, it really is a good show. Go download it.
Last week, while I was looking for something I could put on my poop at MutantFest to help break it down, I discovered Tea Tree Oil. I’ve been using it in my toothpaste for a while, but never really realized what the stuff was.
Tea Tree Oil is a natural antiseptic, germicide, antibacterial, fungicide. Many people use tea tree oil for: athletes foot, cold and flu, oral thrush, cold sores & canker sores, tooth ache & gum infections, ringworm, candida, head lice or louse, cleanser additive, gum problems, mosquito bites, bug repellent, cockroaches, deter flees, mouth ulcers, herpes, cuts, abrasions, after shave, sunburn, anorectal or vaginal yeast infections, unwanted body odors, acne, toe nail infections, and many other uses.
The first day of MutantFest, Tina managed to acquire a bug bite above her eyebrow about the size of a quarter. It was huge. When we got back to camp, she put a couple drops of my tea tree oil on it and, after a couple hours, it was practically gone. I also used it as a bug repellent, since I hate putting that Raid stuff on my skin.
I just got back from the Autonomous Mutant Festival. Well, sorta.
Directions to the festival weren’t announced until 5PM on the 5th (before that all we knew is that it was probably somewhere in the Randle, WA area) which means that, with traffic, we didn’t arrive till about 10:30PM. Long story short, we basically drove five miles past the festival because it was too damn dark to see anything.
I don’t recommend driving in a forest that you’ve never been in at night – especially not one that has crazy bats that fly at your windshield, ala Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
On the 7th we attempted to walk to the festival, but only made it about 2.5 miles (up a mountain, I might add). After that, Tina wanted to drive to it, but driving in a national forest is just depressing (sorta ruins the one-with-nature vibe), and I was perfectly happy just camping.
So we started home this morning because Tina had monstrous bug bites and was getting bored. We did see the festival on the way out, but it didn’t look like there were more than a couple hundred people. Overall I’d say that Mutant Fest was a bust, but camping was fun.
I’ve just finished reading Sean Kennedy’s The Bloodstained Rabbit. I should probably start off by saying that I’m not a big fan of the horror genre – in fact this is probably the first real horror novel I’ve read. That said, I liked the book. A lot.
I don’t think it was so much of a horror book as it was a thriller. (Although it has all the makings of a good horror: nazis, the occult, lots of gore, interdimensional beings, etc.) Sean did a great job with keeping you tense (the scene with the Indian hunting party....I burned through that a sentence a second because of the suspense).
It could have used more editing, though. There were plenty of obvious typos that probably would have been fixed if one more pair of eyes had looked it over before printing.
I’ve just finished reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s one of those books I should have read a while ago, but kept putting it over because of the story that Kesey only wrote it to fund Further. Whether that’s true or not, it’s still an excellent book.
Hey folks: greenjon here.
Let me say first that I just got into town, and I didn't read all the emails
about sites. I might but have not yet. If someone already found a dope ass
site then great! we have two!
So then, instead of going to a ten day meditation thingy, I went to scout in
Gilford Pinchot NF in Washington. Let's get oriented (these are not "directions":
Going North on the 5 from Portland about 68 miles, one comes to 12 East. Going
East on 12 for about 50 miles, one comes to the delightful town of Randle.
Randle is kool cuz it's the HQ for the local part of Gilford Pinchot NF. THey
got pie, too, and you can smoke inside. They even have "DSL" at the biblioteque...
Anyway, from Randle you can enter the Forest and jump on the 23. About 40
miles later you take a little road a mile off the road. This splits at a T.
One end of the T ends at The Gravel Pit and the other does not : )
The Gravel Pit is about the largest I have seen; they quarries purpley rock
there. There are a few piles of gravel left behind (big ones), and between the
size and the existing piles I can easily see 3 soundsystems sharing it
(SPAZ/5lower/Oly?).
The other part of the T goes a short way and then splits in FOUR!
Counterclockwise, these (very short) spurs goto: 1): a cul-de-sac with trees
in the middle; difficult to picture a full camp here but Droid or Tea Camp
might work. 2)a trail that goes about 1 mile down to a big ass lake (more on
the lake follows). 3) a proper clearing. 4) steeply up to a little spot (droid
or tea camp?).
The path down to the Lake is about a mile, and has one very large meadow off
of it. Unless people wanted to hike serious gear, this is not a sound system
spot but it'd be fun camping and perhaps a good circus spot. Other camping is
not totally obvious, as this is heavily forested, but I think there will be
enough camping (I didn't bush whack/explore the woods as much as freaks with
tents will...).
The Lake is BIG (not as big as some in washington, but big). There is free
camping there, and a parking lot, and the spur road it is on also connects
with the 23. There is plentiful parking on this road.
okay then, the cafe I'm in is closingl, just turned out the lights, so I gotta
run. If people are still scouting, power to you, and if you turn up a site
that can top a Mt. Adams view and a big lake (etc), then do get the word out
and we can decide what to do. I may scout a little more, or not, but I think a
good time will be had at the spot down 23.
greenjon 510-384-5096.
I’m happy.
Randle appears to be roughly 3 hours south of me and weather.com’s 10 day forecast puts it in the low to mid 80F. Plus, there’s trees and a lake, which is a nice improvement over PhoenixFest.
I made it back from PhoenixFest. It was good fun. The days were hot, but bearable and the nights were cool. During the day, we hung out in the shade with our neighbors Jeremy and Dale, who were coffee camp. Most everyone stopped by at one point or another for coffee, so we met a lot of people.
As far as music, there wasn’t really a schedule, so I have no idea who I was seeing and who I liked. I can say that the Combustion stage (mostly psytrance) and the Ambient Room (who’s geo-dome Tina and I setup) were my favorite places. Dragontech was good, too.
Pictures are up here. I didn’t take a lot, since during the night it was too dark and I think flashes ruin the vibe. There is a bit of video, though.
It’s all PG. If you want to see topless women lighting their breasts on fire, you’ll have to go next year.
A lot of the burners there seemed to think that PhoenixFest was superior to Burning Man because it was smaller and calmer – more of a community. I was hoping for a little more visual art from Phoenix Fest, like you see in pictures of Burning Man, but Phoenix ended up being mostly a five day rave.
Speaking of alternatives to the playa, I also found out about the Shambhala Festival in B.C.. Apparently a lot of folks who think Burning Man is too corporate now are heading up there. Perhaps I’ll go next year.
All in all, it was an excellent Festival. I plan on going again next year.
Yesterday I started and completed reading Aleister Crowley‘s The Book of the Law (also known as Liber AL vel Legis)– although I really shouldn’t say it is Crowley’s since, as the story goes, it was dictated to him by a spirit called Aiwass.
The book describes the philosophy of Thelema and is something of a holy text to two cults that I’ve been looking into recently: the Ordo Templi Orientis and Argenteum Astrum.
It ended up being your basic cult material. The basic theme of the book is the one law, “do what thou wilt”.
All peaches and cream, right?
Well, it would be, but they’re not a big fan of folks who don’t subscribe to Thelema.
Refuse none, but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors... Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; & destroy them utterly. Swift as a trodden serpent turn and strike ! Be thou yet dealier than he ! Drag down their souls to awful torment : laugh at thei fear ; and spit upon them !
Let the Scarlet Woman beware ! If pity and compassion and tenderness visit her heart ; if she leave my work to toy with old sweetnesses ; then shall my vengeance be know. I will slay me her child : I will alienate her heart : I will cast her out from men : as a shrinking and despised harlot shall she crawl through dusk wet streets, and die cold and an-hungered.
With my Hawk's head I peck at the eyes of Jesus as he hangs up the cross.
I flap my wings in the face of Mohammed & blind him.
With my claws I tear out the flesh of the Indian and the Buddhis, Mongol and Din.
Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels : for her sake let all chaste women be utterly despised among you !
Not a friendly bunch, eh?
But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty ; ye are brothers !
And it ends with this, The Comment:
Do whalt thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
The study of this Book is Forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.
Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.
Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.
All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
The priest of the princes,
ANKH-F-N-KHONSU
Freetekno is a cultural movement present in Europe and North America. Freetekno soundsystems or tribes form in loose collectives, frequently with anarchist philosophies. The soundsystems gather in warehouses, fields, abandoned buildings, forests, or anywhere else that a party can be rocked. Freetekno parties are often held on abandoned private property or in city centers. This sometimes leads to clashes with the police, as was the case at the 2004 Czechtek festival, and many smaller parties all around the world at various times.
Come to the Autonomous Mutant Festival! Be a Gypsy.
Every week, your plan limits will grow as follows, at
absolutely no charge:
L1: 20MB disk and 1GB bandwidth each week!
L2: 40MB disk and 1.5GB bandwidth each week!
L3: 60MB disk and 2GB bandwidth each week!
L4: 80MB disk and 2.5GB bandwidth each week!
So, the longer you host with us, the more you've got! AND, we're so nice
we've even retroactively grown your limits based on how long you've been
hosting with us already (up to a one year max)! If that's not something
to blog about, I don't know what is!
I now have 10860.000MB of space and 350GB of bandwidth.
Josh hooked me up with some cool software called Synergy. It allows you to control multiple computers, through the network, with one keyboard and mouse.
Sort of like a virtual KVM, but each computer still requires its own monitor. It’s a wonderful, cheap way to get a multiple monitor system.
I use it at work to control my XP workstation from my laptop.
Oh, you probably already guessed this, but the version in Ubuntu’s repository is old.
I changed my mail client from Ubuntu’s default Evolution back to Thunderbird. Evolution was really nice when it worked – but that was rare. It would always disconnect from the IMAP server and do all sorts of funky things. One would think that the software would improve after being bought by a big corporation like Novell. Oh well.
Apparently when Synaptic automatically runs to check for updates, it uses 100% of the CPU. That’s slightly annoying. Especially when you’re not online.
Nick, Tina, and I saw Batman Begins last night. It’s a good movie. The best of the bunch, I’d say.
Batman had no nipples, but Katie Holmes made it a point to show hers whenever she had the chance.
The end annoyed me.
According to IMDB, they’ve written three scripts. At the end of Begins, Gordon tells Batman of a robber who left a “calling card”, which just so happens to be a joker. So they’re planning on having the Joker in the next movie? That disappoints. Jack Nicholson was great as the Joker in the first movie. I can’t think of any actor who can follow him up. Plus, it just wouldn’t work.
I assume that the three Batman Begins films are going to be sequential. In the first Batman film, we already saw Jack turn into the Joker. So how could he be in Batman Begins 2? We’d have to jump over the first Batman film.
Also, at the end of Batman Begins, Batman has never heard of the Joker. If I remember correctly, in the first film, Batman is present when Jack turns into the Joker.
It just won’t work.
I wish they’d pick a new criminal; one who hasn’t been put in a film before.
Phoenix Festival 2005
Waking The Dragon
July 21 - July 25
Klickitat County, Wa
www.phoenixfest.com
(Feel free to spread this on to your loved ones and anyone who may be
interested)
Tickets: www.phoenixfest.com/tickets.html
Hello Kids, here again with another Phoenix Festival Announcement!
At this point we pretty much have all of the nuts and bolts in line for the
fest and things are looking quite amazing...
MUSIC:
We are all quite thrilled about the diversity of the performances lined up
this year. Most of you have likely heard about the national and
international acts; Eat Static, Cosmosis, Tipper, Chris Carter and Nick
Taylor. Without a doubt with these folks present, the stages are going to
erupt on a nightly basis.
However, that is not all. The local representation this year is
unparalleled, never in the festival's 5 year history has there been so much
Northwest diversity and skill gracing the various stages. Some of the live
acts and DJs you can expect to see are: KJ Sawka, Reggie Watts & all his
homies, Surrounded By Ninjas, Solovox, Auditory Sculpture, Marmalade,
Bumblebee, Variform, Dahlia, AtoMikDoG v.S. novaTRON, Miss Solar System,
Holy Sons, King David, Grails, pr0teus, Specs One, Synth Club, Mandii, Try
My Cabbage, Jerry Abstract, Muschi, Lara, DJ Advent, Eddie, Osiris and so
many more. The list is phenomenally long and reads like a who's who in the
burgeoning NW music scene.
To see it for yourself checkout: www.phoenixfest.com/performance.html.
STAGES:
Though we would love to take credit for such a stellar lineup, it really is
the stages who are responsible for putting together such an amazing roster
of talent. Speaking of the stages, each one has its own theme and direction
programmed and dialed in practically to perfection...
The stages are:
COMBUSTION - The Phoenix Festival simply would not be what it is without
proper representation from the NW Psytrance community. The stage this year
is going to take things to new heights, featuring performances from Eat
Static and Cosmosis, this area is going to knock your psychedelic spandex
trousers clean off.
DRAGONTECH INC - The Breaks stage is back! These kids are coming out again
in full force to kill it with the sickest breaks from a keen selection of
locals and a couple of headliners.
UPTOWN - This stage will have a foundation in hip-hop and turntablism. The
music genres will consist of down-tempo, afro-cuban jazz, jungle, IDM, and
two very special laptop specialists.
FREE CASCADIA - Focusing primarily on local Seattle talent, Free Cascadia
will embody the musical equivalent of the political diversity its name
implies. Expect live bands, DJs and Live PAs covering the spectrum from
Techno to Rock, Downtempo to Electro, Hip Hop to IDM and all points in
between.
SPIRALNITE - This stage is being run by an extremely enthusiastic Seattle
based crew, Spiral Nights is going to feature headliners from Seattle and
Portland. Expect a focus on House, Jungle, Live DnB and Techno. These folks
are bridging the gap between the Seattle and Portland Electronic Dance
Communities.
Of course, the performances at Phoenix Festival are not all about music. If
you've been before we know that you've come to expect far more and this year
is certainly no exception!
99 EYES:
We have invited some very special and bizarre folks to come out this year.
999 EYES ov Endless Dream CARNVIAL SIDESHOW ov thee DAMNED will be running
their cirkus 24 hours a day throughout the duration of the event. Daytime
shows will be very much on the whimsical side, but as the sun sets be
prepared for the darkness to set in. Presented in association with
International Maggott Theatre, Societas Insomnia, KatabatiK
Metacommunications Platform, the Day ov the Zombie, Summon Creature Theatre,
and the Sour Mash Hug band, this will be something you will not soon forget.
Over 100 anarcho-punk style circus performers hailing from troupes across
the united states will converge on the fest for a sweet injection of the
bizarre.
SATI:
Sticking with tradition, we have asked a group to come out and perform for
you each night at midnight to help get things warmed up. Sati will be
conveying the story of the Phoenix and The Dragon this year. They will be
working in conjunction with several members of the cirkus to blow your minds
with a nightly performance guaranteed to light up the night.
THEMECAMPS:
And now, we come to another favorite element of the festival -- the theme
camps. A lot of the old favorites are back to serve as faithful distractions
as you wander around the festival. Potluck, ChickenHed, Novatron Lounge,
Camp Cooler and 1derland will be out in full force as well as many many
others. And if you are interested in a themecamp yourself, there is no need
to register, come on out and do your thing -- we welcome you with open arms.
However if you would like to register, we'll list you on on our website.
Just go to the themecamp page here: www.phoenixfest.com/camps.html.
Well folks, to begin with lets talk about the location.
We are moving the Festival back to Klickitat County. The space is about 2
hours from Portland and 3 hours from Seattle.
We moved out of Lake Bronson after an 11th hour issue with the contract and
also because we came across a piece of land in Klickitat that is much more
suited to the needs of the festival.
We are very excited about this new land because it has never been used, it
is almost centrally located between Portland and Seattle, it is extremely
secluded, has a wide variety of topographical features and is quite large.
And really, it just has that Phoenix Festival feel. Something we were
starting to think Lake Bronson would not be able to provide.
Needless to say, we are quite eatstatic over the new location!
To tell you the truth, I’m a little sad. I was looking forward to the nudist colony. I mean, how many people get to go to a nudist colony (with a good excuse)?
We do not cover loss resulting directly or indirectly from:
Ordinance or law; earth movement; water damage from flood, surface water, wave, tidal wave, overflow of body of water, water which backs up through the sewers or drains, water below the surface of the ground; power interruption; negelect of the insured to all real means to save and preserve property; war, including undeclared war, civil war, insurrection, rebellion, revolution or warlike act, and discharge of nuclear weapons.
Finally! I’ve watched all the episodes of Max Headroom, except episode 6 from season 2.
I’ve had these files sitting on my harddrive since something like September.
I think I’m about to hit Timothy Leary overload, and I’m barely halfway through this essay.
This is an experiment in mind formation, in-formation, forming, controlling, operating your mind and your brain, using digital techniques to overload, scramble, confuse, unfocus your mind.
Set in the late 21st century, a subculture of humans have emerged who have been modified genetically by a vampire-like disease (Hemophagia), giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence, and as they are set apart from "normal" and "healthy" humans, the world is pushed to the brink of worldwide civil war (a war between humans and hemophages) aimed at the destruction of the "diseased" population. In the middle of this crossed-fire is - an infected woman - Ultraviolet (played by Milla Jovovich), who finds herself protecting a nine-year-old boy who has been marked for death by the human government as he is believed to be a threat to humans.
Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, the same guy who wrote and directed Equilibrium.
I’ve started listening to BinRev radio again. Yeah, I stopped a while back. There’s so much radio out there nowadays that it just sorta got shoved to the back burner. So now I’m on episode 76, which was aired in 2004. Depressing.
I went into Pearle Vision today. When I was walking around the store, I accidentally bumped one of the computers. And what did I see? The XScreenSaver password prompt! Yes, Pearle Vision is running Linux. And not just in the backroom, these were the actual workstations out in the showroom. Cool stuff.
8: Pedestrians are
a) irrelevant.
b) communists.
c) a nuisance.
d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
The correct answer is a. Pedestrians are not in cars, so they
are totally irrelevant to driving, and you should ignore them
completely.
I’ve finally finished cleaning and organizing all my data on my computer and started transferring it over to my laptop. My laptop’s 100GB hard drive now only has 15G free, and I still have roughly another 100GB that hasn’t been transfered yet.
I think I’m going to buy a new 200GB hard drive and stick it in an external usb 2.0 enclosure I have. That should give me a little room to grow.
I watched Blue’s Clues yesterday.
Apparently throughout the show you find 3 clues, left by Blue, and at the end put them all together to form some sort of game that Blue wants to play with you.
The clues yesterday were water, a hose, and a ladder.
I was stumped.
It ended up that Blue wanted to play firefighters with me, but damn– kids these days must be smart. I might have gotten it if they had added in a helmet. Or a person.
In a few years Blue will probably have these kids solving Kryptos.
According to Anti-Polygraph, Albuquerque FBI are saying they won’t use polygraph tests anymore.
AntiPolygraph.org has learned that FBI Special Agent Leroy Chan, a polygrapher assigned to the Bureau's Albuquerque Field Office, has recently notified his chain of command of his decision not to conduct any more polygraph examinations. His decision is based on serious concerns regarding the validity of polygraphy. It is to be hoped that Special Agent Chan will not be subjected to reprisal for his morally courageous choice, and that other FBI polygraph examiners who share his justified concerns will follow his example of bravery, fidelity, and integrity.
SA Chan is not the first FBI polygrapher to disavow polygraphy. Before him, Supervisory Special Agent Dr. Drew C. Richardson, a scientific expert on polygraphs assigned to the Laboratory Division, expressed his misgivings both to FBI management and in sworn testimony before the United States Senate:
http://antipolygraph.org/hearings/senate-judiciary-1997/richardson-state ment.shtml
Paypal, for no apparent reason, suspended my account last Sunday:
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the
PayPal system. We recently noticed the following issue on your account:
We would like to ensure that your account was not accessed by an
unauthorized third party. Because protecting the security of your account
is our primary concern, we have limited access to sensitive PayPal account
features. We understand that this may be an inconvenience but please
understand that this temporary limitation is for your protection.
For your protection, we have limited access to your account until
additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any
inconvenience this may cause.
To review your account and some or all of the information that PayPal used
to make its decision to limit your account access, please visit the
Resolution Center. If, after reviewing your account information, you seek
further clarification regarding your account access, please contact PayPal
by visiting the Help Center and clicking "Contact Us".We thank you for your
prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security
measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any
inconvenience.
Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department
I had to change my password, change my secret questions, and confirm my street address (which involved waiting till Thursday for snail-mail). My account is back to normal now, but they’re still bastards.
Last Sunday I watched episode 13 - Lost Tapes (or episode 14 - Lessons, depending on who you ask) of Max Headroom. I now know where The Matrix’s Agents come from.
Today I finished reading Eric S. Nylund’s Signal to Noise. I’ve had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the book, but, in the end, love prevails and I’d recommend it to any cyberpunk fan.
Although it’s not your average cyberpunk. I think of cyberpunk as generally being placed in a sci-fi setting, but not focusing much on the actual science fiction. And, of course, cyberpunk has your post-apocalyptic/dystopia themes, too. Signal to Noise is leaning more toward normal science fiction – they have aliens! – and ends with the apocalypse, instead of taking place in it.
It ends in a cliff-hanger, too. Bastard.
All in all, a good book. I think Eric Nylund spent a tad too long at Microsoft, though. The whole book revolves around corporations and business.
A few weeks ago I finished reading Timothy Leary’s The Politics of Ecstasy. It’s an ok book. Less attention on the philosophical/mystical side of the psychedelic experience, and more on the real-world stuff. You know, politics.
Thanks to this post on LQ, I discovered that Firefox and Thunderbird have been added to slackware-current. Sweetness. Now I just hope that the next version ships with 2.6 as default so I don’t have to upgrade whenever I install.
Yesterday I discovered that by tuning my Grundig Mini World 100 PE shortwave radio to about 1200kHz, I could pick up what was playing on my computer. Freaky. I’m thinking it must be some sort of TEMPEST effect.
CSO magazine is conducting a survey in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service and CERT Coordination Center, the 2005 e-Crime Watch. The purpose of this project is to uncover electronic crime trends. We respectfully request your help in completing an online survey. Please be assured that any information you provide is confidential and your responses will be used only in combination with those of other survey respondents. This survey should take no more than 15 minutes of your time. Please click on the following url to begin the survey or copy and paste the url into your browser:
http://www.rresults.com/062865/index.cgi?l=3
Thank you in advance for your help.
Sincerely,
Walter Manninen
President
CSO magazine
W. Ralph Basham
Director
United States Secret Service
Richard Pethia
Director
CERT Coordination Center
There’s a nice Cedega Tweaking Guide over at LinuxGamers. It’s meant for Half-Life 2, but most of the tweaks apply to all games. I did the following
Some distributions need to set up a System-Variable. First, you have to examine if it is set.
cat /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout
No output means, that this Variable isn't set.
As root:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout
This setting only survives up to the next reboot. To set up this Variable permanently, open your /etc/sysctl.conf and append
vm.legacy_va_layout = 1
VIDEORAM
Don't forget to set Videoram and AGPVertexRAM to the values of your graphics card. Read the description in the config file and in the release notes of Cedega.
The best value for Videocards with 256MB of Videoram is:
"VideoRam" = "256"
and
"AGPVertexRam" = "128"
Use adjusted values after this pattern for cards with less memory.
ALSA
If you have ALSA then use the winealsa.drv of Cedega. It will give you a small FPS boost.
Open ~/.transgaming/config or ~/.point2play//config and edit the [WinMM] section to
"Driver" = "winealsa.drv"
Can one narrate time -- time as such, in and of itself? Most certainly not, what a foolish undertaking that would be. The story would go: "Time passed, ran on, flowed in a might stream," and on and on in the same vein. No one with any common sense could call that a narrative. It would be the same as if someone took the harebrained notion of holding a single note or chord for hours on end -- and called it music. Because a story is like music in that it fills time, "fills it up so nice and properly," "divides it up," so that there is "something to it," "something going on" -- to quote, with the melancholy reverence one shows to statements made by the dead, a few casual comments of the late Joachim, phrases that faded away long ago, and we are not sure if the reader is quite clear just how long ago that was. Time is the element of narration, just as it is the element of life -- is inextricably bound up with it, as bodies are in space. It it also the element of music, which itself measures and divides time, making it suddenly diverting and precious; and related to music, as we have noted, is the story, which also can only present itself in successive events, as movements toward an end (and not as something suddenly, brilliantly present, like a work of visual art, which is pure body bound to time), and even if it would try to be totally here in each moment, would still need time for its presentation.
That much is perfectly obvious. But that there is a difference is equally clear. The time element of music is singular: a segment of human earthly existence in which it gushes forth, thereby ineffably enhancing and ennobling life. Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative's imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light-years. A musical piece entitled "Five Minute Waltz" lasts five minutes -- this and only this defines its relationship to time. A story whose contents involved a time span of five minutes, however, could, by means of an extraordinary scrupulosity in filling up those five minutes, last a thousand times as long -- and still remain short on boredom, although in relationship to its imaginary time it would be very long in the telling. On the other hand, it is possible for a narrative's content-time to exceed its own duration immeasurably. This is accomplished by diminishment -- and we use this term to describe an illusory, or, to be quite explicit, diseased element, that is obviously pertinent here: diminishment occurs to some extent whenever a narrative makes use of hermetic magic and a temporal hyperperspective reminiscent of certain anomalous experiences of reality that imply that the senses have been transcended. The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person's dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man's ability to experience time -- dreams, that is, whose imaginary time span vastly exceeds their actual duration and which are characterized by an incredible diminishment of time, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoker puts it, the intoxicated user's brain seems "to have had something removed, like the mainspring from a broken watch."
A narrative, then, can set to work and deal with time in much the same way as those depraved dreams. But since it can "deal" with time, it is clear that time, which is the element of the narrative, can also become its subject; and although it would be going too far to say that one can "narrate time," it is apparently not such an absurd notion to want to narrate about time -- so that a term like "time novel" may well take on an oddly dreamlike double meaning...
All I caught of the Academy Awards was the credits. Does anybody know why they were playing the Terminator theme song? Was the whole thing Terminator themed? That would have been cool.
I’ve just finished reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. One of the best books ever written, I’d say. Definitely deserved the Nobel Prize. It should be required reading for all Westerners.
I’ll be driving down to Oregon tomorrow morning. Should be back either late tomorrow or the following morning, depending on whether I decide to spend the night.
I lucked out with the video card. Granted 64mb isn’t too hot, but ATI Linux support is dicey, so I wanted an Nvidia. Nick is also looking to get a new laptop and he discovered a few days ago that Dell is no longer selling the 8600 with Nvidia cards (probably why I got 25% off).
When I got the thing it was running Windows XP. Of course I wanted Linux. I wasn’t quite sure what distro I wanted to put on it, but I was leaning towards Slack.
The first order of business was to burn the Slackware 10.1 ISOs I’d downloaded earlier. I swear I was in Windows for at least 45 minutes trying to figure out how to burn a damn ISO. After that I just got fed up with it, formatted and installed Suse (which, by the way, resized and kept the Windows partitions. Interesting). After about three seconds in Suse I was burning the images.
And they call Windows user-friendly…
The next few hours were spent distro-whoring. I went through Suse, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Slackware, finally settling on Slack.
Getting everything to work in Slackware took a little work, but wasn’t too much trouble.
The first thing was, of course, to install the Nvidia drivers. Grabbing them off Nvidia’s site and installing them the normal way works fine (ignore the warning the installer gives about the conflicting rivafb module). My trouble was getting X to load after that. With the help of Google, I was able to make a custom xorg.conf that worked just dandy.
The second thing I wanted working was the wireless, which uses the ipw2200 module. I don’t know if it supports kernel 2.4, but I couldn’t get it working without upgrading to 2.6 (slackware 10.1 still ships with 2.4, with 2.6 in /testing).
When I got 2.6 running, it was a simple matter of doing make, make install on ipw2200. Then I extracted the firmware to /lib/firmware. After that finishes:
modprobe ipw2200
iwconfig
dhcpcd eth0
Also, reading the iwconfig man page is helpful.
Now the wireless is running. To switch back to the wired connection, do a
modprobe -r ipw2200
modprobe b44
ifconfig eth0 up
The next thing was sound. Since I’d upgraded to 2.6, I needed to install the new alsa-drivers. After that, there’s the problem of a conflicting module named snd_intel8x0m (something to do with modem sound). That needs to be removed and added to the blacklist.
Now all that’s left to do is run alsaconf and alsamixer to adjust volume.
It’s been running great for a few days now. The only thing I’m still working on is getting ACPI fully working (i.e. making the screen turn off when it’s closed).
Today I discovered Phoenix Fest, another one of the Burning Man rip-offs, but this one just 3 hours south.
In the re:evolutionary spirit of festivals such as Burning Man, Tribal Gathering, Woodstock 1 and Earthdance, PHOENIX FESTIVAL is an annual autonomous music and arts festival which takes place over "Independence Day" (4th of July) weekend in the scenic Pacific Northwest, USA.
Last year I discovered Mutant Fest, which Tina and I have been talking about going to this year.
So, if all goes to plan, I think we’ll try to attend both Phoenix Fest and Mutant Fest this summer. Should be interesting.
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996
I saw a headline in the newspaper today (I think it was the Herald): Constitution Likely to Settle Governors Race.
Likely? Isn’t the constitution supposed to settle everything? Isn’t that the whole idea of America? Isn’t that why we pay a bunch of old farts to sit around and feel important all day?
People all over the world are mourning the ascension of Bush to his second term as president... that's something to feel encouraged about, even as all this pomp and circumstance of the inauguration goes on.
-Howard Zinn
I just finished reading James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization. If you have any interest the intelligence community, spys, or privacy, read this book. It has more information than I ever thought the NSA would possibly let out. (The fact that they did let it out frightens me. What are they hiding?)
I can’t emphasize this enough: Read This Book. You’ll be amazed.
At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology...
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America... That is the abyss from which there is no return.
-Senator Frank Church, 1973, referring to the NSA's SIGINT technology
Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power. We're currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later.
Another reason why everybody should find some free hosting and Wordpress.
Edit:
"... there was a recent rash of suicides related to the "gothic" subculture Friday night. The cause of these suicides is still unknown, but is believed to be related to the recent and total server farm crash of livejournal.com."
The InterNAP facility where LJ hosts their gear apparently had a total and catastrophic loss of power today somwhere on or after 1530MST today. They're still working on recovery.
“Signed in 1947 and known as the UKUSA Agreement, it brought together under a single umberlla the SIGINT organizations of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Under the pact, the five nations carved up the earth into spheres of cryptologic influence, each country assigned specific targets according to its potential for maximum intercept coverage.
The UKUSA Agreement…has never been officialy acknowledged by any country even today…”
Page 391, Jame Bamford’s Puzzle Palace
