October 2001 Archives
A dead Britney Spears, mind you.
Nice to know the morbid streak runs in the family. (Pix when I get them developed.)I'm anxiously awaiting my opportunity to buy, install, and use a new piece of software. This is the latest release by one of the biggest, most respected names in the industry. Many users have been waiting for this latest upgrade for years, and it will probably change the way many of us use our computers for quite some time. Unfortunately, installing this program will probably cost users a lot of time, resources, and productivity. And when it comes out next week...
What? Today? No, Sid Meier's Civilization III isn't scheduled to be released until next Tuesday. Why, what program did you think I was talking about? Talk about a waste of time...
Even NPR, which has been one of my main news sources for several years now, has many of the same problems, though I still listen in the car. I can find some good coverage on the net, but mostly I've been turning to print — The Economist in particular, thoush some of their stories are on their website — for the kind of reporting I'm looking for.Paradoxically, with All Terror TV, the more you watch, the less you know. A kind of news tunnel vision sets in. And then there is the hypnotic quality of today's frantically busy TV screens. "Headline News," with its restless news tickers and compressed video screen ("News! Sports! Weather! Anthrax! All at one time!"), has begun to look more like the heads-up display of an F-15 than a television show. As the frenetic factoids race across the bottom of the screen, the impression you are left with is that there are simply too many important things happening to report by conventional means.
It's ironic that this apotheosis of flash over substance comes at a time when the public is hungering for greater perspective and deeper understanding. When the focus of the coverage has become as narrow and repetitive as it currently is, there is no room left for any reference points beyond the immediate and the episodic.
An anti-war protestor crashes a pro-war counter-demonstration.I was about to give up when one guy, not holding or wearing anything patriotic, but definitely in the pro-war camp, wanted to talk. And talk we did. Amidst the clamor (growing, as more people from both camps arrived from the march that spilled into the Civic Center square), we discussed the history and policies of the Taliban, the consequences of casualties on both sides, and my main argument, that we need to use the UN and World Court to seek a trial and unilateral justice. I won't say that either of us was convincing the other, but at least we were talking. And in a city where arguments are often pitted between the Left and the Far Left, I felt I was having an important discussion with someone unafraid to defend his position.
Maybe irony is dead after all; I'm not sure I can tell the difference anymore. [via Ethel again]First, I to thank the three uniformed federal police who visited me in the middle of the night. I appreciate the fact they knocked politely and never drew their guns.
Second, let me offer a note of thanks to the plainclothes federal agent who interviewed me. I appreciate the fact he didn't haul me off to an interrogation room.
Third, I want to thank the antivirus vendor who helped put this ball in motion. An embarrassing column about them will never see the light of day for {ahem} "national security reasons." The war against cyber-terrorism requires utmost secrecy. Or at least that's what I hear.
I can only hope this is sheer, baseless paranoia, like that of the "New World Order" lunatics who see black helicopters and secret UN military bases everywhere. [via Ethel]There was a barrier that went across the road. To the right was an elevated shed like structure, elevated perhaps fifteen feet in the air. It had a small second story that was open. On it was a sign that read "Homeland Security Internal Checkpoint." There were sandbags and the wooden arm that crossed the road read "100% ID Checked." Then there was a small shed to the right with a small barbed wire area behind that. On this structure was a sign, which read, "All citizens not having proper identification will be detained. All foreign nationals will be detained. All citizens who are deemed to be acting in a suspicious manner will be detained." At each of these posts there will be six armed Army or National Guard reservists with M-16's with full field kit. On top of the structure to the rear, the open structure on top, there's a man with a machine gun emplacement.
There is a direct parallel between the old Soviet Union and the East Bloc and what we are doing. We are establishing internal travel restrictions on the American people. We are essentially following the Soviet textbook. In the Soviet Communist Bloc, for example, there were checkpoints in every city. You had to have what's called an "internal travel visa." You had to have that visa stamped at every checkpoint in every city. Then they checked you out at every entrance to every city. Then if you checked out, they would affix a visa stamp and charge you ten marks for it. It was a real racket.
Smithson talks about the growing number of diseases -- pneumonia, tuberculosis -- that are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Why? Because we take antibiotics indiscriminately, often when we're healthy, out of sheer fear.
Afraid that powder on your sidewalk might be anthrax? Take Cipro! That way you'll kill all the germs except the ones with a natural immunity to Cipro, allowing them to multiply undisturbed by other organisms. And if you take antibiotics every time you get a cold, so much the better! Mother Nature thanks you for helping in her eternal quest to weed out the weakest.
A DRM scheme "used to give the consumer more possibilities than existed before," Screamer tells us. "I think the idea of limited time, full-length previews, or time-limited Internet-based rentals is excellent. If DRM was only used for this, in order to give us more options than we previously had, I would not have taken the effort to break the scheme. What is bad is the use of DRM to restrict the traditional form of music sale. When I buy a piece of music (not rent it, and not preview it), I expect (and demand!) my traditional fair use rights to the material. I should be able to take that content, copy it onto all my computers at home, my laptop, my portable MP3 player....basically anything I use to listen to the music that I have purchased."
Check out a couple of pictures here.Called the "pod," the car, which has been designed to show emotion and learn from driver experience, will be on display for the first time at the Tokyo Motor Show that begins next week.
When its owner approaches, it lights up a happy orange-yellow. Puncture a tire or run out of fuel, it lights up blue, complete with a display of tear-drops. Swerve sharply or brake too hard and the color is an angry red.
This is absolutely ridiculous. I am now officially more afraid of getting harassed or arrested for unintentionally doing something "suspicious" than I am of getting blown up by terrorists. [via Gillmor]Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also prevent you from boarding that plane.
— The Principia DiscordiaA SERMON ON ETHICS AND LOVE
One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?
"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"
WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.
"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?
"But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it."
OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.
Well, that was exciting.
I just had an unpleasant scare here at work; a power supply, on the aging server which hosts the main application for which I am responsible, died. Thankfully, we had another server which wasn't running anything critical (we hope; it was supposed to have been retired) from which we could extract a good power supply, and so we got the system back up and running in about half an hour. It seems to be running normally for now, which is better than I can say for my heart rate. (I'm sure I'll calm down in an hour or so.)
Anyway, we were talking in the departmental meeting this morning about our future plans to replace that system, among others. Next year, that application or whatever replaces it will be running on an up-to-date, load-balancing cluster with redundant power supplies, and I'll be sleeping much easier.
Update: Apparently, we're getting extremely dirty power in the computer room. A disk array lost one of its power supplies today as well, and it seems that at least three others have had to be replaced in the past few months.I may be extremely critical of Microsoft, but at least I try to cut them some slack when they do something right.Forensics outfit New Technologies' President, Michael Anderson, a former Fed himself, is claiming that the secure file-wipe feature in Win-XP Pro is going to "make it impossible for federal agents and law enforcement to find and reconstruct digital evidence buried on computers, particularly those seized from terrorists," according to an article by Network World.
Of course there's BCWipe, Norton Wipeinfo, Evidence Eraser, the PGP wipe feature, and so on. But these require crooks to lift a finger; and as we all know, the 'science' of computer forensics depends on really dumb criminals who think deleting a file is the same as erasing it. Arguably, there would be no computer forensics industry if naive point-and-drool crooks didn't screw up so often.
Every saga has a beginning...
There are advantages to living in a UPN-free zone. With that network's SF and fantasy offerings (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Enterprise, Roswell) shuffled off to a Saturday night gulag on the local WB affiliate, certain scheduling conflicts resolve themselves. If I'd had to choose between Tivo-ing Undeclared and Buffy, I might never have learned that it is possible for me to stomach two different television comedies in the same season. (Malcolm in the Middle. Duh.) More importantly, I have easy access to two hours per week of angsty-alien-teens-living-secretly-in-small-towns programming. Not that I think I'd be losing much if I did have to choose; judging from the season premiere, Roswell may not be long for my Season Pass Manager.
Smallville, on the other hand, has potential, at least as long as it isn't saddled with an insipid theme song next week. In case you have a life (and why would you be reading this site if you did?) and don't know, this series is the latest interpretation of the early days of Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton. You know, Clark Kent. *sigh* Superman, dammit! In this version of the mythos, the Youngster of Steel's lifepod is accompanied by a shower of plot complications meteorites from his dying homeworld, which wreak havoc upon Smallville just as the young Kent couple discover that babies come not from the stork, but from alien spacecraft. In the first ten minutes of the show, these remnants of Krypton vaporize Lana Lang's parents before her eyes, end young Lex Luthor's bad hair days once and for all, and seed the cornfields of Kansas with enough mutations to keep the writers supplied with antagonists. (Can you say "Hellmouth", boys and girls?) And even though spoilers may be hard to come by in the Secret Origin of comicdom's best-known crusader, I won't push matters. Let's just say that the pilot takes care of all the necessary exposition to get the series started, from Clark's realization of his origin and its consequences, to his issues with certain green jewelry, and his budding yet doomed friendship (the slash-fic practically writes itself) with the heir to the Luthor fortune. It's usually a mistake to judge a series by its pilot, but I did come away with a favorable enough impression to keep tuning in for a while.
By the way, did anyone else pause the show when Clark was web-surfing the story on the record-breaking runner, in hopes of spotting a familiar name? Nope, it didn't look anything like "Garrick", "Allen", or "West". Sorry.
Huh? Sounds pretty much like a DoS attack to me. Besides, does anyone outside of the industry think the file-swappers will need more than a week to create a work-around?But copyright holders, including record labels, are now experimenting with new ways to cut down on copyright infringement. As described by sources at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), one method uses software to masquerade as a file-swapper online. Once the software has found a computer offering a certain song, it attempts to block other potential traders from downloading the song.
The software technology, according to industry sources, would essentially act as a downloader, repeatedly requesting the same file and downloading it very slowly, essentially preventing others from accessing the file. While stopping short of a full denial-of-service attack, the method could substantially clog the target computer's Internet connection.
(emphasis mine) "When in trouble or in doubt / run in circles, scream and shout." [via Gillmor]The House had had before it a better, more thoughtful bill, reported out of the normally deeply divided Judiciary Committee by a unanimous and bipartisan vote of 36 to 0. It, too, would have greatly expanded the government's powers, but not enough, the administration said -- and the leadership junked it. There followed a charade in which all manner of members of both parties complained they had no idea what they were voting on, were fearful that aspects of the substitute bill went too far -- yet voted for it anyway, lest there be a further terrorist attack and they be accused of not having provided the government sufficient means to defend against it.
I can't think of anything to call this guy without insulting animal species that serve a useful ecological purpose by feeding upon carrion.Although the project began before Sept. 11 as a romance between a middle-aged man and woman, Moonves says the writer, whom he declined to name, offered to "raise the stakes" by having the characters meet after losing their spouses in the attacks.
The opportunists are lined up around the block, and even if most of the proposed anti-terrorism measures weren't blatant assaults on constitutional rights, some nasty special-interest riders are bound to make it through. P.S. Dan Gillmor has also commented on this attempted amendment, and notes that the antitrust investigators are taking an interest in the industry's activities.A copy of an RIAA-drafted amendment [to an anti-terrorism bill] obtained by Wired News would immunize all copyright holders — including the movie and e-book industry — for any data losses caused by their hacking efforts or other computer intrusions "that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent" electronic piracy.
The RIAA believes that this kind of technological "self-help" against online pirates, if done carefully, is legal under current federal law. But the RIAA is worried about the USA Act banning that practice — and neither the Senate nor the House versions of that bill include the RIAA's suggested changes.
Oh. Nevermind.Sun developed the Java computer platform, which could someday provide the language needed for a smart-card identification system to deal with computers at airports, shopping malls, research facilities and other locations where McNealy said anonymity could prove dangerous.
"Absolute anonymity breeds absolute irresponsibility," he said. "We need a thumbprint Java card in the hand of everybody in the country."
Today's Onion: Freedoms Curtailed In Defense Of Liberty
I could say more about this, but it would probably get me in trouble.
Again, I may be critical of Microsoft and IIS, but my company is going to be running IIS for the immediate future, so I'd damn well better learn to do it right. Which is why my boss sent me to this class in the first place.You cannot compare the security of Apache running on a Linux box to IIS on Win2k. You can only compare the knowledge of the people who are implementing the different systems.
...If you've got an admin that can't secure a Microsoft Web server, then your chances of having them secure a Solaris installation will be slim.
For me, it's usually (and thankfully) They Might Be Giants songs, which means I can expect a particularly bad case if I make the concert this weekend. [via Looka!]Almost without exception, the respondents had regularly endured stuck songs or jingles, with the typical episode lasting anywhere from a few hours (55%) to a full day (23%). Another 17% said the malevolent melodies persisted several days, and 5% said tunes haunted them longer than a week. One person claimed — perhaps facetiously — that music from an Atari 2600 videogame had been playing in his head "since 1986."
The worst example I've encountered was a radio speech (by the owner of the station) describing the American consumer economy as a "second front" in the War on Terrorism.At best, this rhetoric sounds shrill and starkly highlights the most grasping aspects of our national culture. At worst, it threatens to turn us into cannibals, feasting upon ourselves out of panic that the famine is about to set in. Where in all this is the dignity borne of mourning? In the wake of all our losses, do we have no greater sense of our purpose than to get people to spend money, pathetically chasing consumer goods in an attempt to salve our wounds? Where is the time of quiet, of reflection on life, that death should always bring? We should consider our impulses carefully, for they are the best evidence yet that we have already surrendered the freedom that we say we want to defend. Slaves to the mall, to our own consumption and that of our neighbors, we find our liberty to abstain has been eroded. Such restraint is not tolerated, but is feared, even abhorred by some as unpatriotic.
It was only a matter of time before the biometric goons wanted to search your brain (a form of surveillance to which they may be immune). The founder of Infoseek (Remember them? Didn't think so.) seems to be behind this boondoggle."Words or pictures relevant to a crime are flashed on a computer screen, along with other, irrelevant words or pictures. Electrical brain responses are measured non-invasively through a patented headband equipped with sensors. A specific brain-wave response called a MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response) is elicited when the brain processes noteworthy information it recognizes. (The MERMER contains another, well known and scientifically established brain response known as a P300.)," he tells us.
"When details of the crime that only the perpetrator would know are presented, a MERMER is emitted by the brain of a perpetrator, but not by the brain of an innocent suspect. In Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a computer analyzes the brain response to detect the MERMER, and thus determines scientifically whether or not the specific crime-relevant information is stored in the brain of the suspect."
On October 12, Marvel will ship Heroes, a book in which, Quesada says, "the world's greatest superhero creators are honoring the world's greatest superheroes"--firefighters, police officers, EMS workers, doctors. For the fund-raising project, whose proceeds will largely go to the widows and children's funds of the New York City police and fire departments, Marvel has rounded up top talent, including artists and writers who haven't worked for Marvel in years, among them: Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn), Neal Adams (Green Lantern/Green Arrow), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Alex Ross (Kingdom Come), filmmaker Kevin Smith (currently writing DC Comics' Green Arrow), Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the team responsible for Watchmen) and even Marvel's legendary figurehead, Stan Lee.
A concise summary of the kind of political rhetoric that has been tossed around by hawks, doves, and birds of any other feather, over the past three weeks.Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.
The chapter of his book on Kooks and Terrorists is available online.The goal of government, at some levels, is to protect the population, to make sure that the law is enforced, The goal of private businesses is make money. So at some level, the privacy violations being done by government have the goal of a greater social good. We've seen abuses by the government in the past -- we've seen some pretty terrible abuses -- but those abuses have usually been directed against a small number of people, and they've been directed for a larger social purpose. And the reason we know about those abuses is government is audited, it's subject to checks and balances.
I've only seen one episode of Enterprise, but I've already got some Theories about this series, and I want to go ahead and put my speculations on the record. I recognize the slight possibility that I wasn't the last person on Earth to see the premiere, so I'll post my ideas in SpoilervisionTM. This should be white-on-white in any modern browser, so highlight to read:
I'd already noted a rumor that there were going to be time-travelling adversaries in this series, but I wasn't expecting them to turn up so soon. So far, we don't know much about the sides in this "temporal cold war", so let's call the faction that have been hyper-evolving the Suliban (sp?) and mucking about with Klingon politics the "Black Hats". Naturally, this implies an opposition, whom I believe were behind Sarin's (the Suliban woman) attempt to inform the Klingons of the Black Hats' meddling; I'll call them the "White Hats" until I can come up with better names. (I realize that I'm implying a moral judgement about good guys and bad guys with this nomenclaure, and may be proven wrong later; so be it. I want some labels I can work with for now.)
One of the Big Questions that fans are asking about the Suliban is, "Where did these aliens come from that are so important now, but are unknown at the time of the original series, a century or so down the line?" I figure there are two major possibilities: First, the Suliban could cease to be significant by the Kirk era, and have little galactic presence at that time. In the context of the series, this could be the outcome of Captain Archer's (and, by extension, his crew's) upcoming interference in their activities, and perhaps even the loss of their genetically-engineered special abilities.
Alternatively, the entire new series could be set in a divergent timeline, which will never lead to the exact future shown in the other series, as a result of the temporal cold war, and continuity with the existing Trek canon is completely fuxx0r3d. This would probably lead to a lot of Fear and Loathing on the part of Trek purists, but I personally like this option. It frees Enterprise from the constraints of having to lead into the future history we've seen on the other shows. More importantly, it raises the stakes; we can't assume the kind of Happy Endings that will lead to that relatively peaceful future.
Either way, some fans already seem upset that time travel has been introduced so early in the new series. I'll agree that it's far too early for Archer's crew to be skipping about the centuries; the whole point of this series, from what I can tell, is to deal with the simpler problems of humanity's first exporation of space. Let future crews under Kirk, Picard, etc. deal with those dilemmas once warp travel has become routine, and early tensions among the spacefaring races have settled out. Having time-travelling meddlers in the background, however, is an interesting twist that could lead to some interesting stories if they aren't overused. In the meantime, Archer and his crew have enough of their own lessons to learn, and many worlds and wonders to explore.
I have run on a bit, so I'll cut off there even though I've also developed a few conspiracy theories about what's going on in the greater scheme of things. I'll save those for a later post.
An Iranian-American woman reporter puts on traditional Islamic garb for the first time in years in order to see how other Americans react. [via MediaNews]I was standing on the corner of Broadway and Pike Street, waiting for the light to change so I could cross, when a young man shoved me in front of a moving vehicle. Fortunately, the driver stopped in time. I faced the guy who pushed me, but all he said was "I guess I tripped and just didn't see you. Sorry." He looked over my shoulder while talking to me. He almost sounded bored.
