Billy Idol’s ‘Cyberpunk’

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The future has imploded into the present. With no nuclear war, the new battlefields are people’s minds and souls. Megacorporations are the new government. The computer generated info-domains are the new frontiers. Though there is better living through science and chemistry, we are all becoming cyborgs.

The computer is the new “cool tool,” and though we say “all information should be free,” it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit, so mistrust authority.

Cyberpunks are the true rebels. Cyberculture is coming in under the radar of ordinary society. An unholy alliance of the tech world, and the world of organized dissent.

Welcome to the cybercorporation.

Cyberpunks.

1993. Bill Clinton is beginning his presidency. The World Trade Center suffers its first terrorist attack. David Koresh and his followers die in Waco, Texas during a raid by ATF agents. Saddam Hussein orders the assassination of George Herbert Walker Bush. Cruise missiles repeatedly hammer Baghdad during the Iraq disarmament crisis.

Intel ships the first Pentium chips. A bug in a posting program sends a single message to 200 Usenet groups simultaneously, and the term “spam” is coined. The ‘net is still in its infancy, existing primarily through the green and amber glows of text-based computer terminals, accessible only through arcane Unix commands typed into keyboards by a legion of geeks (before the term “geek” gained street cred). Usenet denizens dreading the rush of “newbies” each September as college campuses opened and allowed new students onto the ‘net suddenly face the “September that never ended” when AOL opens Usenet access to its subscribers.

And Billy Idol discovers the power of computers, harnessing the power of Macintosh-based small-studio recording to produce his “Cyberpunk” album.

Cyberpunk

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0 is also a number

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Does anyone know how to access and rip the hidden tracks on the X-Files Songs in the Key of X soundtrack CD on a Mac?

For those who don’t know, the CD (a collection of music featured in the X-Files television show) contains a liner note that says, “Nick Cave and the Dirty Three would like you to know that ‘0’ is also a number.” When you put the CD in a CD player and, rather than hitting ‘Play’, you hit the ‘Rewind’ button (not the ‘Skip Back’ button), you can rewind to the -9:15 mark and find two hidden tracks by Nick Cave and the Dirty Three. The first is “Time Iesum Transeuntem et non Reverendem” (Dread the Passage of Jesus for He Will Not Return), and the second is a cover of the X-Files theme.

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t seem to want to scan backwards past the 0:00 mark! I can’t scan backwards, nor can I put a negative value into the ‘Start Time’ option. I looked at the audio file that the Finder displays, but it only reads as 3:25, so it looks like the Finder isn’t reading the extra information either. I even checked it on my “normal” CD player (as it has an optical audio out that I could plug into my G5), but it’s new enough that it isn’t reading the extra bits either.

Has anyone found a way to pull the hidden information off on a Mac? I’d love to know (or, alternately, if anyone happens to have a 128kbps AAC rip of the two tracks, that’d be nice too…)!

CSS geek humor

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Last week, CSS guru Eric Meyer and his wife Kat had their first child, Carolyn, which resulted in a large number of congratulatory posts using css-ish puns. Unfortunately, many of these pseudo-CSS concepts didn’t validate, so Eric has responded in turn by “debugging” their CSS code.

Hey, it amused me.

Profile of a Spammer

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Ever wonder about the people responsible for cramming your inboxes full of offers that you neither want or need? Here’s one of them — a “graying grandmother in a ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ T-shirt.”

Typically a marketer is tipped to Fox’s business by word of mouth and a deal is done on the telephone. Fox then taps into her list of 40 million e-mail addresses — 1,500 times more names than Slidell has people — for possible targets. She is paid based on how many prospective buyers she delivers to the marketer. Until recently she made a good living spamming, she says, pulling in $4,000 in a good week, $2,000 in a slow week. Some weeks produce no income.

(via /.)

US Political Regions

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Commonwealth Magazine, unsatisfied with the standard blue (Democrat) vs. Red (Republican) political reporting of elections past, has proposed an interesting division of the country into ten seperate political regions.

this primary-color collage resonates only because it turns up the contrast. Given that more than 40 percent of voters in the blue states backed Bush and more than 40 percent of voters in the red states backed Gore, doesn’t the red vs. blue model seem, well, a bit black-and-white?

So CommonWealth decided to make a map of our own. Aiming somewhere between the reductionist red-and-blue model and the most accurate (but least useful) subdivision of the United States into infinity, we split the county into 10 regions, each with a distinct political character. Our regions are based on voting returns from both national and state elections, demographic data from the US Census, and certain geographic features such as mountain ranges and coastlines. Each region represents about one-tenth of the national electorate, casting between 10.4 million and 10.8 million votes in the 2000 presidential election.

2003/12/graphics/uspoliticalregions

By their map, when I moved to Seattle from Anchorage, I moved from the Sagebrush region (more centrist, 57.4% Bush/37.5% Gore/3.7% Nader in 2000) to the Upper Coasts region (more liberal, 57.5% Gore/35.8% Bush/5.6% Nader in 2000). Works for me.

(via Lane)

Emperor Norton

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I’ve mentioned Emperor Norton (first [and only] Emperor of the United States) here in the past. Today I found Will’s link to the “Which Historical Loony are you?” quiz, where he came out as Emperor Norton. So, I bounced over, took the test…and whaddaya know…

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?\
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

You are Joshua Abraham Norton, first and only Emperor of the United States of America!

Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, you carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, until an entry into the rice market wiped out your fortune in 1854. After this, you became quite different. The first sign of this came on September 17, 1859, when you expressed your dissatisfaction with the political situation in America by declaring yourself Norton I, Emperor of the USA. You remained as such, unchallenged, for twenty-one years.

Within a month you had decreed the dissolution of Congress. When this was largely ignored, you summoned all interested parties to discuss the matter in a music hall, and then summoned the army to quell the rebellious leaders in Washington. This did not work. Magnanimously, you decreed (eventually) that Congress could remain for the time being. However, you disbanded both major political parties in 1869, as well as instituting a fine of \$25 for using the abominable nickname “Frisco” for your home city.

Your days consisted of parading around your domain – the San Francisco streets – in a uniform of royal blue with gold epaulettes. This was set off by a beaver hat and umbrella. You dispensed philosophy and inspected the state of sidewalks and the police with equal aplomb. You were a great ally of the maligned Chinese of the city, and once dispersed a riot by standing between the Chinese and their would-be assailants and reciting the Lord’s Prayer quietly, head bowed.

Once arrested, you were swiftly pardoned by the Police Chief with all apologies, after which all policemen were ordered to salute you on the street. Your renown grew. Proprietors of respectable establishments fixed brass plaques to their walls proclaiming your patronage; musical and theatrical performances invariably reserved seats for you and your two dogs. (As an aside, you were a good friend of Mark Twain, who wrote an epitaph for one of your faithful hounds, Bummer.) The Census of 1870 listed your occupation as “Emperor”.

The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, upon noticing the slightly delapidated state of your attire, replaced it at their own expense. You responded graciously by granting a patent of nobility to each member. Your death, collapsing on the street on January 8, 1880, made front page news under the headline “Le Roi est Mort”. Aside from what you had on your person, your possessions amounted to a single sovereign, a collection of walking sticks, an old sabre, your correspondence with Queen Victoria and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine. Your funeral cortege was of 30,000 people and over two miles long.

The burial was marked by a total eclipse of the sun.

Security: Mac OS X vs. Windows

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Last week, a minor firestorm erupted when PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff wrote a ridiculously inflammatory article gleefully declaring that, “the Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows.”

I know this is wrong, but in one respect I was happy to learn earlier this month about the discovery of a significant security hole in the Jaguar and Panther versions (10.2 and 10.3, respectively) of the Apple operating system (OS).

Richard Forno, former Chief Security Officer for Network Solutions, has responded with a comparison of Mac OS X and Windows security — and Windows doesn’t exactly come out ahead.

In a December 11 column that epitomizes the concept of yellow journalism, he’s “happy” that Mac OS X is vulnerable to a new and quite significant security vulnerability. The article was based on a security advisory by researcher Bill Carrel regarding a DHCP vulnerability in Mac OS X. Carrel reported the vulnerability to Apple in mid-October and, through responsible disclosure practices, waited for a prolonged period before releasing the exploit information publicly since Apple was slow in responding to Carrel’s report (a common problem with all big software vendors.)  Accordingly, Lance took this as a green light to launch into a snide tirade about how  “Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows” while penning paragraph after paragraph saying “I told you so” and calling anyone who disagrees with him a “Mac zealot.”

You’re either with him or with the “zealots.”  Where have we heard this narrow-minded extremist view before?  

More to the point, his article is replete with factual errors. Had he done his homework instead of rushing to smear the Mac security community and fuel his Windows-based envy, he’d have known that not only did Apple tell Carrel on November 19 that a technical fix for the problem would be released in its December Mac OS X update, but that Apple released easy-to-read guidance (complete with screenshots) for users to mitigate this problem on November 26.  Somehow he missed that.

Since he’s obviously neither a technologist (despite writing for a technology magazine) nor a security expert, let’s examine a few differences between Mac and Windows to see why Macintosh systems are, despite his crowing, whining, and wishing, inherently more secure than Windows systems.

(via Damien)

Saddam captured – what now?

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saddamcaptured.jpg

This was a rather surprising headline to wake up to this morning. Good news, overall &mash; and not only was Saddam captured, but it was done without any loss of life, apparently without troops having to fire a shot.

Of course, me being me, I have to wonder where things are going to go from here. Two things immediately stick out in my mind.

First, I doubt that this is going to suddenly prompt a halt to the violence in Iraq (nice as that would be). From the situation in which Saddam was found, it seems unlikely that he was acting as any sort of major influence over the attacks against the forces of the US and our Allies in Iraq. Will his capture demoralize the Iraqi fighters? Or just give them another reason to want the US (who seems to be perceived as more of an occupying force than a liberating army) out of Iraq, prompting them to start hitting us that much harder?

DHinMI at Daily Kos touches on this question:

And what about the continued attacks on American troops?  It’s hard to imagine Saddam was exerting much operational leadership over the attackers from inside a “spider hole” in which he barely had room to move around.  The people attacking coalition troops don’t appear to need Saddam around to tell them what to do, and their actions don’t appear to be necessarily directed at restoring Baathist control over Iraq as much as evicting the occupying forces from their country.  The biggest positive from Saddam’s capture will probably be in eliminating the fear that he will return to power.  That’s a huge relief for many common Iraqis who may now be more emboldened to assist U.S. forces with intelligence about the resistance forces attacking out troops.  There may also be less acquiescence by the general population to having the resistance forces move as effortlessly through the country.  But it’s too early to tell.
binforgotten.jpg

Secondly…wasn’t all this started by the seemingly forgotten Osama bin Laden?

In Sept. of 2001, the US was the victim of a terrifying terrorist attack that hit the Pentagon and New York City, brought down the World Trade Center, and killed thousands. All of this was, apparently, masterminded by Osama bin Laden, head of the al Qaida organization. After the attacks, we were assured that al Qaida would be destroyed and bin Laden would be caputured “dead or alive”, and the War On Terrorism™ was begun.

Then we stopped hearing about bin Laden. Suddenly Saddam Hussein was once again elected “bad guy of the moment”, circumstantial links between al Qaida and Iraq were manufactured, and the Bush Administration’s propaganda machine managed to convince a frightening majority of the American public that Saddam was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. And into Iraq we went.

And now, months later, after losing over four hundred US lives to Iraqi forces (the majority of which were lost after Bush foolishly declared “Mission Accomplished” after we took Baghdad), we’ve finally captured our latest scapegoat. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens from here. With Saddam in custody, who will we hold ultimately responsible if the Iraqi forces don’t stop their attacks? After Saddam’s highly-publicized capture, what will be the reaction of the American public if we continue to lose soldiers to Iraqis determined to regain control over their homeland from the occupying forces of the US? Only time will tell.

And, of course, there are always questions regarding such a high-profile capture as this (sorry, but Bush has pulled too many fast ones during his tenure in office so far for people not to be cynical and suspicious anymore).

CTDem2 at Daily Kos noticed a few possible discrepancies between the before and after shots of Saddam’s medical examination after his capture:

I think it’s very unlikely that Saddam was captured last night, from looking at the photos.

First off, the wound on his forehead has healed over  between the time the “unshaved” photo was taken and the time the “shaved” photo was taken.  Sure, I guess you could say that for some reason they put makeup on it.

But, more difficult to explain – he has more than a little stubble by the time the “shaved” photo was taken.  That’s no 5 o’clock shadow, even if you have a fast-growing beard.  Looks more like at least a couple of days.

My interpretation is that he was captured on Thursday or Friday, but they didn’t want it to hit the weak Friday news circuit.  By announcing it Sunday morning, they made sure it (a) took that talk shows by surprise, (b) dominated the TV news on a day most Americans are home, and (c) will be on the front page of every newspaper on Monday, just in time for watercooler talk.

kaemaril asks in MetaFilter’s discussion thread about the legality of the released footage of Saddam’s medical examination:

How is showing video footage of Saddam undergoing a medical examination not humiliating and degrading, the sort of show footage that the Bush Administration were OUTRAGED about when it was American GIs on Iraqi TV screens?

You’d have thought the head of state of an occupied nation would have at least some protection from the Geneva Convention …

And lastly, on what may (or may not) be a lighter note, WizBangBlog is collecting possible conspiracy theories surrounding the capture. While I get the impression that they’re doing this mostly to poke fun at the “tin foil hat brigade” (which I freely admit I sometimes flirt with joining, if only for the entertainment value), it would be quite entertaining if there were more truth to some of these than might be initially thought…