furtive explorations

There are no 5.0 user-rated blogs on the site. Presumably that is because they are averaged? The reviewer 5.0 rates are a real mixed bag. Some damn good stuff floats to the top and you are certain to find a new good blog when you visit tho. Heh. I just rated THEM. How sad.

One thing suprises me. They mention the "other stuff" rule. What else you post link-wise and site wise should match your blog's topic. Huh? We are supposed to have topics now? Aren't these weblogs? This is a log of what I see on the web and what I do in life that is worth the mention. I'd be a boring ass person if I only did one thing. Even if I did do it really well and stylishly to boot. *feh* Anyway, if I want to be monotopimatic (I made that up) I'll set it up on W3ME where single focus sites belong. =P

This one is an inside joke. Quite funny. And yes, the answer is always the same...

• Drugs and Yo-Yos That makes sense.

  In a written statement to police, he said: "I grow marijuana for fun and profit, to support myself and my family, to help bring us a better life." He also said he was growing marijuana for his father, who had a disease, and for other "medically ill people."

  The man's wife told police she had never been inside her husband's shed, but that was where he did his artwork and practiced with his yo-yo.

• Monopoly and Polygamy Two great crimes that sound great together!

  A Chicago lawyer has sued McDonald's Corp. and a marketing firm over the alleged criminal ring that fixed $1 million winners in McDonald's popular Monopoly and ``Who Wants to be a Millionaire'' games.

  Burningham, before handing down the sentence, made a long statement about freedom of religion, saying that although everyone is entitled to their beliefs, their actions need to abide by the law.

  "Anytime you have money you are going to have people coming up with a way to get at it," said former federal prosecutor Froelich. "People get that idea all the time."

• Mile High-ly Silly. Yes Denver is that insane when it comes to The Broncos. And they LOVED the Mile High Stadium.

  "This is a typically goofy Denver fight," said Patricia Calhoun, editor of the city's feisty weekly newspaper, Westword, which has had fun at the expense of all parties to the matter. "Everybody else beats dead horses. In Denver, we beat dead broncos."

• Ouch after getting hit twice by lightening, that man had better run out and buy a damn lottery ticket.
• And IRAN, IRAN so far away-hey-hey

  "The bigger art is when you find out what the expectations of society are and manage the government's efforts to compensate for them," said Ali Moradkhani, head of the Culture Ministry's Islamic Music Center.

  Most Western pop is prohibited here because it is "useless and pointless" and seems designed to "corrupt members of society, destroy mankind and give wrong ideas and teachings to misguide people from humane principles," said Ahmad Alamhoda, a mid-level cleric and influential, ultra-conservative expert on Islam. As for women, "singing turns them into tools for male satisfaction," he said. "Therefore, it is regarded as a forbidden deed for them to sing, not as forbidden music." Clearly, they have been paying attention to the current state of pop music. =)

• They gotta get Prince... I mean if any one is going to sell purple ketchup you gotta think Prince first...

After getting a little advice from his 16-year-old daughter, Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman says it's OK for boys to wear earrings afterall.

With some advice from his teenage daughter, Gov. Don Siegelman has softened his criticism of boys wearing earrings, but he still isn't speaking out in favor of it. So which is it? Hmm... Let's go back to the original quote:

His statement at a news conference came one day after a much different comment at a news conference in Birmingham. At the Tuesday appearance, he said parents should tell their sons that "if God had wanted you to wear earrings, He'd have made you a girl." At least we know why God makes half of us girls. Places to put all those earrings...

"For a young kid with an earring, that's a matter that the parent has to deal with and, of course, if the kid's in school, then it's something that the parents and the school board has to deal with," Siegelman said Wednesday. Well, that sounds like and wonderful passing of the buck

"We're just kind of amazed that he would make a statement like that and a statement that really didn't have any substance," Bedell said. Bedell added, "We've never seen one of them there 'politicians' before, what good are they?"

"I knew I was innocent," Fain continued. "When I heard about DNA, I thought it might help me. DNA is my best friend right now."

Fain said that his "faith in God" sustained him during his long incarceration. Well, I'm damn glad an innocent man goes free but I just have to point out that it takes a special kinda blindness to believe in both God and DNA a whole bunch at the same time.

• TheWebLogReview may be worth checking in on.
• FASA? Hmmm... Nope... No, but god that brings back memories.. Those weren't what I was thinking about. Oops, it was FAFSA and too late she already found it.
• MPSA Microsoft starts thinking about security. Next week, we'll do a feature on how bad this is or how cold it got in hell. =)
• Cyber-Sean Cow-orker's blog. He's got some really interesting blog links.

Where I've considered house shopping may just have less than 10 mile line-of-sight to work... Hmmm, 10Mb to the house is a whole lotta pr0n, baby! And since work is about to get dual OC-3 circuits we just might have the extra bandwidth to hook me up with!

Seriously, this thing bugs the crap out of me. Read some of this and think about it. Then read my closing comment.

The OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee (TC) will work to develop Human Markup Language (HumanML), a schema for embedding contextual human characteristics -- cultural, social, kinesic (body language), psychological and intentional features -- within information. OASIS said HumanML would have applications in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, conflict resolution, psychotherapy, art, workflow, advertising, cultural dialogue, agent systems, diplomacy and business negotiation. How much effort does it take to smile? Grin? Frown? Hmmm, currently I can get all three with about... um... :) ;] =( 8 characters including spaces... Now try this <!xml:xml-humanml><emote><smile intensity="normal" /><grin intensity="strong" variant="mischevious" /><frown intensity="normal" variant="pensive" /></emote></xml> Yeah, that will be fun. >%\

Internet users have already developed an informal and rudimentary system to achieve some of this, according to Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga, chair of the HumanMarkup TC and the motivating force behind HumanML. Examples include emoticons like :), ;P and :(. They also include acronyms like LOL. Rudimentary? Sure, but it fucking works and it is flexible like language and communication have to be. Without context sensitivity most of this will be lost and with that comes a nightmare of variations, levels, doublechecking, and quibbling.

"These efforts certainly help convey some human qualities," Thunga said in his proposal for HumanML. "They have enhanced human expression, but their benefits are informal, non-standard and ultimately limited. However, with the current XML framework we now have, we can finally integrate much deeper human aspects within our communication. The result will be a substantial enhancement in the quality of human communications, and the elimination of much misunderstanding in society." And if we can get it to walk your dog too, it will have real value to you. *snort*

Thunga explained, "Subtle, complex human signals are misread, misinterpreted, not presented clearly, not conveyed properly, or simply ignored. This is the cause of various conflicts throughout the ages and day-to-day." Imagine how much more fun those problems will be when you ask a computer to help you capture those subtleties on-the-fly as they happen. Or worse, how much time you'll spend deciding if your resignation should have 15% or 20% pensiveness in the middle bit about the great opportunities you face. Too much and they will spot your transparent attempt to dig and extra 5% salary out of the skin-flints!

"HumanML is an exciting example of the breadth of technical work being undertaken by OASIS members," said Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS. "Unlike standards bodies that dictate direction through a central authority, OASIS offers an open technical agenda that is set by our members themselves. HumanML extends the use of XML into totally new arenas and offers the potential to affect the way we communicate with one another." Please keep paying us so we don't have to go out and get real jobs in an industry that now realizes how stupid 90% of XML projects really are in the light of day.

OK, here it is in a nutshell: how can people who aren't human develop a system for "schema for embedding contextual human characteristics"?

Most of the crowd has come to catch the Atomic Punks, a blue-ribbon Van Halen tribute band. But there's another contingent on-hand. Rage Against the Machine (news - web sites) drummer Brad Wilk, actor/singer Jack Black , and porn queen Jenna Jameson are in the house, and it's unlikely they made the trek to the Valley for a Van Halen tribute band. Yeah baby! The A-List is out in force tonite. =) (Actually, Jack Black's "Tenacious D" stuff rules. Grab Karl and get yer ass back out on the road, JB! -- Oh, and bring Jenna... Thanks!)

"It was a great way to practice," Grohl says after the show, taking a slow drag on a cigarette. "I mean we are more comfortable doing this kind of thing than the big European 30,000-capacity festivals. Because you can really ham it up when you do these kinds of things; it doesn't really matter." Um, you are a rich fucking rockstar, Grohl. You can whip your dick out and piss on people and it likely won't matter. And I'm talking at the 30,000+ festivals.

"I worked real hard on this one. Not," Grohl says when introducing "Tears for Beers" in Reseda. "But it's gonna be a big, big hit." Thank god for Payola!

"We have sort of figured that now, instead of taking out all the 'cool' bands on tour, we'll probably just take out this tribute-palooza, where you have got the Queen tribute band, the AC/DC tribute band, the Atomic Punks and us," Grohl says. "And we're talking arenas too, not ... tiny little clubs." ...like this shitty place

The FBI said the scheme began as early as 1995. The government alleges that those involved provided winning game pieces to friends and associates who acted as recruiters. These recruiters then solicited individuals who falsely and fraudulently represented that they were the legitimate winners of the McDonald?s games. 'One inside guy snagging the damn "Broadway" tickets. I fucking knew it!' say thousands of perenial losers.

Those arrested are: Linda L. Baker, 49, of Westminster, S.C.; Noah D. ?Dwight? Baker, 49, of Westminster, S.C.; John F. Davis, 44, of Granbury, Texas; Andrew M. Glomb, 58, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Michael L. Hoover, 56, of Westerly, R.I.; Ronald E. Hughey, 56, of Anderson, S.C.; Jerome P. Jacobson, 58, of Lawrenceville, Ga., and Brenda S. Phenis, 50, of Fair Play, S.C. Their average age, 52.5, puts the quite a bit out of the regular range for felony mail-fraud, doesn't it?

I just received the following announcement over the SSH mailing list:

Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on SSH Dawn Xiaodong Song, David Wagner, Xuqing Tian University of California, Berkeley

SSH is designed to provide a security channel between two hosts. Despite the encryption and authentication mechanisms it uses, SSH has two weakness: First, the transmitted packets are padded only to an eight-byte boundary (if a block cipher is in use), which reveals the approximate size of the original data. Second, in interactive mode, every individual keystroke that a user types is sent to the remote machine in a separate IP packet immediately after the key is pressed, which leaks the interkeystroke timing information of users' typing. In this paper, we show how these seemingly minor weaknesses result in serious security risks.

First we show that even very simply statistical techniques suffice to reveal sensitive information such as the length of users' passwords or even root passwords. More importantly, we further show that using more advanced statistical techniques on timing information collected from the network, the eavesdropped can learn significant information about what users type in SSH sessions. In particular, we perform a statistical study of users' typing patterns and show that these patterns reveal information about the keys typed. By developing a Hidden Markov Model and our key sequence prediction algorithm, we can predict key sequences from the interkeystroke timings. We further develop and attacker system, Herbivore, which tried to learn users' passwords by monitoring SSH sessions. By collecting timing information on the network, Herbivore can speed up exhaustive search for passwords by a factor of 50. We also propose some countermeasures.

In general our results apply not only to SSH, but also to general class of protocols for encrypting interactive traffic. We show that timing leaks open a new set of security risks, and hence caution must be taken when designing this type of protocol.

http://paris.cs.berkeley.edu/~dawnsong/papers/ssh-timing.pdf

GREEEEEEAT! Now, despite having pimp-smacked my servers into security-mode, carefully layering one level of security over another, including 256-bit encryption of my interaction with said boxen, I am now vulnerable to Markov-analysis! SHIT! I guess it's time to start injecting random bits of garbage into my data-stream. *sigh*

Or maybe it is more proof that I simply don't fit in ANYWHERE.

U.S. music product shipments fell 4.4 percent to $5.9 billion in the first half of 2001, the Recording Industry Association of America said Tuesday, despite the industry's success in stifling its nemesis Napster.

The RIAA said unit shipments to retail outlets and special markets such as music clubs and mail order dropped 9.4 percent in the first six months of the year, to 442.7 million from 488.7 million a year earlier.

The Rev. Larry Rice, an advocate for the homeless who operates a shelter in St. Louis, said companies like Schnucks would be better served donating used carts to shelters and taking the tax write-off, rather than spending money to prevent thefts.

And yes, there is a great deal of irony in taking opposite sides of the theft debate in one post. =)

These things are all connected.

Dave once swore that he wouldn't bother with a DVD player till the Goonies came out. It was his contention that as one of the premier films of 1985, Goonies was a perfect touchstone for the DVD format. If Goonies came out then the medium would survive. Yes, he is insane. =)

He got in trouble with the wife since she was going to sneak out at lunch and get it for him and she caught him planning to come into work late after getting it on the way in this morning. What a maroon. Just remember, "Goonies never say die!"

I'm not the only blog-type chattering about this. And the sequel is climbing the charts, kinda. not everyone is excited by it.

The survey, conducted by Help Me, an Italian volunteer aid group, said 37 percent of 14 to 18 year-olds polled had paid for their first sexual encounter, either with a prostitute or a transsexual. OK, when did selling yourself as a transexual stop being prostitution?

Help Me said the findings raised concerns about the psychological impact on teenagers of having such "cold" contact with women as a first experience, apparently all the transvestites are hot? but also, more worryingly, increased the risk of teenagers contracting HIV and AIDS. There is no "increased risk", they have been doing it. That is past tense, folks.

A new study of young Danish adults found that wine drinkers generally are smarter, richer and more educated -- all factors that can be associated with better health -- than those who don't drink wine.

"People who have high IQs, who come from high socio-economic status, who have high education are generally healthier than people who are not," said June Reinisch, director emeritus of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University and one of the study's authors. See, wine doesn't make you healthy, people who are healthy can drink and smoke all they fucking want. This is the basic paradox of research. Causality, you have to establish not only a link between events or conditions and events but also that one causes another. You must show that both aren't caused by an outside event or by another common condition.

The next question to answer is whether rich people tend to be healthier or do healthy people tend to be richer.

• /.'s comics box
• Sharkey Extreme (its been a long time since I visited)
• Meerkat Creations
• Howard Cruse does comics...
• GracelessLand hmmm.