On the street, Sunday
Heard on Rideau Street, sunny Sunday afternoon, a boy and girl in their early-twenties:
HER: Oh come on! I don't think it's me trying to seduce you, Patrick.
HIM: Hey... I was just playin.
September 2001
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September 30, 2001
September 29, 2001
LEGOmation
Stop motion animation using LEGO bricks: "Some of these movies will be quick childish animations, some will be well thought out, lovingly crafted works of intelligence and creativity."
September 27, 2001
Hackers, Spammers May Be Punished as Terrorists
Theoretically, because violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 have been included in the terrorism crackdown, hackers and spammers could be sentenced to life in prison.
Writes Kevin Poulsen of SecurityFocus: "The Justice Department is urging Congress to quickly approve its Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), a twenty-five page proposal that would expand the government's legal powers to conduct electronic surveillance, access business records, and detain suspected terrorists... The proposal defines a list of "Federal terrorism offenses" that are subject to special treatment under law... Most of the terrorism offenses are violent crimes, or crimes involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. But the list also includes the provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that make it illegal to crack a computer for the purpose of obtaining anything of value, or to deliberately cause damage..."
September 26, 2001
A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design
Jesse James Garrett - A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design: "Diagrams are an essential tool for communicating information architecture and interaction design in Web development teams. This document discusses the considerations in development of such diagrams, outlines a basic symbology for diagramming information architecture and interaction design concepts, and provides guidelines for the use of these elements."
Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell
Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell: The Onion is back.
The conceptual framework of the war from STRATFOR
STRATFOR, "a privately held intelligence agency that creates real-time analysis and forecasting on geoeconomic, geopolitical and geosecurity affairs of strategic value to corporations and individuals worldwide," analyzes the "conceptual framework of the war".
Should we be buying gas masks?
Should we be buying gas masks? Two views on the threat of chemical and biological weapons: Robert Loch's "Stormy Weather, Dark Winter: The looming threat of biological terrorism" and "The Specter of Biological Terror" from the New York Times.
wvWare
"wv is a library which allows access to Microsoft Word files. It can load and parse Word 2000, 97, 95 and 6 file formats... There is some support for reading earlier formats as well: Word 2 docs are converted to plaintext... wv compiles and works under most operating systems. Although most development is carried out with Linux, wv should work on BSD, Solaris, OS/2, AIX, OSF1, and even (with varying levels of success) AmigaOS VMS."
September 25, 2001
Phil Zimmerman's feelings of guilt
I read with a great deal of concern the article the Washington Post article of September 21st that described PGP creator Phil Zimmerman's feelings of guilt over how his open source encryption software might have been used by the September 11th terrorists. Zimmerman is quoted as saying that "The intellectual side of me is satisfied with the decision, but the pain that we all feel because of all the deaths mixes with this... It has been a horrific few days."
On the 22nd, I wrote Phil and told him he should be proud of PGP and the good it has done the world. I wrote, in part:
I work for an international development agency... An old friend of mine is a Columbian who grew up in Canada but wanted to return home to participate in a non-political rural development project. In the course of his work, his agency had to contact rebels who controlled the part of the region in which the project was located. Several months later a list started circulating among Columbian aid workers, a list of those targeted for death and torture because they "cooperated" with the rebels. A rightist paramilitary had intercepted the agency's email. People had thought their Hotmail accounts were secure, and they weren't. My friend's name wasn't on the list, but he left Columbia immediately, and the project he was working on evaporated. If the group had used PGP, they would have been safer, and perhaps the project would have succeeded.
Yesterday, Phil posted a responce to the Washington Post article on his Web site. He writes, in part:
In these emotional times, we in the crypto community find ourselves having to defend our technology from well-intentioned but misguided efforts by politicians to impose new regulations on the use of strong cryptography. I do not want to give ammunition to these efforts by appearing to cave in on my principles. I think the article correctly showed that I'm not an ideologue when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude. Did I re-examine my principles in the wake of this tragedy? Of course I did. But the outcome of this re-examination was the same as it was during the years of public debate, that strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Read my lips: I have no regrets about developing PGP.
September 24, 2001
Nevermind
Nirvana's Nevermind was released ten years ago today. I remember when we received it at the radio station: our music director said it was being hyped up and I remember thinking how well-produced it sounded, somewhere between the Pixies and Metallica, too melodic for one and too loud and angry for the other: melodic, brainy hardcore, I suppose. The popularity of that album ended up having a huge impact of campus radio in Canada, making halfway accessible pop and rock secondary programming on most stations.
September 23, 2001
9/11: Hats off to Cameron
Hats off to Camworld's Cameron Barrett, who lives in Brooklyn and is somehow able to once more write about open source and creating the Web while dealing with the horror of 9/11 and its aftermath. This weekend he's off to the Midwest, by air, and has written an essay at Fray about it called "I Am Not Afraid to Fly".
September 22, 2001
Throw it at their heads
Experts urge airline passengers to fight: I had thought this to be an urban legend, but Salon is reporting that at least one airline pilot is encouraging passengers to fight hijackers. "If anybody stands up and is trying to take over the plane, stand up together, take whatever you have and throw it at their heads..." the pilot is quoted as saying. "You have to aim for their faces so they have to defend themselves."
Rumors of War
Rumors of War: Barbara and David Mikkelson's urban legends site has a page about the recent terrorist attacks on the US. They debunk the Nostradamus "prophecy", the rumourd banning by Clear Channel of John Lennon's "Imagine", and explain Gordon Sinclair's editorial "The Americans."
Terrorists’ trade in stolen identities
Terrorists’ trade in stolen identities: "Had FBI agents bothered to ask college lecturers in South Wales about the terrorist bomber they supposedly taught over a decade ago, then security chiefs would have realised how Osama bin Laden had carefully created a generation of impostors." A case of careful identity theft that is only now being unraveled.
An Afghan-American on the "New War"
Tamim Ansary is an Afghan-American who writes that you can't bomb them back into the Stone Age; they're already there. But you can start a new world war, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.
September 21, 2001
TWITCHSPEED.com
TWITCHSPEED.com is a digital game-based learning portal, bringing together professionals and information in the field of digital game-based learning.
September 20, 2001
Echelon to Spy on Americans
It looks like Echelon, the National Security Agency's shadowy data collection system which actually "doesn't exist," is going to be used to spy on Americans.
September 19, 2001
Security toolbox for activists
I urge everyone to protect the security of the sensitive information that you possess or wish to exchange. History indicates that any loosening of privacy rights and an increased ability of the authorities to wiretap leads to abuse. Only a month ago, the Ottawa Citizen ran a series on the new "Public Order Program," CSIS and RCMP surveillance of activists, and the criminalization of dissent.
With last Tuesday's terrible attacks on Washington and New York, US lawmakers are calling for even more overt surveillance of electronic communications.
Wired News has learned that the FBI reportedly began installing its controversial Carnivore system at some Internet providers, including Hotmail, in order to monitor and record electronic communications, particularly the accounts of indiciduals with "Arab" names.
The U.S. Senate approved legislation this week that would make it easier for the FBI to obtain warrants for electronic eavesdropping. And Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., saying that civil libertarians in the past had blocked legislation essential in a terrorism fight, vowed to push for laws to make search and surveillance easier in domestic intelligence-gathering efforts.
We still have access to strong encryption, and I recommend some of these free and powerful tools to protect your privacy.
:: Hushmail provides free, end-to-end, 2,048 bit, OpenPGP-based encryption of email to other Hushmail users. It is Web-based, so you don't need to change any setting in your email client, and is quite easy to use.
:: Scramdisk is a program that creates virtual, encrypted drives. It makes a container file on an existing hard drive that is protected by a password you set. The container, which can be as small as 250 K or as large as 4 gigs, can be mounted by Scramdisk software as if it were a real floppy or hard drive. The user has a choice of a number of industry standard encryption algorithms: Triple-DES, IDEA, MISTY1, Blowfish, TEA, and Square.
:: Anonyizer provides a free, completely private and secure way to surf the Web anywhere, anytime.
:: Window Washer is a powerful and flexible data cleaning system for a single-user Windows PC. Regular use protects you from unwanted data remaining on you your PC.
September 18, 2001
Art Bell's September 11th inbox
I don't support military action: 16%
"I don't support military action: 16%": Online CNN poll asks, "For how long would you be willing to support U.S. military action against terrorism?" There are a lot more pacifists then I would have expected, given the circumstances. Of course, "As long as it takes" sits at 76%, which is also not surprising. We'll see what that number is in six months.
Reactions to the Attacks of 9/11
Reactions to the Attacks of 9/11: The crazy email started as soon as I arrived home on the 11th:
~ "What the hell is going on! I think the time has come for the people to separate from the state," wrote an anonymous hacker, "The underground revolution has begun... When will we come together? Why should we be left in the dark and innocent citizen be used as live ammo?"
~ Nicholas Longo, the CEO of CoffeeCup Software, sent an email to his product announcement list that read, in part, "We would like to also say on record that if any country is found responsible for these attacks, we call for that country's complete destruction and annihilation."
~ One disturbed camgirl wrote about "selective genocide" and how "we really need to just redraw the map of the middle east. Those people have acted like children with guns for as long as anyone can remember, and they've taken it too far... I say we blow them off the face of the fucking planet."
The anger is understandable, disturbing but expected; it was the talk of "genocide" and "wiping them out" that worried me more. And we started to see it on the streets. As of yesterday, the FBI has opened at least 40 hate crime investigations into attacks on "Arab-looking people," including two killings possibly motivated by anti-Arab sentiment.
But I was impressed, immediately, by the tone of much of what was being said elsewhere. People were calling not just for war, but critical thought, reflection, and peace as well. No one had been silenced by this, and no one seemed scared to say what they really thought. On Metafilter, there was immediate discussion of United States foreign policy and its possible impact.
~ Someone pointed out to me a chilling article from Robert Fisk of the Independent, suggesting that the United States government may be falling into a trap set by bin Laden.
~ Noam Chomsky wrote about of the bombings as atrocities that exist within a context of atrocity.
~ The Atlantic has a new section up linking some of their most insightful articles about terrorism and the United States role.
~ Martin Woollacott: Don't inflate the size of the enemy to fit the crime, from the Guardian.
~ Some interesting coverage of the media coverage by Danny Schechter.
9/11
This morning I woke up from a dream in which the twin towers still stood. I remember trying to fly a plane, alone in the dark, into darkness, and trapped in the lobby, surrounded by bright white flames and no doors, and then dark again.
On September 11th I looked up at a clear blue sky free of airplanes and I wondered if the next war had begun. Cool fall air with buses that roared and people who were mostly quiet. Parliament Hill was roped off, and the streets were filled with police. Tourists leaned over the police lines to try to take photos of the War Memorial, and the police.
Where I work, people know what it means to see the danger and hopelessness of the South brought home, and they gathered around a television in the meeting room. It all came at once: another plane, and another, and another, and the buildings "taken down," as Peter Mansbridge said, as if they were paintings or Christmas decorations.
A quiet fellow in the elevator told me, "This is going to change things; the order of the world is going to change. It has to with something like this. Jesus..."
I couldn't stop looking, but I wanted it to end. I went into my office and cried. Donna had to teach; classes weren't cancelled at the University of Ottawa. "All those poor people," I told her on the phone, "All those poor people."
I had been in Washington only three weeks before, driven past the Pentagon into the lush green of northern Virginia. It had been my birthday, one far away from friends and family, but everyone had been so nice I was happy that day. I ate sushi at Reagan Airport.
I was supposed to have a meeting at 11. Robert came into my office and told me that our building, three blocks south of the Parliament, was going to be evacuated. My friend in the office next to me had been intent on staying, but a few minutes later I saw him with his briefcase. "I was talking to my wife on the phone and she said, 'I'd rather you were home.'"
Was there a meeting, or not? I couldn't find Robert. I gathered my things, wondering if I would be back in the office at all that week, wondering what was coming next.
That day hasn't ended. There are moments -- minutes, or an afternoon -- when average-everydayness seems to return, but I cannot make it last. I fear for myself, and I fear for what we might become.
I hope all of you are safe, even if you don't feel all that safe.
September 11, 2001
"They don't think that someone is jamming their conversations."
"They just shrug... They don't think that someone is jamming their conversations." A friend of mine bought a cell-phone jammer two months ago and has been happily creating "sanity zones" within which cell phones are rendered inoperable. People have a right to communicate, he conceded. But "I have the right not to participate in that communication process - I really don't need to hear people yelling into a cell phone if I'm standing half a block away." (And excellent comments at Metafilter)
September 10, 2001
37
I turned 37 two weeks ago. I knew I'd end up at these arbitrary numbers - 25, 30, 35 - and while I could imagine being older, I couldn't imagine being different. One of the hardest things to conceive is the transformation of self. I thought, perhaps, I wouldn't change, that I wouldn't want different things, or feel differently than I did at, say, 27. The shock, now, is that I'm older, and I can write "older" because it really is the weight of the past that makes me who I am.
I mention this because last year I dealt with something quite strange: age discrimination. I can write about it now because it happened nearly a year ago when I was interviewed for a position at an advertising agency in Toronto. It took me awhile to realize what it was that was going on, but it boiled down to people wanting someone like themselves, and that wasn't me. I was, somehow, too old.
They didn't say it outright; I was given a bullshit line about suitability that I knew, immediately, didn't make any sense in the context it was being delivered. But I wasn't used to the euphemisms and excuses that so many people in the world have to deal with because they don't "fit in" to someone's notion of "acceptable." I'm a straight, white male, and that is, in some ways, a privilege.
I had embraced the Internet in 1993 because it seemed like it could drive a revolution, and make for me a fresh start. I always saw myself as a young man exploring a new world. But you can't stop time. I've been online for almost nine years, and I have years of knowledge about how things can work, or why they don't. Sometimes I feel left out because I'm not fresh to the medium and filled with giddy ideas. But I don't want to be young like I was before, and I'm happy to have dumped some of the weight of pretense, much of my famous anger, and many many other things.
September 6, 2001
mediaAttack
mediaAttack: "[T]he guy at MediaAttack.com does this, calls up these universally awful cable shows and mocks the bloated self-important hosts with faked calls like this- and it certainly does seem to show their true colors. Sometimes it's just stupid, but sometime's it's pure genius, especially when he slips in a question to the host about some personal hypocrisy (for example, calling out a "journalist" on that fee they accepted to speak at a terribly partisan organization which they are now defending on air without full disclosure)..."
New Digital Channels
Last year, the CRTC (which regulates broadcasting and telecom in Canada) licensed more that 200 new channels that would be made available through digital compression over both old coax cable and direct broadcast satellite. I've gone through the decision a few times, marveling at the implications. In part, the commission was saying, Present something reasonable, show that you might be able to do it, and you have our permission. Of course, you had to be one of the Canadian cable players: CITY, Global, Alliance... the usual suspects.
Anyone familiar with American cable offerings will see the few remaining niches filled: classic sports, Animal Planet, a Nick at Night clone, MSNBC, and the Biography Channel. But there are a few surprises:
~ Landscape will offer "the ultimate relaxation channel" with what are essentially nature videos with a new age soundtrack. I have already suggested this to Donna as perfect pet-sitting content.
~ PrideVision will be the world's first gay and lesbian broadcasting service. Don't hold your breath for this appearing anytime soon in the USA.
~ Movieola will be showing short films, animation, and digital media as if they were music videos. I don't know if there is anything like this anywhere else.
~ Drive-In Classics will tap CITY TV's seemingly bottomless vault of cheesy flicks.
~ BookTelevision is also from CITY. It will be interesting to see what they can cook up here that goes beyond Bravo Canada's current offerings.
~ WETV The Green Channel actually started out as an IDRC-supported project.
The new channels launch tomorrow. I could never have enough television channels. The problem, I think, is that regardless of how many there are, something is always missing, and that vacuum, of course, is people. Too many of us have given up on real contact.
September 4, 2001
No free speech for animal rights Web sites
"On Thursday, EnviroLink Network, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Internet service provider, took offline two Web sites belonging to the animal-rights activist group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. The action came in response to a letter sent to the ISP earlier in the week by Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British medical research firm. Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Huntingdon accused the activists of violating its copyright. Although no charges have yet been filed, under the terms of the DMCA, Envirolink was forced to remove the sites to avoid potential legal liability." From Salon.com.
Internet Gossip: The Web Site
The weblog and webcam "scenes" (a term I would rather use conditionally, as opposed to communities) were always about social extension in cyberspace. Or, in the words of Sapphireblue, "Just like high school, but without the learning part." So, of course, there is gossip; Internet Gossip, to be exact.
Wake up!
Wake up, John! Wake up!
September 2, 2001
I, Cringely
I, Cringely: Cringely is the host and writer of the hit PBS-TV miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds." Cringely On Why You Should Pay Any Attention to Him: "When it comes to information technology, I know what I am talking about. Twenty years in and around the PC business have earned me wisdom, if not wealth. It's not that I am so smart, but that my friends are smart. The best and brightest in Silicon Valley talk to me all the time. It's my job to sift through their thoughts for valuable bits to share with you."
