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I'm taking a break from the Internets for at least a week, because I'm pretty certain it's eating my brain.

So um, good luck everybody on being all terribly awesome and stuff (you are!), it's not you. It's just all that information zapping and yapping through my brain, burning me up and keeping me from actually doing something with the information, or perhaps very much anything at all.

Too bad that means I can't really keep in touch, I'll be back though. This however is an experiment, so no Internets for at least a week.

It's mostly webpages and that infinite amount of hyper-interesting stuff that seems to just entangle me like a sticky world wide web (lol spider metaphor), so I will avoid that for a while.

Can't afford not checking e-mail so I'll only check it once a day. I'm not really sure who has my email here anyway (it's not the one in my profile btw, don't write there unless you want me to read it months later). I might quickly pop in to check if I have PMs but also maybe not.

I will PM Faust my contact info just to be sure in case the server crashes or something. Others who have my phone #, text me! I miss you guys already

Ok, see you guys around,

TWEET ME BACK

http://gizmodo.com/5385918/dude-drops-his-kindle-2-convinces-amazon-to-replace-it-and-pay-him-200-for-his-troubles

okay the first comment says the guy is kind of a douche, and in a way he may be, but still, this is pretty BAD ASS

although, only for the reason that I don't consider large corporations to be persons, so you can be as rude or assholish to them as you like. they treat humans the same way, or worse, after all.

if he had pulled this at a smaller store, made of, you know, people, he'd have been a total fuckhead.

please explain your choice in this thread.

http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html

19 minutes TED talk, starts out as an entertaining demonstration on colours, optical illusions, but then moves on to the concept of perception and from about halfway explicitly addresses some of the BIP ideas about how we are unable to perceive reality, so what is real anyway?

Not so much enlightening or new information, but interesting to watch and perhaps gives some ideas on how to demonstrate the BIP.



Of course, optical illusions like this are nothing new. Even though a lot of people never really give it a second thought. However, one of the important ideas in the BIP is that there are physical bars (gravity, atomic forces), biological (optical illusions and other sensory limitations) and psychological bars (social norms, duty, laws, relationships). And that on a certain fundamental level, they are the same, in the sense that they limit your freedom. And you can never get rid of all of them, especially not the physical ones, and to a lesser extent the biological ones.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/10/21/normon-osborn-the-hair-apparent/

Because we all want to know. No really. And be sure to include pictures of weather radars for proof, because we might not believe you.

it's 9.3°C over here, that's 49°F. It's sunny, so that's pretty perfect autumn weather IMO. Here's the temp forecast for the next 2 weeks:



Temp looks pretty okay, but the important part is whether it stays dry or not, which seems reasonably likely for now:



Well that was interesting!

Go on, tell us all about YOUR weather! (But keep it in this thread, FFS)

http://www.universe-people.com/ 

just wait, the pages auto-refresh after a few seconds. it starts out like a crazy hippie UFO love cult, but then turns into creepy paranoid crazy after a few pages. it takes like 14 refreshes before you get to the real index page--which I didnt explore much, but the intro slides were funny and colourful.

[Is [snitching on people by checking my employer's customer PI database against a felon database] unethical or somehow wrong?]

(this may be the wrong forum, but so would the others)

Anyway, wow.

Is [snitching on people by checking my employer's customer PI database against a felon database] unethical or somehow wrong?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9pb1v/is_this_unethical_or_somehow_wrong

About six years ago, and periodically ever since, I've obtained a full CD disc of database information using my State's open government records laws. This database listing is of all current open felony arrest warrants in the various counties in my state. The information is freely available to anyone who asks as long as they are willing to pay the nominal fee.

Anyway, it so happens that my employer is in the business of collecting basic personal information in order to service various warranty accounts. Starting about six years ago, I began checking just the name and birth dates of all our clients against the felony warrants data.

Whenever I spot an exact match in both name and birth date, I've been calling in anonymous tips to the local CrimeStoppers hotline and collecting rewards anonymously whenever local law enforcement arrests the fugitive.

I spotted a "Support Law Enforcement" bumper sticker the other day, and I casually mentioned to a friend in the car with me that I have been doing this for several years now. I make a pretty good income from it in fact, about $1200 a month on a good month, and never less than about $500 a month.

My friend insists that what I'm doing is very, very wrong. I admit that I'd probably get fired if my employer found out, but that's just an issue between me and my employer. I'm not collecting any information other than name and birth date and bouncing it against my database. And only if there is an EXACT match, then I pass the current address for the wanted person on to CrimeStoppers.

My friend seems to think that this is wrong on many levels beyond me using information from my workplace. I just don't see it. Why? These are all FELONY warrants, and most of them are several years old. I've helped law enforcement capture several dozen fugitives that had warrants over 20 years old! Until my friend got so upset, I was pretty darn proud of myself. Now, I'm wondering if I'm just being a douchebag. Reddit, what do you think?

EDIT

As I type this, there are 560 comments. Wow! I wanted to address some concerns that I agree are very relevant. I haven't read every comment, but I think the main concerns are: 1. That I'm making money on this, 2. that potentially there are drug-war victims being arrested, and 3. that I may be violating some kind of privacy agreement. Oh, and 4. there may be some question as to legality.

Yes, I'm making money on this. I purposely set out to make money on this. I mainly do it for the money. I essentially admitted this in my original post I thought, but perhaps I didn't make it clear enough. I'm under no false pretenses that I'm doing it for anything other than the money, however yes, I do get satisfaction from putting scumbags away as well.

Yes, a relatively small batch of fugitives had charges relating to drug trafficking in particular, mainly cocaine. The State database does show the charges in every instance and I know most of the codes by heart now. Yes, I do agree that the drug war is an unnecessary war on our citizens and I don't agree with the harsh treatment doled out at times. However, I trust the justice system to sort all that out, and I do my part to lobby my representatives for changes to our system as regards drug related crimes. The only data the State gives me is for fugitive warrants. I don't know why and I don't care since it's thousands of names long and dozens more are added every month. I wouldn't waste time on anything other than a felony warrant anyway since those pay the best rewards.

I've been in my current job since graduation from college 10 years ago. It's the only job I've ever held other than part time jobs in high school. I've looked through my papers and I can say with just about 95% certainty that I have never signed any type of contract or agreement of any kind regarding privacy of the information that I come into contact with every work day. It may have been an oversight. However, I think because people are mailing us this information voluntarily, (it's only name, address, DOB and a survey), I don't think it falls under privacy expectations. Yes, they're registering for a warranty, but they're also entering a drawing by filling out the marketing survey. Privacy violation simply never entered my mind as a concern. Perhaps it should have. I did mention in my original post that I will most likely be fired if my boss ever finds out. I'm ok with that.

As to legality. Again, this concern never even entered my mind. If the law says I can't turn in a fugitive to law enforcement, then why the hell are they rewarding me in cash for doing just that? I'm not trying to rationalize anything here. I'm very clear on what I'm doing and why. I just don't believe that it's unlawful in any way. However, I'm know good advice when I see it and I'm going to see a lawyer immediately to get a professional opinion.

YES

MOTHERFUCKING HUMMUS



YUM YUM YUM YUM

also, see that orange thingy to the left of the plate? that is one of the cloves of garlic I did NOT put in my hummus. I didn't throw it away either, because it's all mysterious and shit. You see, it is actually orange, and slightly translucent, exactly like a dried apricot, when I took it out of the bulb. The other cloves were perfectly normal. I've never seen this before, there's no fungus, and (as far as I can tell) no little critter living in it either, it's just ... orange and slightly translucent.

What the fuck is up with that, anyone got an idea?

(and yes I'm kinda tempted to taste it)

http://webecoist.com/2009/10/05/weird-wonders-15-of-the-world’s-strangest-animals/

BUMA/STEMRA, the Dutch equivalent of the RIAA wants bloggers to pay €130 per year for embedding Youtube videos on their site. The fees are ridiculously more higher if you have more than one video per year on your site. They don't make any distinction between commercial and non-commercial websites.

No, legally it doesn't make any sense either.

Hilarity ensues.

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/648841/cb69235a/_topic_]_135_x_obama_smile.html

makes your jaw hurt just by looking at it ...

didnt know where to post this, came across the link via twitter: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/09/25/notes092509.DTL

read especially the third suggestion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html

apparently these people are getting rashes simply from showering

i mean, fuck, in some other thread (one about anarchism) people were arguing against some guy comparing America to a 3rd world country, well it might not be as bad as Somalia, but I'd say that clean drinking water is a pretty important aspect of civilization ...

I didnt even know about the existence of this movie until today everybody and their dog started starting threads about it.

Are there any atoms or vodka in it?

my gf was looking over my shoulder at your avatar and asked "why does that guy never change his avatar?", and I had to admit, I dunno either, you just like "Bob", I suppose?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/oh_no_warning_alert_alert_aler.php

http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/2073645/wilders-haar-moet-afkomst-verhullen.html

(Just before you think this is fake, nu.nl is a respected news website, in fact it's the most successfull web-only news publicist in NL, now follows a translation)

In weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer Antropologist Lizzy van Leeuwen writes, "PVV-leader Geert Wilders is of Indonesian origin. He bleached his hair to cover this up."

Wilders' maternal grandmother is from a Jewish-Indonesian family, named Meijer.

Archives show that her husband, Wilders' grandfather, did not serve as a soldier in Dutch-India, like Wilders himself stated, but as a government clerk.

Wilders' grandfather was fired during leave in the Netherlands in 1934. Due to financial problems he and his family could not return to Indonesia.

According to Van Leeuwen, Wilders' viewpoints can be directly tributed to his family history.

Wilders shares his anti-islamic stance and "extreme patriotism" with a lot of other politicians with Indonesian origins, as well as with the national-socialist NSB, which was very popular in Dutch-India in the 1930s.

According to Van Leeuwen, Wilders' bleached serves to hide his origins.

"It was a brilliant idea of Wilders to bleach his dark hair. It seems that is enough to become an ex-Indo in the Netherlands and to enter the political arena as 'the man from Venlo'". [note: "Indo" means Dutch-Indonesian halfbreed, it's not a slur. Venlo is a southern Dutch city, pop. 35k]

This wednesday, a childhood picture of Wilders appeared on the Internet. In [Dutch Magazine] HP/De Tijd, Amsterdam journalist Marco de Vries confirmed that it was indeed a photograph of the PVV-leader.



(also w00t I think I'm getting pretty good at this translation stuff, especially considering I had to reorder most of the sentences cause they would sound like Dutch "coal-English")

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html

so apparently, there's zillions of empty mega cargo ships hanging around near singapore, according to the article, a "fleet" larger than the US and UK navies combined. 12% of the global cargo fleet, expected to rise to 25% of idleness.

the ships are supposed to be transporting our christmas electronics or some such, but because of the recession, retailers are expecting less consumer buying power, plus they don't have the credit for large stocks anymore.

more crazy is that South Korea is still building ships by the fleet, because building a mega cargo ship is kind of a large project, the contracts have been signed in 2006/2007. so these shipyard workers in SK are still building huge ships that nobody actually really wants anymore.

the upshot of this story is that you can now buy a mega cargo ship for as little as €4000, or chartering an entire bulk freighter suitable for carrying raw materials from China to the UK for just €7000! who wants to go on a cruise? :-D

so I moved into my new place and all, and the gas stove was supposed to be working tonight, except that it isnt

fortunately, my oven is electric and I also have a 1.5L electrical waterboiler.

however, without a gas stove I feel kinda handicapped, so anyone got any suggestions what I should cook? as my gf is vegetarian, it should be vegetarian. otherwise I'd just get some pieces of meat and put them in an oven dish with some onions potatoes and garlic and shit.

Just came across this collection of science fiction stories, available free for reading online, or download (and for only $5.09 as print-on-demand, pretty cheap, might be worth looking in how they did that, too).

Either way, the stories seem kinda interesting (though I havent read one yet):

http://thoughtcrime.crummy.com/2009/

enjoy

edit: it's also available in many different type of ebook reader formats, including Kindle, Sony Reader and ePub. One story is also available as audio.

[title, link]

cause me and Rat and Cain and some others post security/hacking/social engineering/etc related articles up for discussion every now and then, I thought maybe I create a special thread for them.
anyone who wants to share a security-related article/topic, feel free to post at least title, link and short summary/blurb/first paragraph. also feel free to jack the thread as far as you like, it'll get back on topic when a new article gets posted.
remember, security is not just about technology or hacking or encryption, but also physical security such as lockpicking or social engineering.

What are some good sites for security news?

Some Top (IMO) security blogs

http://www.schneier.com/blog/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/ (Security Research, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge--interesting projects)
http://asert.arbornetworks.com/


Tangentially security related (privacy, electronic freedom, etc)
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archive
https://www.bof.nl/ (the Dutch EFF. if you can read Dutch, must-read, even if you don't live there. also a damn slick custom WordPress skin)

Misc
http://neworder.box.sk/
http://ha.ckers.org/ (used to be one of cutting edge in webappsec, but is rarely updated these days)
http://sla.ckers.org/forum/list.php?13 (the "News and Links" subforum of ha.ckers.org, dunno how good it is, but the community is reasonably active)





(original first post)

I'll start with

Stoned Bootkit pwns TrueCrypt Full-Volume
http://www.stoned-vienna.com/

Stoned Bootkit is a new Windows bootkit which attacks all Windows versions from XP up to 7. It is loaded before Windows starts and is memory resident up to the Windows kernel. Thus Stoned gains access to the entire system. It has exciting features like integrated file system drivers, automatic Windows pwning, plugins, boot applications and much much more. The project is partly published as open source under the European Union Public License. Like in 1987, "Your PC is now Stoned! ..again".

TrueCrypt Attack

Stoned is able to bypass the full volume encryption of TrueCrypt. It allows installing a trojan to a computer that's hard disk is full encrypted. Let's take a look at the technical part. For TrueCrypt encryption there are two scenarios:
Only the system partition is encrypted; the master boot record, unpartitioned space and the host protected area stay undecrypted
Full volume encryption, only the master boot record stays unencrypted

The trick is that the master boot record is never encrypted - and thus can be safely overwritten and used for our own boot 'software'. For the first case additional data such as plugins, the original master boot record backup or further code can be stored to unpartitioned space. For the second case the whole Windows attacking code must fit into the master boot record, into the 63 sectors minus the decryption software. TrueCrypt has free 7 sectors where Stoned Bootkit still fits, so even full volume encryption is no problem.

My personal notebook has the system partition encrypted with TrueCrypt. I showed at Black Hat USA 2009 live that Stoned Bootkit was able to bypass that and could pwn my own system.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1200486/The-Genesis-enigma-How-DID-Bible-evolution-life-3-000-years-Darwin.html?printingPage=true

The Genesis enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution of life 3,000 years before Darwin?

By Christopher Hart

The revalation[sic] came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force.

'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.'

The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

[The Economics of Botnets]

The Economics of Botnets In the past ten years, botnets have evolved from small networks of a dozen PCs controlled from a single C&C (command and control center) into sophisticated distributed systems comprising millions of computers with decentralized control. Why are these enormous zombie networks created? The answer can be given in a single word: money. Read the article: http://www.viruslist.com/analysis?pubid=204792068

(I started writing this in the PICS thread, but it got kinda long and might warrant a topic of its own. I dunno if it's Apple Talk material, but I hardly ever start a thread here anyway, so here goes)

what this cartoon made me wonder, this is the morning commute right? no wonder people look glassy-eyed and robotic, they're all still zoning out from having just gotten up. perhaps they havent even had breakfast yet, or coffee. or perhaps it's the way back home from work, after a day's work, I'm not making an effort appearing bright and lucid either. and if it's the same stretch, every day, and all you have to do is get in and get out at the right time, no wonder you "shut off" during the trip. it's just a piece of time you have to kill. and then there's the awkward social situation, like in an elevator, but less so. you're in a small confined space, with other people close to you, but nobody talks to eachother, avoids eachother's gaze, etc. it's just weird. to be honest, this is part of why I enjoy public transport, for the sheer alienness of it well that, and travel in general (even if it's the same 1 hour trip every week). and yeah I know from Suu's stories that public transport can be a horrible place as well, I think I got a taste from that in other large cities such as Vienna. In my experience it seems to be mostly subways though. they carry some kind of inherent gritty filth and seem to attract more scum. but that's magical thinking, so I'm going with the idea that the gritty filth, being subterranean and the lack of having a nice view is what makes people appear more like scum and also act more this way (in a similar way to how people are more likely to commit minor crimes in an alley tagged with ugly graffiti than in a clean one). I wonder, what is the inherent difference, or what would it be like, if a bus, subway or train would carry the same atmosphere as a bar? Physically it is kind of the same right, small space, people close to eachother. Wouldn't it be great to enter your morning commute, say "Hi everybody!" and strike up a conversation with some random person? Sure enough, most of them won't be that interesting to talk to, but there's 100 people on that train, chances are there are at least five persons as bored as you are. Maybe ubiquitous wireless internet (will be here soon in my city) and something like twitter could lower the treshold somewhat. One could anonymously broadcast "urggh morning, i need coffee #trainGroningenLeeuwarden" or whatever, signifying you're currently in the train from Groningen to Leeuwarden and anybody who cares can tune in on that #tag, chat anonymously (it's kind of like an impromptu IRC room) either to a particular @person, or broadcast on the #tag. And who knows, at some point you might actually make eyecontact with someone! I heard the above idea was actually supposed to be made popular with the Bluetooth "presence" feature in mobile phones, but afaik it never took off (apart from some weird story about people using bluetooth to broadcast they are available for casual sex or something--I doubt that was ever more real than some reporter's wishful thinking). Okay, long meandering stream of thoughts There's probably some very basic and simple reason why this obviously doesn't work or something, which probably amounts to "people are people are assholes", but I don't see it right now. Semi-related story, I've started following #groningen the hashtag of my city on Twitter (with "-oogTV" to the query to filter out the local news station that spams the tag every half hour with multiple stories about old ladies that fall off their bike and such. not everyone that goes to the hospital or every drunk idiot the police pick up is news, damnit! no matter how "local" you are.) So anyway, this guy tweets from his phone that he just got on the train from #Amsterdam to #Groningen, and wants to know what time he arrives, I had nothing better to do so I looked it up for him and tweeted it back, random interaction between strangers.

xkcd 610 Sheeple

[bolded]

I found this very interesting talk on TED.com:

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

For reference/discussion/people that cannot watch video, I pasted the transcript (by the way if you visit the page and click on "interactive transcript" in the rightside info pane, you can view this text and click on any sentence to jump to that part of the video--pretty cool). He does refer to some slides here and there in his talk, but they are cartoons, so you don't miss out on much actual content.

The bolded bit in the introduction here, is what I think makes this talk especially relevant for Discordianism and "Think for Yourself, Schmuck!", apart from that the talk covers freedom and the ethics of freedom, a topic that comes up here every once in a while, it applies "Think for Yourself" to this blindly accepted, dogma-like idea in western/industrial ethics: that happiness = freedom = choice. and because we should maximise happiness, it follows we should maximize choice. check out the video or read the transcript to see where exactly this reasoning goes wrong.

I'm going to talk to you about some stuff that's in this book of mine that I hope will resonate with other things you've already heard, and I'll try to make some connections myself, in case you miss them. I want to start with what I call the "official dogma." The official dogma of what? The official dogma of all western industrial societies. And the official dogma runs like this: if we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom. The reason for this is both that freedom is in and of itself good, valuable, worthwhile, essential to being human. And because if people have freedom, then each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our welfare, and no one has to decide on our behalf. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice.

The more choice people have, the more freedom they have, and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have.

This, I think, is so deeply embedded in the water supply that it wouldn't occur to anyone to question it. And it's also deeply embedded in our lives. I'll give you some examples of what modern progress has made possible for us. This is my supermarket. Not such a big one. I want to say just a word about salad dressing. 175 salad dressings in my supermarket, if you don't count the 10 different extra-virgin olive oils and 12 balsamic vinegars you could buy to make a very large number of your own salad dressings, in the off chance that none of the 175 the store has on offer suit you. So this is what the supermarket is like. And then you go to the consumer electronics store to set up a stereo system -- speakers, CD player, tape player, tuner, amplifier. And in this one single consumer electronics store, there are that many stereo systems. We can construct six and a half million different stereo systems out of the components that are on offer in one store.

You've got to admit that's a lot of choice. In other domains -- the world of communications. There was a time, when I was a boy, when you could get any kind of telephone service you wanted, as long as it came from Ma Bell. You rented your phone. You didn't buy it. One consequence of that, by the way, is that the phone never broke. And those days are gone. We now have an almost unlimited variety of phones, especially in the world of cell phones. These are cell phones of the future. My favorite is the middle one -- the MP3 player, nose hair trimmer, and creme brulee torch. And if by some chance you haven't seen that in your store yet, you can rest assured that one day soon you will. And what this does is it leads people to walk into their stores asking this question. And do you know what the answer to this question now is? The answer is "No." It is not possible to buy a cell phone that doesn't do too much.

So, in other aspects of life that are much more significant than buying things, The same explosion of choice is true. Health care -- it is no longer the case in the United States that you go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you what to do. Instead, you go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you, well, we could do A, or we could do B. A has these benefits, and these risks. B has these benefits, and these risks. What do you want to do? And you say, "Doc, what should I do?" And the doc says, A has these benefits and risks, and B has these benefits and risks. What do you want to do? And you say, "If you were me, Doc, what would you do?" And the doc says, "But I'm not you." And the result is -- we call it "patient autonomy," which makes it sound like a good thing. But what it really is is a shifting of the burden and the responsibility for decision-making from somebody who knows something -- namely the doctor -- to somebody who knows nothing and is almost certainly sick and thus not in the best shape to be making decisions -- namely the patient.

There's enormous marketing of prescription drugs to people like you and me, which, if you think about it, makes no sense at all, since we can't buy them. Why do they market to us if we can't buy them? The answer is that they expect us to call our doctors the next morning and ask prescriptions to be changed. Something as dramatic as our identity has now become a matter of choice, as this slide is meant to indicate. We don't inherit an identity, we get to invent it. And we get to re-invent ourselves as often as we like. And that means that every day when you wake up in the morning, you have to decide what kind of person you want to be. With respect to marriage and family, there was a time when the default assumption that almost everyone had is that you got married as soon as you could, and then you started having kids as soon as you could. The only real choice was who, not when, and not what you did after.

Nowadays, everything is very much up for grabs. I teach wonderfully intelligent students, and I assign 20 percent less work than I used to. And it's not because they're less smart, and it's not because they're less diligent. It's because they are preoccupied, asking themselves, "Should I get married or not? Should I get married now? Should I get married later? Should I have kids first, or a career first?" All of these are consuming questions. And they're going to answer these questions, whether or not it means not doing all the work I assign and not getting a good grade in my courses. And indeed they should. These are important questions to answer. Work -- we are blessed, as Carl was pointing out, with the technology that enables us to work every minute of every day from any place on the planet -- except the Randolph Hotel.

There is one corner, by the way, that I'm not going to tell anybody about, where the WiFi works. I'm not telling you about it because I want to use it. So what this means, this incredible freedom of choice we have with respect to work, is that we have to make a decision, again and again and again, about whether we should or shouldn't be working. We can go to watch our kid play soccer, and we have our cell phone on one hip, and our Blackberry on our other hip, and our laptop, presumably, on our laps. And even if they're all shut off, every minute that we're watching our kid mutilate a soccer game, we are also asking ourselves, "Should I answer this cell phone call? Should I respond to this email? Should I draft this letter?" And even if the answer to the question is "no," it's certainly going to make the experience of your kid's soccer game very different than it would've been. So everywhere we look, big things and small things, material things and lifestyle things, life is a matter of choice. And the world we used to live in looked like this. That is to say, there were some choices, but not everything was a matter of choice. And the world we now live in looks like this. And the question is, is this good news, or bad news? And the answer is yes.

We all know what's good about it, so I'm going to talk about what's bad about it. All of this choice has two effects, two negative effects on people. One effect, paradoxically, is that it produces paralysis, rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all. I'll give you one very dramatic example of this, a study that was done of investments in voluntary retirement plans. A colleague of mine got access to investment records from Vanguard, the gigantic mutual fund company of about a million employees and about 2,000 different workplaces. And what she found is that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered, rate of participation went down two percent. You offer 50 funds -- 10 percent fewer employees participate than if you only offer five. Why? Because with 50 funds to choose from, it's so damn hard to decide which fund to choose that you'll just put it off until tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and of course tomorrow never comes. Understand that not only does this mean that people are going to have to eat dog food when they retire because they don't have enough money to put away, it also means that making the decision is so hard that they pass up significant matching money from the employer. By not participating, they are passing up as much as 5,000 dollars a year from the employer, who would happily match their contribution. So paralysis is a consequence of having too many choices. And I think it makes the world look like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

It's in your ISP, logging your every action.

[as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.]

http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/06/16/

Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people — such as large corporations — who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.

Social networking is important, but who owns it — the online real estate and all the content we share on it? How much control over our words, photos, and identities are we giving up by using someone else’s site for our personal information? How dependent have we become? I imagine that many of us would lose most of our personal contacts if our favorite Web mail services shut down without warning. Also, many of us maintain extensive friend networks on sites like MySpace and Facebook, and are, therefore, subject to their corporate decisions via “Terms of Service” and click-through agreements.

Of course, with Opera Unite it is Opera Software you are dependent on, but their active decentralized approach tries to minimize this dependency as much as possible. The Opera Unite feature is just a tool that turns your computer into a webserver, but the content remains on your machine, and in your control.

It's basically Peer-to-peer technology, but not with the focus on filesharing (although I imagine that will be a huge part of what it will be used for), but on developing any kind of service in a peer-to-peer fashion without the need of a middle man (such as a hosting/server company).

I'm very interested to see, if this takes off, it could turn the entire web upside-down. Example, add in some crypto, or simply build an adapter for an existing darknet service and you get what Tor wanted to be, instead of what it is.

[http://000.blackironprison.com/img/bip.pdf]

http://000.blackironprison.com/img/bip.pdf

That's 2x3 to a sheet. It has 0.56" margins on all sides, which should be adequate for most printers. The margins are white so you'll need to cut them off, but most printshops have these big handy paper cutting tools. I even used your oddball heathen US Letter size of 8.5"x11"

(ISO-216 A4 sized version, as used in most of the rest of the world, may follow later, if there's interest)

BIP Stickersheet: "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THIS MOTHERFUCKING PRISON" by Triple Zero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License

[When Myth Trumps ScienceWhether it's thinking that vitamin C can cure a cold, or that you must drink eight glasses of water a day, people cling to outdated medical lore long after it's been shown to be wrong. Here's why.]

When Myth Trumps Science

Whether it's thinking that vitamin C can cure a cold, or that you must drink eight glasses of water a day, people cling to outdated medical lore long after it's been shown to be wrong. Here's why.

Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll weren't looking to start a controversy. They're both pediatricians at Indiana University who, as a side project to their day jobs, put together a study on a few medical myths that many doctors believe. The results weren't exactly earth-shattering: they revealed that you don't actually need to drink eight glasses of water and nails do not continue to grow after death. And the research definitely wasn't new. "We looked through old research and basically put it all together," explains Vreeman.

But from the reactions that Vreeman and Carroll got, you'd think they were questioning the very flatness of the earth. They received hundreds of e-mails from strangers and dozens of media requests. One particularly disquieted man repeatedly called their office, irate over their discrediting of the eight-glass myth. He was so threatening and abusive that their administrative staff filed a restraining order. "A lot of people were incredibly upset to think that we would question the fact that you need eight glasses of water," says Vreeman. "Nine studies from the physiology literature have suggested we get enough water from other things we drink, yet many people feel very strongly about water."

Now, the authors are back with Don't Swallow Your Gum! (Griffin Original), a book of medical myths and half-truths that will be published next week. Among the 66 myths, there's something to surprise everyone: that, despite what Mom told us, vitamin C does not cure a cold and even the highest SPF sunscreen will not prevent all sunburns. But what's more surprising than the myths they debunk, is how strongly their friends, colleagues and readers protested their research. Both Vreeman and Carroll have been repeatedly told they're incorrect, misinformed or flat-out wrong, that these are medical facts they're messing with. "It's not like we discovered something new, we just reviewed the literature," says Carroll. "But people still won't take it, it's like nothing would be enough to convince them otherwise."

read more

found via http://twitter.com/dangerousmeme

I just came across this insanely interesting article:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-wisdom-of-community/

It's an overview of a book called "the Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki (2004). I should really check this book out, I think.

Check out the article and apply it to, for example, the Memebomb database voting tool.

[THE END]

so during our holiday in Denmark, Bo and I decided to give the recipe for "bacon explosion" a go. You might remember my friend Bo from such wonderful experiments as "Toothpasta al Dente" and "Pate, the making of". I dunno what cooking blog he's reading, but for some reason he usually links me to the very same horrifying things that get posted here.

This is a picture report of our bacon-explosion.

starting with the weaving of the bacon (upside-down)


a large chunk of beautiful bacon has been cut into little cubes and strips, which are fried. on the foreground you can see pieces of whitebread being dried/toasted, in order to powder them later on (as we didnt have a pack of readymade breadcrumbs)


the filling. consisting of minced porkmeat, pork-sausage-meat (too bad we didnt get any pics of Bo squeezing it out of the sausage skin), eggs and (added after this pic) breadcrumbs and the fried bacon, possibly some black pepper, I'm not sure. and a lot of garlic, too.


The finished bacon weave.


Bo using his telekinetic mind powerz to spread the meat-goo evenly over the weave.


On top of the layer of meat-goo, we put a layer of grated cheese. Then we rolled it into a .. horrendous roll of baconicity:




Knowing that this concoction was going to produce a LOT of fat and juices (even though we removed the fat rendered from frying the bacon cubes), we placed some quartered onions next to the bacon-explosion in the oven-dish, cause nothing is better than big pieces of onion soaked in pork fat. we also put an extra plate below the grill, so any overflowing drippings wouldn't mess up the oven floor.


And then, we wait... (actually, Bo and I were busy pouring the juices back over the .. thing, every 15-20 minutes or so, to keep everything glistening with moisture and fat)

in the left pic above, take a good look at the glass bowl on the table. we cut the pork skin (from the bacon) into small strips and FRIED THEM IN BACON FAT, it's eh something traditional. maybe you got it in the US too. anyway, they get crunchy and taste kind of good, but also still like pork skin, so we didn't really finish the bowl, but since we had the ingredients, I thought why the hell not.

this is the finished bacon explosion in all its glory (as you can see some of the cheese tried to escape):


we do this shit for science:



ah right and in Denmark they sell the coolest stuff in the supermarket, namely packets of assorted beets and roots in all sorts of colours and varieties. Bo prepared these deliciously by cooking and stirfrying them:


this is what a plate with a slice of bacon explosion looks like:
 

or just a plate with a really large piece ..
 

it was DE LI CIO US

juicy, flavourful, and too much, much too much too much too much.

closeups of the leftover. we were with 7 or 8 people, we couldnt finish it, and my friends turned temporarily muslim, refusing to eat pork for the rest of the week. Bo and I ate the rest of it the following days, cold slices of pork on toast, fucking delicious.




THE END

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/bacon-explosion.html

omg.

ok, so kind of inspired by a couple of recipes i read recently, I did this:

- cut up some thick unsalted unsmoked baconmeat into bits (this meat is not nearly as exciting as real bacon, but it's cheap, and bacon flavour can be overwhelming)
- 1.5 onion in small chunks
- 2 cloves of garlic
- some spices that i thought would be a good idea: black pepper, chilli, coriander seed, cumin
- tablespoon of molasses
- half a teaspoon of mustard
- some leftover cola that wasnt fizzy anymore, enough to cover it all

now it's been marinating for an hour or two and I am not entirely decided about what to do with it yet.I could:

- add some potatoe chunks and let it simmer like a stew. i'd have to add more liquid in this case, but I'm out of cola, so that would have to be stock.
- separate it from the liquid, then fry the onion and meat. when done, deglaze using the liquid. prepare potatoes separately.
- butter an oven dish, put the marinated stuff plus liquid in it, with (probably pre-boiled, yes/no?) potatoe chunks (at the bottom or on top, or mixed through?) and put it in the oven at low heat (150 Celsius = 300 F) for some time. maybe cover it with something in the beginning.

what do you think would be a good idea? this? anything else? I just stirred the marinating meat a littlebit and it smells delicious.

thing is, it's sunday, so most shops are closed (and I don't feel like going out anyway), so my ingredient choices are a bit limited. In addition to what's mentioned above, I still have tomatoes, a red bell-pepper, half a cucumber, a bag of sliced curly kale (yummy but I'm not sure if it would go with this?), a can of brown beans, rice, pasta, cans of tomato paste and peeled tomatoes, gherkins, various sauces, condiments and spices -- okay so maybe not really limited, but I just don't really know what would be the best option to do with it.

HALP ME!

cause we seem to agree that some of the bits are bad, or boring. i'm reading the articles and there's so much shit that seems relevant to what people here are bsuy exploring.

one:

Once upon a time, there was an instructor who taught physics students.  One day she called them into her class, and showed them a wide, square plate of metal, next to a hot radiator.  The students each put their hand on the plate, and found the side next to the radiator cool, and the distant side warm.  And the instructor said, Why do you think this happens?  Some students guessed convection of air currents, and others guessed strange metals in the plate.  They devised many creative explanations, none stooping so low as to say "I don't know" or "This seems impossible."

And the answer was that before the students entered the room, the instructor turned the plate around.

Consider the student who frantically stammers, "Eh, maybe because of the heat conduction and so?"  I ask: is this answer a proper belief?  The words are easily enough professed - said in a loud, emphatic voice.  But do the words actually control anticipation?

Ponder that innocent little phrase, "because of", which comes before "heat conduction".  Ponder some of the other things we could put after it.  We could say, for example, "Because of phlogiston", or "Because of magic."

"Magic!" you cry.  "That's not a scientific explanation!"  Indeed, the phrases "because of heat conduction" and "because of magic" are readily recognized as belonging to different literary genres.  "Heat conduction" is something that Spock might say on Star Trek, whereas "magic" would be said by Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. READ MORE

Kai and whoever also checks this blog, add to the thread!

We've already seen the iSight indicator light "disappear" behind the bezel of Apple's MacBook and iMac computers. A recently published patent application could make the iSight itself not only disappear, but move to the middle of the screen. MacBooks, iMacs, and even iPhones and iPod touches could take advantage of the new technology.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/08/apple_files_patent_for_camera_hidden_behind_display.html

 

first of all, you start boiling some water to prepare rice.

my brother got me some good doubly fermented soy sauce for Sinterklaas, which is part of the excuse for making this.

slice some tofu into strips, heat some oil in a low frying pan, soak the strips in some good soy sauce, fish sauce, fivespice sauce, or whatever chinese/asian seasoning you happen to have. also some sticky molasses, for stickyness and sweetness. start frying them on high heat. next time i might dust them a bit with flower, as well. turn them when they get brown and crispy and sprinkle with some more fivespice (powder) halfway.

get your wok hot. i have a big, heavy wok. it's not cast iron, i think, but it's big, heavy and has got a lot of heat capacity, which is what's important.

in a bowl, mix some cut up chunks of napa cabbage, some packet called "crunchy turnip chunks" (which is turnip marinated in some kind of fivespice-ish sour salty lots of MSG and spicy marinade, cheap and good to spice an entire meal), big onion in chunks, garlic, some oil. if i had any, i'd have added mushrooms here.

put a lot of oil in your wok, be sure to spoon it along the sides somewhat, so it coats the entire wok, not just the puddle in the middle.

when you're absolutely sure it's absolutely hot, throw in the vegetables. expect a cloud of steam stir, fry, stir, fry, etc. i put in the vegetables in two parts, cause i was afraid the wok might lose too much heat if i added it all at once, but i'm not really sure if it made a difference.

fry.

at this point i was a bit at a loss as to what to do next, i threw in the rice as well, and stirfried that a littlebit. which turned out to be a good idea i think cause it soaked up all the juice from the napa cabbage nicely, which allowed for some hotter frying, but not too long as the rice crumbles will stick to the wok bottom.

then i turned down the heat and served it with the crunchy tofu strips on top.

[stamppot spruitjes met braadworst en BIER]

stamppot spruitjes met braadworst en BIER

that's "mashed (potatoes and sprouts) with sausage and BEER" (parentheses added for order of precedence).

so I got 2 sausages, a bunch of potatoes, sprouts, and generic kitchen stuff.

first i cook the sausage, cause i'm having some bad days and don't quite feel like cooking at all, but i'm hungry. the packaging says i should soak the sausage in water first before baking it in a pan. i've never heard of this, and personally, i will not fucking stand for this, so instead i soak it in BEER and some stock powder.
cooking the sausage in a pan with a big piece of butter (which i let burn, do not do this cause you will have black bits in yr food), and eating it with some ketchup, it turned out really good.

so i saved up the butterfat and juices and shit from the sausage. also i sort of cleaned my plate from the ketchup and other juices back into the bowl that now contains beer, stock, juices and ketchup stuff. i will use this later on to make GRRRRAVY.

then i peeled the potatoes and cut two onions in quarters (i would have used more onions but i didnt have any) and started cleaning and peeling the sprouts and putting it all in a big pan with water, "hutspot-style" (which is: "throw eveyrthing in a big pan of water, boil, pour away water and mash it"-style), except then i thought, wait, sprouts taste much better when you caramelize them.

so i took them out and caramelized them in more butter and some garlic.

the water and potatoes and onions is now boiling.

also the second sausage has been soaking in the bowl with stuff. i didnt tell you this before, but you're supposed to read a recipe in its entirety before you try it, so that's okay. also i have been drinking BEER.

the second sausage is now also baking. in new butter and the previous butter from the previous sausage.

now i'm waiting for this to be sort of done, but in the mean time i will tell you what's going to be happening: i will turn the sausage so it browns evenly, i will finish caramelizing the sprouts (OSHIT brb) (LMNO said they're still good if they're a bit black right) and cooking the potatoes and onions, and then I will make GRAVY from the beer+juice+stock+stuff+butter in the pan and everything. and then I will MASH IT ALL TOGETHER. except possibly with the exception of the sausage. and possibly also the gravy, i'm not sure yet.

stay posted!

was talking with a collegue yesterday (a clever guy that's really interested in a lot of interesting stuff) about the Black Swan, turned out he read it too and had become a big fan of the ideas presented in it, he pointed me to an interesting blog:

http://robinhanson.typepad.com/overcomingbias/

i haven't had time to really read it yet, but i trust that it's got good stuff in it, and i thought some of you guys might be interested so i put it out here.

so i'm eating a lot of vegetables-du-season, cause im short on moneys, they're cheap, and it's healthy.

- cut up some potatoes, nuke em with water until done, (remove water), set aside
- start bakin some bacon strips and garlic
- cut up some carrots, nuke em with water until nearly done
- cut up some onions, add to the bacon etc
- cut up some green common beans, nuke em with water until nearly done (i like my microwave, leaves me with less stuff to clean up after)
- add the carrots to the frying stuff, and the beans a bit later as well, oh and i had half a red bell pepper left over, so throw that in as well
- combine the potatoes with milk, 3 eggs, some hunks of cheese, some spices (nutmeg, thyme, something or other), stock powder, pepper in a long container, for application of the blender-on-a-stick (i have a new one and it's making me soooo happy)
- the stuff will turn into a very thick mashed-potatoe-like substance almost immediately. which surprised me a little cause i was expecting something more fluid. but it makes sense, because of the potatoes.
- now put the fried veggies+bacon at the bottom of a buttered glass oven dish, and top with the potatoe-goo.
- cook it for ~25-30 minutes in a preheated oven at 400F (200C). i covered the top with aluminium foil the first 14 minutes, but i dunno if it's necessary.

it will look like this, and taste very yummy:



some variation ideas for next time:

- if i would have had breadcrumbs ready, i'd have added them on top.

- a slightly more crazy idea, to blend some baking powder through the goo at the last moment, and then use one small layer of goo, followed by the veggies/bacon, followed by a second layer of goo .. cause it will rise and turn into some kind of cake or something. i dunno, this was my idea at first, but i semi forgot and was hungry.

HUTSPOT

hutspot = traditional dutch recipe of awesome.

i dunno if i posted this before, in fact, i might very well have, but yesterday i made it again, and it was awesome. again.

what you need:

- potatoes
- carrot
- onion
- salt, pepper
- butter
- milk
- either bacon cubes or (smoked) sausage, or both. or meatballs. or klapstuk (some kind of stewed beef).

for amounts, i think (but am not sure) volume-wise you need about 2 parts potatoes, 1 part carrot and 1 part onion. yes. i think i used 500g potato, 250g carrot and 250g onion.

how you make it:

- peel the potatoes, slice them up into about equal sized pieces, put them into a big pan, just submerged in water, and some salt. start boiling, potatoes need about 20 minutes (from until the water boils) until they're done. with the lid on.
- in the mean time, peel the carrot, cut into cubes, and throw it on top of the potatoes, put the lid back on. carrots need a bit shorter until they're done, and over the ages the amount of shorter has proven to be exactly the amount of time it takes to cut the carrot into cubes*
- same thing for the onions, peel, cut into chunks, throw on top of the rest of the boiling stuff. lid back on. i hope you cut things quickly enough, because it is of tremendous importance that these onions have enough time to cook so they turn sweet (same for the carrots of course).
- in the mean time you should have been using your own judgement to start cooking the bacon or sausage so it would be pretty much exactly done when it's time to
- turn off the heat and pour the water from the pan
- now add the bacon cubes to the big pan (sausage would be served separately but bacon goes into the mix), add some pepper, butter and milk and mash it all into a big yellow-orange hutspot of awesome! mash it up good, taste and add more salt, pepper, butter or milk to taste. if you think you know what you're doing, you may also try adding a bit of white sugar.

it's done!

serve it in a big heap on a plate, with a little hole in it filled with gravy (or a cube of butter), and the sausage on the side.

yesterday, i had some cabbage left over from days before, so i sliced that up and cooked it with the bacon (soaking up flavours) and added to the mash. it was a good variation.

*for an explanation why this cannot be a coincidence and SCIENCE IS WRONG buy my book The All-Seeing Chef: On the Origin of Spices by Means of Culinary Design

[QUICHE THE FIRST: RED BEETS]

ok question

i'm making 3 quiches tonight.

i already madde the dough from water+flour+olive oil+pinch-o-salt

for all three, i will coat the metal pie spring thing (you know what im talking about) first with butter, then with flour, then i'll put the dough on the edges so i'll get a pie shape. the filling will all have a egg+milk mixture in them.

ok that's all standard quiche procedure.

now for the real filling i need your advice:

QUICHE THE FIRST: RED BEETS

i have red beets cooking. they were cheap at the veggie market/bazar. i'm gonna bake some onions till they caramelize and mix them with the cubed beets and creme fraiche (sour cream, but slightly less liquid) and the egg+milk for the filling. bit of pepper and salt and that's it. my gf said the red beet flavour is not to be fucked with.
now because i wanna make it look cool i was thinking of one extra layer on top of the beets. the choice fell on celery. my gf thought the tastes might combine well. since our synergetic cooking usually tends to turn out more awesome than either of us expected, i tend to trust her on this.

question 1: do i boil the celery? i was thinking of very lightly boiling (blanching?) it, but not much cause it goes into the oven as well.
question 2: personally, i think a quiche needs cheese. she says creme fraiche is cheesy enough. i was thinking of slicing up some mozzarella and mixing that with the celery slices and using that as a sort of celery-mozzarella layer on top of the bright red beets. thinking mozzarella doesn't taste like much (esp the cheap one i got) it cannot hurt, and it's cheese.
question 3: general advice? see anything to do horribly wrong with this plan?

QUICHE THE SECOND AND THIRD: UNKNOWN YET

i ahve a bunch of other ingredients:

- 1kg (2.2lbs) of red/orange/yellow bell peppers
- a cauliflower
- one fucking big orange carrot (looks a lot like the middle one at the bottom of this pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CarrotDiversityLg.jpg )
- a cucumber
- 0.7kg (1.54lbs) of pre-cut frozen broccoli (only the flower bits)
- two unpickled gherkins (they were at the market/bazar and i always wondered what they taste like without pickling. probably like cucumber. i think they'll go into the salad. or possibly for dipping in the hummus i will be making as well! i'm brilliant! i must get more carrot for this as well! and some of the celery i haven't cut yet! woooo)
- enough danish blue cheese to exactly spoil two quiches cause of blue cheese overdose (i only wanna do this to one quiche)
- easily enough gouda yellow cheese for two quiches (hey i'm in dutchland)
- a nigh infinite supply of onions, garlic, minced chillis (sambal oelek), herbs, spices, mustard and other obvious must-have things.

i think i'll make one with cauliflower and broccoli, gouda and danish blue and some spices.

the other one will then be with bell peppers. but .. is bell peppers enough? oh, i know. i'll add bacon, and it'll be like quiche loraine only with added bell peppers. i already got two veggie quiches anyway (got two vegetarians tonight for a group of 10)

question 1: yes? sound idea? got any generic advice?
question 2: more advice? thoughts?

i got 4-5 hours left before everything really needs to be ready (i already done quite some work). i'll get some extra hands in maybe 3 hours.

i will go to the shop two more times today, which is now, and in about 1 hour. so if your advice includes extra ingredients, hurry. otherwise, pick from what i list above. [edit: shopping will be delayed as i'm going to finish the red beet quiche first]

okay, i'm gonna continue cutting and making stuff.

pics will be provided later.

(also, yay for the first time i think i'm not going crazy because of this periodic "cooking for 8-11 friends" deal ... thank you alprazolam)

[a website that gives you a series of "prove you're a human" challenges, each more complex (and strange) than the previous]

I like the idea of a website that gives you a series of "prove you're a human" challenges, each more complex (and strange) than the previous, until you make a mistake. (Upon which it would give you a blank page with, "Clearance request denied." or something similar.)

whoa i love this idea!

it could start with a few simple CAPTCHAs, then a couple of those weird "pick out the three kittens" selectors, then a "pick the three cute chicks" captcha, then some vague reference to robot sex (it's mandatory), then something reall absurd, and from there it should move on to slightly more active/real life kinds of challenges, finally stuff like "to prove you're not a robot, download these posters, paste them all over town, take pics and post them to Flickr tagged as 'postergasm'".

ironic thing being, if they carry out all these tasks, they're pretty much programmed like a robot

That would be brilliant, in fact.

It would also spread like wildfire, like so many of these sites do, when their purpose is unknown.  Digg, Stumble, reddit etc would mean crazy hits for the site.

hmmmmmmmmm okay. since it's uber-easy to make, code-wise, as it doesn't have to be actual generated CAPTCHAs, just pics with an "answer" or "click on the right spot to continue" kind of stuff made up to look like CAPTCHAs, i might do this.

i should really finish the radiofreediscordia.org site first, though

but brainstorming:

- i want to title it "rabotnik" (rabotnik.blackironprison.com perhaps) or "ja tvoi sluga" (website title) as a reference to Kraftwerk's "the robots"
- front page will have a little news feed saying "News 5/9/2008 - The site is online and live!" and one or two other informationless generic news-items (ideas anyone?)
- big logo that says "JA TVOI SLUGA"
- fill the rest of the page with generic newskool css/html crap that looks shiny
- next to the news feed there is a box that says "To continue, please prove that you're not a robot by solving the CAPTCHA below: [some image of a real easy CAPTCHA stolen from some site, for the one on the front page possibly randomize it between 10 different ones to not give away it's actually static--still easier than writing a CAPTCHA script]

questions:

- what should be on the second page? i'm thinking of slowly changing the layout to different things, but nothing too noticeable.
- there should be a littlebit of (info-less) text
- and most importantly, what should be the excuse for presenting the user with another CAPTCHA? i say the first three screens it should give a semi-reasonable reason, after that the reasons can become more absurd.
- Cramulus, do you happen to have saved a collection of cool oldskool robot pics / robosexual pictures and things, i think it would be cool to start incorporating them after a few screens. plus, a few well-chosen images really helps to make an otherwise nearly empty page look cool, example: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/devival2008

- for info-less content some of the IT/web2.0 stuff could be parodied about dynamic solutions leveraging business potential in a customer oriented way and such. there used to be a fake website made by some dutch guys that did this brilliantly and sold nothing, maybe i can find it. otherwise maybe somebody can write empty content? (somehow i feel that LMNO might be excellent at this)

- maybe after some levels it could start linking to discordian rants (at first not too obviously discordian related) about The Machine and those "Robot Sex" essays Cram made (one or two?)

- another choice is whether to have each level as a new URL so people can bookmark it, or to use sessions and POST forms of which i'll spare you the technical details but it would come down to that the URL stays the same so people cannot bookmark it (or if they do, they would return to the first page before any CAPTCHAs), which would make the game harder to solve, but perhaps also just more annoying to "play". thoughts on this?

- oh i forgot where, but it really should have a 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle somewhere, they're boring as fuck, easily solved by very repetitive behaviour and therefore prove nothing about being a robot or not (heh)

[Modern Spellbooks]

Modern Spellbooks

http://davidseah.com/blog/comments/modern-spellbooks/

David Seah writes about how hand-written notebooks about computer programming languages are in fact a lot like spellbooks filled with incantations.

(The difference being that if you follow the incantation step by step, you will get a 100% success rate, which might make these things even better than actual spellbooks )

["The Majency Oracle"]

"The Majency Oracle"
http://www.jamesbickers.com/majency.html

A free printable deck of "inspiration cards", similar to Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" or a deck of Tarot cards (if used for brainstorming/inspirational purposes)--check it out, some of the stuff is pretty far-out whacky, almost memebomb-worthy.

The Cox-Zucker machine

“A Mordell-Weil Group of Rank 8, and a Subgroup of Finite Index,” Charles F. Schwartz, Nagoya Math Journal, vol. 93, 1984, pp. 17-26. (Thanks to Rodrigo Trevino and Don Troop for bringing this to our attention.)

The author, who is at Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, makes reference to the following paper, which was written by two Rutgers University mathematicians: “Intersection Numbers of Sections of Elliptic Surfaces,” David A. Cox (who is now at Amherst College) and Steven Zucker (who is now at Johns Hopkins University), Inventiones Mathematicae, vol. 53, 1979, pp. 1-44( http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01403189). The Schwartz paper is notable for its Section 1, which begins:

1. The algorithm of Cox and Zucker (AKA, The Cox-Zucker Machine)
The purpose of this section is to provide, not a complete description of the algorithm of Cox and Zucker, but rather, a brief summary of their technique.

http://improbable.com/2008/08/12/the-cox-zucker-machine/

[FAKE CHEESE MACHINE]

BREAKING: some dutch semi-satirical confrontational food testing and research TV programma found out that 30-70% of the cheese on McDonalds Cheese Burgers, NY Pizza pizza's, oven pizzas, ready made oven lasagna, etc etc is actually fake and made of oil+starch+flavourings.

yeah, big fucking deal, tell me something i didn't already suspect for a long time.

this, however is BESIDES THE POINT

BUT THIS:

http://www.brabantsdagblad.nl/voorpagina/3622743/Kaas-op-pizza-en-cheeseburger-is-nep.ece

THE MACHINE ON THAT PICTURE IS A FAKE CHEESE MACHINE

how fucking awesome is that????

INDEED

IT'S A FUCKING FAKE CHEESE MACHINE

thank you for your attention.

[meat pies]

ETA: this post probably makes slightly more sense when i mention that I'm in Edinburgh now, for the Day of Discord meeting on saturday

scottish and/or british food is actually surprisingly good! i say surprisingly because i heard mostly bad things about it.

okido, so we have:

meat pies - really really good. you can buy them ready made and/or frozen. basically it's just some kind of meat (steak, minced meat, probably others as well) with onions and gravy, wrapped in dough, in a pie shape. we have similar things in the netherlands called "saucijzenbroodjes" (sausage-buns), but they are filled with such disgusting low-quality cardboard meat that i wonder if the general shape was actually intended to be like a sausage or just happens to be like that. anyway, scottish meat pies are really good.

irn bru - it's orange. that's pretty much it's main feature. it's a hyper-sweet radio-active orange fizzy soft drink beverage that has a genuinely artificial flavour, that is a littlebit in between bubblegum and some very cheap artificially-flavoured orange 'just add water' lemonade syrup i remember from children's parties in my youth. i thought it would be heavily caffeinated, but this is not the case (it is a littlebit, but not as much as coke, for instance). also, Payne has invented a mix called "Iron Dick" which is Irn Bru + Port, and tastes pretty damn good!
oh wow and i just checked the ingredients, it has quinine in it! that's the stuff that makes the tonic in gin-n-tonic glow bright blue when you're in a club that has blacklight, so yeah, i can't wait to see what Irn Bru looks like in blacklight!

haggis - haven't tried yet. but i intend to, if i get the chance.

black pudding - there's a few slices in the fridge, but, while i pride myself on eating pretty much anything (i'm pretty much okay with the idea of haggis, for instance), i just don't like blood. it makes me uncomfortable.

toast with jam - it's good. but .. it's wrong. you eat as much as you want, but you are hungry an hour or two later. i'd say it has no nutritional value, but it has sugar and fat, but it just doesnt seem to register or something.

ale - i don't like it. i now know why Guinness (also an ale) disappoints me nearly every time i drink it. it tastes like flat beer. which is, probably, because it is flat beer. and not in a metaphorical sense, i'm pretty sure it's actual flat beer. they should just cool it and inject it with carbon dioxyde like normal beer. fortunately, pubs serve normal beer for pretty much this exact reason.

toast with egg and bacon - good! the bacon here is slightly different than the dutch bacon, it has a less smoky flavour, and my hostess didnt thoroughly cook it (i'd have cooked it till crispy, but we're out of bacon now), also thicker slices. it looks beautiful.

Stella Artois - tastes a lot better than whatever they are trying to pass off as Grolsch over here. cheaper, too.

ah right and this morning i did some triple zero scottish fusion cooking. i have a whole grain baguette (like a french stick bread, but smaller) baked in the oven with some slices of (edam) cheese. sausages cut into bits, between the baguette buns, sliced tomatos and onion rings and oh yeah

brown sauce - it's like worcestersauce, except thicker. we have the Branston brand here, which has the annoying tendency to be impossible to dose properly, it comes out in large squirts only, so i had to use a spoon to spread a littlebit on my baguette.

it was pretty damn good, better breakfast than the toast-n-jam shit i've had the past couple of days

got this url from friend at university who planned out her entire masters thesis in this thing, it's based on the FreeMind/MindManager mindmapping tools, I'm pretty sure some of you may find a use for this:


http://www.mindmeister.com

an example of a full mindmap, which you can browse and expand nodes:

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/8199342

(this one is partially dutch, dunno why, but it's first non-boring one i could find in the public mindmaps directory)

more info:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

Tutorial Video:


(click)

[SomethingGASM INVITATION!]

so, a GASM is basically a decentralized* discordian* pranking* project* (aka Deedeepeepee)

when organizing a GASM, one of the key elements to its success** is getting the word out, so that others can easily join in.

so I give you the idea of GASM Invite Business Cards. such a card would look a littlebit something like this:

------------------------------------------------
         SomethingGASM INVITATION!
you have been invited to SomethingGASM, which is
a FUN way to SOMETHING and blabla SOMETHING!

participate by doing SOMETHING!  and downloading
the material at http://something.com/something.

-HAIL-ERIS---WWW.PRINCIPIADISCORDIA.COM---FNORD-

don't forget to put a nice picture on it as well. then get your ass to the copyshop and print out a couple of sheets of these on thick paper, cut them to the proper size, and leave them laying around at places where you think interested people will pick them up and participate.

if you want to spread the word even wider, you can of course post the PDF here and who knows, someone might print them out and spread your cards somewhere real far away (but dont count on it for the success of your plan)

* sort of.
** apart from Leading by Example, of course.