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Cryptography, steganography, movies, cyberculture, travel, games, and too many other hobbies to list!

'Time-Traveler' Busted for Insider Trading
Topic: Business 5:49 pm EST, Mar 28, 2003

] Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall
] Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly,
] he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

I don't think he's lying.

For the record, these are other recent headlines from "Weekly World News":

 3/24/2003: How You Can Own A Piece Of Iraq Land
 3/21/2003: Archaeologist Finds 12,000 Year Old Magazine From Atlantis!
 3/20/2003: Secret Videotape Shows Lions Eating Christians In Iraq
 3/19/2003: 'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADING
 3/18/2003: Schools Will Soon Force Your Kids To Take Drugs!
 3/17/2003: Fish Has Human Face!
 3/14/2003: Bigfoot Captures Sexy Camper For His Love Slave

And it's not even April 1st yet! :)

'Time-Traveler' Busted for Insider Trading


George's little antics
Topic: Miscellaneous 1:25 pm EST, Mar 27, 2003

Hijexx wrote:
] The footage was the most disturbing thing on television in
] some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped
] for his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing
] of his hair, the only aspect of the coverage reported by any
] American media outlet (the Washington Post in this case),
] which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that.
] Rather, it was the demeanour — I would say antics — of the
] president himself.
]
] Like some class clown trying to get attention from the back of
] the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted
] back and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around
] him. He pumped a fist and self-consciously muttered, "feel
] good," which was interestingly sanitised into the more mature
] and assertive, "I'm feeling good" by the same Washington Post.
]
] He was goofing around, and there's only one way to interpret
] that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on
] Iraq: the man is an idiot.

]
] ...
]
] I've seen the footage they're talking about. It's not the
] hair combing, it's the antics. I watched as he sat there
] trying to practice his serious face and asking if it was good
] or not. It was pretty sickening.

The Washington Post article is here, btw:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1027-2003Mar20.html

Now, I haven't seen the footage itself (if anyone has a link to it, let me know), but I would like to offer an alternative view, especially because I've been doing a lot of public speaking myself lately.

Basically, it's *scary* to get up on stage. Even when I'm giving a talk that I've given literally dozens of times before, I get nervous right before I speak. My palms sweat, I fidget, I run through the script in my head, I worry about how the audience is going to receive what I say, I worry whether I'll communicate the emotional impact that I intend to communicate, and I do all kinds of absurd little things to try and calm myself down and/or psych myself up. Then, once I'm actually on stage, I usually go on autopilot and I'm fine, though I may not even be consciously aware sometimes that I'm speaking. Indeed, on a couple very stressful occasions where I was speaking to enormous audiences, I'd have people coming up to me after a talk and telling me what a great job I did, and how moved they were by some of what I'd said, but I would have absolutely no memory of some of the parts of the talk that I'd just given, because I was so nervous while I was speaking!

When I watch Bush speak (and also sometimes when I watch Colin Powell or Tony Blair speak), perhaps because I'm identifying so strongly with the *process* of public speaking, I can picture what's going on behind the scenes. Like during Bush's "State of the Union" speech, while I was... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

George's little antics


RE: Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? Just Ask Them
Topic: Technology 12:26 pm EST, Mar 27, 2003

Jeremy wrote:
] Peter Wayner, the author of _Disappearing Cryptography_,
] writes about online gaming in the New York Times.
]
] An arms race is underway ... Bots can do drudge work to earn
] extra cash for their owners; video cards can be reprogrammed
] to let players see and attack through walls; and much more.
]
] It's all here ... black markets, weapons inspections, test
] bans, treaty verification regimes ...
]
] There's probably some good academic work in this space. Can
] you design a provably fair massively multiplayer online game?

Um, mine? We've got massively multiplayer games that have been running for several years (one for over a decade), with relatively stable economies, game systems, and player-bases.

There's still a certain amount of black market trading that goes on in the background -- by my guesstimates, each of our major products has a black market (some call it grey market) of about $50,000/month in transactions, with about 20% of that being out and out fraud. We can't stop all of it, and we definitely don't actively encourage it, but we do track it. For example, in one of our games, DragonRealms, there's effectively an exchange rate of in-game currency (platinum kronars) to real world dollars. If we see that exchange rate making sudden changes, it gives us a good heads-up that there's some new bug or other problem that's throwing the game economy out of balance, and we can increase steps to find and plug the hole. Over the last few years though, things have been running pretty stable... The game's producer refers to it as "our platinum kronars are running at about the same exchange rate as the Canadian Dollar"!

RE: Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? Just Ask Them


Humor: Bush Movie Posters
Topic: Humor 11:54 am EST, Mar 27, 2003

A couple of these made me laugh out loud...

I think my favorites are the Gulf Wars "Episode II: Clone of the Attack" poster, and the picture of Bush walking by clutching that familiar yellow book...

Humor: Bush Movie Posters


GlobalSecurity.Org: Iraq Military Guide
Topic: Current Events 6:49 pm EST, Mar 26, 2003

There's a ton of data here on the exact composition of the Iraq military forces, right down to describing the history of each division's military encounters, and the estimated types and quantities of equipment, guns, missiles, aircraft/helicopters, and so forth. There are also some extremely detailed maps of Iraq, and even aerial reconnaissance pictures of specific buildings in Baghdad (though I think that some of those buildings are definitely past-tense at the moment!).

On the plus side, the news ticker on this site seems to be up to the minute. On the minus side, some of the troop descriptions are very out-dated. Certain sections obviously haven't been updated since the 1991 Gulf War, whereas other sections seem to be current only up to around 2001, though I did see a couple pages that were current as of August 2002. Also on the minus side, though there does seem to be a map showing locations of military units, there's no date on it to indicate whether this is something relatively current, or if it too is a decade old.

Still though, for the sheer quantity of other information at this site (and the up-to-the-second news ticker), I recommend this link.

P.S. What I'd really like to find is a Java or Flash page that shows not only current Iraqi troop positions as reported in the media, but also a scrollable timeline so I could see how those positions have changed over the last several days. I haven't had any luck finding something like that, but if anyone else spots one, please Meme it!

GlobalSecurity.Org: Iraq Military Guide


North Korea Is Dark
Topic: Travel 6:37 pm EST, Mar 26, 2003

] This amazing image is included in the standard US
] Department of Defense briefings on North Korea. It was
] mentioned in a news briefing on 23 December 2002 by
] Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who stated that "If you look
] at a picture from the sky of the Korean Peninsula at
] night, South Korea is filled with lights and energy and
] vitality and a booming economy; North Korea is dark."

I've been looking for a good link to meme this image for awhile. It's a satellite view of the night-time landscape in eastern Asia, including Japan on the right, and the Chinese coast on the left. In the middle is the Korean peninsula. What's remarkable is to see how lit up the southern part of the peninsula is, and how completely dark that the North Korea part of the peninsula is. It's a dramatic indicator of the differing economic and technological levels between North and South.

North Korea Is Dark


Soldier 'bloggers' report from war
Topic: Technology 5:29 pm EST, Mar 26, 2003

] There's a new breed of combat personnel at the war front:
] soldier "bloggers."
]
] Once the narrow domain of geeks and technology
] journalists, "Web logs" -- or diary accounts published
] online -- have gone mainstream, making it possible for
] even soldiers to transmit daily updates to Web sites
] about the rigours of battle.
]
] War-themed blogs, appearing on sites such as
] www.blogsofwar.com and www.sgtstryker.com, have become a
] popular alternative news source since fighting broke out
] in Iraq a week ago, sometimes beating newspapers and
] television with war developments.

I actually wish more of the soldiers could access Email and blogs. I have a cousin who's currently deployed somewhere in or around Iraq (I don't know exactly where). He was shipped over there in January, and then he and I were Emailing back and forth regularly until last week, when he sent me a short letter saying, "I won't be able to send Email for awhile." So I follow the war developments, and try to make educated guesses about where he is, and every time I see pictures of killed or captured soldiers, I have a little mental cringe, wondering if I'm going to see his face.

I still strongly support him, and the war effort, and I know he's there of his own free will. But I'll still be incredibly relieved when I know he's able to logon again and send me an Email to let me know he's okay!

Soldier 'bloggers' report from war


Saddam's Blog
Topic: Humor 9:37 pm EST, Mar 25, 2003

] Then all of a sudden, some big powerful democratic
] country has one of those election things, someone new
] takes over, and suddenly they actually MEAN what they
] say?!?! How the hell is someone like me supposed to know
] when they're serious in their threats to invade?
] I miss Bill Clinton.
]
] :: Saddam "No Nukes Here" Hussein 12:39 AM

LOL!

Saddam's Blog


Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars
Topic: Society 5:01 pm EST, Mar 25, 2003

Some interesting statistics on wars from the Revolutionary War to the (first) Gulf War, on things such as:
- Percentage of population enrolled in the military
- Number of casualties (both absolute and percentage)
- Cost of the war (converted to 1990 dollars)
- Duration of war, average casualties/month, and so forth

Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars


Urban Legends Analysis: (Who's Smarter? Actors or Government Officials?)
Topic: Miscellaneous 1:58 pm EST, Mar 25, 2003

(from the original essay):

] So who are these celebrities? What is their education? What is
] their experience in affairs of State or in National Security?
] While I will defend to the death their right to express their
] opinions, I think that if they are going to call into question
] the intelligence of our leaders, we should also have all the
] facts on their educations and background . . .

There's a post making the rounds about comparing the educational backgrounds of actors and government officials. I was curious as to how much of it was urban legend and how much was true, and was pleased to see that Snopes had already beaten me to it and posted an analysis of the piece a few days ago. Summary: The essay wasn't 100% accurate, but does seem to have been pretty close to the mark, on at least a factual basis.

(4/23/2003 note: Adjusted URL since the page moved)

Urban Legends Analysis: (Who's Smarter? Actors or Government Officials?)


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