Reflections From a Murky Pond

In the Western World, especially America, it is an old adage that a bit of warm milk in the evening will help one get to sleep. Somehow I don’t think the images below depict exactly what most people meant by “warm milk.”

Admittedly though, these images more closely resemble “Hot Milk” than mere “warm milk.” 😉

While not being especially useful help for getting to sleep, the digitally manipulated photo set above by Andrey Razoomovsky is beautiful, erotic and highly creative. It is also one of the most stunning examples of digital imagery I ever seen. The combination of photos of beautiful women with computer generated graphics in these photos is so well-blended that it’s incredible.

Is it just me, or are you wishing you had some cookies right now? Either Nabisco or the California Milk Processor Board – of “Got Milk?” fame – needs to hire this guy.

Andrey Razoomovsky received a bronze medal and worldwide recognition in “Colour slides & Digital images” category on 16th Trierenberg Super Circuit photo exhibition in Austria during 2007. Trierenberg Super Circuit annually defines photo perfection standards. His work is varied but consistently amazing in both form and content.

😆 We’ve all learned by now that you can do almost anything faster, easier and better with computers.  Perhaps the War on Terror can be approached the same way. Of course, you’ll need need to understand the Unix command line and shell scripting to achieve the best results…

One of my wives, Eve aka jmochagrrl, sent me this solution to the US’ ongoing war on terror and terrorism, specifically the dangers arising out of the Middle-east.

The War On Terror

As viewed from the Bourne shell

$ cd /middle_east
$ ls
Afghanistan  Iraq     Libya      Saudi_Arabia  UAE
Algeria    Israel   Morocco    Sudan         Yemen
Bahrain      Jordan   Oman       Syria
Egypt        Kuwait   Palestine  Tunisia
Iran         Lebanon  Qatar      Turkey

$ cd Afghanistan
$ ls
bin Taliban
$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory “Taliban”: Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
. .. .insurgents
$ chown -R USA .*
chown: .insurgents: Not owner
$ cd ..
$ su
Password: *******
# mv Taliban /tmp
# exit
$ ls
bin
$ cd bin
$ ls
laden
$ cd ..
$ rm -r bin/laden
bin/laden: No such file or directory
$ find / -name laden
$
$ su
Password: *******
# mv bin /tmp
# exit
$ pwd
/middle_east/Afghanistan
$ cd /opt/UN
$ ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
ln: cannot create /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda:
Permission denied
$ su
Password:*******
# ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
# cd /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
Al_Qaeda: does not exist
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# mkfile 100g /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
mkfile: No space left on device
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# cd /opt/Coalition/Willing
# mkfile 1b /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# chown -R USA:Proof /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
#exit
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls -a
. .. saddam
$ find / -name [Ww][Mm][Dd]
/Korea/North/wMd
$ wall Propaganda.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on USS_Abraham_Lincoln Th May 1st
Mission Accomplished!
$ rm saddam
saddam: No such file or directory
$ find / -name saddam
/var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam
$ wall NewsWorthy.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on Time.Magazine Sat Dec 13
We Got Him!
$ mv /var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam /opt/jail
$ cd /opt/USA
$ cp -Rp Democracy /middle_east/Iraq
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq/Democracy
$ ./install
Install Error: Install failed. See install_log for details.
$ more install_log
Installed failed!
Prerequisite packages missing
Conflicting package Wahhabism found in /midde_east/Saudi_Arabia
Packages Church and State must be installed separately
File System /PeakOil nearing capacity
Please read the install guide to properly plan your installation.
$

Eve got this from The S Word Blog over at Sun Microsystems.

Of course there are still some issues with the “operating system” used in the above example; as has been pointed out, everything in /bin should be “executable.”

Also note that this must be done from the Bourne shell. Using the slowly deprecated Bourne Again shell ($bash) will accomplish the goals faster, but may result in the destruction of all files in /middle-east.

Well, we all know the fantasy that nerds and Hollywood put forward as truth in regards to Hacking, Information Security, and such like. To listen to them, it’s all about technology skills and crafty, intuitive intellect. Below is a hilarious – to me at least – cartoon that puts paid to that fantasy.

Cartoon courtesy of xkcd

Trust me, in the world of Information Warfare, advanced technology is neither the most effective means of stealing someone’s information nor the most commonly used methodology. Social Engineering has always been more cost effective and “brute force attacks” are more often the use of actual force than one might expect.

In keeping with the neo-Socialist principles of the Liberals, President-elect Obama is pushing hard for a stimulus package that is essentially a modern version of FDR’s “New Deal”, which created a federal welfare state, devalued Us currency by ending the gold standard and ended prohibition. Obama has pledged that his incoming administration would make the largest “investment” in national infrastructure projects since the late 1950s. Among these projects is a plan for expanding access to Internet broadband, the so-called information superhighway.

Leaving aside for the moment all the “brick & mortar” projects Obama wants to use taxpayers’ money to fund, let’s look to the future in the form of “expanding access to Internet broadband.”

During the Great Depression and FDR’s resultant reactionary New Deal, the US Federal government tried to revive the American economy with the public work projects, this ended up paying people to dig unneeded ditches, ditches to nowhere. It is likely that Obama’s plan for expanding access to broadband internet services will end up in a similar fashion, having built “information superhighways to nowhere.” President-elect Barack Obama and many Liberal want to spend billions of tax dollars on a nationwide broadband build-out as part of his planned economic stimulus package. But how do we ensure that those billions aren’t spent creating the 21st century equivalent of ditches to nowhere?

Essentially the question of how to spend the money is not one that can be answered. The underlying coverage and usage data is just not available. Only a tiny few know anything substantive about the internet’s actual infrastructure and those that do know aren’t sharing that information with policymakers, regulators, or their competitors.

The FCC has essentially created a fictional story about broadband’s growth and deployment. Had the FCC done the actual work to examine the history of broadband and then questioned why America was not getting properly upgraded, we wouldn’t be 15th in the world in broadband.

—  Bruce Kushnick
TeleTruth,
An Alliance for Customers’ Telecommunications Rights

Earlier FCC found that its data collection on internet broadband was incomplete and thus ruled that AT&T, Qwest and Verizon could stop filing some reports – because the reporting requirements did not extend to cable companies, as well as more traditional telecommunications companies.

Without public data how can the US federal government find anything close to best way of making the internet more resilient, accessible and secure? With little or no data to work from and the very real probability of this being a useless waste of tax dollars, this does sound a lot like a 21st century version of FDR’s New Deal.

There’s been a fair amount of media coverage of- and hoopla over the Congressionally mandated switch over to all-digital television broadcasts within the US with its “drop dead” date for analog receivers being February 18, 2009. The oft-repeated message coming from both the US government and the television broadcast companies has been, “don’t panic.” There are many ways to keep millions of televisions in American households from going black.

I think its good that the US government and the television broadcast companies have both made sure that digital television antennas and analog-to-digital converter boxes are readily available to the households who don’t subscribe to cable or satellite TV sources. I also think it’s good that the US government and television broadcast companies doing what they can to keep this switch-over from becoming a cause for mass panic. We certainly don’t want the US public to fear that their television may be taken way 😉

But question remained floating around in my mind. Why is our government forcing this change to happen, and what is the US government’s “interest” in passing legislation to mandate the switch-over from analog to digital television?

The Given Answer(s)

Analog TV signals use the 700MHz (698 – 806MHz) frequency band, this means that by nature, they have a longer range than those frequency bands used by the wireless and electronics industries. Freeing the whole of that spectrum from television’s use could mean easier and cheaper deployment of broadband networks, which could translate to more affordable, widespread high-speed Internet access for consumers.

A portion (24 MHz at or near the upper end) of the 700MHz spectrum would also be set aside for police, fire, ambulance and other public safety responders who must rely on the analog spectrum to communicate due to its greater range and coverage.

By the time of the 2009 switch-over, the US government will have auctioned the remaining parts of the 700MHz spectrum to companies interested in deploying wireless technologies. The proceeds from these auctions are estimated at about $10 billion by the Congressional Budget Office.