Seebach Exhibit 7

Anime Weekend Atlanta con report

Well, that was fun!

We did, in fact, get to go to AWA. The drive out was about 26 hours total. Highlights included traffic jams and road work. We picked up Rah in Ann Arbor about 11-12 hours in. Then we drove pretty much "south until there's not much south left". On the way out, we discovered that we like Arby's better than McDonald's as road trip food.

We got into a NASTY traffic jam on I75 on the way south. Actually came to a full stop for at least 15 minutes. We spent a while complaining, but when traffic started moving, we got to the place with something like five firetrucks and two ambulances, so I guess on the whole our complaints were pretty pathetic.

We got to the hotel. BEAUTIFUL hotel. Sorta mediocre location in a lot of ways. Tragically, the Ruby Tuesday that was in the building with the hotel closed recently enough that some of the signs were still up, so I didn't get any tasty burgers. Aww.

We came in Thursday afternoon, around 1PM local Atlanta time. We got our stuff in from the car and collapsed in a pile on the bed. So, there I was, in bed with three women. I leaned over to Rah and stage-whispered "I think my wife suspects", which set off a round of giggles from all concerned. People who have been on the road for 26 hours will laugh at anything. (For those who don't get it, my wife was leaning on my other shoulder, and presumably aware that I was, at that very moment, in bed with another woman and planning to sleep with her.) (... I said "sleep", and I meant "sleep". Why do people have such dirty minds?)

When we woke up, we decided to go out looking for food. We found out Ruby Tuesday was gone (I weep!) and ended up going to a nearby IHOP. Luckily, the feds who had been following us the whole trip were unable to extradite, so we got away scott free! Also, I had pancakes. Mmm. I thought I didn't like pancakes, because Perkins pancakes suck, but now that I've had IHOP pancakes, I'm gonna see if there is an IHOP anywhere in Minnesota. Yes, they're that good.

Friday, we showed up sort of early to wait in line for registration, then eventually got to get our badges. We got our table in Artist's Alley, we set up. The Alley had disappointing traffic, and our table was on one side, so we didn't get as much traffic as people in the middle - and nowhere near the traffic of people on the other side, which was where all the long lines formed, and on the way to the exhibition halls. Argh! So, our take wasn't so good... But Saturday, we figured out to make more space for our stickers, which sold well, and put away some of the things that weren't selling as well. That helped.

On Saturday, we had a weird experience. We were directly across from the table where Piro (MegaTokyo) was signing... And Fireball had a longer line than Piro did. A lot longer. Conveniently, her line went in front of the part of the table where Rah and I were taking turns trying to sell stickers and prints.

Saturday's take was better than Friday's, actually, and Sunday wasn't so bad. Jesse and I lost a little money on the trip (we almost always do), but we came pretty close to breakeven. Fireball raked in money; her art stuff is teh b0mb. Rah showed a nice solid profit for the trip, assuming the couple of checks she took cleared. (BTW, folks: If you later find that Rah won't accept checks, blame the people who wrote these.) Sunday evening, Fireball finally managed to get a local place to stay before the bus trip to California... So we had an extra space in our car, which helped the guy who needed a ride "up to around Chattanooga". Turns out that it was actually about 50 miles west - we actually made it back into Central time - but conventions are based on people doing favors, so we did it. Also, his girlfriend bought a print with the money she'd been saving up to help him get a ride home. :)

We ended up needing to sleep on the way home (horrors!), but we did okay; $45 for a hotel room, and we got to eat at an actual Waffle House. Not great food, but food nonetheless. Then, just straight north on I75. I already wrote about the tragic inconvenience of Bush's security detail.

We dropped Rah off in Ann Arbor, to go back to school, around 8PM on Monday. So, she missed about 3 days of classes... But she did some homework on the trip (such diligence!) and had everything planned so she could make up her work. I think it was worth it; conventions are fun.

Jesse and I traded off napping and driving the rest of the way home. This works surprisingly well if you can get the hang of it. At a rest area somewhere in Illinois (I think), we ran into a guy who was asking for gas money. He had a very fractious child who would just run away in random directions. Not like he was scared; just like he was bored. The guy had about 100 miles to go and about enough gas to make it to the next gas station, maybe. I gave him $15. You might argue that it coulda been some kind of scam. Well, maybe it was. So far, the lifetime cost to me of trusting people in rest areas who claim they desperately need money for gas to get home has been $15. That's a bit under $0.50/year. I'll give up a candy bar a year for the off chance that some guy stranded a hundred miles from home can get home. Fair enough.

We missed a turn (I hate Chicago's interstate labeling) and ended up not realizing it until we were about 30 miles west of where we wanted to be on I80. However... This isn't all bad. Turns out that, if you take I80 west to La Salle, and then I39 north, you only have to make about two toll booths, instead of 5-10 or so that you take the other way, and you miss all the downtown construction in Chicago, which has nasty traffic even at 2AM, and is very harrowing to drive at night. 50 miles extra, but worth it easily. If we'd known, we'd probably have done it on purpose.

We made it back in around 9AM Minnesota time, emptied the car, and slept.

So... Another con. Reasonably successful. I think we'd have done a lot better if we'd gotten one of the better positions, but given the stuff that went wrong with our attempts to register, I guess we're lucky we had anything at all. And it was fun. Friendly place, Atlanta.

Reasonable precautions?

(Posted originally in the Republican forum on ChristianForums. Edited to make the Sisters of Mercy reference clearer.)

We just got nearly killed by George Bush.

I'm writing from Milepost 36 on I75 northbound in Ohio. This is the first exit I've seen in about 20 miles which wasn't blocked off. The freeway overpasses have all been blocked off, whether or not they were attached to the freeway. Every parking lot you can see from the freeway has had police cars in it.

And, because of this, we nearly got creamed by a car that couldn't stop fast enough for the sudden transition from 70mph freeway to a dead stop in the right lane, and we had to pull into a still-moving traffic lane without enough warning. We were lucky not to get hit and, well, squashed.

So.

Reasonable precautions? Does it make sense for the buses with the President's staff on them (was he even there? I don't know) to be surrounded by 20+ police cars, fire tricks, and ambulances, and to have this disrupt all travel within twenty miles? Is the danger that real? Is it Americans in the middle of Ohio that are the danger?

I've seen a lot of people on this board argue for the limitations on non-Bush-supporters at various events where Bush might be on the grounds that liberals are "likely to support terrorists". I find this to be a terrifying sign of a retreat from the rationality and constrained government powers I associate with the Republican party, and a move towards the extremes of government power we like to associate with the Communists.

Indeed, when it was Clinton doing the "free speech zones", they were rightly condemned.

I dunno. I just know I don't think I can vote for another motherfucker in a motorcade, backing up traffic for 8+miles (we're still seeing the traffic jam on southbound I75), keeping people from going home, and otherwise bringing a portable police state with him. This is not my America; this is not the land of the free, this is not the country I want to live in.

I would like to see a Republican who stands for freedom and limited use of government powers. I would like to see someone who doesn't create circumstances that have resulted in more ambulences rushing past us, lights flashing, in the last half hour than we saw in an entire 26-hour road trip on the way out.

The danger is not that great; the man is starting to be paranoid. This needs to be stopped. Kerry is, at best, anyone-but-Bush. Fine by me.

Sharpening the butter pencil.

My wife is a wonderful artist. She can draw a person well enough that you can tell how often he works out, and what exercises he skimps on.

So, why, O why, can't she draw the letter "e"? I have a copy of her shopping list for the art store. On it, one of the items is "butter pencil sharpener". I suspect she meant that she wanted a pencil sharpener which was more good than the one she already had. But what she wrote was clear enough; "butter pencil sharpener". I suppose that's what you use to sharpen a butter pencil, which is presumably what you use when a grease pencil is too hard.

So, we went to the art store -- Wet Paint. While we were there, I was looking for a sketch book. I wanted one that would fit in my purse so I would stop forgetting to bring it. So, while she was looking around, I was walking through the notebook section, trying to shoplift. I mean, really obviously. I'd pick things up and try to hide them in my purse, then shake my head sadly and put them back. One of the staff found me a wonderful notebook, which fit inside my bag. It's Moleskine, apparently. I don't know what it's made of, but it's incredible; very thin paper, but not tissue paper; it's solid and opaque. The clerk said she was able to watercolor on one side of a page. And the paper is as smooth as any paper I've ever seen, which is a big plus for sketching. Oddly, I didn't like their "sketch" book as much as I like the plain unlined notebook.

On the way home, I was bragging to Jesse about how wonderful the surface was, and I said "it's like butter". (One of Jesse's favorite sayings is "smooth like butter", generally pronounced "smoove like buttah")

The conversation went rapidly downhill. "Well, actually, it's not like butter. Very much. Butter would be hard to write on. Unless you had a butter pencil."

I still don't know what a butter pencil is, whether it's made of butter or used to write on butter. But Jesse needs a sharpener for it. I guess she compromised and just got a really nice sharpener for ordinary wooden pencils.

BTW, I am stunned to note that Real Live Preacher just mentioned Moleskine in a recent article.

Wow.

Originally, "let's just drive straight through" was a joke.

1,140 miles later, it's not a joke; it's I75, just getting into Tennessee. The fog over the mountains is beautiful.

We expect to be in Atlanta around noonish, and be VERY VERY TIRED. But we look to be making it.

A practical observation.

When an editor asks if 1:51AM Sunday morning is "an okay time to call" and wants to know whether you can have a two thousand word article done "by Monday"... That is a good sign that the answer to one of life's pressing dilemmas is "you can pay both the mortgage and your health coverage, after all".

And when someone like me is still up at 7:40 in the morning, that's a good sign that someone just wrote two thousand words on a fairly obscure topic in under four hours.

My head hurts. I am going to lie down on a bed and see if one of the cats will purr until I fall asleep.

But it's a good tired.

A delightful ambiguity.

So, my friend Kevin said, as we were leaving the coffee shop, that this year we have a choice between a liar and an incompetent. I like that description, because it's perfectly ambiguous.

Really, though, I like to think that, this year, the presidential options in the U.S. are better than normal. We don't have to choose between a liar and an incompetent. We can have both. In fact, we'll have both no matter what.

It's sorta scary, really. The entire arrangement is full of nastiness and evil. Everyone lies. Everyone lies about other people lying about their lies. Both candidates are making all sorts of stuff up, and neither of them has a good track record to point to.

In short... we can have a lying incompetent, and an incompetent liar. Lucky us.

If there were a dog on the ticket, I'd vote for it. I mean a literal dog; maybe a basset hound. He could look soulfully at the French until they agreed to help stabilze Iraq. He could lick his crotch when foreign dignitaries came over, and hey, it'd be an improvement. He would be unlikely to start any new wars. I want the dog in office.

Learning C.

Wow. This brings back memories. I just found an article describing how I learned C.

It's long. Some of it won't make much sense if you aren't a programmer.

But... Just as many Christians have their testimony, the story of how they became Christian, I think a lot of geeks have, somewhere in them, the story of how they became a computer person. That story is a large part of mine. I'm still active with C today, having been a member of the C standards committee for the last few years.

...Although I may be about to lose my voting rights on the C standards committee due to lack of funding; Microsoft's hosting the current meeting, and whenever Microsoft hosts a meeting, it's in a hotel where the special discount rate is $147/night, plus fees, plus taxes, and the only food around is expensive food, unless you rented a car so you could drive to the only sort of expensive supermarket and make your own. So... For a 5-day meeting, I'd be spending about $800 on the hotel, plus a fair amount on airfare... This is a bit much for a freelance writer to pay to pursue one of his hobbies, even if it is a fun hobby. But if I don't make enough meetings, I lose my voting privileges until I can make it to two out of three consecutive meetings, which could be a while given how expensive it is.

Ironically, it costs $800 a year to be a member of a committee. This money goes to pay for a bunch of bureaucrats who do absolutely nothing but inconvenience us; to the best of my knowledge, the C committee recieves no services at all from the parent organization. We pay our own way to meetings, the hosts of meetings pay the expenses for the meeting, we do our own document distribution... But we have to pay $800/year/member for whatever it is that they do, which appears to be absolutely nothing.

Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and there will be a meeting somewhere cheaper next year that I can actually go to. The meetings themselves are a blast. Well, they're a blast to C programmers. There's a certain joy in being in a room full of people who all laugh when you say "maybe we should use static for that".

Anyway, that's a post from 8 years ago, long before I got to my current state of comfort with computers and programming languages.

But... Yes, I'm still learning. Programming is a big field.

The "space travel is way cool" discount.

So, my company (Plethora Internet) builds computers. Not very many. We don't do much in the "we need a computer for under $700" market. We don't do swarms of identical 1U servers.

What we do do is moderately specialized systems. We built a couple of machines that got used by Internet2. And, a while back, we sold a machine to NASA.

This left us with a problem. We have discounts for educational and non-profit organizations... But, while NASA has never turned a profit, they aren't exactly a "non-profit organization". And we certainly don't want to give a discount to "government agencies" in general.

So.

I declared, by fiat, the "space travel is way cool" discount. This discount applies on sales to organizations or entities doing space travel and related research. It's the same discount we give everyone else (10% off, leaving us with no profit margin after warranty)... But it's the "space travel is way cool" discount. It's the special discount we give for space travel.

Building computers is a lot of fun. The deal is, I like shopping for hardware, and I enjoy speccing things out. Building computers is a way to do this on someone else's dime, and it's not illegal.

If you're curious, a few caveats:
1. No laptops. There's just no cost-effective way to build a laptop from parts.
2. We are not competing with e-machines.
3. We will not sell a machine without ECC memory and a motherboard that supports ECC memory.
4. No VIA chipsets. We got burned on a VIA-based board that claimed to support ECC memory, but actually, merely allowed you to use it - no error correction. We've also had problems with keyboards, with strange problems powering up VGA cards, and a dozen other things. No VIA chipsets. Never again.
5. While we can, if we really push, get a system's price down a ways, what we're best at is the medium-heavy-duty servers. Ultra 320 SCSI, a gigabyte or more of memory, and a solid (if somewhat pricey) motherboard.
6. We don't sell parts. We sell systems.

The deal is... It's really hard to compete on parts without buying in bulk, and that's not particularly viable as a side project business model. On cheap systems, you're still basically competing purely on price. With the more expensive systems, you can make some money with just a small markup on parts... But because those systems are no longer partaking fully in some of the economies of scale, that's where a lot of vendors have their biggest markups, and thus, one of the niches where we can compete with the Big Name vendors.

But... We can make at least a few boxes, and we can make some small money in the process.

And even when there's not much profit in it, well... Space travel. Is way cool. Good enough for me.

Donations!

THIS SITE IS NOT PART OF EBAY OR PAYPAL. POSTING YOUR QUESTION FOR THEM HERE JUST MAKES RANDOM STRANGERS HAVE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION.

Okay, so, I finally caved and put up a donations link. Or, if you want, you can just follow this link.

You'll note that it's not a paypal link. Rather, it uses a company called Bitpass. There's a few reasons for this.

1. Paypal has a history of questionable handling of private data, adding people to marketing lists without permission, and so on.
2. Paypal's customer service is sucky beyond words. I tried to pay for something using paypal. They said "that card can't be used, send email to cardproblems@paypal.com for help". I sent email there. A day and a half later, I got back a note saying I'd have to call in - but not providing a phone number. I pointed this out, and got an email with instructions for navigating their page to find the phone number. The instructions, I assure you, were much longer than the phone number.
3. I sent email to Bitpass asking them a moderately technical question about their service. I sent it at 12:31 AM, Central time. I got my response at 12:52 Central time, and it was an informative answer that actually addressed my question.
4. Bitpass was recommended to me by someone whose judgment I trust.
5. Bitpass's micropayments model makes it practical to charge genuinely small numbers - say, a penny or two. Yes, a penny. Of course, I'd only get 85% of that penny, but I could sell things for a penny.
6. Paypal's association with eBay puts them in league with a company with a long history of abusive privacy practices and fairly solid tolerance for spam.

So.

I went with Bitpass. Not a hard choice at all.

If you want to try bitpass out, I urge you to give it a try. Sign up, put a bit of money in an account, and try handing out payments. Feel free to donate as much or as little as you want. Er. More is better, though, 'cuz I'm broke. (More on that in another post.)

THIS SITE IS NOT PART OF EBAY OR PAYPAL. POSTING YOUR QUESTION FOR THEM HERE JUST MAKES RANDOM STRANGERS HAVE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION.

More thoughts on the DMCA

Well, I talked a bit to someone at the ESA. They acknowledge that the notice they sent was in error. Apparently, a person did actually "review" that message, but... They also said they send out hundreds of thousands of messages a month. That would imply an awful lot of people, or very very cursory work. I suspect the latter.

This has me thinking, though. During my conversation with the guy I talked to, he mentioned that the DMCA is "self-correcting"; exemptions are made to the provisions against copyright circumvention, as technologies become "obsolete".

That should be a big red flag right there. If you need to constantly revise a law's list of what is and isn't a criminal act to talk about... That's a bad sign. That's a bad law.

The DMCA's major accomplishments so far are:
* Locking up Dimitry Skylarov for a long time based on the possibility that his software might have led someone somewhere to copy a file, but no such copied files were ever produced.
* Legal threats against someone who announced that a popular music CD could be read on Windows computers if you held down the "shift" key when putting it in the drive.
* Legal threats galore sent to people who have no idea what they are or how to respond to them.

That latter is interesting. Mr. Allen assures me that the majority of the messages they send are legit. I have no idea how anyone would know. However, even if they've got 99.99% reliability, that means that one message in ten thousand isn't legit, and that means that, if they are sending hundreds of thousands of messages a month, that's at least twenty bogus messages a month. These messages are a little spooky. They are very unclear (Mr. Allen's explanation of the confidentiality paragraph did not match any reading of it I could have come up with). They are couched in references to provisions of a large law which, according to Mr. Allen, is under active revision and modification.

In short... These messages are scary legal threats being sent to people who, by and large, have no clue what to do about them. That's Bad.

Mr. Allen's justification is that there's a lot of "pirated" software out there. I recognize the brilliance of using the term "piracy" (which involves people being raped and killed and thrown out to sea) to refer to "copyright infringement", but it's brilliant propaganda; it's not any kind of truth.

The thing is... Even if there were, what evidence do we have that the DMCA approach is mattering? Publishers have found good ways to make software work without copy protection. Stardock's "Galactic Civilizations" is doing just fine on being an actually good game, with regular patches and updates available to registered users.

Baen books has the Baen Free Library, which has demonstrated that, not only do people still buy books you give away, they buy more of them and faster. Janis Ian, a songwriter, has also written about the internet debacle.

In other words... The people who actually questioned their assumptions, and tried giving stuff away, found that it improved sales.

The software industry blames illegal copies for reduced sales. I am very skeptical of this. They laud copy protection as a cure. I am even more skeptical of this. I have a collection of games whose copy protection is so bad that I was unable to get them to run... I do not generally buy from those vendors. You know what's hurting sales of games with the word "ATARI" on the box? Copy protection. I still buy games with little or no copy protection. But games with too much will turn me off a publisher entirely. Games are supposed to be fun. If I can't play a game, then I'm not getting much fun for my money.

So... The DMCA is still a bad law. I actually think it's a worse law than I thought it was before I got this stupid notice. It is a law designed to ban cars because, if you wanted to, you could try to run someone down with a car. Its focus on copyright "circumvention" misses the entire point of our legal system; we don't ban something just because you could misuse it.

Let me explain my interest in copyright "circumvention".

I have a laptop. I play a lot of games.

Many games use "the original CD" as a dongle to prevent you from playing them without the CD. If I want to play these games, I have to have the CD with me. If I have to have a dozen or two dozen CDs with me on a trip, that's starting to be an inconvenience. They can be lost or damaged. They can be stolen. In short, I am open to additional risks, and additional hassle. I can't just play my games.

Circumvention systems allow me to run these games on my laptop. You could say "but they also allow people without the game to run it". Well, that's nice. Also, Nebraska is a state. These are similar, in that they are both factual claims with no relevance to anything. It is not my problem that someone could, if he wanted to, drive a car in such a way as to intentionally hit someone crossing the street. If I don't drive that way, then the possibility that someone else would is not a basis for taking my car away.

If we want to deal with the problem of script kiddies copying games, I think the first step is gonna be admitting that, when you've got a twelve-year-old who has 400 illegally copied games, that doesn't mean that the software industry has been harmed to the tune of $20,000 in "lost sales". That kid never had $20k. You could take the games away, and he could buy two of 'em back.

On the other hand... All those folks out there who think nothing of "sharing" a game with five people, all of whom play it at the same time on different computers... They actually probably are having some effect.

Still... There's a lot of things that are worth $free, but aren't worth $50. It's hard to get an accurate sense of which people would stop playing if they had to pay or stop playing, and which would pay. I think some would pay.

This leads to an obvious conclusion: The first thing the people who want to see the DMCA go away should do is start lobbying for greater respect for intellectual property rights. The DMCA is a response to a perceived threat. It's an intellectually and morally bankrupt response, catastrophically worse than the threat... But nonetheless, it might help if something were done about the perceived threat.

Of course, as Master Of Orion 3 shows, another problem with the software industry today is that games sometimes suck. Then no one wants them with or without copy protection.

Cryptography is fun.

So, I'm playing a game called Morrowind, and I got a "coded message". And of course, all I have to do is take it to the set of pixels representing the quest-giver, and I have completed the quest.

But hey, whaddya know, there's text there.

SOZZOF IFNLIVW GL YV LKVMRMT IVGSZM
NZLMI ZH GSVRI MVCG HGILMTSLOW
OOVGISR YVORVEVH SV ULFMW
VERWVMXV ULI ROOVTZO SOZZOF VYLMB
HSRKNVMGH UILN XZOWVIZ
HVMW ZTVMG GL DZGXS IVGSZM
ZGSBM DROO FHV RMUOFVMXV DRGS WFPV
GL YOLXP XLMGIZXGH RU KLHHRYOV

And, sure enough, that text actually has a coded message which, if you're playing the game, means something. It might even be helpful.

What's funny, though, is that the way I deal with something like this is to write a program. I mean, I wouldn't want to use paper, so I just threw together a little program to solve cryptograms. It's easy enough.

BTW, if you want a hint, it helps to realize that "SOZZOF" is probably a proper name, not an English word.

I can't believe this is still going on.

So, there's this long-running claim that the etymologies of Chinese characters "reveal the truth of Genesis", because, if you don't know anything about Chinese etymology, and you ignore all use of phonetic radicals, and you misinterpret some symbols to be other symbols, and you put in a lot of connective words, you can find a few characters where you can make up an etymology for them which connects to the Genesis story.

This list of Chinese Characters in Genesis is a pretty good starting point for understanding just how awful these are.

But... What's scary is, I and several others have been pointing out this error to the people promoting this painful idiocy for something over two years; I first wrote to one Creationist group in July of 2002. All we have to show for it is a hilarious "defense" which ignores most of my points and attacks my faith.

This is a great example of one of the reasons people get so worried about sins. Evil, of its nature, corrupts. It spreads. You don't stay just a little evil. You cannot be very dishonest for very long without becoming a little cruel. As these people are more and more desperate to preserve whatever arguments they have left, they become willing to use genuinely bad arguments, and they become more and more willing to play games to justify their retention of an argument with known flaws.

Eventually, this turns into plain old lying.

This is, really, one of my biggest objections to Young-Earth Creationism. I don't particularly care about the claims of how old the universe is; I wasn't there, and I don't really need to know. But I do care about the demonstrable tendency for YEC beliefs to twist people until they're willing to lie, cheat, and indulge in personal attacks to defend a belief which was never part of the faith to begin with.

Or, as Augustine said:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

Finally added a few more posts to my April Fools page.

I do April Fools posts to Usenet almost every year. I haven't been remembering to add them to my April Fools page, but now I'm mostly caught up again.

Browsing in Google Groups, we see that there are a lot of people who don't have the sense of humor it would take to recognize an obvious joke. But... The original articles are pretty funny, I mostly thought. If you want to see the responses, Google groups carries most of them.

Haven't updated this in a while, but I'm glad I've gotten around to it now.

Project Home

So, my church is involved with something called "Project HOME". I believe it's the same one as this one, although that's not my church. But, hey, we all agree on this stuff.

Anyway, I'm on the substitute list, and someone couldn't make it, so I spent the night hanging out in the church library, reading books, watching DVDs, and then making breakfast for some homeless people. If there's something like this in your area, get involved; it's a Good Thing. It's amazing how something so simple as "someone made coffee before you got up" can make someone's day easier.

But, what I really want to share, is how beautiful the sunrise was. The sun was entirely below the horizon, but there was a thick bank of dark clouds in that direction. So... The sky's the pale blue you expect during dawn, and the clouds are doing that darkly luminous purple, somewhere between violet and lavender, that they do in the mornings... And then there's the area where the sun would be, if it were up, which is gradually turning from a dark purple into a dusty rose, without the slightest hint of orange; just bluish and purplish reds, and dusty pink.

Absolutely stunning.

First time in the last decade I've been glad to get stuck at a red light, I might add.

AWA revisited: We get to go there, but no thanks to spammers.

It turns out that the problem is that Anime Weekend Atlanta loses a lot of mail to spam filters. The alternative, of course, is to not get any at all; for anyone who has published addresses, trying to get by without spam filters is just a joke. (I get well over a thousand spams a day, and I've gotten a few hundred bounce messages from a spam run someone put one of my addresses on.)

But... The very excellent AWA people, once they heard of our plight, made a special effort to track down a table for us. So, we're going after all.

A reminder, then, that when you think someone's being unprofessional, the first thing you should do is blame spammers. Realistically, they're more likely to be at fault than anyone else is.

That said... If I'd been more active in pursuing contact, we wouldn'ta had this problem anyway. So, it's probably more my fault than it was AWA's, and I shoulda been more fair to them. Mea culpa.

(See the previous article, if you're curious.)

Unless this guy is WAY more subtle than I think he is.

We just got visited by the Stupid Thief.

So, Jesse goes downstairs, around 2:50 in the morning, and finds the back door, and the basement door, open.

So we call the cops. They wander through the house. No mysterious people. Our roommate's room is open, with the light on. This is odd, because she's in Oregon.

A couple of our cats went missing. Apart from that, we can't find anything missing. Computers still plugged in and running, monitors still present. No TV/VCR stuff to be had down there. Well, actually, our ex-roommate's TV was just sitting on the floor, and still is.

But... While we were seeing the police off, we noticed something. A reasonably new-looking Huffy bicycle. In our driveway. Which was decidedly not there when we were out for dinner.

That's right, folks. The genius who came into our house in the middle of the night GAVE US A BICYCLE.

If there's anything missing, it's too subtle for me to identify it so far. We'll keep trying to think of things. We got the cats back; Graystoke, as is his wont, skulked around until he heard us talking, then immediately froze in place mewling like a frightened kitten. He's really, really, really not an outdoors cat. Maya took a little more effort to catch, but the food dish always works on a domesticated cat. We found Jimbo hiding in the basement.

So...

What on EARTH was this? World's dumbest thieves? Were these the guys Tom scared off a while back, coming back to search around for... I dunno, whatever they thought they wanted?

But the thing that's really throwing me off is the bicycle. I mean, come on. That's gotta have been worth something. Why abandon it?

Usability, applied.

I just found this example particularly interesting.

This is the interface Kerio Personal Firewall gives you when it finds a new interface.

There's a problem here. You are asked whether this is a "trusted" network. What's wrong with that? It's dangerous, is what. Users are trained to answer "yes" or "OK" when they don't know what's going on, because most of the questions computers ask you are stupid questions. That means that users are trained to say "please, go ahead and let anything you see on this network in. I don't mind."

If that's the default, then the firewall doesn't do you much good.

I don't wanna slag Kerio here. Their firewall seems to work just fine (if you are smart enough to use it correctly). They also give it away free to home users. That's awful nice of 'em, and you'd better believe it's the first thing I install on any Windows system I load, even if it's just gonna play video games.

So...

1. If you're running Windows, and you don't have a firewall, go pick up Kerio's firewall package. If you're feeling generous, or you have an actual job (rare though that is these days), register for the paid version, and help 'em out.
2. Don't say "yes" when you're asked if a given network is trusted, unless you know for sure that it really is.

Anyway, just thought it was a cool picture.

Can they really be this stupid?

Here's a delightful message I just got. It's funny enough to be interesting, so I'm including it.

From MAILER-DAEMON  Wed Sep  1 14:15:55 2004
Return-Path: 
Received: from herd.plethora.net (root@herd.plethora.net [205.166.146.1])
	by guild.plethora.net (8.12.11/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i81JFtuS004377
	for ; Wed, 1 Sep 2004 14:15:55 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from email.mediasentry.net (email.mediasentry.net [209.123.110.75])
	by herd.plethora.net (8.11.6/8.10.1) with ESMTP id i81JFIK12631
	for ; Wed, 1 Sep 2004 14:15:19 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from MEN20 ([209.123.215.95]) by email.mediasentry.net with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713);
	 Wed, 1 Sep 2004 15:12:00 -0400
To: Seebach A Peter 
Subject: Case ID 9282959 - Notice of Claimed Infringement
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; Boundary="--PTCP_00001beb031fa607d4"
Message-ID: <00001bec031fa707d4@[209.123.215.95]>
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 15:11:53 -0400
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Sep 2004 19:12:00.0808 (UTC) FILETIME=[8EF34A80:01C49057]
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on 
	guild.plethora.net
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=2.1 required=5.0 tests=EXCUSE_16,FROM_NO_LOWER 
	autolearn=no version=2.60
X-Spam-Level: **

Okay, a few interesting points baout the headers. The most interesting thing is the total lack of a normal "From:" line. Or a "Reply-To:". In other words, if you try to reply to this message, your reply is sent to the only guess left - the envelope header, "MAILER-DAEMON". That doesn't go to them. So, in a fairly practical sense, the message is forged.

----PTCP_00001beb031fa607d4
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable

This is a very poor choice of formats, but it has the additional useful qualifier that it causes my mailer to warn me that this "may be a binary file", as indeed it turns out it is.

=EF=BB=BFEntertainment Software Association
1211 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036 USA

Attention:  Piracy Enforcement - DMCA Officer

Telephone:  202-223-2400

Fax:  202-223-2401

E-mail:  dmca@theesa.com

Okay, here we see several things. First, a "real" email address. Also, the crucial data which caused this to become a "binary" file - the "=EF=BB=BF" at the top of the page. I don't know what that's supposed to look like. I get an i with a diaresis, a double-greater-than, and an upside-down question mark.

We also see the word "piracy". Piracy is what happens when men with cutlasses and parrots kill you and take your stuff. The use of that term to refer to someone allegedly copying a video game is pure propaganda.

September 1, 2004=20

Dear Seebach, A Peter,=20

I am an authorized representative of the Entertainment Software Association=

 ("ESA"), which represents the intellectual property interests of twenty-fo=

ur (24) companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles,=20=

personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet. =20

(The "=20" and =s at the ends of lines are the "quoted-printable" encoding. They're harmless.)

This paragraph contains a manifest falsehood. According to the ESA's web site, they have 26 members.

ESA is providing this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millen=

nium Copyright Act and 17 USC Sec. 512 (c) to make Digital Solutions, Inc.=20=

aware of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive cop=

yright rights of one or more ESA members.  This notice is addressed to you=20=

as the agent designated by Digital Solutions, Inc. to receive notifications=

 of claimed infringement, as so reflected in the current records of the U.S=

. Copyright Office.  Under penalty of perjury, we hereby affirm that the=20=

ESA is authorized to act on behalf of the ESA members whose exclusive copyr=

ight rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

But they never tell me which member or members they think are infringed. (Note also that "Digital Solutions, Inc." is long-dead; I suppose we should update our ARIN records.)

ESA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at 205.166.146.12=20=
continues to infringe the rights of one or more ESA members by offering for=
 download one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products prot=
ected by copyright, including, but not limited to:

Doom 3 (Retail version)=20

Okay, they identify the product, so we assume they're representing iD Software. But they don't say.

The unauthorized copies of such game product[s] appearing on, or made avail=

able through, such site are listed and/or identified thereon by their title=

s, variations thereof, or depictions of associated artwork (any such game=20=

titles, copies, listings and/or other depictions of, or references to, any=20=

contents of such game product, are hereinafter referred to as "Infringing=20=

Material").  Based on the information at its disposal on 9/1/2004 at 7:31=20=

a.m. EDT (GMT -0400), ESA believes that the statements in this Notice are=20=

accurate and correctly describe the infringing nature and status of the Inf=

ringing Material.

Okay. What information do they have? They don't say. They certainly give no indication of exactly what they're looking at. We'll be looking at the information that exists in the external world shortly; suffice it to say that, if they believe this, they have probably been consuming schedule 1 controlled substances.

Accordingly, ESA hereby requests Digital Solutions, Inc. to immediately rem=

ove or disable access to the Infringing Material at the URL address identif=

ied above.

Note that no URL has been provided, or "identified above".

I think at this point I can use the term "idiots" without fear of being accused of libel.

Should you have questions, please contact the ESA at the above listed maili=

ng address or by replying to this email.  Please also include the above not=

ed Reference Number in the subject line of all email correspondence.

We thank you for your cooperation in this matter.  Your prompt response is=20=

appreciated.

Regards,

Robert L. Hunter, IV

Entertainment Software Association

Hmm. I wonder. Does Mr. Hunter actually exist? Does he review these emails? Was this sent by Mr. Hunter, or by an automated program? Read on, MacDuff!

------------------------------

Infringement Detail:

Infringing Work: Doom 3 (Retail version)

Filepath: /if-archive/phoenix/games/pc/

Filename: Doom3.zip

First Found: 1 Sep 2004 07:31:12 EDT (GMT -0400)

Last Found: 1 Sep 2004 07:31:12 EDT (GMT -0400)

Filesize: 114k

IP Address: 205.166.146.12

IP Port: 21

Network: FTP

Protocol: FTP

Well, there you have it. It's the "Doom3.zip" file found on the Interactive Fiction archive.

Impressive, this modern technology, that manages to crunch a modern game down to 114k, when the original probably takes up at least one full CD.

Even more interesting that the file in question is dated 1999 (although they don't show this):

(THIS IS NOT PART OF THEIR LETTER: THIS IS LOCAL STUFF ON MY SYSTEM.)

$ ls -l Doom3.zip

-rw-rw-r--  1 seebs  wheel  116471 Oct 17  1999 Doom3.zip

Pretty impressive. Apparently, this "retail" copy of Doom3 somehow got leaked nearly 5 years ago.

=20



Note:  The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the=20=

person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/=

or privileged material.  Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemin=

ation or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this infor=

mation by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibit=

ed.  If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete=20=

the material from all computers.

This message is about as persuasive as the "IF U WORK FOR THE GOVERMENT U ARE TRESSPASING AND MUST LEAVE AT 1CE!" messages one gets from warez people trying to cover their tracks.

Amusingly... The site they're complaining about is a mirror site. So. I could remove the file, but it'd just come back, and they've just prohibited the people maintaining the master site from deleting the file. Luckily, no one is likely to be stupid enough to take any action in reliance on a message this stupid.

----PTCP_00001beb031fa607d4
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.cer"
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="signature.cer"

LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBDRVJUSUZJQ0FURS0tLS0tDQpNSUlFZWpDQ0ErT2dBd0lCQWdJUVdNazk2YzJ3

ZXg1SFhMWVcrQ3ZOSVRBTkJna3Foa2lHOXcwQkFRUUZBRENCDQp6REVYTUJVR0ExVUVDaE1PVm1W

eWFWTnBaMjRzSUVsdVl5NHhIekFkQmdOVkJBc1RGbFpsY21sVGFXZHVJRlJ5DQpkWE4wSUU1bGRI

ZHZjbXN4UmpCRUJnTlZCQXNUUFhkM2R5NTJaWEpwYzJsbmJpNWpiMjB2Y21Wd2IzTnBkRzl5DQpl

UzlTVUVFZ1NXNWpiM0p3TGlCQ2VTQlNaV1l1TEV4SlFVSXVURlJFS0dNcE9UZ3hTREJHQmdOVkJB

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Rncwd05UQTRNVGd5TXpVNU5UbGFNSUlCDQpIakVYTUJVR0ExVUVDaE1PVm1WeWFWTnBaMjRzSUVs

dVl5NHhIekFkQmdOVkJBc1RGbFpsY21sVGFXZHVJRlJ5DQpkWE4wSUU1bGRIZHZjbXN4UmpCRUJn

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M0p3TGlCaWVTQlNaV1l1TEV4SlFVSXVURlJFS0dNcE9UZ3hIakFjQmdOVkJBc1RGVkJsDQpjbk52

Ym1FZ1RtOTBJRlpoYkdsa1lYUmxaREUwTURJR0ExVUVDeE1yUkdsbmFYUmhiQ0JKUkNCRGJHRnpj

eUF4DQpJQzBnVFdsamNtOXpiMlowSUVaMWJHd2dVMlZ5ZG1salpURWFNQmdHQTFVRUF4UVJUV1Zr

YVdGVFpXNTBjbmtzDQpJRWx1WXk0eEtEQW1CZ2txaGtpRzl3MEJDUUVXR1dOdmNIbHlhV2RvZEVC

dFpXUnBZWE5sYm5SeWVTNWpiMjB3DQpnWjh3RFFZSktvWklodmNOQVFFQkJRQURnWTBBTUlHSkFv

R0JBTjNKM3BjSUppcUFKOGY0VkgyNzd0R3ozUUFuDQpjMTRqakxSOFk3V1VIaWUwdEtsN2JnQmdZ

T3RTVWRVNGlESFFJU2gxUi84bC8wV2gwaEZZTzdQSE1kY0pQaUE4DQphT1p5Tjg1NnlpWi9GMnk0

WUxaOHc2bUx6NnE5aExkdS9mOHB1MUhkV0MzY3FwTjR5bnhDY2VIVEJHaFV1WGphDQowOWlxSlJ2

cS9MVldLUXhQQWdNQkFBR2pnZ0VHTUlJQkFqQUpCZ05WSFJNRUFqQUFNSUdzQmdOVkhTQUVnYVF3

DQpnYUV3Z1o0R0MyQ0dTQUdHK0VVQkJ3RUJNSUdPTUNnR0NDc0dBUVVGQndJQkZoeG9kSFJ3Y3pv

dkwzZDNkeTUyDQpaWEpwYzJsbmJpNWpiMjB2UTFCVE1HSUdDQ3NHQVFVRkJ3SUNNRll3RlJZT1Zt

VnlhVk5wWjI0c0lFbHVZeTR3DQpBd0lCQVJvOVZtVnlhVk5wWjI0bmN5QkRVRk1nYVc1amIzSndM

aUJpZVNCeVpXWmxjbVZ1WTJVZ2JHbGhZaTRnDQpiSFJrTGlBb1l5azVOeUJXWlhKcFUybG5iakFS

QmdsZ2hrZ0JodmhDQVFFRUJBTUNCNEF3TXdZRFZSMGZCQ3d3DQpLakFvb0NhZ0pJWWlhSFIwY0Rv

dkwyTnliQzUyWlhKcGMybG5iaTVqYjIwdlkyeGhjM014TG1OeWJEQU5CZ2txDQpoa2lHOXcwQkFR

UUZBQU9CZ1FDY05HckV4Qjc1Y2lGejE5RnNiWmEyNW91eWJjMUREbzJDVTNTS1V6TmwrdGRzDQpo

MmZGMlJYc1g4ZEdoejZzRzBIbE40MkI4b2NlRnRhL3dkN05Ia1JsZnRWZitHNnAzN0o1L2RIcGlP

b0hHMVBvDQpnV1NKQmVsQU4rTGwxUENwSnlJa2svc0o4M2lEN3lOcXNQTGxua1JGRGtxUFhrQ2ll

d1BNL2hMVTRiQnkwQT09DQotLS0tLUVORCBDRVJUSUZJQ0FURS0tLS0tDQo=

Yeah, whatever.

----PTCP_00001beb031fa607d4
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="9282959.xml"
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="9282959.xml"

PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4wIj8+DQo8SW5mcmluZ2VtZW50IHhtbG5zOnhzaT0iaHR0cDovL3d3

dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMS9YTUxTY2hlbWEtaW5zdGFuY2UiPjxDYXNlPjxJRD45MjgyOTU5PC9JRD48

U3RhdHVzPk9wZW48L1N0YXR1cz48U2V2ZXJpdHk+Tm9ybWFsPC9TZXZlcml0eT48L0Nhc2U+PENv

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aXRlIDYwMA0KV2FzaGluZ3RvbiwgREMgMjAwMzY8L0FkZHJlc3M+PFBob25lLz48RW1haWwvPjwv

Q29tcGxhaW5hbnQ+PFNlcnZpY2VfUHJvdmlkZXI+PEVudGl0eT5EaWdpdGFsIFNvbHV0aW9ucywg

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L0FkZHJlc3M+PFBob25lPisxLTY1MS00ODgtNjYwODwvUGhvbmU+PEVtYWlsLz48L1NlcnZpY2Vf

UHJvdmlkZXI+PFNvdXJjZT48VGltZVN0YW1wPjIwMDQtMDktMDFUMDM6MzE6MTJaPC9UaW1lU3Rh

bXA+PElQX0FkZHJlc3M+MjA1LjE2Ni4xNDYuMTI8L0lQX0FkZHJlc3M+PFR5cGU+RlRQPC9UeXBl

PjxOdW1iZXJfRmlsZXM+MTwvTnVtYmVyX0ZpbGVzPjwvU291cmNlPjxDb250ZW50PjxJdGVtPjxU

aXRsZT5Eb29tIDMgKFJldGFpbCB2ZXJzaW9uKTwvVGl0bGU+PEZpbGVuYW1lPkRvb20zLnppcDwv

RmlsZW5hbWU+PEZpbGVzaXplPjExNjQ3MTwvRmlsZXNpemU+PFR5cGU+U09GVFdBUkU8L1R5cGU+

PC9JdGVtPjwvQ29udGVudD48SGlzdG9yeS8+PE5vdGVzLz48L0luZnJpbmdlbWVudD4NCg==

----PTCP_00001beb031fa607d4--

This bit here is just an XML file containing a little thing with all the information from above; no idea why they sent it.

But.

Let's see what that file actually is.

          This directory contains MS-DOS executables of games released
           by Topologika Ltd., who have now given permission for these
                       games to be freely redistributed.
           Several of the games were originally written on the Phoenix
                    system at Cambridge University, England.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Index                    this file

Acheton.zip              Acheton, by Jon Thackray, David Seal and

                         Jonathan Partington.

Avon.zip                 Avon, by Jonathan Partington.

Doom1.zip                Countdown to Doom, by Peter Killworth.

Doom2.zip                Return to Doom, by Peter Killworth.

Doom3.zip                Last Days of Doom, by Peter Killworth.

Hamil.zip                Hamil, by Jonathan Partington.

Hezarin.zip              Hezarin, by Alex Shipp and Steve Tinney.

Murdac.zip               Murdac, by Jonathan Partington.

PhilosophersQuest.zip    Philosophers Quest, by Peter Killworth.

SpySnatcher.zip          Spy Snatcher, by Jonathan Partington and

                         Jon Thackray.

Hmm.

Apparently, despite the fact that neither "Topologika" nor "Peter Kilworth" is listed as a member of the ESA, they think that they are representing these people.

Or maybe they are too stupid to read the file describing this. But then, they thought a game which (I assume) is a little larger than 114k somehow got compressed into that tiny file.

In short... Someone wrote a really DUMB web scraper, and harassed me with it.

When I get a chance, I'm gonna set up my phone recording device (Minnesota is a single-party consent state!) and call them. And we will have FUN!