stray bullets

Pentagon plans ‘spaceplane’ to reach hotspots fast The American military is planning a “spaceplane” designed to fly a crack squad of heavily armed marines to trouble spots anywhere in the world within four hours.

The History of the India-China Border There is no territorial dispute which has been, and still is, more susceptible to a solution than India’s boundary dispute with China. Each side has its non-negotiable vital interest securely under its control. India has the McMahon Line; China has Aksai Chin. Only a political approach, climaxed by a decision at the highest level, can settle the matter. In a couple of months it will be half a century since the issues were joined. (via)

Debt Collection, Outsourced to India With her flowing, hot-pink Indian suit, jangly silver bangles and perky voice, Bhumika Chaturvedi, 24, doesn't fit the stereotype of a thuggish, heard-it-all-before debt collector. But lately, she has had no problem making American debtors cry. (via)

Biology in Science Fiction: Big Giant Heads Before transhumanism became all the fashion, science fictional depictions of far future often gave our human descendants fantastic mental powers along with giant brains. But there is a serious problem with that idea: human brain size at birth is limited by the size of the opening in the pelvis, and those far future women never seem to have extra-wide hips to go along with their giant heads. (excellent post)

also:
Stone Age man took drugs, say scientists
NASA sends probe to study edge of solar system
Books: Umberto Eco - Turning Back the Clock
Britain to get first glance at author Burroughs' paintings
Showcasing 'Hidden Treasures' from Afghanistan
Eight Reasons Why You Can't Pay Attention (via)
How to Stay Awake at Work (via)
In the computer age, handwriting is a lost art
20 Places Where Bookworms Go to Read and Socialize Online (via)
Idea Generation (visual arts) (via)
Complete Spy Cam Smaller Than an Eyeball
Open Yale Courses: Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Professor Donald Kagan (via)
Photo Gallery: Hackers delight - A history of MIT pranks (via)
List of common misconceptions (via)

viddy:
17 months and 14'000 km away from technology Swiss adventurer Sarah Marquis, who travels by foot around Europe, Australia and America, explains what happen when you reconnect with nature and try to be autonomous, finding water, getting some electrical energy, collecting food were some of the topics discussed during her presentation.
Ivo Niehe Meets Frank Zappa (’91) (narration in Dutch, interview in English)
Presenting the instrument of the moment (beautiful music on the kora)
Brainwave Synthesis With Percussa AudioCubes
D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln
Insane Train Stunt (completely nuts)
Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" (montage)
Order of the Knights of Malta
Boring Books
The Ruts - Babylon's Burning
Run DMC on Reading Rainbow (via)
Do the Hustle

photograph of a man flying, ca. 1910

If you zoom in on it, the image of the guy in the air looks drawn and superimposed. Even so, I found this photo to be eerily cool.

from airform archives, who also has a fascinating photostream.

Why the 'Biggest Drawing in the World' Is Probably Fake

Well, for starters, the Artist Admits He Didn't Actually Use GPS, DHL to Create 'Biggest Drawing in the World'

Another way to get on the "Do Not Call" list

One from the "I wish I had thought of that" files.

hearty hat tip to the Nag on the Lake

A Call to the Zimbabwe Embassy

This is billed as a prank. I don't think they accomplished what they set out to, but it is pretty funny.



via The Strategist

Virgle: Branson and Google to Colonize Mars

This isn't a joke... or is it?

(wink wink, nudge nudge)

For thousands of years,

the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision.

An invitation.

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

The question is, do you want to join us?

Ever yearned to journey to the stars?

I'm already ready for April Fool's Day to be over. I think I'll stay home. I'm an AFD scrooge.

via Neatorama

Obama Site Hacked?

It appears that hope.net has been hacked or this is a prank or hoax of some sort. It is April Fool's Day, but apparently this happened yesterday and I can see no reason why Obama's people would have anything to do with this.

Notice on the bottom left it says "and hacked by Zhuangzi" (that's my best guess on the last bit.) and the underlying link leads to Hillary Clinton's page.

Could it be.... The Chinese? The Spanish Inquisition? What the hell's going on here?

The first message says: Spread the word, Barack Obama has no security on his website. Will his administration have no security?

As of 3:38am ET, the message says: To the media, stop saying Clinton hacked Obama, they want nothing to do with this, you spread lies.

Update: It's a hoax. hope.net is a hacker site as in the HOPE Conference.

via The Raw Feed

SKULLPHONE Update: Digital Billboards Rented, Not Hacked

Well, so much for that.

for more info

Who is SKULLPHONE?

SKULLPHONE is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, coated with a secret sauce. This digital prankster has hijacked Clear Channel Communications‘ 10 most prominent digital billboards in the Los Angeles area.

More photos here.

I love the hack-as-prank. Criminal hackers, stealing identities and draining bank accounts, are just goons with GUIs instead of guns; a big yawn. Sadly, hacking for fun, learning, anarchy and not-for-profit is on the way out. The recent disbanding of the VX group 29A heralds an age of hacking as a predominantly commercial venture. This is evidenced by the fact that the top infecter these days is Adware, not viruses.

In the wake of the aging Billboard Liberation Front, SKULLPHONE is a breath of fresh bits and gonzo freakage in a banal consumer driven economy and a digital underground that has largely abandoned the prank for the gank.

I hold out hope that younger generations will spearhead a backlash, moving away from predatory hacking and toward more clever and artful works. The prank is a reality check, a peek behind the curtain, a suspension of suspension of disbelief... it keeps us from getting too encrusted with cynicism, despair, ephemera, idiot humor and morbid seriousness.

I sense some ludic possibilities with RFID hacking, but I haven't heard much about this lately.

Hacking someone's pacemaker, is not a prank, however; it is more likely murder.

Further out, a world of ubiquitous computing could find itself vulnerable to all sorts of unanticipated pranks, hacks and attacks.

Also, RUMINT has it that berserker gangs from World of Warcraft have found ways to breach Second Life and are staging raids. (Anybody have any hard evidence of this? I remember reading about this in an interview with one of the developers of Second Life, but I can't find the source.) I love the idea of cross-platform invasion. I think we'll see some amazing gaming mash-up mods in the near future.

UPDATE HERE: apparently Mr. Skullphone paid for the billboards. Never mind.

via grinding.be

Billboard Liberation Front's talk at Vooruit, Ghent

we make money not art ran a nice spread on the Billboard Liberation Front

Quote:

In 77 a "bunch of freaks" in San Francisco called the San Francisco Suicide Club had vowed to live each day like it was the last one. 27 of them (including ten members wearing gorilla suits) were blindfolded and taken up to a roof. They were faced with two Max Factor billboard and some paint. Unfortunately they were a bit drunk, a bit conspicuous because of the gorilla suits and they started arguing about what should be done with the billboard. Some neighbour called the police and SF Suicide Club learned the message the hard way: be prepared, don't get drunk, don't wear stupid suits.

BLF Website

BLF's Flickr page

The Art and Science of Billboard Improvement.pdf

Sunday Excursions

Sunday is a day that I like to break routine and explore something new or tackle some backburner project or just chill and hang with some friends. Some days we fish, some days we mend nets, and some days we just goof off.

With this in mind, Uncertain Times is going to disengage from the cycle and go a little off-topic with Sunday Excursions.

Item: Scamorama

Most of you are probably familiar with those emails with the subject line "Request for Assistance" etc. etc., offering a cut of a large sum of money in exchange for help with transferring funds so that they can drain your bank account, or worse.

Yes, it's the Nigerian Scammers, aka: 419ers or The Lads from Lagos. These scumbags practice what is known in legalese as Advance Fee Fraud, a variation of the Spanish Prisoner con.

Although they are popularly known as 'Nigerian', 419ers operate from a number of different countries. They did, however, originate there and remain predominantly Nigerian.

Most of us ignore and delete, but many have been victimized by these folks. (as well as by their own greed and stupidity) Many have lost money, but some have been kidnapped and held for ransom and some have even been murdered. (despite editorial complaints, for our purposes, Wikipedia has an adequate entry on AFF.)

But now, the cool part. Enter Scamorama.

Scamorama is a website devoted to scam-baiting. The object is to string the scammers along for as long as possible (sometimes for months) and eventually lay some sort of smackdown on them. Some actually get the scammers to send them something; a copy of a photo id, a picture of the scammer in lingerie, money, even gold.


But what's really priceless, in my opinion, is the interplay. Some of the entries are hilarious. In fact, many are so well contrived that scam-baiting has practically become a literary genre unto itself.

Many scam-baiters pose themselves as fictional, pop-cultural or historical characters such as, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Mr. T, Joseph Stalin, and my favorite, the Miskatonic University Tales, chronicling the exploits of Thomas Mallory, a living human head in a jar!

Although many of the entries aren't quite as humorous and some are so long that it's impossible to slog through after awhile, some are so funny that I'd advise not drinking milk while reading them.

Score one for the good guys.

Late note: I've been following Scamorama since 2003, but I've only recently found 419 Eater. How I missed this, I have no idea. Although I don't think their scam-o-grams are quite as funny as Scamorama's, they're pretty crafty. So much so, that in one case, a 419er was actually convinced to provide some pretty elaborate wood-carvings. I was hepped to this after scanning Wikipedia and the Boing Boing archives. Scamorama also has blivets of links to advance fee fraud and scam-baiting sites both funny and serious as well as a number of odd nuggets worth a peek.

Item: Suppressed Transmissions

I haven't played a pencil and paper role-playing game for quite a while, but I still keep an eye on the industry and a few of the publishers, designers and writers; in particular, one Kenneth Hite.

I first became aware of Mr. Hite via his Suppressed Transmission column in Pyramid, an online RPG journal published by Steve Jackson Games. A friend of mine suggested that I should check him out. I sneaked a peek on a friend's account and I was impressed enough to subscribe. (SJG has also released two volumes of ST in print.)

The Suppressed Transmission series covers a wide range of themes and genres related to gaming, but it is built on four pillars: Conspiracy, Secret History, Horror and Alternate History. Within this framework each column addresses a particular subject, magnifies it through various historical, fictional or gaming-oriented lenses and then focuses it into an informative and entertaining transmission of ideas and inspiration. Topics include Shakespeare, Antarctic Space Nazis, The Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon, Emperor Norton, The Knights Templar, Route 66, and many others.

As an erstwhile gamer, I know that the Suppressed Transmissions are an invaluable resource for game-masters and designers. (to paraphrase Mr. Hite: If you can't get any inspiration from this, you might as well go back to drawing 10 foot wide corridors on graph paper.) However, as a writer, Hite's work is a very helpful source of insights and ideas. His erudition, perspective and wit is refreshing and inspiring.

The Suppressed Transmission collections would be a good score for any aspiring writer. Check 'em out.