Saturday, 30 January 2010 at 23:40
While I try to figure out what to write about, here are two press releases which will probably be of interest.
First of all,
2600 Magazine has has announced that
pre-registration for The Next HOPE has opened. Held every two years at the
Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan, the
Hackers On Planet Earth conference draws hackers, crackers, cypherpunks, makers feds, and as many other sorts of people as you care to mention to present, attend presentations, get in trouble, and bounce ideas off of one another. The cost to attend HOPE is $75us in advance (paid through
Yahoo's online store) or $100us in cash at the door (anonymously, of course). They've also
put out a call for speakers who are interested in presenting this upcoming July. You don't necessarily need to present on infosec - if you experiment with tech in any manner you've got a chance of presenting, because after all hacking is more than finding exploits and cracking systems. No matter what it's a good time, and well worth the money.
Also,
Evil Hat Productions has announced a momentous occasion:
the Dresden Files RPG will debut at Origins. Four years in the making, the game based upon Jim Butcher's modern fantasy series
The Dresden Files has been converted into a tabletop role-playing game set in the world of
Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. It's built around the
FATE system, as are some of Evil Hat's other games, like
Don't Rest Your Head and
Spirit of the Century. In the game, you can play a wizard like Harry, a vampire (of the White Court, at the very least), one of the fae, a were-creature, or a plain-jane mortal with the heart to exceed. Walk the beat. Fight baddies. Protect the innocent. Try to make your rent payments. Wonder what in the hell is going on. Give the books a read and pick the game up.
Saturday, 23 January 2010 at 13:24
As long as I can remember, rumors of people being framed for smuggling have gone around. The urban legends go something like this: an unlikely sort gets stopped at the airport/border/bus terminal by a security officer who happens to be holding a piece of his/her luggage. The security officer produces a weapon/drugs from the bag/backpack/suitcase/duffel bag, claims that the traveler was carrying them and places him/her under arrest. It later turns out that the security officer planted the contraband him/herself for (insert dastardly reason here - making their arrest quota for the month, fun, making some poor schmuck sweat, what have you). It's the sort of thing that keeps one up at night just before one goes back on the road.
When it actually happens, though, it's enough to make you sweat like Kevin Mitnick at a traffic stop.
On the fifth of January, 22 year old Rebecca Solomon was flying back to Detroit by way of Philadelphia for school after winter break. Arriving at Philly International 90 minutes early as advised due to the new travel restrictions, she ran her carry on luggage down the x-ray conveyor belt, stepped through the metal detector, and was then stopped by a TSA worker while collecting her personal effects. The worker pulled a small baggie of white powder out of her carry on and asked if it was hers.
At moments like this Time itself seems to stop, and the only thing you can hear is the sound of your heart hammering double-time in your ears.
Twenty seconds later, the TSA agent
cracked a smile, told her that he had put it there himself, and told her to move on. It had been a joke.
Please bear in mind that Solomon was flying on Northwest Airlines, the same airline upon which
Captain Sparkypants tried to blow up a plane with 80 grams of
PETN packed around his junk just a few days before. Air travel is bad enough around the holidays, moreso after some jackass with high explosive sewn into his gutches blows a black op and puts everyone's nerves on edge, and this dumbass decides to play a cute Penn and Teller prank on a co-ed when he should be doing his job by making sure that someone isn't trying to be the star of
Underwear Bomber II: From Briefs To Boxers?? Ann Davis, the regional rep for the TSA says that she's seen no evidence to contradict Solomon's story, and the unidentified-by-policy security worker is no longer employed.
It's no wonder why people are loathe to travel anymore; not because they're afraid of terrorism, but because they're afraid of the Keystone Kops that were hired to work sitesec for the airports.
Saturday, 23 January 2010 at 11:25
For many years, body armor that was fashionable as well as protective was a trope of cyberpunk sci-fi. The ever-present black leather jacket lined with kevlar,
dusters and
drovers coats with trauma plates stitched into them, and even capes and cloaks which could turn bullets or the blade of a knife graced the pages of many a well-thumbed paperback book. Now it would seem that fashion designers have taken inspiration from these stories and
helped make body armor, or at least the appearance thereof fashionable. It would seem that some subcultures have taken body armor as a fashion statement of sorts - after all, if you have to wear armor when you're out, you're obviously important enough to have people want to kill you, right? - and the cool hunters have picked up this blip on the radar and run with it. Semi- and non-formal outerwear that can stop rounds from low-calibre handguns are selling pretty well right now, and for people who can't afford them there are variants which protect you from nothing but the cold. This trend might have grown out of some people purchasing body armor for personal use (which is legal in some locations, illegal in others, and legal with certain caveats in still others - check your local ordinances before
hitting eBay), namely, the glitterati and heads of corporations who just may have angered their markets with their antics. Plus, you can get this stuff with nifty patterns silkscreened on it without having to do it yourself if basic body armor isn't your thing.
If you've a mind (and money) to, there are even companies that will tailor concealed body armor for whomever can pay for it. Miguel Caballero has been doing just this for almost twenty years now; a polo shirt that can taken a 9mm round and let you (painfully) walk away will run you about $4kus. Good bulletproof vests with trauma plates aren't cheap; you can expect to pay well upwards of $1kus for military grade armor, less for civilian grade armor and
other protective measures.. of course, you really have to know what you're buying and what it's rated for. There are
multiple grades of body armor which stop different kinds of rounds so planning ahead for threats becomes necessary. Also, not all sorts of body armor are proof against edged weapons due to how kevlar is used in the construction of ballistic armor; for that
you need to look elsewhere. Something else that isn't mentioned is that body armor is less comfortable the more it protects you. It's heavy. It's hot. It tires you out. It can slow you down. It doesn't cover everything. If you get shot it still hurts because not all of the force is absorbed by the armor. At best you'll have a nasty bruise or three. At worst you could break a rib, collarbone, or possibly your sternum.
Oh, and there's just one more thing... the best body armor in the world won't protect you from a headshot.
Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 20:55
A most disturbing announcement was posted to the or-talk mailing list by Roger Dingledine, one of the core developers of
Tor. Earlier this month it was discovered that moria1 and gablemoo, two of the seven directory authorities of the Tor darknet
were compromised along with a server added to the project's domain to track and serve metrics. One of the boxen was imaged for later analysis but all were reconstructed. New crypto keys were cut for the directory authorities due to the compromise, necessitating
a new release of the software. Scarily, moria also hosted the
Subversion and
git repositories for the project, though the source code was audited and no malicious alterations were found. By all appearances, the crackers were looking for systems with lots of bandwidth and didn't pay much attention to the contents of the machines.
The directory authority servers exist to give any instance of Tor on the Net that asks for it a cryptographically signed list of all documented nodes in the darknet and their status, which are used to determine what nodes a given client can connect to and what state they're in. The idea is that a majority of the directory authorities have to have the same particular record to be considered valid, so if only two were compromised a faked consensus of network status could not be given. The public keys of the directory servers are hardcoded into Tor itself, which is why an emergency release had to be made.
The thing about metrics.torproject.org being cracked is that it contained an archive of bridge descriptors dating back to 2009. While this in itself isn't critical to the security of the Tor darknet it does represent a significant list of
otherwise undocumented entry points for clients into the darknet, which would make it easier for unscrupulous parties to make use of the darknet that much harder. Roger says that there is sufficient turnover of bridges that the impact won't be great.
Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 20:45
I don't know what this says about our world, but it's not good, this I know for cetain:
CREATIVE PEOPLE MUST BE STOPPED
Seen on the beltway as a bumper sticker this afternoon.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at 20:40
One year after the television show
Doctor Who returned to the airwaves, a spin-off show aimed at adult viewers called
Torchwood was created as a spin-off. Centered around the character of
Captain Jack Harkness,
Torchwood follows the adventures, foibles, and WTF moments of a black-ops outfit headquartered in Cardiff, Wales that takes it upon itself to investigate and minimize the impact of alien activities upon the Earth. There is a significant amount of crossover between the two
fandoms, so it remains to be seen what they'll think of this...
Word has hit the Net that the
Fox Broadcasting Company is
working on a new version of Torchwood aimed at US rather than UK audiences. BBC Worldwide Productions is said to be working on the project with series creator Russel T. Davies writing at least one script (and probably more; details are sketchy). It is said that the series' original production team in on board and they might contract some of the actors from the original series to star, which wouldn't be a bad thing. The press release says that the storylines will be more global in nature rather than local (i.e., US or Wales-centric). There isn't a whole lot more hard information out there and I don't want to speculate. Suffice it to say that I don't trust Fox to not mess it up given what they've done to a few other good shows over the years.
Then again, after the
last season of Torchwood (warning: spoilers) I have no idea how they'd keep the show going along its present course.
Time will tell.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at 20:29
Well, kinda. Hopefully soon, but not quite yet.
A team of stem cell researchers at Maastricht University
have worked out a way to culture porcine stem cells in vitro to grow edible meat. It's not bacon yet - it's not pork-like, either, but has a texture more akin to cooked scallop - but it's a start. The team hopes to perfect this method so that it could be used to produce edible meat with far less impact upon the Earth's biosphere. As things stand now slaughterhouses and the greenhouse gases produced by farming pigs are a topic of concern to environmentalists, to say nothing of the parts of the pigs that can't be used for anything (no hot dog jokes, please). This could also eventually lead to a way to feed people living in regions where major farming efforts aren't possible. Of course, there are a few people out there who are concerned about the potential impact of eating vat-grown meat upon the health of people but it's really too soon to tell yet. Peter Ellis, biochemist, remarked that the flavor and texture of meat are more than just what sort of animal it came from - how the muscle fibres are patterned and
marbling are also key factors, and no one's sure if they can be replicated in the lab, let alone in a manufacturing plant.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at 20:23
At 2302 EST5EDT last night, our friend Rhianna gave birth to a 6 pound 14 ounce baby girl at a hospital just outside the DC metroplex. Rhianna and Rab named the baby Skya Danaan MacFadyen.
Welcome to the Earth, Skya.
Monday, 18 January 2010 at 17:35
For a couple of years now the Customs and Border Patrol of the United States has had the legal authority to
confiscate the laptops of
people entering the country to perform forensic analysis on an indefinite basis. If you don't give them your laptop (or you refuse to give them the passphrases to decrypt your data)
they can and will send you back or incarcerate you, even if you're an American citizen. They also have standing orders to
seize any and all data storage media you're transporting (including USB keys, cameras, cellular phones, MP3 players, and disks) for
duplication and analysis also. Needless to say, a lot of people have flat-out refused to travel to the States anymore, and not a few US citizens no longer feel safe flying into, out of, or within this country at all.
It seems that the backlash against this draconian policy has begun in earnest: the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
have begun a search for members of the legal profession who have had their computers seized. Their argument that the CBP is violating the right of the people to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, plus it poses a serious risk to attorney-client, doctor-patient, and work-product privileges. In fact, the EFF has announced that
they want to hear from defense lawyers who have had their laptops searched at the border who are willing to participate in this lawsuit. They are not seeking monetary compensation but to change the current state of affairs insofar as these practices are concerned. If you fall into this category, the contact information for one Michael Price of the NACDL can be found at the end of the EFF's announcement.
Monday, 18 January 2010 at 15:28
I got up earlier than usual this morning to join Hasufin and Mika for breakfast on our day off. The restaurant we were going to visit wasn't open today (it usually isn't on Mondays, actually) so we had to re-work our plans at the last minute. After a little discussion we settled upon a different restaurant which none of us had tried before, a diner not too far away called
The Virginian Restaurant in Vienna, Virginia (169 Glyndon Street; Vienna, VA; 22180; phone number 703-938-2333). It's a little greasy spoon-type place just off of Maple Avenue on the other side of the street from a small shopping complex. When you walk in the front door you'll find your classic mom and pop restaurant, from the bar along the right-hand side of the building with stools to sit at to tables and chairs everywhere else. The staff is very friendly, the prices are good (for a hearty breakfast expect to pay about $6.50us), and the food's quite good. If the breakfasts are any indication, the food is also horrible for you (as comfort food tends to be), but once in a while probably won't hurt you. I had my usual benchmark breakfast (eggs, bacon, home fries, toast, and coffee) and found it quite tasty. Mika seemed to enjoy her bacon, eggs, and grits, and Hasufin's pancakes were far larger than any of us expected. Oh, and the coffee's bottomless, so feel free to tank up while you're there. While we haven't tried any of the other food yet, I have no reason to think that it's any less tasty.
On the whole, I give the Virginian Restaurant one flaregun - if you're in the mood for warm, tasty comfort food, especially if you're going on the road, by all means stop by. The food's good and you won't regret it.
Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 22:30
People recording what is going on around them is a relatively new development in North American history. One supposes that you could trace it back to the
beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in the year 1991, in which a bystander recorded the incident with a home video camera. Jump forward a dozen years; cellular phones and digital cameras now have the ability to do the same thing but are far smaller and record in much higher quality. With the proliferation of websites like
Youtube and
Facebook videos of every kind can be made available to the entire connected world within seconds. And this has the police scared.
In the year 2007, a lawyer named Simon Glik was walking through Boston, Massachusetts when he came across three cops trying to pry a plastic bag out of a teenager's mouth. Concerned, he pulled out his cellphone and began filming the arrest. About a year later Jon Surmacz thought that the BPD was probably being too rough in the breaking up of a holiday party he was attending and filmed it with his cellphone.
What these people have in common is that
they were arrested for unlawful electronic surveillance. The BPD defends this by saying that police officers are obligated to protect themselves and the citizenry and may take whatever steps they deem necessary, and if that includes arresting bystanders whom they feel may be interfering with an arrest (even though they are standing on the other side of the street and using a cellular phone) they can. Apparently, they can do this because the state of Massachusetts (along with California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington) are states in which
all parties must explicitly give consent to being recorded (though if a party thinks you're kidding and gives consent anyway it probably still counts by the letter of the law), and the Boston police officers did not do so. Glik and Surmacz were able to get their charges dropped because the incidents took place in public in places in which there were no reasonable expectation of privacy and they used their cellphones openly. On other occasions, people have been arrested on charges of illegal wiretapping (which is an entirely different charge even though no communications were intercepted) and been convicted. Technicalities are rampant and being exploited to the utmost; one Jeffrey Manzelli of Cambridge recorded the MBTA Police at an anti-war rally and was convicted of a charge of illegal wiretapping in 2002 because the microphone he was using was up his sleeve even though the recording device itself was openly carried.
If such things trouble or concern you, I suggest that you do a little research on what is referred to as
sousveillance. I think it'll be interesting to you if not enlightening.
(Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; do not take any of this as legal advice; if you get in trouble it's not my fault.)
Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 18:59
Taser has become one of the more notorious companies in the United States. Best known for it's (technically) non-lethal electrostun weapons, the name of which has become synonymous for most any stunner, they've recently
gotten into the mobile surveillance market with a product they call
Protector. This product is actually an app which you install in your kid's mobile phone; it lets you keep an eye on all of the phone numbers which are called or place calls to the phone as well as giving access to all text messages sent or received. Certain numbers can be blacklisted by the app, and it will even three-way your phone in so you can listen in on any voice conversations without any of the parties involved knowing about it. If a new phone number is picked up an alert will be sent to an application running on your computer or to a parent's cellphone. The phone can even be disabled for a configurable period of time, or the GPS location of the phone can be reported (assuming that the phone has such functionality). The by-subscription service will go online in the summer of 2010, with a monthly charge between $10us and $30us. Taser claims that Protector will bring old-fashioned parenting into the mobile age...
What dreck.
I'm all for old-fashioned parenting: everything from playing catch in the back yard to making sure your kids do their homework to the odd crack across the ass with a wooden spoon. Parenting involves building trust with your kids, but spying on them (with or without their knowledge) is not how you go about it. Trust is a two-way street: if you show your kids respect (which is subtly different from "respecting your kids") they will respect you in turn. If you place trust in your kids and make sure they know it they will trust you in turn. Spying on your kids (or even the threat of it looming over their heads) will not engender trust in you, it will make them resent you and they will be more inclined to hide things. In fact, it will also make them even more inventive in the methods they use to keep things from you (as kids are wont to do). It would surprise me not at all if kids start buying pre-paid cellphones (which you can get at just about any drugstore, convenience store, or supermarket cheaply) to get around this, and you can bet that hacks to disable or trick this app will start making the rounds on the Net.
(Obligatory disclaimers: I am not a parent. I am opposed to surveillance. I got my ass whooped not a few times as a kid and never did what I did to earn those beatings ever again.)
Wednesday, 13 January 2010 at 22:05
It seems as if
Facebook is everywhere these days. Less involved than
Livejournal or
Blogger but packing a little more substance than
Twitter, Facebook is a great way to goof off when you find yourself with a couple of minutes to spare. Games, quizzes, applications, and toys abound on the service, and it also makes it easy to stalk people you used to go to school with. It also made it easier to
hose your social life without having to resort to
off color jokes in front of the boss' wife. Their privacy settings (and ambiguity thereof)
were infamously poor the moment they were put into action, so unless you're very careful and possibly go out of your way to double-check you might have exposed more (possibly embarassing) information about yourself than you suspect.
A couple of days ago the online culture blog called the Rumpus posted what appears to be
an interview with someone who works at Facebook where some interesting things were discussed over a couple of drinks. The employee, who wished to remain anonymous for the sake of his or her job, spoke frankly about some of the stuff that happens at corporate HQ which should raise your eyebrows, if not your suspicions if you're interested in protecting your privacy. So the nameless source says (and I have to phrase it that way because we have no real evidence on our side of the screen), everything you've ever posted to Facebook - status updates, comments, search terms, pictures, what have you - gets archived in their databases even if you take it down. Your viewing history, i.e., the posts you click on, the profiles you look at, and the pictures you pull up are all stored and analyzed to determine whom you interact with the most. The bit about their storing what are described as snapshots of all of their servers on an hourly basis sounds like taking
filesystem snapshots, which make it easier to back up heavily loaded machines. The bit about what was referred to as a "master password" isn't all that surprising; the way it's described it sounds like the
root password to a MySQL instance or
ORACLE account of an Oracle database server. In other words, nothing to write home about. Same with certain people abusing those accounts.
What it boils down to is this: if you don't want everyone to potentially find out about it, don't put it on the Net. If anyone does, ask them politely to take it down. Common sense.
Sunday, 10 January 2010 at 23:07
There's really no way to start off an article about this other than to lay it out up front:
Soda fountains in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia were found to be contaminated with the same bacteria you find in human feces. Thirty soda machines in the area had samples taken from them for analysis and the soda from them was found to be contaminated with a few strains of
e. coli,
stenotrophomonas maltophilia,
klebsiella pneumoniae, and other
coliform microorginisms. Oh, and as if that wasn't enough to make you reconsider getting a drink the next time you go to a restaurant it was discovered that the bacteria were resistant to eleven different antibiotics tested against cultures grown by Dr. Renee Godard of Hollins University, the author of a report published this month's issue of the
International Journal of Food Microbiology. The water, ice, and soda syrup itself were ruled out, which leads Dr. Godard to conclude that the machinery itself was where the bacteria were breeding. A few people had been observed touching the nozzles of the soda fountains themselves, which suggests that people were not observing basic measures of hygine before drawing soda...
Yeah. I went there, too. I think I'm going to erase the last few minutes of my short term memory buffer after I click 'Post Entry'.
The Coca-Cola Company says that there have been no reported incidents of illness contracted from contaminated soda fountains. They also state that it is the responsibility of restaurants to flush out their soda fountains and clean the taps (and rightly so). Experts consulted (who weren't named in the article, unfortunately) were quoted as saying that only people whose immune systems have been compromised have anything to worry about, and the lack of reported outbreaks of gastrointestinal diseases seems to support this statement.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wash my hands, and then set to erasing the last few minutes...
Sunday, 10 January 2010 at 18:57
In the DC metroplex it isn't uncommon for people to drive to a Metrorail station (which aren't always just down the block), grab a space somewhere in the daily parking lot, and then walk inside to catch the subway. The down side of this is that you have to leave your car sitting unattended and unmonitored for something like ten hours out of the day... as a few people have recently discovered one's
catalytic converter, which contains non-trivial amounts of rhodium¸ platinum, or sometimes palladium (which is why they're so damned expensive to replace)
are being stolen right out from under the car in broad daylight. Not many have happened yet around here, just a few since June of 2009, but apparently
word's been getting around since at least 2008. Interestingly,
trucks and SUVs are being targeted preferentially, probably due to how far off the ground they are compared to cars. The thing that really gets me, however, is that the catalytics are being cut right out of the cars' exhaust systems; four-foot lengths of assembly have been reported being removed. From a few other reports I've dug up this week it seems like the
Milwaukee Sawzall might be the tool of choice here; I should add, reports from people who heard someone using a power tool of some kind beneath a vehicle as they walked by but did nothing to investigate.
EDIT:
Here's the letter that started it all.
Friday, 08 January 2010 at 09:52
Anybody know what's going on? Is this only where I happen to be sourcing from right now or are other people seeing this?
drwho@windbringer ~ $ whois google.com | less
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
IP Address: 69.41.185.195
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.DOWNLOAD.MOVIE.ONLINE.ZML2.COM
IP Address: 64.28.187.63
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZOMBIED.AND.HACKED.BY.WWW.WEB-HACK.COM
IP Address: 217.107.217.167
Registrar: DOMAINCONTEXT, INC.
Whois Server: whois.domaincontext.com
Referral URL: http://www.domaincontext.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZNAET.PRODOMEN.COM
IP Address: 62.149.23.126
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.WORDT.DOOR.VEEL.WHTERS.GEBRUIKT.SERVERTJE.NET
IP Address: 62.41.27.144
Registrar: KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH
Whois Server: whois.rrpproxy.net
Referral URL: http://www.key-systems.net
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.VN
Registrar: ONLINENIC, INC.
Whois Server: whois.onlinenic.com
Referral URL: http://www.OnlineNIC.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.UY
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.UA
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.TW
Registrar: WEB COMMERCE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED DBA WEBNIC.CC
Whois Server: whois.webnic.cc
Referral URL: http://www.webnic.cc
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.TR
Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.COM
IP Address: 80.190.192.24
Registrar: EPAG DOMAINSERVICES GMBH
Whois Server: whois.enterprice.net
Referral URL: http://www.enterprice.net
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.SPROSIUYANDEKSA.RU
Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
Whois Server: whois.melbourneit.com
Referral URL: http://www.melbourneit.com
drwho@windbringer ~ $
UPDATED: 1000 EST5EDT@20100108 -
Huh. Never expected that, though it doesn't show up on the few web-based whois queries I've run...
Friday, 08 January 2010 at 08:52
On this date in the year 1880 c.e. Emperor Joshua Norton the First, Emperor of United States of America and Protector of Mexico
collapsed in death at the corner of California Street and (now) Grant Avenue.
Emperor Norton was possibly one of the most eccentric people ever to have lived in the United States. Born in England in the early 19th century, he came to the United States by way of South Africa in the mid 1800's and became something of an entrepreneur, working the real estate market and using the profit to try to corner the market on rice in China during a famine. The attempt failed, and it would appear that what passed for his sanity vanished along with the Emperor himself after the dust from the lawsuits settled and the last of his fortune consumed in the process. The Emperor returned in 1859 and issued a series of proclamations, first and foremost crowning himself Emperor but soon following up with other commands from San Francisco, such as dismissing the then-governor of Virginia and replacing him and most famously dissolving the United States of America in July of 1860. It didn't take long for newspaper editors to get into the act; it isn't known how many of the oddball things published in Emperor Norton's name were actually penned by him but history doesn't much seem to mind. Spectacle, after all, gets people to buy papers and popular attention is all that is needed to turn a man into a living myth.
And a living myth he is. By all accounts he was mad as a hatter, yet his madness somehow kept him sane as Neil Gaiman wrote in
Fables and Reflections
. He printed his own currency and somehow got most every shopkeeper in the city to accept it as legal tender. Soldiers stationed at the Presidio gifted the Emperor with a blue uniform, complete with gold epaulets, an outfit he was given to wearing about town. It is said that he single-handedly halted an anti-Chinese riot in progress by standing in the middle of the melee and reciting the Lord's Prayer aloud. Emperor Norton was so beloved by the people of San Francisco that he ate for free and was afforded respect not often due people unrecognized in international politics. On the 100th anniversary of his death in 1980 c.e. many memorial ceremonies were held in his honor around the city, and from time to time Emperor Norton still pops up in pop culture in everything from graphic novels to short stories to the odd video game.
Two days after his death he was buried with honors
at the Woodlawn Memorial Park in nearby Colma. It is said that approximately 10,000 people attended the funeral, and the funerary parade was two miles in length.
The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor. Hail Eris.
Monday, 04 January 2010 at 23:18
I'll have stuff to post about New Year's. Really.
Right now I'm still trying to adjust to something approximating a normal diurnal schedule and not having too much luck at it. My ability to sequence words is largely nonfunctional at the moment (my coherence at present is illusory, I assure you) and the best I can manage is pale imitation of ADHD.
I really should go to bed.
