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Cory Doctorow gave a great speech at #28c3 called "The coming war upon general purpose computation" about all the various ways that the establishment is going to fear computers and continually attempt to abridge our freedoms. It is both well-spoken and rousing and I recommend you take a few minutes out of your day to watch it. Doctorow made some very salient arguments for the coming dangers to cognitive and computational freedom from other industries outside entertainment spanning everything from RF to agriculture. Everything he says about the coming establishment threats to your freedom is spot-on. There's one statement he makes that leads him to a much rosier view than reality, and one which I think distorts the view of the future battlefield. If you take Doctorow's speech at face value you will believe that the battlefield is a bureaucratic one. It isn't. It is going to be a development race, and most of the people that should be running for their lives don't even realize that the starting gun has been fired. Doctorow makes the statement that we don't know how to make a computer that will run only approved programs. This, sadly, is not even remotely true. These computers have been developed in quasi-secrecy, at great taxpayer expense. Ever taken a look at the XTS series? The operating system, STOP, has the security subsystem in ring 0 and the kernel in a lower priv'd ring. This was far before the NX bit, which having an external security subsystem be in charge of these days could be catastrophic for programmers' freedom.... Most programs run on STOP systems were compiled for other platforms, but STOP offered a semblance of binary compatibility by having foreign binaries sandboxed in highly restrictive virtual machines. As you can imagine, this pretty much eliminated the malloc funny business. This all funded by the NSA's TPEP/TCB. And this was the fucking nineties! This was etymology of the term "trusted computing", sourced of the military and intelligence complexes. Microsoft just used the term to conjure the proper images within heads of those in the know. In addition to the continued development of OS-layer user subversion, there's been a number of additional developments since then that have been similarly funded by the US government at incomprehensible taxpayer expense. Is it possible to have a single processor expose different instruction sets to different hardware channels, thus offering the application developer a computer a crippled processor architecture that lacks the control over memory addressing which is fully accessible to a coprocessor that controls software and hardware signing? You betcha. If you've done any reasonable EE work you can start to visualize it in your head. This is real. Hell, would most developers notice if the processor architecture changed transparently to mechanisms of managed code? What percentage of software developers actually even understand pointers anymore? I'd bet the pie chart of the great mass that doesn't versus the tiny sliver that still does is beginning to look like the distribution of assets and income amongst US citizens. These days if someone knows JavaScript, Ruby and MongoDB they dare give themselves titles like "programmer" and "hacker". These subversions of computing have been designed, implemented, and mass-produced for the government, perfected over the course of 3 decades and ready for real commercial deployment. Every commercial OS vendor has an application signing process in place, there just needs to be a couple generations of new hardware with the stuff packaged in. The technology to turn computers into objects of oppression already exist. So why aren't they implemented yet? The reasons are social. Imagine if you told every developer on earth that they had to use hilariously bad new APIs and syscalls that crippled performance, abstracted them away from their ability to write completely in languages they were familiar with and added precious weeks or months until shipment date. There'd be a universal revolt! No developer on earth would write anything for that platform. If I were an oppressive state machine, I'd drop this bomb in 6 steps: - Start getting people used to devices that they think of first as things less than a computer and more of another sort of device first. Perhaps consumers could be coaxed to think of their computers as devices of more limited scope, like phones. Have people shed local storage for that in some wispy aether on the Internet. Make these devices exceptionally hip and well-advertised to encourage their widespread adoption.
- Get developers producing software that's dependent upon an oligopoly of digital distribution points for sales. Make them beg for keys to the distribution channels, and begin subject them to approval processes to sell applications.
- Progressively raise the cost of general purpose machines until number of people buying them (engineers, developers) is small enough to keep to a 'potential subversives' list. "Why do you need one of those fancy computers, son? The $TABLET lets you keep in touch with grandma via Facebook just fine!"
- Implement subverting technology on the "general-purpose" machines but only make them spy on their users for now, executable blacklists to be activated on a timer at a future cut-off date.
- Wait a little bit for the shoddily made modern computer parts with their planned obsolescence to fail. I know people with hard drives from the eighties that still spin. Do you think modern components actually need to be as unreliable as they are? After this nobody can buy non-free hardware.
- Flip the damn switch! Now everybody is stuck on approved distribution mechanisms.
This dystopian vision is true in the epistemological sense, and the most probable future scenario. Somebody with an unfathomable amount of wealth has already begun to execute this process. If you think this isn't going to happen you are naive. Let me tell you this: Stallman, despite eating his own filthy toe jam in public is right about everything he's ever said. As ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) jesuitx once said, Stallman is a modern-day Ezekiel (another filthy slob that couldn't keep a decent living arrangement), and everything he's ever said has turned out to be prophetically, nightmarishly true. If you are dependent upon an external party for your NIC or your CPU or your GPU, your very liberty and life are going to be threatened. Any piece of computing architecture that cannot be commonly replaced with a free (as in freedom) version will be used by imperialists furthering their own hegemonies. The community needs to make free hardware versions of these things within the next ten years, because it will be far more difficult to bootstrap these things when we are locked out of the modern computing landscape. Those who trade liberty for the slickest UI/UX will have neither.
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Praise the Lord, I'm going primetime! WFMU/WXHD will be playing my Christian spoken word art next Wednesday, the 7th from 7-8pm. That's 6 days from now! There are working shoutcast/flash/asx/realmedia streams of varying bitrates at wfmu.org. Tell your friends and moms! If you use that abomination in the eyes of the Lord known as "Twitter" you can tweet at me during the show: @rabite. If you missed my show on the 20th, you can listen to the sermon on birth control here. I appreciate the dozens of you who tuned into the last show despite it being at absurd hours. I hope to have a lot more of you tuning in now that I am not at some sort of crackhead hour. There were a fair number of complaints from the station regulars about the last show, but I guess that's what happens when you tell the truth of the Lord to liberal ears! If you enjoy the continuing production of gospel please consider donating to my defense fund. In other news, thanks to the donations of tickets from a wonderful woman who works with the Met, I got to see Handel's Rodelinda Saturday night. I am a huge opera fan. Baroque opera is a breath of fresh air in a world where culture has decayed into degenerate garbage that I can't believe anyone at all can even stomach. I have been to so many operas I cannot remember them all, and many at the Met. Rodelina was by far the best opera I have ever attended. Much has been written about the Renee Fleming's performance (who is my second favorite soprano after Bartoli), but she was far outshined by the countertenor Andreas Scholl playing Bertarido. He stole the show, and is the single best countertenor I have ever heard live. His performance of "Dove sei, Amato bene?" made me weep. It was not only a spectactular performance, but it was highly relevant in my life. Rodelinda is the story of the undying love of two people who have been torn apart by tyranny. I currently am kept from the one I love due to my current situation, and dove sei is a mournful aria about Bertarido's inability to see his love, Rodelinda, due to the tyrant which keeps them apart. It hit home. I miss my true love, and I know her discomfort with the situation is equal to mine. Ours is certainly a timeless, fairy-tale love of two from different and opposing worlds that echoes great literature and moments of history. It fits with my movie-esque life story for sure. The met is bringing this performance of Rodelinda to theatres nationwide (and in Canada!) December 3rd. If you don't have plans on December 3rd, please for the love of all that is holy find a theatre near you that is playing it from the PDF on the Met website. Even my sleepy birthplace of Fayetteville, AR (pop: ~73,000) has a theatre carrying it so the vast majority of you will be able to watch it. Go see it, seriously.
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Sunday morning I'll be on WFMU-FM 91.1 Jersey City/NYC and 90.1 Hudson Valley from 3-6AM EST. That's starting about 25 hours from now. There are working shoutcast/flash/asx/realmedia streams of varying bitrates. Tell your friends and moms! If you use that abomination in the eyes of the Lord known as "Twitter" you can tweet at me during the show: @rabite. This is sort of a training demo thing. I'll be getting a weeknight primetime-ish slot within a very short period. But I'm still going to have a lot of fun with this Sunday morning slot, which will allow me to bring the gospel of my Lord, Jesus Christ, to the many radio listeners in the New York City area. There are probably a lot of people out there listening at such an hour who need to receive the gospel. Topics of discussion will include the urgent need to destroy the evils of birth control and abortion, how totally awesome the death penalty is, how sodomy undoubtedly sends someone straight to burning in hell, how an international cabal of Mammonites runs the financial system/defames christ/rapes children, and how, with all due respect to other creeds, Christ is the only one that can actually get you to paradise. Being a non-profit, listener-supported radio station, WFMU has an extremely liberal listener base spanning multiple continents and timezones and I'm sure they very urgently need this gospel. I can't wait to engage some of them in debate! I will also be showcasing tunes from the Christian Identity movement and a small baptist church from Kansas. If you would like to see more gospel please consider a donation to my legal defense fund. Find peace in Christ, brothers and sisters!
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Well now! It seems from the comments on my last post (largely consisting of "where are you" and "where did you go" it seems that most of you do not follow the news. Which I can understand because the news is generally garbage. In case you were unaware, I got federally indicted. I was actually sending out posts from the joint (I did 40 days, quite biblical, and was released on February 28th and am now awaiting trial), but unfortunately the person I trusted to update my LJ turned out to be horribly untrustworthy in a whole array of ways. They flaked and never updated this so ya'll never saw what I was saying or my predicament. I've backdated the two major emails I wrote from Federal prison so they won't flood ur f-lists:
Up until a couple days ago my bail conditions prohibited me using the internet for basically anything, but now I can solicit donations for my legal defense fund going on at http://freeweev.info/. Please spread the word about it. It turns out defending yourself from the federal government takes a six figure sum of cash and they already stole everything I had. I am available for hire for copywriting/unix sysad/c perl and bash/deliverability/viral marketing consulting/welding/whatever if you know of anyone hiring in the NYC/North Jersey area or anything I can work remotely. I am going to trial. Wish me luck, and please send cash. I am facing a decade in prison if I don't get funds for a good legal defense.
I guess I should talk about life out on bail for a sec. I am broke as fuck but having a good time. There are a few pieces of ONTD fodder that have happened since I got out in February:
- I met Karen Gillian (Amy from Doctor Who) on the rooftop bar at The Standard hotel in the packing district of Manhattan. We were the only people really dancing in the discoteque and when I see her up top on the roof she says in a heavy Scottish accent "always great to meet a fellow rocker". We get to talking and I tell her about my pending federal computer crime indictment. We end up in a long conversation about astrophysics and how the double-slit experiment is proof of a divine creator and she drags me to Hogs and Heifers and buys me shots of tequila. Thanks, Karen. I needed the sauce. I had never seen an episode of the new Doctor Who series but I have since seen Demon's Run and Let's Kill Hitler. It is some of the best television ever. Why did nobody tell me it was so great (besides
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/user_ontd.gif?v=92.1) this_is_not_art's hubby)?
- Wyatt Cenac from the Daily Show and I were on the same radio show. I shook hands with him! I think he is the best Daily Show correspondent currently on the show. Rob Riggle however is still the funniest of all time.
-
Something about DSK. I was deliberately misquoted on the issue. They said I said "I dont want to say they trapped him, but it seems like there is more to the story". Among many other things presented by the journalist, this is not true. I said that "he didn't rape anyone" and it was "blatantly obvious Sarkozy set him up". Which turned out to be more or less the case, but the press at the time was trying to crucify Strauss-Khan. I thought the article in question was generally funny so I liked it but it just goes to show that media people always write what they want to write regardless of the truth. I was honored for the chance to defend Dominique when everyone else was slandering him. He could be one of the 144,000 blessed Jews written of in Revelations. I hope he becomes the President of France.
It is 9/11 and I live in the NYC area now, so it is kind of a big deal. I pray for all the Americans murdered during that historic tragedy and their families. Death would be too kind of an ending for those who were truly responsible for that great crime. I hope one day those involved are fully brought to justice.
For the time being, because I am heaven sent I am drived to a dive of low lives and low rent. I am in a sorta crappy condition objectively but my spirits are high and there is just so much to relay about my life as of late as of late that I don't even know how. I may not post anything else after this but just know that I love ya'll.
Oh, and if anyone has like, a spare smartphone plz hook it up.
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gettin on the cross
lol thanks to some germanic hottie. i like how she perfectly captured the asymmetry of my nose. the beard is a little poofier than mine though.
i think its signed "die gedanken sind frei" whatever that means
<3iez, thank you |
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Recently, Gawker.com got seriously hacked by some group calling themselves Gnosis. I saw no small number of media sources implying they deserved it for covering the AT&T information disclosure by Goatse Security. I feel there's a gigantic difference between these two events that needs to be discussed. Gawker is a media source with a gigantic amount of integrity. Once upon a time, there was a Valleywag story (this was back when Valleywag was a separate website) that wasn't posted on Gawker mainpage. When it was found that incorrect information was contained within a story, they printed the correction on Gawker.com, and it was longer and more prevalently featured than the original story: http://valleywag.gawker.com/tech/breakdowns/drunk-editor-kills-the-gossip-item-you-care-about-282558.phpThis event really stuck with me. Afterwards, I considered Gawker one of the media sources with utmost integrity. When the NYT makes a mistake on the frontpage the correction is in tiny print on page C30. Gawker held itself accountable to a level which few sources do, and I have to respect that. When they do wrong, they apologize. What Goatse Security did was thought out to multiple degrees: * The data we gathered was not disclosed publicly (only to Ryan Tate), we wanted to LIMIT the public's exposure to risk, not add to it. I believe we were successful at pursuing that goal. * When a reporter (I forget whom) asked me if AT&T customers should replace their SIM cards, I answered negatively, as I did not feel that AT&T needed to have a bunch of paranoid customers demanding a new SIM. I felt, however, it was appropriate for some iPad owners (military, government and corporate leadership) to be able to be made aware of the issue that their iPad could be geolocated or have traffic intercepted. I thought that it was fair that the public know that if they did not check their email associated with the iPad ICC-ID, they could not be coaxed into clicking a malicious PDF link that could have allowed an attacker to takeover their iPad. Issues like this are important for people to be able to mitigate. * I don't know. I said some inappropriate things about AT&T and the iPad, but that was only after AT&T called us malicious (which I did not feel was fair to us). I was defensive and ran my mouth a little too freely in response. I regret that. The comments these kids made in their readme file were straightforwardly mean from the very beginning. Were some comments at Gawker ill advised and perhaps invited attack? Yes. I have made a lot of ill advised statements myself in the past, and cannot possibly throw a stone at them for that. The fact remains, Gawker is a cool bunch of people and one of the few journalist outlets which truly make a good effort to be fair and still get the bleeding edge of stories. They are a valuable resource to society, and I give them props for that. The public disclosure of Gawker user emails and passwords is wrong. I feel really bad for them. The people who did this crossed a line into maliciousness that makes me sad. It is terrible, and I feel that they should come forward and apologize.
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Wikileaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys to Stoned Afghan CopsMany of DynCorp's employees are ex-Green Berets and veterans of other elite units, and the company was commissioned by the US government to provide training for the Afghani police. According to most reports, over 95 percent of its $2 billion annual revenue comes from US taxpayers.
And in Kunduz province, according to the leaked cable, that money was flowing to drug dealers and pimps. Pimps of children, to be more precise. (The exact type of drug was never specified.)
Since this is Afghanistan, you probably already knew this wasn't a kegger. Instead, this DynCorp soiree was a bacha bazi ("boy-play") party. Bacha bazi is a pre-Islamic Afghan tradition that was banned by the Taliban. Bacha boys are eight- to 15-years-old. They put on make-up, tie bells to their feet and slip into scanty women's clothing, and then, to the whine of a harmonium and wailing vocals, they dance seductively to smoky roomfuls of leering older men.
After the show is over, their services are auctioned off to the highest bidder, who will sometimes purchase a boy outright. And by services, we mean anal sex. Notice how much better and more moral things were under the Taliban. Everywhere American Imperialism goes, it fosters rot and social decay. Wikileaks: Vatican "offended" by Ireland Sex Abuse Inquiry Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables indicate that the Vatican felt "offended" that Ireland failed to respect Holy See "sovereignty" by asking high-ranking churchmen to answer questions from an Irish government commission probing decades of sex abuse of minors by clergy. Fucking kidfuckers. The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See also condemned the leaks and said in a statement that the Vatican and America cooperate in promoting universal values. At least he's being somewhat honest there... but I don't particularly find kidfucking a value I find universal. Degenerates. Someone unload a stream of lead on these motherfuckers already. Tags: america is doomed, why isnt there a pogrom yet?, you will eat your babies
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Howdy Lee, Originally, I was outraged by your prosecutorial efforts against me and my associates, and extremely shaken up due to the unjust search of my home, in multiple violations of the Fourth amendment. I believe that the emotional stress caused by my multiple-day solitary confinement without cause, and the accumulated effect of previous harassment by the government lead me to treat you less respectfully than I should have. However, recently I was at the law library, my usual resource for ethical guidance, and I started reading Thomas Paine. There, I experienced a revelation as to how to best proceed in dealing with your actions. “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
- Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government I’m writing to help clarify the situation in which we continue to find ourselves. It appears, despite the obvious facts surrounding the events, that you are continuing to attempt my legal prosecution. While information security experts worldwide (many of whom your department hire as expert witnesses), law analysis groups, consumer affairs groups and lay citizens continue to support me, you still investigate me for some alleged obscure criminal act. While I generally support your mission, Lee, I think you’re being lead astray by a desire for professional distinction. I am sure that you are probably under great pressure to produce something, as evidenced by your use of quasi-legal means such as your questionable search warrant, the ensuing negative publicity for your office and name, and the growing number of people asking why you are doing this. These influences upon your judgments are of no matter; ultimately, you will be held accountable to the people for your actions. I’m sure that the strain is beginning to take a toll on your personal and professional relationships, and as I am, and always have been, a supporter of the United States’ government, I’d like to offer some friendly advice before irreparable damages from your errors spread to other aspects of the Department of Justice. Here are the options available to you, and my advice for each: 1. Continue holding Grand Jury sessions and force an indictment.
I can in no way advise this as it will harm your professional reputation and force the Department of Justice to engage in the manufacture of evidence. Social responsibility has always been at the core of everything we do at Goatse Security, and this will be extraordinarily obvious at a trial. Goatse has done large amounts of documented work in project areas such as combating safe havens for pedophiles worldwide, protecting US infrastructure, and keeping US citizens safe from Russian and Chinese organized crime. The DoJ has also pursued these projects, quite well at times, but we should work together for a common goal instead of fighting for territory, and wasting our fiscal and legal resources. At Goatse, we do not have a large advertising budget like the DoJ and FBI; our publicity comes from citizen recognition of national stewardship and skillful work. I hope that you don’t see this as competition to your own great work in the area, but allow me to communicate that I believe that we could both do better 2. Stop this investigation.
Given the vulnerable position the DoJ is in as a result of your actions, you may be required to resign. I am very sorry for this prospect, but there are many great opportunities available for you in the private sector, and just because you will not be employed by the people at large does not mean that you will not be able to help make the country a better, safer and healthier place for us all to enjoy. We at Goatse give back, with daily volunteer work, which we are able to accomplish in our free time due to the gains we make by working in the private sector. We find this the most healthful and heartiest form of patriotism, as it not only allows total agency and freedom of choice, so that citizens can give in the ways they are most capable, but also minimizes bureaucratic costs we all bear as brothers and sisters in this great nation. 3. Publicly accept assistance from Goatse Security.
While the smear campaign your agency has launched against Goatse and myself personally may make this difficult, I’m sure that fully disclosing the rationale behind it would secure the public’s forgiveness and understanding for you and the DoJ. Lest it go unsaid, a friendly hand extended in partnership would earn Goatse’s respect and forgiveness as well. As always, we are more then happy to work with you hand in hand for a stronger country. If you are unable to do this for political reasons, we understand but we would not want you to dishonor your family or the legal education they’ve helped you attain by making choices which are wrong. AT&T needs to be held accountable for their insecure infrastructure as a public utility and we must defend the rights of consumers over the rights of shareholders. I pray for you, Lee. I pray for you to see wisdom in your actions, and pray for you to be guided towards righteousness. I advise you to discuss this matter with your family, your friends, victims of crimes you have prosecuted and your teachers, for they are the people who would have been harmed had AT&T been allowed to silently bury their negligent endangerment of United States infrastructure. Hugs and Courage To You, Andrew http://www.scmagazineuk.com/apple-ipad-leak-incident-re-emerges-as-hacker-accuses-united-states-attorney-of-conducting-a-smear-campaign/article/191104/http://security.goatse.fr/open-letter-lee-vartan http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20023161-245.html (great comments in here)
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true knowledge
i got beaten up by linemen once, but this time they just gave me a hat |
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People on the chats ask me what I'm going to do when all my legal troubles are over. I'm not a planner. I never think ahead. People think I come up with shit through hard and long thought and it is all premeditated. I don't really have motives or goals. The answer is, who the fuck knows? There's a passage from the Tao Te Ching that indicates my underlying philosophy: Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts. I do what I can right now, with whatever is in front of me. Fluidity is key. I take advantages of all opportunities. I don't try to create them, I just let them flow to me. My eyes are my guide. Seeing is believing. I learned this being a trader. Every time I try to speculate, I get fucked real fuckin' bad. I learned I'm really not too smart, and the key to being a prophet is to talk about what is happening right in front of you. A sucker thinks prophecy is predicting the future. Nothing ever came out of the mouth of Jesus, Mohammed, Moses or anybody else important other than criticism of shit that was happening in their time and vague statements which were completely obvious. Even if your predictions become correct, they usually aren't correct on the timeline you think they'll be. The Adam Smith adage rings true, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." I think the Warren Buffet one is better though, "Beware of nerds, bearing charts."
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back
