rant: October 2001 Archives

What makes you think the government has your best interests at heart? Even your own cat shits in your sneakers.

Okay people. Time to buy you a hat. Seems your brains are frozen again.

The biggest privacy concern this week is Bugs. A little unseen image that sits on a web page and *gasp* reveals all kind of information about your computer. It's terrible because it may give out your information to people you don't even know about.

Small detail here.

This is exactly the way every web page and every browser has ever worked. Every file you load in your web browser... every image, every text file, every sound file... every time you load one of these from a server out there on the 'net, they have access to quite a bit of information about you. Your IP address, what you loaded, the time and date.

And something no one else has mentioned in their reviews of these bugs, they can also see where you just came from, and where you go next.

This is the way it has always been people. This is akin to being shocked that someone is reading a billboard you put up.

The more in depth articles point out that someone could pass 'cookie' information on to the bug owner this way. Of course, if you have taken any time to learn about the web browser you are using, you probably set it not to return cookies to anyone except the person who set them. Otherwise you do stand a chance of broadcasting private information to god knows who.

Don't be stupid people. I know it's what you're good at, but still...

In trying to avoid our friendly neighborhood bullys (a.k.a. Police) recently, I found myself stepping through the looking glass. I simply walked around to the back of one building that I have passed many times. But behind there, it was a whole different city, so it seemed.

Two or three blocks form the Capitol, and the building was the Department of Agriculture. The front is prime tourism grounds. Big buildings with a view of the skyline. A Starbucks on every corner, and a policeman at every crosswalk.

Behing the Ag, it all just stops. The buildings become non-descript. Streets are replaced by commuter highways and on/off ramps.

This isn't an area you see if you can help it. Tourists would politely run for their lives and brag about it to their neighbors. District residents would never be there in the first place. And with no businesses or important officials in residence, the police could care less.

The only people there are sitting on the stoop of the Homeless Center, the only public building visable in the area. Three men in the dirty brown overcoats and boots with no laces. Three men homeless.

Not the homeless you see on the street normally, who push around a shopping cart while screaming at God, nor the panhandlers who work the corners and Metro stops after work. And certianly not the addicts and conmen (they're always men) who sometimes give performances so good you pay them just for the quality of their work.

These were men without a home. They do want better, but have no way to get it. No way to get out of the condition they're in. The jobs they can find hardly pay enough to eat and drink. If you don't have enough money to improve your own condition, how do you convince someone to hire you for a better job? And likewise in reverse. Without a lot of luck or a lot of help, these men are going to be sitting on that stoop for a long time.

The won't be lonely. Estimates for true homeless people in the District range from the hundreds to the thousands.

I don't care how hardened you are. It will get to you when a young woman sits in a doorway to Wendy's crying. She doesn't want your money or your pity. She just wants someone to buy her something to eat.

I stood watching the anti-war protestors setting up in Freedom Plaza a few weeks ago. It was wonderfully active. Everyone was making sure they were heard, from the protestors, to the conspirists, to the communists. But off in the corner, on al but empty benches, slept a man. On a frigid windy day, he lay there in his spring jacket and sandles, trying to sleep. Makes it hard to take seriously war protestors seeking justice for every factory worker in Malaysia.

God bless America. This is our Capitol.

I know I have commented enthusiastically about the RIAA before, and their ignorant, self-destructive, monopolistic efforts to control music. But you gotta give it to them. If yur gonna be an ass, you might as well be the biggest ass.

They're joining everyone and their grandmother in trying to tack on riders to the anti-terrorism bills going through congres right now. These bills are scarey enough on their own, without the help of the big-three media companies.

They weren't so much trying to add anything, as to grant themselves special exceptions. In this case, to make themselves immune to prosecution.

What are they afraid of being prosecuted for, that could possibly relate to terrorism? (Besides forcing people to listen to another Hanson album). The exemption they want involves a portion of the bill that classifys any hack on a computer that results in 5 grand or more of damages as an act of terrorism.

Why do they need to be exempt from this?

The only answer that has come up so far is that they literally want the ability to hack into individual's computers in an effort to locate and destroy illegally distributed music. Or as this article puts it, "RIAA's License to Virus". And if they accidently destroy the contents of your hard drive while they're at it? Well they wouldn't have been legally liable.

RIAA: Judge, Jury, and Executioner

Bite my friggin ass.

< weiny whineing >

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Signs.

I've been working on a couple projects that involve very old pictures of various towns. It's caused my to take closer looks around me now, especially when I'm out taking pictures. And in the last hundred years city landscapes have become incredibly cluttered.

street signs

lights

roadmarkings

I doubt there's an intersection in this city with less than 8 signs surrounding it. Most have 3 or 4 times that many. Two blocks from my place, there are two signs on the same corner, going the same direction, that both forbid right turns at a certian time. The problem is, the times conflict with each other.

Even where there aren't conflicting signs, there are usually redundant ones. Or totally ointless ones. The most current trend in DC is to put up signs reminding people that causing gridlock in intersections is illegal.

Who

fucking

cares.

If you have enough mental capacity to drive, you ought to know that pulling into a crowded intersection is a stupid idea. And if you couldnt figure that out, the 6 ton city bus that is going to come barreling at you will likely clarify the point.

If you don't think we're becoming inured to it all, then why are the newest signs all done in flourescent yellow and green?

With an average of 15 signs at any given city intersection, and people haveing 1-3 seconds to look at signs, do you think anyone is getting all this information?

There needs to be a review of city signage, with brevity and clarity in mind. And a strong consideration for aestetics and usability. Put some standards in place, man.

I said this would be a ridiculous post. But I look at these old pictures of the city and you see people, and architecture, and skylines. I look today, and you see streetlights, and powerlines, and signposts every 10 feet.

Even with all my bitching about people overreacting, I notice I've gotten a bit jumpy. It used to be when I hear loud noises out in the city I just assumed some numbnuts smashed their car up. But I've caught myself straining to listen to every crash and boom in the last month.

Comments about undoubted attempts at further terrorism ain't helpin.And quite frankly, the talking heads, and the president (the Talking Ken Doll), really need to stop mentioning them. It does no good. If you don't think there are always efforts to attack the US, originating from inside or out, well then you're still the same dumbass I told you that you were a few weeks ago.

*right turn*

About a year or two ago, I was talking to Sara about one of my inspirations. They hit me about once a month. Sometimes they become something great, but ussually, like in this case thus far, they fall miserably by the wayside. Anyways... in this case I was thinking about creating a newsletter/magazine. It would be distributed online in PDF format. I would (hopefully) get articles and stories contributed by people who were writing online. Cause, ya see, back then, it was still a new thing. I know maybe 5 or 6 people who were seriously writing online. (There's still not a whole lot of serious writers online). I figured it would give the writers a chance to distribute their work, and me a chance to utilize my design skills with no client screwing it up.

My, how times have changed.I think it would be a lot harder now. Writing on the 'Net isn't as unique anymore. And someone stole the damn (a gram is better than a damn) name I wanted to use.

*left turn*

So I was listening to the Fastbacks on the subway today. They're one of those bands you go back and listen to so you don't forget how good they are. Not to mention how much better they are than listening to tourists who are scared of the automatic doors on the train cars.

Speaking of which, did you know Franconia and Springfield are pretty damn far away?

"It would be easy to poisen your corn flakes, but astronomically difficult to poisen all the cornflakes in the entire country."

Moron.

You would cause much more terror and problems by not infecting the entire batch. Terrorism would involve contaminating only a few selected sites at random locations across the country. It would leave everyone paniced about their cxhances of being the next victim, as opposed to simply not buying corn flakes.

*end rant*

George Bush is a twinkie.

I can't think of a better word. I tried watching his speech this time (don't call it a press conference). But I can only stand so much rhetoric and campaigning. (Managed to get in everything from Palestinian statehood to the Ballistic Missile Ban. And I just know someone is going to slam him tommorrow for his comment about "my country". (Coulda sworn we all lived here, Dubbya).

Damnit. My building is on fire again. It wouldn't be a new month if the fire trucks didn't park outside. It might be less disturbing if they actually rang the fire alarm.

Judging from the news, I'd think we were it. Attacks on America. Terrorist networks and anti-terrorist partnerships. Occasionally an attack in Isreal/Palestine. But it seems others are just as good at acting like animals.

This boy wants to kill you.

Or so I'm told, by the talking heads.

He really didn't look too imposing shivering on the sidewalk, way too early in the morning to be radical.

I'm not sure how many people that showed up have even finished puberty yet. They carried drums and banners and wore rags and scarfs covering their faces.

Going to a rally, and concealing your identity?

By quarter to ten, there were maybe 300 people at most. It was your general granola bar mix of nuts and flakes. If you can name a cause from the sixties, they were there. Environmental, Organization of Anarchists, big government haters. I felt like I was back at a Saturday afternoon in college.

This was a rite of passage, not protest or rally. These are the same people that show up any time a cause is in danger. The important thing is the protest itself.

People concerned about the cause would probably put more effort into the message than the props, and would show up here more than one day a year.

So what the fuck was MetroPDs problem. Fuck me if they were there to observe and ensure.

I was once assaulted by 5 guys 100 feet from my apartment. It was over an hour before I saw a single police officer, and then I had to prove to them I wasn't the one doing the assault. But a bunch of high school radicals with cloth banners brought out one third of the metroPD.

Those cops that weren't lineing every street and intersection for six blocks around the park, or sitting on one of at least a hundred motorcycles were sitting on Metro buses across the street from the park. Just sitting there.

Until 5 minutes before the rally started. At which point over 100 riot troops in full gear marched out and surrounded the entire area, three officers deep at some spots. And proceeded to constrict themselves into a smaller area every few minutes. Thirty seconds into the march, the cops started gathering up all the people sitting on the grass. shit or get off the pot, I guess. There was no option... if you were in the park, you were forced to march by big, ugly men in riot gear.

This is when I turned on my sorry ass and went the other direction. When cops start forcing people to join a protest, it will not be a good day for the protesters.

No doubt. I kept an eye on several other protests in the city that day. I wasn't able to find that one again, after circling around a couple blocks.

That night of course, there were stories of how protesters marred a peaceful rally with violence.

Bull fucking shit. These people couldn't do anything more violent than blow their nose. They didn't even have ammonia soaked rags this year. I suppose they beat the shit out of an innocent bystander with the blue peace-symbol or the swan signs.

And this kid shivering on the sidewalk looks like a threat to a 6'5, 250 lb. cop in full riot gear.

Feeling good about being an American? Freedom and all that?

A little something for your paranoia: "Government seeks to extend reach of secretive court used on spies, terror".