Tool recently announced that they will be touring the "West Coast" (apparently this spans as far as Houston and New Orleans) between mid-November and Christmas. At the moment only seven shows are listed, but more will be added as they are confirmed.
Get out your pencils: the most mysterious of all codes in the most clandestine of all places has yet to be fully broken. "Kryptos," a coded sculpture in the courtyard of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, contains a long string of seemingly nonsensical letters that conceal a message devised by sculptor James Sanborn. Correspondent and supersleuth Chad Cohen gets cracking, covering the cipher techniques used by Sanborn and the success of amateur code breaker Jim Gillogly at reading portions of the text. The deciphered sections include a poem, a reference to something buried on CIA grounds, and an extract from an eyewitness report of the discovery of King Tut's tomb. But the beguiling last bit of the message remains a mystery. Solutions anyone?
Okay, we're within "TiVo" time-range, so I figured it was about time I blogged it. Next week, Tuesday night on NOVA, there will be a 15-minute segment on Kryptos. The documentary filmmakers did their homework on this one: There are interviews with Kryptos artist Sanborn, code expert Ed Scheidt (who designed the systems that are used on Kryptos), Jim Gillogly (first person to publicly crack parts 1-3), and yours truly, Kryptos fangirl incarnate. ;) They flew me out to DC, to film an interview at the Hirshhorn museum next to Sanborn's "Antipodes" sculpture (which has all the text of Kryptos, plus encrypted Russian text which we cracked in 2003). I'm looking forward to seeing the segment!
FYI,
Elonka :)
I'm watching it now, Elonka! As you can imagine I was pleasantly surprised when I first saw you on the preview. I'll update this post after I watch then entire episode.
Post viewing edit: I thought they did a great job of introducing crypto, and Kryptos, to the layman. A couple of my friends who also watched the segment agreed, and noted that they have a renewed interest in crypto. Congratulations, Elonka.
Also, try to crack this code they presented at the end of the segment:
In the wake of the HD-DVD Key release, the AACS has claimed that the 128-bit key is an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA. The folks at Freedom to Tinker have set up a page that will grant you the rights to a random 128-bit key. You can now go after anyone who copies this key and kick their butt in court. Just visit Freedom to Tinker to generate a new one.
Fun website that pulls up all the videos that once were available on Youtube but have since been deleted. All you need is the deleted video's ID. For example if the link is "http://youtube.com/watch?v=q3Zk-ePo7H0", "q3Zk-ePo7H0" would be the video's ID. If you find anything interesting let us know!
After 9/11, Vice President Richard Cheney seized the initiative. He pushed to expand executive power, transform America's intelligence agencies and bring the war on terror to Iraq. But first he had to take on George Tenet's CIA for control over intelligence. [...] Amid revelations about faulty prewar intelligence and a scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history.
The 90min. series is available for viewing on PBS.
UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.
At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.
The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.
The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.
It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.
....
The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.
