It is with an extraordinarily heavy heart that I post that my good friend, Brad Blines, died on Thursday morning of a heroin overdose. Folks on memestreams will know him as crankymessiah. People from the 'scene' in Nashville will remember him from the days of Dragon Park, countless concerts and shows, and Predators games.

Brad was one of the lights of my life. We shared the same giddy excitement over music, film, and creativity that few people can understand. We had that kind of brotherly relationship where you don't really have to say anything to hear the other person. I hope that I will be able to still hear his infectious laugh in my head for the rest of my life.

Goodbye my friend.

Brad Michael BLINES
Nashville, TN
Age 35
January 8, 2003
January 8, 2003. Survived by parents, Michael and Diana Blines; sister, Kristin (Richard) Vik; grandmothers, Bonnie (Lloyd) Holt, Ruth Allen; nephews, Ethan Richard Vik, Brennan Michael Vik. The funeral service will be held at 3 p.m. at Harpeth Hills Funeral Home with Bro. Doug Varnado officiating. Pallbearers will be Chris Scheele, Richard Vik, Michael Dodson, Rich Husband, Jim Folger, Ernie Simon. The Interment will follow at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the New Life Lodge. Visitation will be Friday 5-9 p.m. and Saturday 1 p.m. until service at HARPETH HILLS FUNERAL HOME, 9090 Hwy. 100, 615-646-9292

I am sad, and unhappy...

... It's not about you.

New Year's Resolutions

In the grand spirit of the holidays...

I'd like to be the bloated santa overdosed on heroin found in a phone booth in Times Square. I'd like to dress up as one of the apostles, rig myself up a stand out of steel rod and leather straps, put myself in place of one of the figures and eat a cyanide capsule. I'd like to paint my naked body white, dawn golden wings, and impale myself ass first atop a giant urban christmas tree, bleeding to death out my ass and then freezing solid. I'd like to be delivered in a box with a big red bow, to the happiest family in America, then watch the horror in the eyes of the children as they rip open the box only to see me draw my last breath and expire there, under the tree. I'd like to go out in style at a grand ball, drinking cup after cup of punch I'd poisoned only moments before, then die screaming bloody murder at the podium, "Its poison don't you see! Damned fools all of you! Merry Christmas!" slowly sinking, wailing... dying. I'd like to be discovered three days after Christmas, in a public restroom, having died trying to pass the parts of a plastic baby doll stolen from the manger of a nativity scene on Christmas eve. I'd like to be pried from the grating of a semi, having descended onto I-75 with a red light on my nose. I'd like to be discovered dead, humping a great bible, having slammed my penis in it repeatedly, and then bled out upon the words of the lord. I'd like to tear headlong into a troop of reindeer, forcing myself upon their females until the males rip me to shreds, my corpse the next morning coated in reindeer shit and vaginal fluid, rammed to death by mighty horns. But most of all... I'd like to be sliced and diced and cut into pieces and distributed inside a thousand fruitcakes, to be delivered late to people that hate fruitcake, all across the land.

Merry Christmas to you all.

"What makes the Asp short stories fascinating may be the fact that the main character actually cares for his victims, and within his rotting, short-circuited brain he actually believes he is working towards improving their lives. He acts in their better interest. And if they happen to... well... not survive his love and attention, he is fulfilled with the knowledge that they received benefit from his help before leaving this plane.

But his love is short-lived. The Asp bores easily, becomes distracted and will move on to someone more "deserving" of his attention. But not before leaving a token of his annoyance -- a sample of his bodily fluid, a dead pet, broken glass strewn on the driveway.

The Asp is rich, but dresses poorly. He's an inventor and a destroyer. And he cares about you. Pray you don't need his help. Ever."

Wow, the best literary find I've made on the net in some time. This fucker is sick... but all comes naturally. He isn't reaching when he comes up with these ideas. They are totally authentic.

Tales of the Asp -- Amazingly good stories

I foresee alot more "accidents" occuring ;)

The Seattle Times: Health & Science: 'Morning-after pill' over the counter? FDA considers it

] Why flying cars, jetpacks
]
] haven't taken hold ... yet

Seven flights of fancy that fizzled

] In a rare wireless hacking prosecution, federal officials
] this week accused two Michigan men of repeatedly cracking
] the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores' nationwide
] network from a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix parked outside a
] suburban Detroit store.

This was covered earlier. However, this article by Kevin Poulsen (who is quite familiar with computer crime) has much more detail about the timeline of events. This is a hacker positive article, but it also fully acknowledges that these guys went way over the line. This wasn't some case of wardriving, or even just network probes, and it went way beyond anything that could be even be considered "harmless machine intrusions". No vague grey ethical line to stand on here.. These guys got caught installing a sniffer to monitor credit card transactions across Lowes' entire company network. There is not that much detail about how Lowes caught them, but it sounds like they broke so much stuff on the network screwing around that Lowes was alerted to their presence.

] Timmins and Botbyl, known online as "noweb4u" and "itszer0"
] respectively, are also part of the Michigan 2600 scene -- an
] informal collection of technology geeks that meet, blog, eat
] pizza and attend hacker conventions together, but generally
] balk at penetrating systems or otherwise committing felonies.

I was actively involved in "the 2600 scene" in the southeast several years ago. This would not have been condoned behavior. I'm sure for the bulk of the people in the mi scene it isn't there either. But this also doesn't really surprise me..

This is of interest.. The following was snagged from a 2600 mailing list in the southeast, which will remain unattributed in order to maintain a certain level of pointlessly transparent hacker mystique:

] hmmmmmm.....michigan....
] Article mentions immaturity....
] doing some rough math here.....
] idiots at phreaknic that were cutting the lan wires a couple
] of yrs ago were from michigan...
] One wonders what's in the water up there !??
]
] On a positive note, the article was fair....

Hmm.. My curious side wonders if there is a connection between the wire cutting that year and the mentality that picks the nym 'noweb4u'.. Anyone familiar with the scene up there care to shed some light on this? :)

So anyway.. We seem to have a good track record with rehabilitating criminal hackers by turning them into journalists and other such things. [smirk] Their bail was only set at $10k, which isn't actually that bad.. They can still use computers for work and school. So in a way, this is a step forward from the draconian handling of these things in the past. At least on face, the handling of this seems reasonable thus far. The initial vibes of mass hysteria and stupidity that I'd normally expect doesn't seem to be present.. Due Process even..

SecurityFocus HOME News: Wireless hacking bust in Michigan

] let me just say that, as a slashdot troll, i have a
] firewall which allows me to dynamically modify my o/s
] fingerprint, a highly adaptive cookie manager/poisoner
] that can decode many cookies in realtime (stop using
] urlencode!), a browser plugin that lets me modify my
] entire http header including user agent, a
] database-driven transparent proxy tracker which harvests
] new proxies 24/7, scripts to generate free email accounts
] by the 100's, good web scripting skills, and on a good
] day around 500 moderation points on slashdot from over
] 1,000 monitored accounts.

This is a really great discussion between a troll and a sysop. It really speaks to the fact that governance of an internet community is a very complex problem that shares many of the social dynamics of governance of a IRL community.

Trolls vs. Sysops...

Researchers say it is "absolutely not" a reason to kill cats, but suggest they might be quarantined with their owners during outbreaks.

hahahaha! Die kitty die!

Cats can catch SARS - and pass it on

bucy wrote:
] While I agree that in principle this is possible, I'm
] not terribly worried by it. I think it would be
] extrordinarily expensive to deploy and maintain... I may have
] some more to say about this later.

Lets discuss this...

1. Asynchronous internet access:
Already occurred. I've been complaining about this for years. I have a DSL connection with a static IP and I pay through the nose for "real" internet access in a colo facility. I think this is a real problem. I think it can be solved, but it will take real market pressure from a really hot service that people want to host themselves. Even surmountable barriers chill speech.

2. DRM:
Yes, sort of. I've been warning about this for years. I think it works for software. I don't think it will work for content. The only way for DRM to work is with things like the DMCA... The future here is uncertain, but certain to be contentious (putting it mildly).

3. Micropayments: I don't see this as a technical problem. If people wanted this, then they would build something reasonable out of what they already have. Its a prisoners dilemma. You WILL get better sites when you decide to pay for them. When I imagine how cool MemeStreams would be by now if I could feed myself while working on it I almost want to cry. But it doesn't happen because everybody expects somebody else to pay. There has to be a massive social movement to encourage people to willingly donate cash to small websites before these changes will start to happen, and when it happens it won't matter what the technology is. People used to pay for online services in the early 90's... I think that all this free stuff is mostly a product of the bubble. It will probably change eventually... I think he has the basic economics right. Some WAP networks currently cut checks to content providers based on the amount of traffic they collect. The billing will be managed such that end users see a flat rate... However, I might be wrong here. He might be wrong. The social movement might not happen. People like free stuff, and prisoner's dilemmas are powerful things...

4. Personal Certs: Already here, but no one really uses them. A geek idea that has never gained traction. I think this needs an application moreso then better tech. Spam white-listing might end up being the killer app for personal certs. Fortunately we don't NEED certs to solve that problem. There will be alternative solutions available, and they are actually more likely to be adopted because the personal Cert option is more costly. Its a maybe situation. If people start banning remailers from publishing we're in a lot of trouble.

5. The end of anonymous speech: This, again, will be a social rather then technical phenomenon. On the one hand, I am amazed to see the end of anonymous mail. That is something I would never have predicted. I think its a really bad idea. On the other hand, I think the reason th... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

RE: The Digital Imprimatur