As previously mentioned, Industrial Memetics is going to be sponsoring the PhreakNIC convention TV channel. We encourage all convention attendees to bring CDs or DVDs with video we can air on the station. Anything that we don't have to worry about the licensing of is open game. That means many clips of odd and strange things are game. Its suggested you raid the Internet Archive.

I have some big news... I just got off the phone with Mark Neale, the maker of No Maps for these Territories, the recent documentary about William Gibson, and he is allowing us to show the film. Mark seemed about as excited as I am of the prospect of showing all you his most excellent film at the second oldest hacking convention in the United States.

Hopefully I'll be able to clear the rights for another thing or two before the weekend.

Decius and Rattle will be representing Industrial Memetics at PhreakNIC this year by giving a talk entitled "Information Warfare for The People". Everyone is encouraged to attend. The talk will be at 3pm on Saturday. Please refer to the speakers page and schedule for more information. We look forward to seeing you all.

In addition to this, Decius will be delivering his yearly rant at 10pm Saturday night.

Industrial Memetics is also sponsoring the hotel's contention TV channel. During the day, the TV channel will be showing the talks. At night, it will be showing whatever content we can put up without licensing concerns cued by [adult swim] style bumps. In an effort to make the channel as open as possible, we are encouraging convention attendees to bring with them any content they would like to see on the station in file format that VLC will play, burned to either CDs or DVDs. Make sure its something that does not require a license for us to use. Find Rattle at the convention on Friday and give him whatever you have.

... and that's far from being all the content at the convention from MemeStreams related people.

Fellow MemeStreamer and Industrial Memetics Resident Engineer Acidus will be giving a talk entitled "Layer 7 Fun: Extending Web Apps in Interesting Ways" on Friday at 6pm. This talk encompasses using web applications such as Google Mail for uses they were not intended for.

Virgil will be giving an updated version of his talk on "Artificial Intelligence". MaxieZ will be giving a talk entitled "Web Security 101". Dolemite, who is also running the con, is going to be talking about "MythTV". And much, much, much more..

Be there, or be ^2.

Update: Video of our talk is available for download.

'Information Warfare for The People' | Decius and Rattle to speak at PhreakNIC 2005

The CIA is divided between the Directorate of Intelligence, which houses the analysts, and the Directorate of Operations, which houses the spies and the paramilitary forces. The spies are, in general, divided into two groups. There are those with official cover and those with non-official cover. Official cover means that the agent is working at the U.S. embassy in some country, acting as a cultural, agricultural or some other type of attache, and is protected by diplomatic immunity. They carry out a variety of espionage functions, limited by the fact that most foreign intelligence services know who the CIA agents at the embassy are and, frankly, assume that everyone at the embassy is an agent. They are therefore followed, their home phones are tapped, and their maids deliver scraps of paper to the host government. This obviously limits the utility of these agents. Being seen with one of them automatically blows the cover of any potential recruits.

Then there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is understood going in by all NOCs.

George Friedman of Stratfor on the way the CIA divides up its clandestine staff, and how it relates to the Plame situation.

Stratfor via DailyKos: The Importance of the Plame Affair

This blog post contains links to AVI files taken at the North Korean Mass Games. That's one hell of a half-time show. You can really get some amazing results out of people when you torture them if they don't do a good job.

Dan Schorr: Arirang Video

Cats are blamed for triggering asthma attacks in humans but veterinarians in Scotland said on Wednesday it may also work the other way around.

I'm someone who has asthma attacks triggered by cats. Yet, I still like cats. Now I know what kind of cat I need to own.

Pedigree oriental breeds such as Siamese cats are more prone to the respiratory problem than other cats, according to the researchers.

That's perfect. I need a pedigree asthmatic Siamese cat. Then I can finally have a cat that understands my angst.

Are asthmatic cats allergic to humans? - Yahoo! News

Tim O'Reilly, Malcolm Gladwell, Clay Shirky, Mark Dery, Esther Dyson, David Brooks, and Moby.

There is not an easy way to sum up this interview. This is my best attempt:

The world is flat, but planes still fly in arcs, and golf scores are staying the same. We think the center is bigger than it appears. We are optimistic. It's all one big evolving intelligent grand design. Breakfast is rad.

TIME.com: The Road Ahead -- Oct. 24, 2005 -- Page 1

Rockstar has made a video game version of The Warriors. Not a video game based on the movie, but a video game version of it... They even used the audio track from the movie for all the scenes and dialogue. Judging from the trailer, the entire movie is told over the course of the game.

The movie does go along like a video game.. Its really that ridiculous. All the gangs have themes that make them look more like clowns then gangsters. I remember watching the movie and thinking that the reason The Warriors were beating up the other gangs is because they were the least ridiculous looking.

The Warriors: The Video Game

First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Bill Joy is still wrong. Now Ray Kurzweil is wrong too.

Creating a virus is non-trivial. This isn't something we need to worry about terrorists doing. The sky is not falling.

UpdateL The Daily Show crew does not agree with me.

Recipe for Destruction^WIgnorance^WFear - New York Times

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

"We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

According to this page, the Secret Service was the only organization that has the ability to decode the information in the dots. That means that its usage is (was?) limited to investigations on counterfeiting operations and threats against government personnel. That's the only stuff that falls under the Secret Service's jurisdiction.

I would be curious if the FBI has the ability to use this encoding system in investigations. I'd find it strange if they couldn't. Now that the information about how its encoded is public knowledge, its arguable that any government investigative agency could use it. Once the serial number of the printer is obtained, who it was sold to is just a subpoena ot two away.

EFF Breaks Secret Tracking Code in Color Printers

This article is worth a read. Based on interviews with researchers at Microsoft, it examines the role that interruptions play in computer UI design. In short, computers as they are today do not have a way to determine if you are busy or not when they decide to interrupt you, or let others interrupt you. Researchers are trying to learn as much as they can about how we work so they can address this problem.

The theme is a relatively old one. These days, we are always dealing with a deluge of information. Now, rather than just efficiently displaying it to us, its also necessary to determine if it's the right time to notify us about it.

On the other side of the coin, I think that computers should do what they are told to do rather than try and make decisions for us. This area of study walks that line. I can envision numerous problems that will not likely be accounted for in the first generation of computers designed to anticipate our work habits.

A good first step may be something as simple as "smart status" for Instant Messaging. There are time when I really don't want to be bothered with messages at all. Other times, I'd like them to be displayed, but not in the forefront of my desktop. In other cases, some discussions take place over hours with messages every several minutes, instead of a traditional dialogue. In all these situations, my status is simply "available". Idle and Away only appearing when I'm not actually active at my terminal. Just addressing this issue with IM would both make IM more useful, and milk more productivity out of people.

Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times