Welcome to the Engadget BBS! How’s it going? Sorry if you had a busy signal a bunch, the board’s been growing like crazy—we’re adding a third line next week, so check out the boards to get that number!

Engadget is a prefect example of the booming BBS scene springing to live on America's phone network thanks to the advent of affordable modems (short for modulator-demodulator). Engadget's lines have been busy almost all the time recently, so this fellow was nice enough to dump his scrollback log to one of these Internet Blog things. You can see all the recent posts to the Engadget BBS without having to wait for a line to clear up.. Check out the latest in cellular phones, personal computers, GPS receivers, game console units, and storage media.

This might lead you to believe that the Internet will eventually replace the BBS, but we all know that's a load of horse shit. BBS's Forever!!

Engadget 1985 - Engadget - www.engadget.com

"George Bush doesn't listen to us,'' Keith Richards said.

The cross-fire hurricane rages on. Its a gas. This time around, Jagger has decided to howl at Bush in the form of some of the most political songs the Stones have done to date. Here is a taste of some of the lyrics to "Sweet Neo Con", thanks to the linked news article:

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of (expletive)
. . . How come you're so wrong?
My sweet neo con.

It's liberty for all
Democracy's our style
Unless you are against us
Then it's prison without trial
But one thing that is certain
Life is good at Haliburton . . .

Here is a snip from another song, "Dangerous Beauty", which addresses Abu Ghraib:

Who you got there in that hood
You look so fancy in those photographs
With your rubber gloves on
But you're a favorite of the Chiefs of Staff . . .

So, Keith Richards continues to do the walking dead thing, while Jagger continues to do the androgynous rocker thing, and no one other than the boomers is likely to care. I'm not sure how much political cred the Rolling Stones can carry. I guess we are going to find out.

BostonHerald.com - The Rolling Stones get political

I was poking fun at CNN earlier about their response to the worms..

Wolf Blitzer was in crisis mode, warning computer users to protect themselves. Paula Zahn started her program by reporting on crashing PCs in the CNN newsroom. And Charles Gibson talked about needing to use ABC's old typewriters.

The latest Windows worm, Zotob, was notable in part because its victims included some major media organizations. Although a variety of businesses were struck by the worm, it created a particularly challenging situation for the broadcast media, which found itself reporting in real time on a problem that was hitting very close to home.

"We are continuing our coverage of tonight's big story: A computer worm that is spreading havoc in systems all over the world," Zahn told viewers at the outset of her Tuesday show, according to a CNN transcript. "Here is exactly what we know right now: Someone has unleashed a worm that cripples computers by forcing them to continuously shut down and restart. It's been a wild scene around our newsroom today because of that."

Earlier, on CNN's "Situation Room," Blitzer had called the worm a "potentially huge story."

Software Notebook: Live on television, a worm attacks

The Aspen Times covers Hunter's last trip:

The legendary author's ash remains exploded out of a giant fist grasping a peyote button at 8:45 in a field outside his home on Owl Farm as Japanese drummers built their beat to a crescendo.

Blue and white fireworks erupted from either side of the 150-foot tower as the button changed from blue to green and back. Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" streamed out of the party.

But it was apparent early in the afternoon that this was not an ordinary funeral. The media likely outnumbered fans, but it was hard to differentiate, as most of the media there were Thompson fans.

The Aspen Daily News also has an article or two. A batch of pictures can be found on Yahoo! News.

Hunter S Thompson Blasts Off

The pictures and stories are the stuff of slapstick: wheelchairs, gurneys and even floor polishers jammed deep inside M.R.I. scanners whose powerful magnets grabbed them from the hands of careless hospital workers.

The police officer whose pistol flew out of his holster and shot a wall as it hit the magnet. The sprinkler repairman whose acetylene tank was yanked inside, breaking its valve and starting a fire that razed the building.

This is pretty amusing. I knew the magnets in MRI machines were strong, but I did not realize they were strong enough to make objects go flying across the room. This article even mentions an incident when a fireman was pulled into the machine and almost folded in half due to his oxygen tank. That's a powerful magnet!

Cited in this article, the Simply Physics page is an good resource for information about MRI. Don't miss the page with pictures of objects being sucked into the machines.

This reminds me of playing with a degaussing coil when I was a kid. They are basically strong electrically powered magnets. My father had one from when he used to repair old television sets. I used to set it on the table, turn it on, and make structures in the middle of its field using nails, paper clips, or any other small objects made of ferromagnetic material I could find around the house. It seemed like magic.

M.R.I.'s Strong Magnets Cited in Accidents

Investigators told local paper Helsingin Sanomat that the suspects wrongly believed that the use of an insecure wireless network in commission of the crime would mask their tracks. This failed when police identified the MAC address of the machine used to pull off the theft from a router and linked it to a GE Money laptop. Police say that stolen funds have been recovered. Four men have been arrested over the alleged theft with charges expected to follow within the next two months

One of the suspects was their data security chief. Talk about a lack of ethics... Apparently none of these people were particularly good at information security either. They used a GE Money laptop, and neglected to do anything aside from using an open wireless network to mask their source. The authorities were able to identify them based on the MAC address of the laptop. None of them were keen enough to change the address, as Acidus pointed out.

Finnish security exec arrested over bank hack | The Register

Because of the A-list names--such as Google co-founder Larry Page and Technorati founder Dave Sifry--and the level of discourse involved, the trip, known as Foo Camp (for Friends of O'Reilly), has become one of the must-get invites among the geek set.

But when the event convenes again this weekend near the Sebastopol, Calif., offices of O'Reilly & Associates, O'Reilly's publishing company, a number of people who have attended previously or who would like to be on hand won't have gotten invitations.

That's why some of them have gotten together to organize what they're calling Bar Camp and referring to as an open-source alternative to Foo Camp. Bar Camp is a play on the word "foobar," a common programming variable.

FooCamp has fallen prey to the Outerz0ne phenomenon. Here is the wiki.

Geeks to hold anti-foocamp

A joint Chinese and Russian military exercise set to begin tomorrow is meant as a political signal to the United States, in addition to helping Moscow showcase its weapons for sale to China, U.S. defense and intelligence officials said yesterday.

"For the Chinese and the Russians, this is a message to the United States," one U.S. official said. "They want to see our bases in Central Asia and presence in Asia cut back."

The fact that the United States was not invited to observe the war games is a sign of the anti-U.S. nature of the exercises, said several officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Defense officials from India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia will be present in China to observe the exercises.

This story has been making the rounds the past 48 hours.

When Bush and Putin first met, Bush said he stared deep into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. This may be true. They both seem to have a penchant for dressing up in flight suits and taking jets for a spin. These two men bonded easily.. For better, worse, or unknown. After looking into Putin's soul, he and Bush made jokes about each other at a press conference in Texas. CNN's graphic overlay at the bottom of the screen said "Presidential Comedy". I remember clearly watching this, overwhelmed by how downright surreal it was. Here we are years later, and my annotates are not all that amusing. Its still just surreal.

This is another one of those things that feels like prep for a Taiwan invasion. But that's nothing new. I don't see anything new here at all actually. I'm not even sure why I'm commenting on it. Wargames go on all the time. On the Sino-Russia side, its against America. We've wargamed against Russia and China. I think we have even wargamed against Israel.

Just look at the pretty pictures of the presidents in flight suits, get that feeling of impending doom, and quickly run off to invest in Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, GD, Northrop, GE, Litton, Sun, CSC, and whoever else you can think of. Sip your tea. Watch the sunset. Relax.

Sino-Russia Wargames

This freely available article by Charles Platt tells the story of Sam Cohen and the Neutron Bomb. This link is to the HTML version posted on BoingBoing.

This is an interesting read. The Neutron Bomb is arguably the most moral strategic nuclear weapon ever conceived, yet its reality never lived up to its vision. The story behind it exposes bungling only possible when military, politics, and fear intertwine.

For those unfamiliar with the Neutron Bomb, its a nuclear weapon that emits high levels of neutrons. It kills people but leaves structures unaffected. If you are in range, you die. If you are out of range, you get a hell of a case of the shits, but you will most likely live. No residual radiation. When compared with the usage and side effects of other area-effect weapons such as cluster bombs, carpet bombing, and other more recent large scale conventional weapons, it seems downright humane.

The point here isn't that we need a batch of Neutron Bombs, as much as it is that military weapon design history shows a lack of the most basic common sense. Read on.. Look for the big lessons.

Charles Platt | The Profits of Fear: Sam Cohen and the Neutron Bomb

Zobot and other worms and variants have hit networks since Sunday. A sketch shows which pests try to detect or undo rival pests, according to F-Secure.

"My worm can beat up your worm!"

Photo: Worm vs. worm | CNET News.com