For those up for something on the harsh side of Christmas, why not login or sign up and then follow this link to download my Xmas story? But please do let me know what you think, and please don’t distribute it without my approval. By the way, the link does work, but only if you are logged in. Otherwise it looks like a dead link within the site. The power of privacy… which, if I upgrade to WordPress 2.0, I may have to give up (temporarily, anyway).
Month: December 2005
What To Do With Snake Oil Salesmen (and Other Spammers)
Another day, another wave of spam in my inbox. It’s very easy to pick out, for me, but my webmail provider doesn’t seem to have a system sophisticated enough to catch only the bad stuff; as soon as it starts blocking spam, it also starts blocking everything else along with it. My first instinct, like that of many people, is to think up and appeal for highly punitive responses to spam. After all, spammers — at least, the ones who’re pushing viagra and seething malware through unsolicited email, and through comments and trackbacks on blogs — are committing a much …
ET = 1337 h4x0r?
Remember in Independence Day, where Will Smith hacked an alien computer system with an iMac? Someone out there is concerned that the reverse might be far more possible. What if aliens were malicious hackers? The source for the above link, mssv.net, doesn’t seem to find the idea as outlandish as I do. I mean, what are the chances their virus would even work on our Networks? I just don’t buy it. If it were to happen, you’d need more than just data being captured by the SETI@home system; you’d need a malicious hacker somehow present, say, an AI orbiting earth …
Checkin’ Out Mr. Lee
One of the difficult things about living in Korea is that quality film just rarely makes it over here. For example, I don’t think a Spike Lee movie since Malcolm X has made it into cinemas in anyplace except maybe Seoul. A friend and I were talking last night about Lars von Trier, and she and I agreed that probably the next film he puts out won’t get released here because, well, someone made the mistake of putting Dogville in cinemas in Korea. Dogville — an experimental movie with no sets, just chalk lines on the wooden floorboards. Putting that …
Racism shock therapy
The author of the site American Pictures bills his work as “Racism shock therapy”. It’s a fascinating, and rather saddening, collection of photos by a Dane named Jacob Holdt who traveled as a vagabond among the poor classes in America back in the early 1970s. The thematic focus is systemic racial oppression. Worth a look.