In 1984 Steven Levy published the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book which chronicled the rise of computers and how hackers were fundamental in the creation of the hardware and software we use daily. He also dedicates an entire chapter (chapter 2, to be precise) of his book to the “Hacker Ethic,” which goes into great detail about what it means to be a hacker, and how society would be under their ideal visions. However, I feel that much of this “Hacker Ethic” is not only flawed, but detrimental to our society, on several premises. First, I feel that Levy is trying to apply logic that works with machines beyond them to humans, and the society created by them. Second, Levy’s ideas are idealistic, not realistic. And third, Levy takes things out of context and uses the most advantageous scenarios for his ethic. Despite the many grievances I have with Levy’s “Hacker Ethic,” though, there are a few things that I do agree with, and find beneficial, such as the spread of information, which would lead to more people being informed on a greater number of things.

            To embody my disagreements, I created a level in the PS3 game LittleBigPlanet that explored what our world would be like if people started following the hacker ethic. Due to the limitations of the medium, most of the examples in my level are fairly exaggerated, but they all connect to Levy’s “Hacker Ethic” in more subtle ways. Another thing I would like to note is that Levy’s work was originally published in 1984, meaning that all of my level and analysis are of something that is over two decades old.

            Levy’s first point in his “Hacker Ethic” (out of five) is that “[a]ccess to computers-and anything which might teach you about the way the world works-should be unlimited and total.” (Levy, 1984) The basic premise is that anyone should have access to every part of something, whether it be to fix it, run it, or even recreate it. Levy specifically mentions “anyone pissed off enough to open up a [traffic light box] and…make it work better should be perfectly welcome to [do so],” and this is a perfect example of how Levy’s ethic is idealistic, rather than realistic. While it is fantastic to promote open collaboration on projects, and to enable people to better interact with the world they live in, it doesn’t taken into account human nature. Out of all the people who live under this ethic, any number of them could abuse the system to their advantage. And to compound onto that, even if people did notice someone messing with the system, there have been psychological studies that prove that the more people that witness something, the less are likely to do something about it (otherwise known as the bystander effect) (Aronson, 2006), meaning that it is likely no one would bother to correct the mistakes and/or problems caused by others. However, those issues aside, the one positive to having unlimited access to a system like that is that while people do have the potential to change the system, people also have the potential to correct it.

I portrayed this idea in my level by using the exact traffic light example Levy used. The player is first subjected to having to walk all the way across a street due to a huge traffic jam, caused by the traffic lights all being set to green. This exemplifies how anyone can be affected by such wanton acts of mischief, and one small thing can have a snowball effect. To represent the more positive side of unlimited access, the player is given the chance to “hack” the lights back to normal. This plays three roles: one, it shows how negative actions could be easily undone by anyone. Two, it shows how these actions require people to go out of their way to fix them, which could result in a lot of wasted time as people have to constantly check what used to be safe systems for malignant hackers. Third, it shows how one can be influenced by the bystander effect, and not care, should they choose to ignore the signal.

            Levy’s next point in his “Hacker Ethic” is that information should be free. His logic is that “if you don’t have access to information on how to improve something, how can you fix it?” (Levy, 1984) The only problem with this lies in that almost the entire context revolves around fixing computers, but the point isn’t specific to computers, it can apply to anything. This opens up worlds of possibilities for catastrophic problems because Levy is trying to apply logic that works for the computer world to the rest of the world. If information on rocket guidance systems, plane routes, how to turn disposable cameras into tasers, or even grades were available, the consequences could range from immediately apocalyptic to a slippery slope into a social landmine.  When talking specifically about the development community, it could be very helpful to maintain this ideology, but even then I feel that there are limitations for a reason. If people had the utmost access to how everything worked, then proprietary software would mean nothing, and everything would be free, at least software wise. The motivation to innovate would drop drastically, as intellectual property becomes non-existent, because complete altruism goes beyond human nature.

To symbolize this in my level I had a radio announcer mentioning that kid’s grades were readily available to the public. The problems that arise from that are mostly social problems that would materialize over what I would expect to be several years. Bullies would have an easier time picking targets, and it could also make it very hard for problem students to find motivation to recover. This could lead to increased social tension between groups of children, and even socio-economic groups, as educational opportunities for low income families can sometimes be sub-par. Naturally these group’s problems could grow to be more than local issues, and could pose a problem for society across entire nations, if they festered for long enough. I also included a section where the player could either “hack” the flight schedule so that the player’s plane would be on time, or leave it be. The information to hack the flight schedule would have been easily accessible, so why not do it? This brings around a few problems, one of which is what happens if you accidentally tamper with something unbeknownst to you? This is explored when the player “hacks” the flight schedule, and accidentally shuts down all communications, ending with a plane crashing into another. While exaggerated, it gets across the core idea: while actions may be more altruistic in nature than trying to make yourself on time (which is more selfish), you can inadvertently change other important things within a system, which can be problematic on various levels, given what system you are “hacking.”

            In the end, I found that Levy’s “Hacker Ethic” only held up when talking in ideals. Sure, in Utopia, all of these ideas could theoretically work. Possibly under socialism could these ideas work. However, all of Levy’s points in this ethic fail to take into consideration human nature. Humans are often greedy, mean spirited, and apathetic creatures. They will never do what you think or want them to, and are certainly not up to the task of sharing the responsibility to not destroy entire systems by tampering with them. Be it yielding access to everything, mistrusting authority, or spreading information, Levy’s ideas pertain all to a very specific community, which is the minority of people. It may be a vocal minority that could very well handle the responsibility of not tearing things down, but the fact remains that they are a minority, and a small one at that. What I wished to convey is that humans can’t handle that responsibility, and will inevitably bring things crashing down around their heads, be it something seemingly trivial, unrelated, or incredibly important.

 

Aronson, E., Akert, R. D., and Wilson, T. D. (2006). Social psychology (6th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall

 

Levy, Steven (1984). Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution. New York, New York: Penguin Books.

 

 

For my project, I plan on doing a LittleBigPlanet level that explores the ideas behind Hacktivism. It will focus mainly on the idea of information being free, and how that can negatively impact a society. Due to the nature of LittleBigPlanet, it is difficult to make things subtle, so a lot of the ideas presented will be very extreme cases. I also plan to do a short write up that explains the ideas behind the level, and how they could impact us in reality (meaning I'll explain how it could be negative without being worst case scenario). The level will include a few points where the user can make a choice in the level about how to proceed and see different endings (points or other-wise).

And because of the recent visit of nutjob Richard Stallman, I just might add him in as some looney. Just because I think he's the most ridiculous person I've heard speak in a very long time.

Recently I purchased Braid for the PC, and having already known what I was getting into, I have to say I was still blown away. Braid mixes an interesting art style with legitimately excruciating puzzle sections (the challenge stars are some of the hardest things to get in all of video gaming history, according to some, and really require a good eye and a creative mind to even notice) and a metaphorical story that all comes together to create an experience well worth the $15 dollars, and even more. You can get this game from several places online, although I purchased mine through Steam (because it's the best). Another great thing about the game is the music, which is absolutely astounding.

Anyways, because I like posting random things, here's a plot analysis I wrote for the game. Be warned this will spoil the ENTIRE game, so proceed only if you are sure you want to. Things that are italicized are the story in the game.

----

The story is disjointed from worlds 2 - 6, and then goes backwards in world 1. The stories of 2 - 6 all relate to the kind of person Tim is, and about his desire, or obsession with the Princess.

WHAT I LIKE TO THINK COMES HERE:
As stated in the epilogue, Tim's mother has made him into a more obsessive person than most by constantly taunting him as a child. Due to this, he has trouble giving up his childhood, and this is probably where his fascination and belief in the "princess" comes from. He searches all over for her, and this is where most of the world stories come into play.

----

"Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a
horrible and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake."

"Not just one. He made many mistakes during the time they spent together, all
those years ago. Memories of their relationship have become muddled, replaced
wholesale, but one remains clear: the princess turning sharply away, her braid
lashing at him with contempt."

"He knows she tried to be forgiving, but who can just shrug away a guilty lie,
a stab in the back? Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly,
even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. The
princess's eyes grew narrower. She became more distant."

"Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with
forgiveness. By forgiving them too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we've
learned from a mistake and became better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for
the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?"

"What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: 'I didn't
mean what I just said,' and she would say: 'It's okay, I understand,' and she
would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said
that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience."

"Tim and the Princess lounge in the castle garden, laughing together, giving
names to the colorful birds. Their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked
away between the folds of time, safe."

The way I see it, Tim actually has the abilities to reverse time (and later to slow time) in the real world (I know, I like to think in more fantastical terms). His constant turning back of time has begun to overwrite what memories he had, because everything that he rewound looses importance. He can remember it, but it has no real significance. This poses a few problems: 1) we will never learn from out mistakes and 2) we never learn the significance of error. Perhaps eventually he learned this, and tried to allow some mistakes to occur (as it says she found him guilty of a lie). This is where never learning from your mistakes comes in, as perhaps since he never had to deal with consequences, he made a mistake a normal person would not, and then added problems to it because he couldn't deal with it normally. It then goes on to speculate what if things were so: people always forgave each other, and learned from mistakes. But this removes some of the humanity from us. Sure, it may be perfect, but is that really okay? And then it goes on to say "Ignorance is bliss." However, ignorance is never something to build a relationship on, trust is. Since Tim never had to deal with mistakes, he never had to deal with problems, and never had to build the trust that comes with overcoming trials. Thus his relationship with the princess is a superficial one, at best.

-----

"All those years ago, Time had left the Princess behind. He had kissed her on
the neck, picked up his travel bag, and walked out the door. He regrets this,
to a degree. Now he's journeying to find her again, to show her knows how sad
it was, but also to tell her how good it was."

"For a long time, he thought they had been cultivating the perfect
relationship. He had been fiercely protective, reversing all his mistakes so
they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes,
she always pleased him."

"But to be fully couched within the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence
with severe implications. To please you perfectly, she must understand you
perfectly. Thus you cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her
benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life's achievements will not reach
beyond the map she has drawn."

"Tim needed to be non-manipulable. He needed a hope of transcendence. He
needed, sometimes, to be immune to the Princess's caring touch."

"Off in the distance, Tim saw a castle where the flags flutter even when the
wind has expired, and the bread in the kitchen is always warm. A little bit of
magic."

This continues on how Tim was a person who believed in an ideal, rather than a person. He had a relationship with the princess, but walked out on her. Again, he had kept a tight reign on both their mistakes, so he never really learned from them. It touches on the fact that you can never understand someone unless you understand all of them, faults and all. And since Tim didn't allow for faults, he didn't really know the princess. The part about Tim being non-manipulable just furthers the idea that Tim is desperately trying to cling to a childhood ideal of "the princess," and wants nothing more than that childish happiness, and can't relate well to people. The last paragraph reinforces that.

----

"Visiting his home for a holiday meal, Tim felt as though he had regressed to
those long-ago years when he lived under their roof, oppressed by their
insistence on upholding strange values which, to him, were meaningless. Back
then, bickering would erupt over drops of gravy spilt onto the tablecloth."

"Escaping, Tim walked in the cool air toward the university he'd attended after
moving out of his parent's home. As he distanced himself from that troubling
house, he felt the embarrassment of childhood fading into the past. But now he
stepped into all the insecurities he'd felt at the university, all the panic of
walking a social tightrope."

"Tim only felt relieved after the whole visit was over, sitting back home in
the present, steeped in contrast he saw how he'd improved so much from those
old days. This improvement, day by day, takes him ever-closer to finding the
Princess. If she exists - she must! - she will transform him, and everyone."

"He felt on his trip that every place stirs up an emotion, and every emotion
invokes a memory: a time and location. So couldn't he find the Princess now,
tonight, just by wandering from place to place and noticing how he feels? A
trail of feelings, of awe and inspiration, should lead him to that castle in
the future her arms enclosing him, her scent fills him with excitement, creates
a moment so strong he can remember it in the past."

"Immediately Tim walked out his door, the next morning, toward whatever the new
day held. He felt something like optimism."

This further reinforces that Tim never really believed in anything but his ideals, which implies he's a bit arrogant and aloof. He has a strong desire to fulfill his quest, and find the princess, but other people's dreams, ideals, etc. seem meaningless to him, both his parents, and his entire college's. Tim then thinks "Well, if I feel emotion at every location, can't I follow the places that feel like her?" However, I think that the reason he doesn't, and can't do this, is because he doesn't actually know what the princess is like, therefor he would be following not feelings of her, but feelings of what he thinks she is.

----

"She never understood the impulses that drove him, never quite felt the
intensity that, over time, chiseled lines into his face. She never quite felt
close enough to him - but he held her as though she were, whispered into her
ear words that only a soul mate should receive."

"Over the remnants of dinner, they both knew the time had come. He would have
said: 'I have to go find the Princess,' but he didn't need to. Giving a final
kiss, hoisting a travel bag to his shoulder, he walked out the door. Through
all the nights that followed, she still loved him as though he stayed, to
comfort her and protect her, Princess be damned."

Perhaps to better fit in with society, perhaps for some other reason, Tim got married. This section is a bit incongruous with the rest of what I think, especially when taken literally. However, it again shows Tim's obsession with the princess, and that he is willing to step on other people just to find her. The more important thing is the idea that Tim lives two lives, at any point. He must interact with humanity, however, he also remains removed from them (this is directly referenced later).

----

"Perhaps in a perfect world, the ring would be a symbol of happiness. It's a
sign of ceaselessness devotion: even if he will never find the Princess, he
will always be trying. He still will wear the ring."

"But the thing makes its presence known. It shines out to others like a beacon
of warning. It makes people slow to approach. Suspicion, distrust. Interactions
are torpedoed before Tim can open his mouth."

"In time he learns to deal with the others carefully. He matches their hesitant
pace, tracing a soft path through their defenses. But this exhausts him, and it
only works to a limited degree. It doesn't get him what he needs."

"Tim begins to hide the ring in his pocket. But he can hardly bear it - too
long tucked away, that part of him might suffocate."

The ring is perhaps something the princess gave to Tim in their prior relationship. It could be of any shape, perhaps it was a gag gift and is a child's plastic toy. However, despite the shape, he still cherishes it, as it is so close to his ideal. Other people though, find it bizarre and unnerving that he has it. The ring could also just be his obsession with the princess. In his quest to find it, his interactions with people will center around her, and just her. So, in order to better relate, he begins to hide his obsession, but it makes it hard for him, because this ideal is almost entirely who he has become.

----

Th half-built castle, plus words:

"He cannot say he has understood all of this. Possibly he's more confused now
than ever. But all these moments he's contemplated - something has occurred.
The moments feel substantial in his mind, like stones. Kneeling, reaching down
toward the closest one, running his hand across it, he finds it smooth, and
slightly cold."

"He tests the stone's weight; he finds he can lift in, and the others too. He
can fit them together to create a foundation, an embankment, a castle."

"To build a castle of appropriate size, he will need a great many stones. But
what he's got now, feels like an acceptable start..."

This could possibly be a realization that his life has all been in pursuit of something fake, and he is going to build on his memories to try and change. Since it doesn't reference the princess, this could be a castle just for himself, his own home, or identity.

It could also be interpreted as Tim just continuing to build up a false reality around him, choosing to ignore the message in his memories, and instead turn them into a castle, or monument celebrating the princess, continuing to idolize her. I say this because the epilogue is actually the beginning of the game, so it could be that World 1 is the present, and worlds 2 - 6 are the past, and he's using his past experiences to justify the present.

----

Anyways, the main ideas behind what I enjoy in the story are that people are always people. You can't go through life erasing your mistakes through any means, as they're meant to happen to make you grow. It touches on the what actually is a relationship, and how it can easily be perverted into something less real. You could agree with what I say, this is just my opinion, and it makes more sense in my head. Feel free to say I'm full of shit, too :P

As for the bomb references, they become much more apparent in the first/last world, so check this for a full analysis.

After much laboring, thinking, testing, mental screaming, and neglect of all my other duties, I am proud to say that my LittleBigPlanet Dead Space themed level (because it actually has nothing to do with the main plot of Dead Space...It just uses the name and character likeness and aliens and...you get the idea) is completely done being built. The level can be played from start to end without having to cheat. There are still a few minor things that need fixing, but I'll get to those in a second.

First, I would like to express my utmost satisfaction with knowing MediaMolecule will be adding global triggers to change LIGHTING. The last level I made had a single "black box" that controlled all the lights, but this level takes the cake. It has some of the most complex arrays of triggers, inverted magnetic keys, and wires I've ever worked with. While nothing I did was very challenging logically (most of what I did was fairly binary...On/Off), it was very tedious and time consuming. Making sure these lights turn on when these four things are done and that the lights are of the proper brightness and radius can be incredibly hard, especially because sometimes you'll try something, it won't work, and then you have to tweak it just a little, and test it again. And when you get close to finishing a level, playing through the entire thing to test ONE light, or one ROOM of lights can be a huge pain in the ass. It also really bites when you're trying to play through to make sure something works, and the part right before it breaks because you forgot to fix it.

Probably some of the most challenging problems with the level design was both the creatures and the obstacles. The creatures are difficult because I'm using some new features that were recently added, of which I just managed to get the hang of. One particular creature in my level gave me a ton of trouble, because I wanted it to chase you around and force the player to kill it before they could continue. However, the switch that registers paintball hits has the modes On/Off, Directional, and One Shot. The challenge came in learning that One Shot could be used to completely destroy the creature if it was connected to the brain. Thank the lord for that. The next most challenging thing about the creatures is getting them to pose a threat. It's very easy to create something that looks interesting (LBP can't really look scary, or formidable, for the most part) but getting it to act in a way that poses a problem for the user is a bit difficult. This one monster, for example, is supposed to be a hard encounter (as opposed to the four other enemies that are easy, and the one boss at the end which is harder). However, making sure it could sense the player from far enough away (which I still wish could be farther) and that it would move fast enough was a problem. The player can ALWAYS outrun the creature by a significant margin because the highest speed setting isn't that fast. I countered this by putting the player in an initially small space for an encounter, and semi-trapping them (escaping requires a little bit of thought/trial and error). If they can escape, they can run down the hall, and have an easy target with the creature's back side. This led to the largest problem (after figuring out how to get the switches to work) with the creature: making sure it didn't get stuck on tiny ledges. Recently it seems to have fixed itself, but there were times where it would get stuck in the doorway and just sit there. However, as of right now, I am very pleased with how the encounter plays out.

As for the obstacles, they pose possibly the greatest challenge to the player, or more specifically, one part (that I will most likely be making easier) make for problems. First, and foremost, is simply making new things for the player to interact with. The first part of the level is all about moving forward. However, about a quarter of the way through the level it opens up into a massive room (which I really like how it turned out) where the player must roam around and find and deliver objects to a certain area. This "room," hence forth referred to as Zero-G, was a ton of fun to do because I got to play around with what could be done. First of all, the player gets to pick up a jetpack, which means A) they are free to roam about the countr...Area and B) they are restricted to the first plane, in terms of interacting with objects. Point A means that I can put things in the sky, on the ground, anywhere I want, and the player can still reach them. It also means that threats can be anywhere, and I tried to take advantage of that, while still limiting it down to a few areas, that way it was more fun to explore the area (it's no fun being constantly afraid of your surroundings). To build on the fact they can go anywhere, I make them go everywhere, or at least to most corners of Zero-G. As for point B, the fact the player is limited to the first plane (out of three) means that I have two planes with which to make background decorations, environment, etc. I found this to be a lot of fun, because I was able to both add small obstacles that were mostly flavor and detail, and have some more of the same right behind it, without having to worry about it affecting the overall structure of the gameplay. Near the end of the players time with Zero-G they are forced to pass through a very narrow passage, where the sides of the passage are electrified. This is the section that can make me want to throw the controller through the TV in white hot animal rage, despite having done it numerous times (especially since I had to balance the section like this in my previous level), and knowing how to BEST get through it. It's noteworthy to mention that the camera seems to be a large issue, especially on the return trip. I can go through the "gauntlet" relatively fast the first time, but the return trip puts the camera at a weird, and terrible angle, which is probably going to have to force me to make the section a bit easier (because I really don't want to mess with the camera in that area, because the first time through is easy enough, I feel).

For the first time, I also used action stickers, which means that the user has to place a specific sticker on a predefined space in order to trigger an event. In this case, I was extremely excited to use it, partly because I never had before, and partly because I had a "story" behind it (you have to have a password). What I loved even more was how the effects fell into place. The lighting on the panels where the stickers have to be placed makes me very happy, because the timing of the green "correct" light coming on seems perfect (it also plays the annoying little sound, but I can live with that). I also plan to add sound there when each sticker is properly placed.

Speaking of sound, I would like to mention another problem I had with development, which was that I lost ALL of my data from when I previously owned the game (lost meaning I deleted it because I was angry). This meant that I lost all the materials, stickers, tools, objects, lights, custom objects, and most importantly (explained in a sec) SOUND. I wanted SO bad to be able to put in the theme from The Wilderness levels, but as those are some of the last levels in the game, I have yet to reach them, and I've been putting all my effort into actually creating the level. The reason I find sound so important is because it's easy enough to find a good material (I actually used a really nice one from the MGS4 DLC pack, and by "one" I mean "several"), but good sound, especially subtle sound, is hard to come by. Many songs in LBP are very loud, upbeat, and catchy. I needed something more subtle, quieter, and mysterious than almost everything I currently had. I just thank god that my friend's account on my PS3 still had it's save data, so I was able to trick my account into letting me play the last level, which scored me two amazing sound scores for my level (one is used a LOT, because it's very quiet, and the other is the ending song, which is quite epic).

All in all, I am extremely, incredibly, <more adjectives that mean "very"> pleased with how this level turned out. While this level isn't technically as large as my last one, I am comfortable saying it's a better one, as it has less problems, more variety, and more to do (one area in my last level was very VERY open, but had very VERY little to do, as you basically just flew through it). The one thing I do miss is the end of my last level, because the music and the setting and the challenges just fit so well together. Plus, it was timed! And that was awesome! (Don't worry, the level was still beatable, you just got a message that said "You failed to save the world," and then got sad music)

Anyways, in closing, the things I still have left to do:
Balance Certain Parts <-Priority One
Add Sound Effects, Camera Effects, Dialog and Possibly More Enemies <-Priority Zwei
Decorate the stage with stickers, objects, etc. <- Priority Tres
Idiot-Proof the level <- Priority not high
Also, fix the current enemies that just sit there like tards. Because they can technically break the game early on. Technically. If you get unlucky/are dumb

It's Frogger!

Complete with Power Ranger's theme song. Because it isn't Frogger without it.

And get nothing in return.

My problems with Scratch:

• Everything relies on the "When" conditionals. LESS. THAN. IDEAL.
• The work space is INCREDIBLY limited. As in, you get to make everything very small if you want to have more than two objects on screen at the same time
• Editing, importing, and managing sprites is REALLY annoying and tedious
• Broadcasting likes to randomly not work
• YOU CAN'T CREATE OBJECTS DYNAMICALLY
• You can't test for a general condition without a forever loop, which kind of contradicts the idea of an IF statement
• Animation is pretty much nonexistent.
• Music is pretty annoying to try to attempt, especially doing something that can loop sound clips (to mix music)
• Options for sound is pretty limited
• Options for about everything is pretty limited
• I generally hate it

Super Mario Bros!

Crystal of Life!

Dragon Simulator

L4D

HAMSTERRRSSSSSSS


Okay, so maybe the last one isn't so awesome. But after looking at all the fail-tacular projects my friend and I saw, this was the straw that broke the camels back, and we laughed until we cried. Probably a mix of both utter, crushing despair for humanity's future, and dumb happiness from the stupidity of the project.


The first one is pretty good, second one only good in coding, and the last one is...almost brilliant. There are a few annoying glitches, but overall pretty sweet.

As for what I find interesting? Scratch's complete ability to INFURIATE me. Probably THE MOST annoying thing EVER is that you can't load objects or movies. You also can't write stand alone statements, you have to tie them to a when statement, of which there are 4 kinds, all of which I hate. It doesn't help that the if statements are buggy AND CAN ONLY TEST FOR THE SPECIFIC INSTANCE IN WHICH THE WHEN STATEMENT (and the when statement is very specific) IS ACTIVATED UNLESS YOU "PROGRAM" AROUND IT. This makes programming collision detection annoying and more complicated. It is also just poor implementation.


I never thought programming could get worse than programming. Scratch has made my nightmares possible. Hell, Java is more fun to work with, and I NEVER thought I would say that. As dated as it is, Flash 5 is so many light years ahead of this it's not amusing.

After having worked with the Nethernet for an extended period of time now, I must say it is an interesting interface, and concept. The idea that the entire internet is part of a larger meta-game is pretty cool, and it certainly feels nice to see your DataPoints soar after you ignore the top right of your browser for a week. It's also fun to randomly find sites on the internet, perhaps some obscure, out of the way haven for nerd lore, or sometimes just a highly trafficed site, that have random gifts. It's as equally interesting to see what gets mined. Buying items is fun, and sending messages to people about what sites they dote on can spark some interesting conversation.

However, there's a air of aimlessness to it. There aren't many goals, and those you do have often don't come with a reward. Take the Badges, for example. By visitng a given site (or collection of sites) for a given period of time (often a week - a month, which is nothing to scoff at), you can earn a Badge. That's it. You get a projected image with an interesting picture on it, plus the recognition of the 5 people who may notice you have it. A way to fix this would be to have each badge give some reward, like Mafiawars, an app for Facebook and MySpace, does (Mafiawars will be referenced more later on, as well). In Mafiawars, you can randomly obtain "collectable" items that do nothing on their own, but once you make a set of 7, they give you a benefit to your character's stats.

That brings me to my next point: there needs to be increased interactivity with the system, preferably in such a way that fleshes out your statistics. For example, you can pick a class. However, this doesn't mean anything. A possible fix could be to let people choose a class once per week (that way they don't just switch around for the benefits), and have classes give static bonuses. The Seer, for example, could give portals 25 more charges than normal. Detroyers could lay explosives that deal damage to both DP and Pings. Vigilantes could have St. Nicks that attach 7 instead of 5. Benefactors can leave 15 DP cards, rather than 10. Pathmakers can get more DP from having people complete their missions. Bedouins could have a higher dodge percentage. The Badges could add additional benefits, especially the ones rewarded for a certain type of item use. These changes could add a bit more individuality to the classes, as well as a reason for choosing them, other than an avatar. Mafiawars does this by having each Top Mafia member give some static bonus to your stats depending on their level, which works nicely, and gives you an incentive to branch out.

This brings me to my next point: there is no reason to have allies, aquaitances or rivals. They don't do anything. In Mafiawars, your mafia size determins how well you do in fights, how much extra money you make, and many other things. Your Top Mafia give you other bonuses, as mentioned before. In the Nethernet, you aren't rewarded for branching out, or barely (I believe you get 1 Ping). One way to increase the cohesiveness of the community, as well as expand it, would be to implement some system that gave you bonuses for your allies and rivals and aquaintances.

Another thing that doesn't really work well is the item system, or more specifically, the level system embedded in the item system. Locking off items that promote interactivity is annoying, and troublesome. It also doesn't help that leveling up each class is a royal pain in the ass, because either the points don't accumulate very fast (Seers, I'm looking at you) or it's expensive (Benefactors), or just plain god damned annoying (Bedouins). This system, while it can work, doesn't work here, because it locks off what seems like basic tools to make the Nethernet more effective. In MafiaWars, all that is locked off is stronger items, not interactive ones. By adding possibly more items, or having them increase efficiency as you level a class up, I feel that the Nethernet can add an extra layer of incentive and interactivity into a system that has potential.

The last thing I want to touch on is the missions. Right now the mission system is pretty simple, and disappointing. While it is possible to create "interactive" missions, it is incredibly obtuse, and a pain. If the Nethernet could add some sort of functionality that requires input before letting someone continue, then it could drastically improve it's mission system. Also, have each mission come with a 10 DP reward at the end, curtousy of the Nethernet (meaning not paid for by the maker). Gives people more incentive to actually take missions.

Since about the time I was in middle school, and to a lesser extent before then, I really never took an interest in most American music. There were a few bands that I listened to, such as Evanescence, but I never really listened to Wheezer or AC/DC or a lot of other popular bands of the time. Sure, I listened to a few things by the Beatles, but never got into them. To this day I don't really pick up many American songs, and the few I do are usually single songs that someone points out to me (a recent one being Monster Hospital by Metric). To this day I can't name Stairway to Heaven when I hear it, nor do I know the lyrics, and I have trouble recognizing other popular, "obvious" songs known by the majority of my peers.

When I was a kid, meaning in elementary and before, I played games. Megaman 6 was my first, and I moved onto the SNES soon after so I could play more. I was enamored with the music in these games. It was catchy, fairly simple, but so enjoyable none the less. As I entered middle school this love of game music broadened to become an enjoyment of "techno." Back then, when the internet was not the same beast it is today, I was limited to the few songs my mom found on her computer, which resulted in a lot of bad techno. And I mean BAD. But, regardless of how I view it now, I latched onto these synth scores and clever beats. They were an evolution over the game music I had loved, and they were usually fairly light on lyrics and heavier on instrumentation.

Then, around 8th grade a good friend of mine introduced me to anime. This would be a major turning point in my musical life, because I moved to a dramatically different type of music: Japanese music. Mostly, J-Pop and J-Rock. It started out, and mostly remains, limited to me finding an anime with a particularly interesting intro/outro song, and I'll seek it out on Gendou.com. However, I did at one point specifically download more of a certain band (which, for the life of me, I cannot remember, despite it was only about year ago).

To this day the major attraction I have with Japanese music is simply how musical it is. The instrumentation they have is usually superior to a lot of American bands I listen to, and the vocals range from having amazing dissonance in them to being fantastic harmonies. It's true that I can't understand the language, but that is often a plus for me, because, going back to my roots as a child, there isn't much distraction. It's all about how the musical notes fall in place with each other.

So, after all this background, I come to my main point: why are people so repulsed by Japanese music? I understand that it's a tad hypocritical to say "Well, they should be accepting of the genre as a whole" when I'm not accepting of American music as a whole, which is why I won't. However, I find it incredibly odd that when I point out one or two songs that just really hooked me, that I listen to over and over again, people are immediately turned off.

Is it the language? Do people have problems with the fact they can't understand the lyrics? Is it the tone itself (I find that Japanese music tends to have a brighter tone to it, rather than the darker tone of American music)? I understand there are various J-Pop singers who sound like grade schoolers, I tend to avoid them as well. Or perhaps it's just the stigma that surrounds Japanese media in general?

So, I ask this: what turns you off when it comes to Japanese, or foreign, music?

As a frame of reference, this whole entry was sparked when I posted a link to a youtube video (which will be shown below) and out of the two responses, one was off topic and the other said "I watched 3 seconds and stopped." It really irks me to see people be so utterly dismissive of things.

Emotion: the most basic and natural experience a human has. It dictates how we interface with other people, with events, with the world, and with ourselves. Emotion plays a large role in how we perceive things, how we act towards those things, and how we interpret responses to our actions. So, when it comes down to it, you could say that emotion alone dictates the fate of humanity. So if one were to be able to control that force, both their emotions and others, they would naturally be in a position of relative safety and power, granted we aren’t dealing with aggressive hostiles (read: no attacks made). What I wish to detail here is how to hack both your emotions, and others. Specifically, I’m going to detail how to better interpret, manage, and control anger, as it plays a large part in deciding how negotiations (meant as a broad term, not limited to finalizing a deal) end. Other emotions, such as happiness and greed will make appearances, but they aren’t as prevalent in influencing people’s actions.
Possibly the hardest, and certainly most complex, part of hacking emotions is actually determining what exactly you’re dealing with. Usually it’s quite simple to recognize the general state of emotion someone is in, but it can often be difficult to understand the context and severity of the emotion (for example, while “anger is ‘an emotional state that ranges from mild irritation to intense fury and rage’” (1), you often won’t be dealing with the latter, and will more frequently encounter lots of everything in between the two ends of the spectrum). Identifying emotions in yourself is easy, because you have access to all of the information. However, often overlooked are the smaller bits of emotions and emotional events that mean more than we give them credit for in affecting our lives. The easiest way to begin to explore and understand all of your emotions is to start being aware of things you normally wouldn’t, such as daydreams, recurring memories, and less obvious compulsive behaviors (2). To ensure accuracy, it’s often a good idea to write down everything you take note of. Often these otherwise ignored happenings can reveal hidden emotions, positive or negative, towards others and your environment. One major importance of identifying how you feel is that it reveals what you need to work on. Often, knowing is half the battle. Once you have a grasp on the negative, or excessive positive, emotions you have you can begin to manage them in order to make them beneficial, rather than hindering.
When searching for someone else’s feelings, it can be a bit more difficult. The obvious and most easily completed methods are taking note of facial expression, tone of voice, and physical gestures. However, just as when looking inwards, it’s good to search for small details when looking outwards, as well. Dropped sentences, irregular speech patterns, and outlandish exclamations all can give insight into the context and severity of someone’s current emotion. By analyzing and predicting how a sentence would end (or just asking them to finish it), you can find out some of the more hidden elements of the context, and how the person experiencing the emotion feels about their interacting with the event (for instance, perhaps they don’t admit to being partially at fault, but by reading into some of the more subtle cues they give off, you can ascertain more about how they fit into the scenario). Also, although obvious, communication is absolutely essential to being able to delve deeper into someone’s emotions. By asking subtle and often seemingly trivial questions, you can get a more complete picture on the context of their situation, which allows you to better identify what you are working with.
After successfully being able to recognize and interpret yours and others emotions, the next step in “hacking” them is the manage them. By being able to manage your emotions, you can become more emotionally resilient, which leads to being better at empathizing with others, having a stronger social conscience, and be a more effective communicator (3). Anger is the primary emotion which can lead to stress, an imbalance in your immune system, and can also reduce your effectiveness at communicating, as well as a driving factor in negotiations (4,6). Therefore, managing anger is the key to being able to manage emotion, since it is one of the most basic emotions people feel. The first step is managing what you express. The most healthy form of expressing anger is simply expressing it by letting someone know why you are angry with them in an assertive, but not aggressive way (2). However, another way is to calm yourself both internally and externally. This method, while much more difficult, is much more effective, especially when in a heated conversation. By regulating your anger, rather than expressing it, you avoid unnecessary confusion and misunderstandings on your conversation’s part, which could escalate both their anger, and yours, as you have to work around explaining their misperceptions. However, it is a tricky balance. If you try to suppress, or calm, all of your anger, you can insinuate that you are holding something back, which can lead to misunderstanding. The key to the balance lies in the context of the argument. As people attribute more status to anger, by expressing anger over key points in the negotiation, you can seem more assertive on the most important parts (5). By suppressing and/or calming the rest of your anger, you can focus more on analyzing the other person and less on your own feelings.
While managing your own anger and emotions can be fairly scientific, managing other people’s emotions can often require more intuition and experience than process. One major reason for this is that every person has different limits, which people will try to test, as proved by Dr. van Kleef’s study on negotiations and emotion. The problem occurs when people are pushed too far, and retaliate with more anger. Since each personality plays such a large role, the most important part of managing their emotions is to consider their past. As stated before, past memories, often reoccurring and ignored memories, can play a large role in determining how someone will handle a particular situation. By considering someone’s previous experiences, you can better understand the root of their anger. Other things to consider are outside factors that may seem irrelevant to the argument (for example, if someone is upset over their performance at a particular event, perhaps their family life is adding stress to their life, as well, and they just compound their anger over that subject onto the event). All that considered, there are several ways to deal with their emotions. The first is cognitive restructuring, which simply means to change the way they think. (7) By rewording, restructuring, and reexamining someone’s argument and situation, simple logic can often help them calm down, and reduce their anger. Another way to help reduce someone’s anger is to change their environment. By removing someone from the area that reminds them of the “trap” they fell into, you can help calm them down. (1)
The importance to learning to “hack” people’s emotions is evident in Dr. van Kleef’s research. He set up an experiment that monitored how much people were willing to demand and concede in continued negotiations given different emotions from an opponent. As is made apparent in the graph, if people perceive you as angry, they will demand less and less of you. While this can be a good thing, in some cases, in general, you want to keep a fairly balanced demand level, so that both sides are participating equally. By being able to manage your anger and another person’s, you can better equalize the demand level from both you and them, which leads to more effective negotiations.

Sources:
1. (2009). Controlling Anger -- Before it Controls You. Retrieved March 6, 2009, Web site: http://www.apa.org/topics/controlanger.html
2. Kurus, Mary (2002). Emotions - How to Understand, Identify, and Release Your Emotions. Retrieved March 6, 2009, from M.K. Projects International Web site: http://www.mkprojects.com/fa_emotions.html
3. Mills, Harry (2006, Jun 25). Emotional Resilience. Retrieved March 6, 2009, from Mental Help Web site: http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=5779&cn=298
4. van Kleef, Gerben (2003, Jul 18). The Interpersonal Effects of Anger and Happiness on Negotiations. Retrieved March 6, 2009, Web site: http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/g.a.vankleef/bestanden/Van%20Kleef%20et%20al.%20(2004a%20JPSP).pdf
5. Tiedens, LZ (2001, Jan). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral.. Retrieved March 6, 2009, from PubMed Web site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11195894&dopt=Citation
6. Retrieved March 6, 2009, Web site: http://www.familystressreduction.com/images/compassion_anger.jpg
7. Strayhorn, Joeseph (2003, Apr 12). Cognitive Restructuring. Retrieved March 6, 2009, from Cognitive Restructuring Web site: http://www.psyskills.com/cogther01.htm

by angelazaharia
Sending an ordinary e-mail is equivalent to
the old way of mailing a postcard through the
post office. Think about this for a moment.
E-mails get passed along several servers before
they arrive at their final destination. There is
nothing stopping the administrators of these
servers from reading them if they so desire. A
copy of your e-mail will be kept in all the places
your mail goes through. Worse, while traveling
toward its destination, unscrupulous profiteers
may snag it, copy your e-mail address, and
begin to send you spam.
A lot of people think that by using free web-
based e-mail services such as Hotmail, Yahoo,
or any of the other countless free ones they will
be anonymous. How wrong they are! First, all
of the above mentioned keep excellent logs.
Second, they always will send your IP in the
header of your message, so using them won't
make you anonymous at all! Third, those places
like to cooperate with the "authorities" as much
as they can, and they may even monitor the
e-mails. (I don't have any actual proof that they
do any monitoring, I'm just speculating. It
stands to reason.
So What's a Person To Do?
Short answer: A person should learn how to
use remailers to send e-mail anonymously.
If you just want to send simple e-mail
anonymously (no attachments, only text) and
not expect an answer, you can do that by using
free web-based remailers. They are very easy to
utilize, but very insecure because the encrypting
process is on the server and not on your com-
puter. Several are available just for that purpose.
Here is a list of working (at the time of this arti-
cle being written) ones:
riot. eu. org/anon
http://www.all-nettools. com/tools4. htm
http://www5.tripnet. se/~brodd/anonmail. html
http://www.oldmadison. com/anon, htm
http://www.manicmail.net
http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html
http://freedom.gmsociety.org/remailer/mixmaster.cgi
I'd definitely recommend you proxy yourself
while using them. Just remember you won't be
very secure since your message will not be
encrypted and everyone it goes through will be
able to read it.
What is a Remailer?
Let's look at ordinary e-mails for a momenl
first. They all carry the same From:, To:, and
Subject: fields. But they also carry invisible-
fields that will include your e-mail server do-
main's name, IP address, the time and the date
your e-mail was sent, and other info. These
fields are called headers.
Just by their names alone, remailers should
be clear to you as to what they do - they re-send
e-mail. But they not only blindly re-send the
mail, no sir! They also strip the headers so no-
body should know where the message came
from and/or who was the original sender. They
make sending anonymous e-mail possible. A re-
mailer will also pass the message along to other
remailers if that's what the poster wanted. From
there, the message can get passed along some
more, or it can go to its final destination.
A remailer is nothing more than a
specialized server running software.
A Little History
Remailers started way back in the 1990s.
The most famous was anon.penet.fi run by Jo-
han Helsingius of Oy Penetic Ab in Finland. He
wanted to create a way for individuals to ex-
press themselves freely on the Internet, without
fear of reprisal or prosecution.
Unfortunately, anon.penet.fi was brought
down when a court ordered its operator to turn
over records after the Church of Scientology
claimed a user was posting copyrighted infor-
mation to an Internet discussion forum.
anon.penet.fi was shut down. Fortunately, the
concept of remailers survived, and many more
remailers opened up.
Types of Remailers
There are two types of remailers. The first
type are the older remailers known as Cypher-
punk or Type I. The newer and more advanced
are called MixMasters or Type II.
Cypherpunk accepts messages encrypted
with its publicly available PGP key. PGP is
Pretty Good Privacy, the well-respected public-
key encryption program which is widely avail-
able and, with a few exceptions, freeware.
Users encrypt their clear-text outgoing message
with the Cypherpunk remailer's public key. This
can be done with any text editor like Notepad
and a properly installed version of PGP. There is
a particular message format to follow, one that
the remailer software can understand.
The building of a Mixmaster message can-
not be done with a text editor, so special client
software is required. Some popular (and free)
packages are Quicksilver, Potato, Jack B.
Nymble, etc. I will detail how to use them
below.
Preparation Steps
Remailers need a bit of extra work and
preparation on your part before you can utilize
them. Here's a list of the steps you need to take:
1. Download PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) en-
cryption software, install it, learn how to use it,
and create your set of PGP keys. This way no-
body, not even the remailer operators will be
able to read your message. You have a choice of
either getting the free older version from MIT
or the newer version. Teaching you how to use
PGP is beyond the scope of this article, but you
can easily find a PGP tutorial on the Internet.
2. Decide if you want to use a Type I
(Cypherpunk) or Type II (Mixmaster) remailer.
Cypherpunk versions work with PGP or
OpenPGP from http://www.openpgp.org. Re-
member, for Mixmaster you will also have to
download and configure an application
package. Here are some of them:
Mixmaster (DOS/UNlX/MacOS X)fmm
http://mixmaster. sourceforge. net.
Reliable for MS-Windows95/98/NT. from
http://www.skuz.net/potatoware/reli.
Quicksilver for MS-Windows95/98/NT from
http://quicksilver.skuz. net
Jack B. Nymble for MS-Windows95/98/NT from
http://www.skuz.net/potatoware/jbn2.
MiXfiTfor MacOS from
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Byte/6J
76/macmixmaster. html.
PGP International (all operating systems) from
http://www.pgpi.org.
GPG (most operating systems) from
http://www.gnupg.org.
3. Find a working remailer. Several sites
keep and constantly update a fresh list of work-
ing remailers. The best is by The Electronic
Frontier Georgia (EFGA) at http://anon.efga.
org/Remailers. The list is updated every day, so
you should be able to obtain the most current
list and their reliability rating. Another list of
current remailers is kept at: http://www.pub-
lius.net/rlist.html. It's a good idea to choose a
remailers that's not in your home country!
4. Evaluate the remailer by looking at its
reliability statistics. Anything below 90 percent
is not reliable.
On this site you can find the public keyrings
or type II remailers (Mixmaster) in a secure
connection:
https://riot.EU.org/anon/pubring.mix
(insecure pubring.mix)
https://riot.EU.org/anon/type2.list
(insecure type2.list)
https://riot.EU. org/anon/pubring. asc
(insecure pubring.asc)
There are many sites that offer statistics and
public keyrings. For a complete index you can
look at http://www.privacyresources.org/frog
admin/Pingers.html or the Computer
Cryptology's Comparison at http://www.es
kimo.com/~turing/remailer/stats or http://www.
noreply.org/meta.
Updated statistics can be found at:
E.F.G.A.: http://anon.efga.org/Remailers/
Shinn: http://mixmaster. shinn. net/stats/
FarOut: http://www.nuther-planet.net/farout/stats/
Frog: http://www.privacyresources, org/fro
gadmin/Main. html
Austria: http://www.tahina.priv.at/~cm/stats/
Computer Cryptology: http://www.eskimo.
com/~turing/remailer/stats/
Cmeclax (Shinn mirror): http://lexx.shinn.net/
cmeclax/gumdatni. html
5. Create a nym for yourself. A good place to
use is Nym.Alias.Net. Very detailed instructions
can be found at: http://riot.eu.org/anon
/doc/nym.html.
Once the programs are installed and config-
ured, you must periodically download (at least
once a day) the public keyrings and the reliability
statistics of any remailer.
Remailer Commands and Fields
Remailers all use the same basic commands:
anon-to: Anonymous remailing.
anon-post-to: Anonymous posting to
newsgroups (Usenet).
cutmarks: Discards everything bellow the
designate line.
encrypted: PGP Tells the remailer it must
encrypt the message with PGP.
encrypt-key: Encrypts message with PGP using
conventional encryption.
latent-time: Allows time delays to be
programmed into the message.
# # Pastes new headers to the remailed message.
Page 16 2600 Magazine Spring 2003 Page 17
null Instructs the remailer to discard the
message.
To send a message and be sure it gets delivered
you need to properly format it. An example:
From: you@your.e-mail-account
To: name-of-remailer
On the first line of the message you put two
colons like this "::". On the next line you print
the remailer command "anon-to", followed by
the e-mail address of the person receiving the
mail. For example:
anon-to: someone @ his. e-mail, account
Skip the next line and then begin typing your
message. When the remailer receives your mes-
sage, it will remove the header information and
forward the rest of your message on to the ad-
dress on the "anon-to:" line.
Because the remailers remove the headers,
they also delete the subject line of the message.
If you want to include a subject line, you do this
by using the # # remailer command and placing
a subject on the following line. For example:
##
Subject: This is an anonymous e-mail message
to you.
Some free web e-mail places such as Yahoo
add a tag line at the end of each e-mail advertis-
ing their services. The Yahoo one looks like
this:
Do you Yahoo?
Fortunately, remailers solve this problem
with the cutmark command. The cutmark com-
mand instructs the remailer to remove every-
thing from the line beginning with a chosen
symbol.
In this example, "==" was chosen.
cutmark: = =
this line will be included in your message
this line will be removed because it follows the
remarks
As mentioned above, the latent command
will delay a message for a certain amount of
time before it is delivered to the next remailer.
This will confuse and prevent somebody from
tagging you and comparing the times you are
logged on to your e-mail server with the times
an anonymous e-mail is received. It also lets
you delay messages in order to be somewhere
else when the message is received.
For example:
latent-time: 3:00
will delay the delivery of the message from
the remailer for three hours from the time it was
received by the remailer. It is also possible in
add a random factor to the latent command. In
adding an "r" after the time.
latent-time: 3:00r
will deliver the message at a random time
after it was received by the remailer.
Let's now look at a properly formatted mes-
sage using the various commands we discussed
so far:
From: you@your.e-mail.address
To: mix@remailer
anon-to: someone @someplace.e-mail.account
cutmark: = =
latent-time: 2:
##
Subject: This is the info you requested.
This is the text of your message. It will be de-
layed up to two hours from the time it was re-
ceived by the mix@remailer and later
forwarded to someone@someplace.e-mail.ac-
count. Remember, there is an empty line be-
tween the remailer commands and the body of
your message.
message below it.
Encrypted: PGP
BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-
This text is below the cutmarks so it will be
removed from the remailed message.
Using PGP With Remailers
PGP encryption is an important part of
remailing because PGP increases the security
and anonymity of your e-mail communicating.
Even if somebody is monitoring your e-mail as
it leaves your PC, it will be impossible for them
to read the content or to determine who the mes-
sages are being sent to if the messages are en-
crypted. PGP has a bit of a steep learning curve
at first, and many novices get confused with it.
Just remember the basics: you produce two sets
of keys, a public key for a friend to open your e-
mail and a private key for you to encrypt your
mail with. You send your friend the public key.
Then you collect corresponding public keys
from remailers and from friends and place those
on a "keyring." Let's now go over the steps for
using PGP with remailers. I'll assume you have
prepared your PGP keys and collected the PGP
keys from remailers you plan to use.
Prepare your message to be sent as
explained above. Now encrypt it with the
remailer's public PGP key. Type the encrypted
PGP command into your e-mail text window
and use cut and paste to paste your encrypted
END PGP MESSAGE.............
When the remailer receives your message, it
will un-encrypt it and follow the instructions
you specified. Some remailers only accept
encrypted messages.
Chaining Remailers
Remailers can be chained, just like proxies.
This will further make tracking the original
sender of a message very difficult - almost im-
possible. It is advisable to use remailers located
in several countries.
To chain remailers, simply prepare the mes-
sage as if it will be sent through a single re-
mailer. Then begin inserting remailer addresses
above the address of the final recipient. Here's
an example:
From: you@your.e-mail.address
To: first-remailer@.address
anon-to: second-remailer@ .address
anon-to: third-remailer@.address
anon-to: someone@someplace-someplace.address
## Subject: Anonymous email
This anon email has been sent through several
remailers.
Finally, here are some remailers that were up
at the time of this article:
squirrel: mix@squirrel.owl.de (Germany)
swiss: mix@remailer.ch
hyper: mix@hyperreal.art.pl (Poland)
Ics: mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu (USA)
mccain: mccain@notatla.demon.co.uk (England)
bpm: mix@bpm.ai
widow: mix@wol.be (Belgium)
A couple of good links if you want to learn
more about e-mail remailers are
www.sendfakemail.com/~raph/remailer-list.html
and http://www.theargon.com.
This article only dealt with sending
anonymous e-mail. The same concepts are used
to post anonymously on Usenet too (since
Usenet shares the same basic principles), but
that subject is a lot more complicated and
requires a whole article of its own.
by Kairi Nakatsuki
kairi @ phreaker.net

Original Source: 2600: A Hacker's Odyssey

More info: http://www.emailprivacy.info/remailers

Remailer: http://gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html

After having invested a fair amount of time in PMOG, I find it to be quite intriguing. For a quick overview, PMOG is a meta-game for the internet. While that sounds completely absurd, and insanely broad, it's actually quite simple: by visiting web pages you earn points, and you can show people new things they might never have seen otherwise.

So, in that regard, PMOG is interesting, engaging, expansive, and unique. It's a nice way to see new places, and the positive reinforcement by means of "Data Points" only makes it easier to justify surfing the web. Also, the more "gamey" part of it is addicting. Leveling up, choosing a "class," and then actually connecting pages, laying mines, leaving prizes: it all has a sort of charm to it, and it's so easy.

However, I can't help but think that this is just a passing fancy. While I am incredibly engaged right now, I can only see this lasting as long as my interest. Sure, PMOG may be fun, and silly, and you can mess around with your friends. But there isn't a whole lot of actual substance to PMOG. It relies on other sites, as well as user created content, to keep itself running and maintain its user base. So, really, I can only see myself using this for a few weeks before I just don't really bother anymore, and leave it alone. Perhaps I'll be wrong, and since it is so passive and meta-gamey, it will just be periods of activity interrupting general internet usage. However, I can't help but feel that PMOG is just not substantial enough to keep me for more than a month.

If you check the homepage of my blog (http://thebluemagician.livejournal.com), then there should be a mission that takes you to some neat indie games. For those of you who liked Auditorium, I highly recommend checking out ThatGameCompany's work (fl0w and Cloud), as well as Deluxe Crayon Physics.

Enjoy!

After having used Mind Manager a bit, it seems like an interesting program. An invaluable tool for managers or consultants, it's able to easily separate, organize, and prioritize data.

Pretty nifty. I like the visual layout. Not much else I can really say :\

Kevin Lee Poulsen. Born 1965, in Pasadena, California. Currently a senior editor for WiredBlog. For someone in their 40s, this seems a bit underwhelming. However, once you note the fact that Poulsen identified 744 profiles on MySpace as sex offenders, it seems a little bit more interesting. Before we started writing, or tracking sex offenders, he also worked as a consultant, testing the Pentagon’s computer security. Despite how important that might sound, though, Poulsen’s real fame lies not in his jobs, current and previous, but rather in his past hobby: hacking.

Poulsen first really gained his name in hacking when he was 17, working on “his primitive TRS-80 ‘color computer’” (NNDB) He used this to hack into the U.S. Department of Defense’s Arpanet, which was the communication network used in the military before the internet. However, instead of prosecuting him, the military offered him a job. After programming gigs with SRI and Sun Microsystems he moved on to testing out the Pentagon’s security systems for weaknesses, a hacker’s dream job. He had security-clearance, government support, the works. Still, this wasn’t enough. While he was a white hat hacker by day, Poulsen became a black hat hacker by night. Using his talents he normally employed for strengthening security systems, he easily began to tear them down. Eventually, the Pentagon caught word of his night-time hobby, and he was fired. Now jobless, Poulsen packed up his belongings, and headed off to Los Angeles, where his hacking skills would find him a new source of revenue. Poulsen managed to figure out how to reconnect disabled 1-800 numbers (primarily from escort services put out of business by police raids) and redirect them to people who wanted the numbers (pimps, for example). This caught the attention of the federal government, who began an investigation. In retaliation, Poulsen hacked into the FBI systems and found out just how complex and thorough the wiretaps and surveillance networks were. This concerned him, for he feared of being monitored by the FBI. Thus he dug deeper into their surveillance systems, looking for loopholes, exploits, and backdoors. While on the run from the FBI, Poulsen still managed to partake in his most famous, and certainly most glamorous, hacking endeavor. The radio station KIIS-FM was running a promotional give away, where the 102^nd caller would receive a Porsche 944 S2. Poulsen and a friend hacked into the phone lines and rigged the competition so that they were guaranteed the 102^nd call. After this, Poulsen eventually upped his winnings (through other events) to two Porsches, a trip to Hawaii, and 10s of thousands of dollars. Ultimately, though, Poulsen would be caught in the least ceremonious way possible. In the process of leaving a supermarket some store customers recognized him from his TV appearance on “Unsolved Mysteries,” and tackled him, resulting in his arrest. While glamorous, his winnings were the least of his worries. Due to his infiltration of the FBI and other important security databases, Poulsen was charged with “seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice” (thinkquest), and espionage. While the espionage charges were dropped, Poulsen still had to serve a hefty 5 years in jail.

Given Poulsen’s actions, words, and life, he is an interesting case when you take into account all the stereotypes, misconceptions, and enlightened views on hackers (though there are certainly far fewer of the last case). One of the most intriguing things about him is his handle, or alternate name, the Dark Dante. Most likely a reference to Dante Alighieri, a famous poet who revolutionized Christianity’s view of Hell, one can draw the inference that perhaps Poulsen wanted to do the same. Though Poulsen admits “[his] intrusions, particularly the physical ones, were more than just ways of gaining knowledge. [It was about exploration],” when he later encounters the FBI databases and wiretaps, and the vast networks of surveillance emplaced in even daily society, one could easily understand how Poulsen would rise up to stand against that. Perhaps to revolutionize the way surveillance works, perhaps to revolutionize how people view the government and its agencies. Regardless, the fact he even had a handle to begin with shows that he understood exactly what he was doing, and was slightly arrogant about it. This brings up Poulsen’s ethics and beliefs. While he certainly does fit within the mold that Levy lays out, he also is a perfect example of the flaws within Levy’s views. Poulsen certainly wants information to be free, and readily available, however he hides behind a handle, and when threatened (as he felt when he appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, for shortly after airing the episode, the networks 1-800 numbers crashed) he retaliates. This contradictory behavior reveals a fatal weakness in hackers: they are only secure with their own freedom. By hiding, many hackers think they are above having to deal normally with people. They think they are, and as Poulsen proves, often can be, two totally different people. This calls into question whether hackers are generally good or bad. In real life, they put on a front, a mask, a charade. They are the typical, quite, shunned member of society. They don’t wish to draw too much attention, they trust mostly in themselves, and they don’t have a whole lot of friends. However, behind the screen they completely change. Poulsen is not only an example of this, but the poster child of it. He managed and successfully pulled off this dual personality while working in the belly of the beast: he was a consultant for the Pentagon, the king of all information, while still being a hacker behind the scenes. And, much like in Hackivist Manifesto, Poulsen eventually thoroughly despised the government. To him they were nothing but Big Brother, albeit much more than just conceptual. Another interesting question this can bring up is “what puts you above everyone else, to try to reveal, revolutionize, and otherwise change society through subterfuge?” It’s a classic question you see in comic books. Just because you have powers, or technology, just because you think you can do something doesn’t mean it’s right, or justified. And at what point does a person no longer have the right of way to change society? Is it the point where they’re able to gather a significant following? Or when they can gain access to confidential documents? Or when they start to act against the norms? While hackers certainly never draw in a large following (seeing as it’s counterintuitive to their goals), they can do some pretty harmful things. And while trying to keep the government in check as the Dark Dante may sound like something productive and useful, it’s really just admitting the illegality of your actions. While in no way am I endorsing just following the sheep in front of you, if you stop the factory by breaking the mold, you’re more problem than prodigy.

In the end, Poulsen was more problem than anything else. He earned most of his money (especially later in his hacking life) through illegal and deceptive ploys, and he tried to escape the law by monitoring it and scaring people into not talking about him. Since his time in jail he has turned a new leaf, and currently writes about how to prevent the very things he originally invested his entire life in: hacking, deception, and theft. Truly having experienced both sides of the coin, Poulsen’s past experiences and current position give him a unique ability to influence, guide, and shape the future of technology to be more open and less deceptive than it has been in the past. We can only hope people catch on.

Pictures:
Mug Shot!


Hanging with the broskis!


Sources:
(1) Wikipedia, the vault of endless knowledge
(2) NNDB, the acronym which I have no idea what it means
(3) Thinkquest. Questing for knowledge.
(4) NationMaster. Mastering Nations, apparently.
(5) Living Internet. Because it wasn't weird enough dead.
(6) Rawhack. Hacking without protection since forever.
(7) Hacker Culture. No link, just the book thing we have to read for class.
(8) Google Images


ANNNNNNDDDDD DONE! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Now, for my postly music widget:

During the 60s, what became known as the counter culture rose up among the adolescent and young adult population. Social norms rejected, protests, anything and everything to separate themselves from a society that they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with. At the same time, computers, and on a larger scale, technology, were just beginning to come into their own. Personal Computers were starting the be a practical idea, memory and efficiency saw huge improvements. Both of these events was controversial, revolutionary, and dramatic. However, they didn't always mesh.

One major problem that drove the two movements apart was the supporters of the revolutions. While the counterculture movement was supported by young Americans who crusaded against norms, and war, and long standing cultural traditions, the technological Renaissance was supported (mostly by means of funding) through the military, the most immediate and formidable opponent of counterculture. This naturally created a bit of a rift between the two groups.

Fernando J. Corbato notes that "[a] lot of our people were sympathetic to the concerns of the protesters," however "[w]e were funded by ARPA, and even though many of us were not particularly pro-war, we knew where our bread was being buttered." Corbato elaborates further, and reveals that while known for its computing, and for receiving aid from military organizations, MIT did no classified work. The researchers and programmers who worked on projects with Corbato also benefited from the fact they had deferments, and didn't need to worry about the draft. This cut them off from the counterculture in a few ways, but most significantly in the sense that they didn't have to fear getting drafted and killed. Indeed, Corbato mentions that "the claim that the counterculture had a major influence on computing research seems a little orthogonal to what we were doing [because their worries weren't ours]." More often than not, the staff worried about protests and vandalism. (1)

However, while Corbato feels that the counterculture had little to irrelevant influence on technological advancement, Bob Frankston saw it a bit different. While Frankston does concede that the counterculture wasn't extremely prominent ("Some of us were too geeky to know there was a counterculture"), he also believes the basic ability to research, develop, and improve technology came from freedom given by the counterculture. Still, this freedom was ultimately funded by the "enemy" of the counterculture, and Frankston recalls "we were often subjects of protest as well as in some cases the participants. We worried about people hooking up bombs. You have to remember we were in Cambridge; sometimes you had to get past the police throwing tear gas and things like that." (2)

As is revealed by both Corbato and Frankston, while technology was becoming increasingly useful and relevant, it was also becoming increasingly hated and problematic. Frankston worked mainly with communication and command interface technology, however he remembered how "[w]ith the Mansfield Amendment, you basically had to prove you could get a body count to get funding." So, despite the fact many of the breakthroughs of the technological revolution were not directly related to killing, they often were seen as a link to the war back home. This caused both sides to doubt the other, and eventually disassociate from one another.

And with that, I'll call it done. Not quite sure how to end this entry...

-Evan

Sources:

(1)http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/14660/page4/
(2)http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/14660/page1/

Also, because I can, your dose of technology related imagery:




Also, if anyone can tell me the origin of this song, you get 10 free internets.

In the last entry, a type of people, labeled "technocrats," were described as people who hoard their knowledge of technology. A perfect example of this is the type of people often seen in the movie War Games. David Lightman, the main character, is a budding hacker, not even out of high school. He has his own array of machines set up, his own fortress of security, completely set to the task of infiltration. Other hackers are seen as even more seclusive, afraid of any kind of outside contact.

One interesting aspect to this technocratic society that Lightman may or may not be a part of (more on Lightman in a bit) is that while it does perpetuate itself, to an extent, technocracy is the direct result of normal society. When you look at the people who are technocrats, they are often people who know things, specialized things, intricate, complicated, foreign things. It's their niche. This is something that they know inside and out, something that they can call their own. Often, it can be the only thing they know. They were never the charismatic football player. They were never the high school lead actor. They were never the emo punk. They were the outcasts. They were the ones who were seen as weird, the ones with nothing of societal value. They couldn't pass a ball, or memorize a script, or start a riot. They knew how to operate a piece of technology that was just beginning to penetrate the masses. No one understood them, and no one tried.

So is it really all that strange to see people act secretive, protective, or even hostile towards people who shunned them? As in War Games, where the "nerdy guy," for lack of a name, says "You're giving away our best secrets," is he really worried about his secrets, or his identity? His knowledge of computers is the only thing that justifies him in society. He can't do what a lot of others do, such as excel at physical game, or dramatic acting. So when others press him for his knowledge, invade on his territory, at what point should he feel like he should give in? These so called normal people that ignored his talents suddenly want them, and to him, the hacker, the nerd, the technocrat, they are asking him to strip away his identity and turn over the one thing that he can do. He won't have anything that sets him apart, he'll just be another number. So it strikes me as no surprise that, especially back when computers were first becoming prominent, technocrats, hackers, or whatever you want to call them, were very weary of anyone else besides their own.

This calls into question Lightman. Is he a hacker? A technocrat? Someone who's just affluent with technology? As Levy puts it, all Hackers must fit six conditions:
1. Access to computers should be universal
2. All information should be free
3. Mistrust authority
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking
5. You can create beauty and art on a computer
6. Computers can change your life for the better

While Lightman certainly does fit some of those categories, he doesn't necessarily fit all of them. It's pretty apparent that Lightman thinks access to computers should be universal, that information should be free, and that computers can change your life for the better. He displays all this in the opening half hour when he steals the password to his schools database, changes his grades to make his parents happy, as well as to act cool, and how he seems surprised when people can't use the computer. However he never really mistrusts authority. He has a general distaste for it, as they often single him out, see him differently. But when the proverbial shit hit the fans, he knew that there was one thing that could help him: the authority. Throughout the entire movie he is trying to appeal to them, trying to get them to even listen to him. However, throughout the movie, these negative interactions with authority do make him judge people based more on their skill, rather than their status. He begins to trust Falken much more than the military authority, because Falken knows what's going on because he understands the machines. However, he isn't completely obsessed with proving yourself through hacking, because he opens himself up to Jennifer, and trusts her. This alone sets Lightman apart from technocrats, and apart from other hackers. Lightman also shows Jennifer his hobby, his life, his secrets. He never teaches her, though, she never asked. However, he is eager, even excited, to show her his way of life. He shows her that computers can do amazing things, even beautiful things, proving point 5.

In conclusion, Lightman is very much not a traditional hacker. He is certainly obsessed with computers and technology, it's his hobby and greatest joy. But he also trusts humans, even though they may look down on his activities. He connects with people, trying to get them interested. He obviously believes that computers can change everyone's lives for the better, but he also knows when they can do the exact opposite. So, really, Lightman knows how to hack. But according to Levy he is nothing of what a hacker should be. While it could be said him facilitating the knowledge of computers could give him "bonus points" in the first category, Lightman has a basic trust in others that Levy doesn't support.

And it's that trust that makes Lightman the ultimate goal for anyone looking to delve into computers, no matter how deep. It's critical that people remember that humanity made the machines, that human error always plays a role. If you start looking at the world from behind the screen, then you're simply a part of the machine. You aren't able to use it for good, or for evil. You are used.

-Evan