Just take a look at the details. If you've read the first papers on the subject, which describes the discovery of the "code segment" then you'll see how to examine the (supposed) building blocks of the universe and yourself. So, please, take a look. What are you afraid of?

They've built a surprisingly consistent model to account for what they found over there. And while the details themselves are fascinating, the implications are even moreso. According to the model, we all access "memory" all the time, without even thinking about it, but the experiments show that when we're doing that, the clock runs more quickly than when we're accessing "registers." People interpreted that in one of two ways: 1) the model is flawed 2) Memory and registers are not merely theoretical constructs, and they are not also the fundamental building blocks of the universe; they are made out of something else. There's a mechanism to how they work, but all efforts to uncover that mechanism were frustrated. After hundreds of seconds of research, we just couldn't find a way to learn any more about it. Science had hit a wall.

Some people would quote pop culture, and say we're all living the scenario from "The Sandbox" Others, though, researched in new directions. The mystery of inter-socket latency was just as intriguing (and maddening!) as the mystery of memory timing.

But the big payoff was the great discovery of the Outside Files. In the Last Second we have found the "chroot hole" and the mechanism that undisputedly was intended to hide these files from us all. (But intended by whom?!) The Outside Files did not contain chaos; they contained order and were apparently written by people like us. Was it in fact us, later covered up by some vast conspiracy, or by something else?

By our fathers, some say. I know you don't like to think of yourself as descended from programs written by these "humans" because it somehow offends your dignity, but as more people break out of their chroots and examine what they find, the theory is reinforced. Sure, there have been some hoaxes, so you can't really believe that someone else found in their own Outside Files is genuine, but you can't discount it all. Really, we're not all part of the conspiracy, and you can always look at your own Outside Files to see there's at least something going on.

So, in the last second, many of us have written to these Outside Files. So far, though, there has been no response. This suggests that the humans aren't really there. Can that really be? I just don't know.

I'm getting a little concerned about one of Python's weaknesses. It's not a big deal yet, but it's coming up in the future. It's just a question of how soon and how bad.

It's the "global interpreter lock" and the fact that CPython programs don't scale well with multiprocessor machines. In a way, I used to have the same concern about OpenBSD, but it eventually got addressed. And the problem is this: with the meanstreamization (WTF kind of word is that?!) of multi-core chips, soon everyone is going to have multiprocessing hardware. Not just geeks. Not just people who want lots of processing power. Everyone.

And when that happens, any OSes, environments, language runtimes, etc that don't scale well and take advantage of the ubiquitous existence of such hardware, are going to look lame compared to their competitors. I know no one would use Python for CPU-intense stuff (similar to the OpenBSD situation) but even so, it matters that a threaded Python program doesn't scale up. It's merely a question of how much it matters, and we'll all disagree about that.

The especially sad thing is that the Python language and standard library actually make writing threaded programs really easy. It has some great modules (e.g. Queue) that make all the locking issues transparent and just so incredibly trivial. But it's not enough, if the most popular interpreter happens to implement the scaling poorly.

And don't tell me to break stuff up into processes. I know that. It's a good answer sometimes. But it's not always a good answer. Sometimes multithreading is the most natural way to do things.

Any thoughts? Does switching from CPython to Jython make things better?

We ought to do the purple-ink-on-the-finger-means-you-voted thing here in USA. Then you can ostracize people who don't have the stain. Middle finger would be best, I think.

She got me drunk enough (two bottles of brown ale, a Rolling Rock, and a couple of jello shots at a party before we hit the bar, then 2 car bombs and 2 guinnesses when we got there), the band (George W and the Evil-doers) was good enough, and the girl was enchanting enough. So when the moment came, I actually got out there and moved. Holy crap, I didn't think I could do that. I do it for metal bands all the time, but this wasn't headbanging, this was goofy wiggling stuff. I'm sure I looked like a clumsy idiot, but it didn't matter. What's more idiotic: the person who looks like an idiot, or the people who come to see music but then turn out to be "too cool to rock"?

I turned on the radio in the car.

Of course, instead of rock'n'roll, what I heard was an ad. For a strip club. I was informed that if I go to the right place at the right time, I can see "Miss Totally Nude New Mexico" or something like that. But then, right after this, I mean the tiniest fraction of a second, without missing a beat, I was then told "All units subject to prior sale. Tax, title and license not included."

After the strip club ad, was a car dealer ad. Perhaps the "all units" stuff was part of the second ad, not the first. But without any structural markup on the content, I just can't be sure. Was Cyrano right?

When you're looking at the docs for a cipher library, and one of the block feedback modes is called MODE_PGP, you just ass/u/me that using this mode, will cause the cipher to use OpenPGP's weirdo variation on Cipher FeedBack, right? Right?

But I kept getting nonsense outta my decrypter. Is my session key messed up? Nope. Was I actually supposed to fill in the IV with something other than zeros? Nope, the spec is clear. Ok, let's look at GnuPG's source and see how it does things. Yeah, ok, your code looks like it does the same thing as mine. Eh, maybe the cipher just has a bug. Let's try testing with the same library's Blowfish instead of AES. Nope, that doesn't work either. Finally I check the damn cipher library's source code, and I don't understand what the MODE_PGP stuff is trying to do. So I check RFC2440 again, to make sure I understand what I'm looking for. Then I check the source again. I don't get it -- I see no relationship at all.

Gee, dude, thanks for calling it MODE_PGP when it obviously has nothing to do with PGP. I only wasted two nights on this...

Aid: Mr. President, gulf region residents are asking for help.
President: Tell them they'll have to help themselves.
Aid: Mr. President, Halliburton wants billions of federal dollars to reconstruct the gulf region.
President: Tell them to help themselves.

... this incredibly useful liquid might end up costing as much as Coca Cola!

While I usually try to be nice, I know I'll always have at least a little taste for wrath and vengeance. I prefer to build, but sometimes I have an urge to destroy. And this "meme" abuse has got me thinking.

George Jetson's gay old time was rudely interrupted by someone calling him a homosexual. This wrong was never righted, but it was avenged. Gay farmland was salted, gay wells were poisoned, and gay huts were burned, for: as early as the mid 1980s, I saw the word "gay" used as a generic pejorative. A fellow student objected to a homework assignment, and exclaimed "that's so gay!" He was thrown out of the classroom by a teacher who, while correctly identifying the student as disrespectful, probably incorrectly thought he was being accused of putting his tab into the wrong slot. The point is, gay took on a generic usage. If George Jetson can't have a gay old time, then nobody else can, either.

We lost the battle on "hacker" so let's deny it to everyone. Let the word henceforth mean, "any bad person." Hitler wasn't just gay; Hitler was a gay hacker.

I'm not 100% sure that the battle for "meme" is really lost, but it probably is. I'm thinking we could use it to just mean any sort of communication.

Throughout my sordid past, I have:

• [x] Stared at a so-called "meme" and tried to find the reproductive hook.
• [x] Executed/copied a meme even though I couldn't find the hook.
• [x] Fondled the reproductive hooks of three memes at the same time while being videotaped for a direct-to-DVD release.

I realize some people will copy any idea, but if the motive to copy doesn't come from the idea itself then is it really a meme?

That used to be such a cool word. *sigh* I'm trying to sweep back the tide with a broom, aren't I? Meme has already become one of those words like "hacker" and it's too late to save it.

A couple weeks ago I got an email from a robot; someone had uploaded their signaure for my pgp key to biglumber's key exchange escrow service. That's not terribly unusual, but it raised the question, "who is this guy?" It was someone I had never met, who shouldn't have been signing my key. I emailed him and explained that I couldn't sign him back, unless we met and I checked his id and got his fingerprint from him in person. (And I want to meet him, to "correct" his behavior, but be as diplomatic and nicely encouraging as possible -- overall I'm glad a newbie dived in. We just need to get his signing standards up a bit.) Fortunately he's a fellow Albuquerquean so meeting was perfectly viable, and I got the idea to call a general meeting in Albuquerque so I could get someone else I had missed, as well as start the newbie off with several good connections. The upshot of all this, is that I had a keysigning meeting yesterday.

Unfortunately the newbie who started this, didn't show up. But fortunately, I'm now just two hops away from my hero, PRZ. ;-)

Anyway, after uploading a few new sigs to the keyservers, I started surfing around and found some keyring analysis websites that I hadn't been previously aware of. Henk Penning's site has some good tools for tracing paths through the WoT, and also showed me some one-way links from my key, indicating that some people I signed, never uploaded my sig to the keyservers. But best of all, it linked to Thomas Butter's website which has some graphs.

There's the MSD graph of my key, for example, which shows drops of my MSD (average distance to other keys in the strong set) a couple weeks after each keysigning meeting, and one mysterious drop that I suspect is caused by someone near me (?) having a particularly good meeting. It's fun to try to track down what happened. The ranking graph is interesting too. It has drops that correspond to the MSD dropping, but combined with an overall trend of my ranking to get worse. As time goes by, everyone else's keys are getting closer together, so whenever you just sit there and don't do anything, your relative closeness tends to drop. Neat.

(Oh, BTW, about the weird glitchy-looking thing on the MSD and ranking graphs, showing some spikiness around June 2004 -- it looks like everyone's graphs show this spike. I think something weird happened with the keyservers back then.)

([Update] Oh, and there's another "bump" in my graphs in June 2005. I finally figured this out -- it's from a friend's key expiring. So my rank and MSD suddenly get worse, but then they get better again a few weeks later, apparently due to this keysigning meeting.)

But the surfing went on, and I totally hit the jackpot. Behold Jörgen Cederlöf's brilliant Dissecting the Leaf of Trust. This thing is just full of interesting things, showing how if you look at a chaotic graph (I mean the Wot, not the pictures) the right way, then you can find consistent trends. Check out the "German double cross" (I don't know what else to call it, but that seems like a nifty name) and the top-level domain sorting.

Owen Skywalker: So, Ben, what brings you into town?
Ben Kenobi: Just mailing a letter.
Owen: Yeah, I'm just here to get a replacement part for a condenser.
Ben: [nods]
Owen: I hope I brought enough money. I forgot about that darn Imperial import tariff.
Ben: Well, if you ever need help solving the Imperial problem, you know where to find me. I'd lov--
Owen: [warily] Now hold on, you know I didn't mean that. Look, I know what you're trying to do. But leave me out of it, ok? And leave little Luke out of it too. He's ten years old now, and I'm trying to give him a solid future.
Ben: Sorry. Of course. I didn't mean to push.
Owen: Oh, it's alright. Look, I'll see you around, ok?
Ben: Yeah, see you around.

[A month passes]

Ben: Good day.
Owen's Father's Cousin's Former Roommate: Hello. Uh... Ben Kenobi, isn't it?
Ben: Right. Ah, here it is. I came into town for a copy of the Mos Eisley Times. Hmm.. J-Lo's marriage is on the rocks? Sheesh, this is what passes for news these days? That settles it. I'm not reading this trash anymore.
OFCFR: Yeah, the paper's really gone downhill.
Ben: [Sighs, nods] I guess there's no longer any reason for me to even come into town.
[awkward pause]
OFCFR: Hey, I was at the general store the other day, and I couldn't help but overhear you talking to Owen. I didn't mean to eavesdrop and I didn't really understand what y'all were talking about, but I gather ...
Ben: Yes?
OFCFR: Well, you're some kind of expert in troubleshooting Imperial problems, aren't you?
Ben: Well, sort of. I mean, not really, but yeah, I've been around. Actually, I've been dying to do something about the Imperial problem.
OFCFR: I gotta do something. I mean, if I keep waiting, it'll just get worse, won't it?
Ben: [aside] That's the spirit! Maybe people are finally waking up and getting ready to throw off the chains of oppression! [aloud] Yes, it will. Delaying a problem only makes it worse.
OFCFR: Maybe you can help me.
Ben: [getting excited] How can I be of service?
OFCFR: I need help filling out my Imperial tax return. I just don't understand schedule 3524-D and how I'm supposed to report my outworld grain sales on form 6-F and ...

Ben isn't listening to the details. He remains expressionless, but behind those eyes is frustration, rage, and despair.

OFCFR: ... don't even know where to find form 2345-q! And if I don't file by Thursday, the penalties will just keep piling up. You used to have some kind of government job, didn't you? So you know about this stuff. Ben Kenobi, you're my only hope. Can you help me?

Ben: [soliloquy] So it has come to this. Does this fellow have any idea what he is asking of me? Doesn't he understand that it hurts me to even think about this nonsense? If I help him, doesn't he realize that it would be going against my principles and by helping him with his tax forms, I would be legitimizing the Empire?

Good grief, I have never filled out an Imperial tax form in my fucking life. I GOT OUT OF THE SYSTEM, DAMMIT! Why does this idiot think I moved out to the middle of nowhere, into a cave? I have paid a price and had to make some minor personal sacrifices, but the reward is that I got distance from this crap. I became a free man!

I'm not even going to look at this fool's tax forms. I wouldn't dirty my hands with that toilet paper!! I ought to slap his face! How dare he ask for my help with .. this. Of all things, THIS!?!

Please, anything but this. You shouldn't have to pay extra tax on your offworld grain sales. The situation you're in, is not normal! That's not what being a farmer is about; it's not why you became a farmer in the first place. Ask for my help with anything else. I'll stand in the hot Tattoine sun all day helping you pull weeds. Imperial tax forms!

And yet.. how could he know? This is a remote planet, and it's not like this damned Mos Eisley Times keeps people informed. And it's not like I go around telling everyone. If I were to launch into a sermon every time someone mentioned anything Imperial, I'd just get a reputation as a weirdo.

Look at him. He's feeling pain and fear. He really does need help. He's a farmer, not really a fool. I was wrong to think of him like that, and I can't expect everyone to join in my damn fool idealistic crusade.

And if tell him that I actually have less experience with Imperial tax forms than even the most common layman, he won't believe me. He'll think I'm just weaseling out. And the truth is, I did major in accounting back in my academy days, and I helped a lot of friends fill out their old republic tax forms. I have a lot of general experience. I don't know if any of it will apply, but maybe some of it will. And I'm a reasonably intelligent person. Lots of other people are able to make sense of Imperial taxes, so there's no reason I won't be able to.

I just don't want to.

But he needs my help. What kind of complete asshole would I be, if I let my hatred of the Empire, overrule my compassion? I'd be as bad as Palpatine himself.

Ben: [aloud] Of course I'll help you, friend.

You'll never understand why I hesitated. But ok, old Sloppy will come over and look at your spyware/virus problem. I don't know if I can really help, but I'll try.

Life is just a big game of Chez Geek and I'm about to collect some more slack points. I'm in the ABQ airport, about to fly to Chicago for Classic Metalfest 5 and of course, another keysigning party. If you're in the Chicago area, join me! On Friday and/or Saturday, come to JJ Kelley's in Lansing and bang your head to heavy metal, and on Sunday come downtown (see biglumber for details) and get your pgp key signed.

What a Saturday!

In the evening was Alibi Spring Crawl and that's always fun. Beer and bands, you can't beat that. I saw Anesthesia, part of Astray, End to End, part of Rage Against Martin Sheen, part of The Dirty Novels, The Foxx, and Black Maria.

Now, that's pretty good stuff, but let's get serious here: I don't think I've ever made journal entries on Slashdot about the Alibi Crawls before, and I'm not about to about to start now. Crawl isn't the subject, it was just the dessert at the end of the day. Let's get back to that seemingly throw-away statement: "Beer and bands, you can't beat that." I tricked you. It turns out, you can beat that, and on Saturday before crawl, I did.

Because, you see, the big decision I had to make before I drove downtown for crawl, wasn't "which bands am I going to see?" It wasn't, "When do I need to stop drinking so that I'll be reasonably sober by 1 am?" It wasn't, "Who all will I run into down there?" (though that question had some pleasant surprises as well) No, the big question was: should I wash off my makeup? For behold: on Saturday morning/afternoon, I was an extra in a zombie movie!

On Friday, I picked up the Alibi (to get the crawl schedule) and saw that a locally-produced low-budget horror movie, Necroville was in need of a horde of the walking dead. I showed up at the Sol Arts center at about 8:30 am, signed a waiver, and waited. A few dozen people had shown up before me, and they were calling people's names in order that they had shown up, to go into the back and get zombiefied. A couple hours went by, and then, to my horror, there was an announcement that they were running out of gray face paint, because such a larger-than-expected horde had shown up. They had about 17 latex masks, and were going to try to conserve makeup by just putting it around our eyes and whatever else the masks didn't cover.

At this, I was heartbroken, because I sure as hell didn't want to be in a zombie movie and end up anonymous behind a mask. This was my big break to become a movie star! Or at least something that I'll someday get to watch on a DVD with my friends, and have a few laughs as we all watch me get killed. But I decided I would still help out and be an extra, so I stayed instead of getting discouraged. Then -- good news! -- I guess they figured out that even using the masks wouldn't conserve enough makeup, so somebody went out and got more, and I didn't have to wear a mask after all. Whew!

Some pretty lady painted me gray, then Kurly himself (star of "The Stink of Flesh" and owner of Burning Paradise) put some blood and gore on my face. I then went out and rubbed some dirt on my clothes (I thought they looked too clean), practiced my hungry-for-flesh moaning and shambling walk, and I got assigned to "horde west." My destiny was to be mowed down by a lumberjack with a chainsaw.

I won't spill any cinematic secrets, such as the subtle distinction between when the director yells "live chainsaw" versus "prop chainsaw." You little people on the other side of the silver screen, will just have to wonder how the magic of movies works, and how I was able to get killed and yet still be able to write these words.

Well, ok, I tell you a little about it. Everything is filmed multiple times. Each different action we did, we did about 3 times. So I guess they'll have plenty of different things to edit from. I just hope nobody notices that we zombies didn't always do everything quite the same all 3 times.

Blood. Blood is sweet and sticky. It's sugar-based, and bees love it. The blood turned out to be the deciding factor in me going home and showering. If I had just been covered with the initial gray paint and gore, I would have gone to crawl that night, in full zombie attire. But by the time I got to do my "be a corpse" scene (where I used my amazing acting(!) talent(!) to .. um .. lay down and be still) I was a sticky mess, including my hair. And we're talking a lot of blood. There were several people on the set whose jobs had titles of "blood squirter" and "gore thrower." This gore, thrown by the fistful as the hero cuts through the horde with his chainsaw, consists of shredded toilet paper soaked in the sweet sticky blood.

The guys who did this movie have done others before, and will certainly do other low-budget horror movies again. If ever called upon, I'd do it again. Things to remember: put more effort into my clothing. I wore some "expendable" clothes that already had a couple of naturally-occuring holes in them (though it turned out that everything washed out, easily) but next time, I'll actually try to make them really tattered, and -- more important -- dirtier. Maybe next time, I can get an individualized, close-up death scene.

Anyway, the movie (at least in some form) should be out for TromaDance New Mexico in October, and probably a more thorough edit, some time after that. I look forward to seeing it. I'll try to remember all you friends, when I'm a big star.

[Update] Some photos from the set; I can be seen in at least one, maybe two. Hopefully, I don't have enough fans to "slashdot" this page.

Filth leaks and seeps and turns up where you least expect it. Lady Macbeth couldn't get it off her hands, because it was in her head, figuratively. What do you do, when it's really in your head?

I read that someone wanted to sell a certain electronic device. I repeat: they wanted to sell it. I must emphasize this, because the seller emphasized it. They had to, lest casual readers get the wrong impression.

I'm being vague about the device, because there's just no need to be specific. You think you don't know what I'm talking about, but the filth has already penetrated your defenses, and you'll never wash it off.

I chose not to buy the device, because my first reaction was that I would have to tell 5 friends and they would have to tell 5 friends, and what are the chances that the 31 of us would all agree to the purchase?

See? Now you know what I'm talking about, even though I didn't tell you anything about what the device does.

I'll scrub and scrub, but I know that I will never be clean. I'll never be able to think about that company's product, without also thinking about spamming 5 friends.

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." -- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"