At the moment, the useless toy I most desire is a nice looking famiclone. If there were superfamiclones or genesis clones (beyond the little, non-cartridge supporting kind), I'd probably want one of those instead. Don't take this to mean I want to get a famiclone with pirated games. Nothing is farther from the truth.

The reality is, I like the idea of having my own, odd little bit of nostalgia. While currently my family as a whole owns a working original NES, there's something sort of geeky about having perfectly legal, but never the less dubious looking, electronics equipment from another country. It's probably this reason more than any that I bought a Gamepark 32.

Part of celebrating nerdiness/geekiness, to me, is being different in things that others wouldn't even understand how it's being different. I've no doubt that's part of the reason I like Earthbound over Final Fantasy (the other reason being that Final Fantasy doesn't seem to be intentionally corny; there's that whole intentionally B-movie factor that helps it out; of course, a lot of movies try that and somehow fail because they lack the chemistry to be incredibly corny while still endearing).

In that regard, I sometimes notice that I seem to disagree just to disagree, and I'm a bit shaken with the prospect that I'm unwilling to agree with the mainstream. It's not that I think that the mainstream is always right, but I'm equally sure that the mainstream isn't always wrong. It is just incredibly difficult for me, at times, to draw that line where I feel confident I'm making a decision impartial to what group it would place me in.

So should I relish being a geek or just accept that it's merely the label that various others are likely to attribute to me through no intentional action of my own to be labelled a geek. There's nothing wrong with being a geek. But, I'm not so sure that it's okay to take steps to be a geek so you can feel like you fit in. Uniqueness can be an uncomfortable ground to stand on. Siding with a group or broadly rejecting opinions--which are immaterial to anything of consequence--might in the long run be a more uncomfortable ground to deal with.

This is but one of several sections of a story I am working on for a publication that will be known as "Eurohacker" and hopefully printed at some later date. It is a science fiction piece for which various ideas likely will seem familiar to those who read or watch much of any science fiction. If you have any comments of the story presented, please comment. Comments are welcome. Feedback, even trolling kind, at least shows someone read it. And that, to me as an author, is worth a lot.

Section 1

  Weather-worn rocks protruded through the barren brown dirt forest floor. A gentle, gray mist hung throughout the foliage. And young Jay Matherson scrambled forward, scraping with free hand up a steep hill up to the forest plateau. How much of a head start he had, he wasn't sure. Without a clock handy, he was a horrible tell of time.
  It must have been fifteen, maybe thirty, minutes ago when they had caught on. At least, that's as soon as he realized he wasn't alone. Typing on his laptop, he thought he noticed a file change. That couldn't be right, he thought. No one's supposed to be using this account.
  Scrolling back, the change was there and apparent. Someone was there, and they must have noticed by now the changes he made. Maybe they thought it was someone else? And then his connection was terminated. *Shit*, he thought. The only reason they'd do that is if they already knew where he was.
  Quickly putting on a pair of shoes, Jay had grabbed his laptop and took off. If he was lucky, he could get to the other side. At least there, he could blend in. Surely Frank would let him crash at his place.
  Running forward, he started arcing east, hoping to find the bridge. Trudging across the river would ruin his shoes, and he hated the thought of what would happen to his laptop. They didn't make them like this anymore.
  Past trees and the unlikely bush, Jay ran across the Alaska countryside. He hated the chilly winter mornings. Looking back from time to time, he heard the distant hum of an approaching helicopter. Must have been more important stuff than I had thought, thought Jay.
  Only a couple more minutes. Hopefully a couple more minutes. Even having hung around in the forest for long stretches at a time, he still could hardly tell where he was. Hiding out in the forest patch was only good when the hunters went by foot. Few bothered tracking through the forest for long, figuring anyone stupid enough to go willing hang out in the radioactive dump wasn't worth the money to try bringing back alive.
  But Jay knew the radiation wouldn't kill you. Not right away at least. You could survive a few weeks in the forest if you didn't kick up the dust too much and general stayed huddled in one of the rock alcoves. Though near the end, you'd start losing some hair. That was the sign to get the hell out as quick as possible and hope the trackers had given up.
  He still wondered how the trees survived around here, though he supposed they had very deep roots. Their bottom trucks all were a thickly layered black color thinning out to what otherwise looked like a healthy tree. Elm? Oak? Birch? A tree's a tree. He only guessed they weren't dying.
  But back to the problem at hand. The area around the bridge was a clearing. Surely the helicopter would hover around it, waiting for him to cross. Worst of all, it'd kick up a lot of dust, and the last time he had hung out the forest was but a month back. He couldn't wait for long, and he couldn't very well go running through a radioactive dust cloud. The guys at the camp couldn't save him from that much exposure.
  So, it meant trudging across the river. He arced more west, where the trees went out to the water's edge. Hopefully his shoes wouldn't melt too much. But above all else, he wasn't go to let his laptop in the river. Any new one would end his games, with their authorized programs only "feature". It was only a feature to the government. What better way to prevent you tracking the latest toxin dump.
  Not that the toxin dumps were the worst things. But, they were the most persistent. Who was it that was the government's sponsor this year? The contract must be really good to be producing twice as much as last year. Computer chips? Coal harvesters? It had to be somewhere in-between those two, given virtually no other industries still exist. Who needs a real car when you can get a virtual one virtually free?
  Live, grow, and die in the computer world. At first the idea was fun for Jay, Frank, and the others. But, then the crackdowns came. Oh, not the old kind. The new crackdowns just meant a fix and virtual cash dump. If it's virtual cash, it's not really yours anyways, right? And all the new computers began being only able to interface with the computer world. And people who wanted to could continue live in the real world.
  But the real world was boring. You were so fixed on what you could do. So virtually everyone began staying on night and day: working, sleeping, and eating while connected. The hardcore traditionalists stayed offline, though most their children didn't. And a few hacker camps like Franks stayed offline and only dabbled on enough to keep people abreast of the real world.
  Not that most listened. The government would acquire enough provider, there'd be a short spurt of outrage at Frank's virtual newspaper, and then the next day life would go on. Who cared if the government bought another provider? It just meant lower rates, right? And that'd mean I could work a little less at my job, my virtual job.
  And the government knew well enough to never attack Frank and his group directly. Spies like Jay would find an connection on the other side, to be sure we weren't being filtered. Some of Frank's camp was half way around the world, but the majority of us would head out, find a connection, do a little "tweaking" to get past the latest generic blocker, and see if we can spot any trouble.
  Jay had stumbled across a news report that was coming out later today to announce the now future attack by a "hacker" group. It seemed like a good report to make a few minor changes. Would they notice the slight change saying the hackers were sponsored by the government? They had caught Jay's change though, before he had time to clean up the evidence of his break-in.
  Oh well, thought Jay. At least they probably didn't notice the wedge he put in should he or his group have a need to get back in. The next computer audit left them at least a 2 month envelope before they'd have to break in again.
  But breaking in is such a crude way of putting it. You had to massage the system a certain way. Trying to take the metaphorical sledge hammer and smash your way in just alerted them to an attack. That was fun to do, if you were tunneling through one of the mega-corps. But, it was no way to actually find out anything useful. So, you used one hole to carefully watch as people come and go. And if you were lucky, you could tailgate in behind someone with high enough authority to make a small back door for entry.
  Once inside, you quickly looked for any logs to wipe them of your entry and the small hole. Then, you unpacked enough so others who don't know how can't get in as well. Some of the more subtle bugs kept being quietly patched in the process of the unpacking. The last thing you wanted was they system to go down and be audited. Not that the audit would turn up much. But, they were paranoid and did a clean wipe from an independent source undoing the work in a way you couldn't trap.
  Out upon the water's edge, Jay prepared to take the plunge. The water was nice rosy pink today. He hoped it was the happy and cheery pink and not one of the more caustic ones. Shove his pants down into his shoes as best he could and tying the laces to hold them in place, Jay looked down the river.
  As he expected, he could see in the distance a search light peering down around where the bridge was. They'd probably give up soon and go down river more. No sane person would willing go trudging through a pink river. Jay realized just how much sanity he had to give up to get out of their world.
  Placing the laptop on his head and holding it in place with both hands, Jay began his trek across the river.

Through some fluke or post of another person on slashdot (I don't know recall), I recently stumbled across a rather interesting book hosted on MIT: The Hacker Crackdown. Having read through all four chapters and being in the "Afterword", something striking occurred to me that probably should have occurred to others before. That is, why exactly is it that viruses and worms of today are much weaker/simpler than of many years past?

"What?", you ask. You obvious realize that worms and viruses seem to be everywhere and tons of exploited machines are in use all over the place. They certainly don't seem weaker. But, while the large mass of machines are together strong, each individually is quite weak. But, the weakness is not only in its singleness. The weakness is at core in the design of its payload designed to infect others.

The simple reason for this striking weakness is clearly one company's fault: Microsoft. How could they possibly be to blame? Why would I even call it blame? It's not really blame, now, but this is the calm before the storm.

In the past, viruses were transmitted by floppies (and networks, for those lucky few). Over time, BBSs became a major transit though good sysops made sure they didn't keep such badies. This "centralized" control meant more than anything, you were pretty safe even without a virus scanner. But, e-mail introduced the need for person virus scanners, which the public was woefully unprepared for (as well as MS's Outlook Express) and for which virus scanners even now only do a lack luster success at stopping.

This is primarily because viruses spread like word of mouth, much faster than anti-virus makers have time to disect and block their "nasty" payload. In a blink of an eye, millions of systems can be infected and turned into zombies.

The situation isn't much better with worms but for a different reason. Where the first Internet worm took advantage of several unpatched exploits in a few Unix variants, most all since worms have targetted the Windows platform. And partly because of unpatched systems and the sheer near unending need to patch yet another security flaw, many machines become infected and spread on their disease.

These two methods of transmission are so great in fact, just about any programmer can do the work. And with them comes the rapid anti-virus team to remove them. There's no time nor any strong need to make a resistant worm or virus. There is sure to be a new vulnerability or a new way to trick people through some new hole than to labor for a worm or virus designed for attrition.

But, that's the fatal rub. Today, XP SP2 is being rapidly deployed across many XP machines. And while pre-XP machines and various people who never do patch when there are patches available are out there, the new line of Windows will quickly move forward. And assuming the whole user-verifications to e-mail are perfected to everyone's happiness and as generally users become more aware (or at least, the programs they use do), that anonymous and word of mouth virus will slowly die away from a flood to a trickle.

But what does this mean? An end to viruses and worms? Of course not. Some will get through, and the sheer labor and unlikeness of getting through will make the worms and viruses more virulent. Today, most businesses don't give a second thought to installing a security patch to their system without doing a company wide audit of all systems. They know that most worms are harmless, they're not exactly quiet, and though it's possible, it's improbable someone exploited the security flaw prior to the patch.

But in the future, where worms are one in a million, every patch will have to include an audit. Maybe even weekly audits may be necessary. Once a machine is compromised, the author will *not* want to give up his new "0wnage". Techniques like that of Ken Thompson and the infamous login hack will undoubted be duplicated, compromising a system in a way to leave the administrator unware there ever was a problem.

As a result, the security costs will dramatically rise to scour all those systems to make sure they're safe. And the same will be true for Mac OS X and Linux. In a brave new world, having hardware digital signing and no true system-wide administrator account will begin to be the only hope to keep costs down. Are we prepared for this new world?

To start off, I'd like you to know what I made this entry, so here's the story (rather old, which I heard some time ago anyways) which inspired me to finally write something about it: Thong-th-th-thong.

Now, go read the article. Back? Right, so this is just another one of those stupid "Abercrombie & Fitch" stories with this particular instance involving thongs aimed at 10-16 year olds.

It's clear from the Sophie Linnett's point of view, thongs and sex are equal. In fact, it seems that *any* underwear advertisement, short skirts, or nudity is seen as sex. That's partially to do with the hypersensitivity of the US as well as the fact that a lot of advertisers use sex to sell things.

But where does this lead me to issue? For starters, I don't seem to understand the basis for why that's exactly a bad thing (ignoring the larger ramification of all society that it dilutes sex's "power", though not necessarily its importance). For most of America, 10 years is about the age in which children are entering Junior High School. It's also the time that most children are going through puberty (the national average has shifted from 16 to 10 as nutrition has improved). So, if thongs are in fact a relation to sex, why shouldn't children of that age be able to wear such clothes?

The problem is, a lot of people get a queasy feeling about children and sex. I personally learned the basics of sex (man (with penis) + woman (with vagina) + intercourse => baby) before I was even in kindergarten. I also was taught at the same time that a man and woman should love each other and marry first. Regardless of the obvious religious basis of this learning, until I reached puberty and had hormones pumping heavily through my veins, I took such information the same way I took information about Santa Claus not being a real person: it's just another fact of life.

But, if I hadn't been told, would my naivity been innocence? I say, no. I was innocent because I was taught well in ways that kept me innocence. Naivity is another approach to that end, but it's raught with pedophiles and general society which leaves you not innocent but warped by society. So, every time a person comes forth screaming "such and such will warp our children", I realize it'll only warp the children who are never taught anything. Try to stop things like thongs for kids doesn't stop the core problem: parents unwilling to teach their children properly.

Now, this isn't to say that a totally warped society would be conducive to producing a non-warped child, but it can hardly be said to be the case that a specific cut of underwear is the culprit in the downfall of all children.

And I believe the author is probably well aware of this and is instead acting more on their queasy feeling of children and sex. It might be a case of conscious dissonance: ie, the author herself likely finds thongs sexy. Because of this, the author realizes she'll think girls in little thongs are sexy. Because thinking little girls are sexy makes you a pedophile*, she'd have to self-loathe herself because being a pedophile is such an egregious sin. So, I say get over it.

You're not really a pedophile to think that. More so, don't punish others on the assumption they're so naive that they'll do insane things. Instead, *teach them* so that it's unlikely to be a problem. If you believe something strongly enough to follow it, you should be teaching your child why you believe it. They may not follow your path, but you'll know you've taught them well enough that they can find a path they will be content with. That's more important than them being a carbon copy of you.

*A pedophile is the extreme fetish of being unable to have sex without a prepubescent child. Being attracted to the opposite sex when they are capable of producing offspring isn't truthfully unnatural, while it is likely unnatural to be involved with such a person if you're not in the same age group. People who exploit children or men or women do it because they want to be in power, especially in a sexual relationship. Any actual attraction to their prey is secondary.

More importantly, it would seem the case that girls (and some boys) use their cuteness in much the same way as women use their sexuality to "take advantage" of the opposite sex. While actual thoughts are not necessarily traced out as being clearly sexual (especially in the eyes of the junior participant), there is striking similarities to the behavior shown. Children are innocent because they do not possess the biological parts or experience to understand sexuality. Parents, relatives, and friends should not exploit that queasy/good feeling of the cuteness of children unless they're willing to admit that the majority of the harm from sexuality of children is not in the physical act (the except of course being when it is) but in the psychological damage substained from how people perceive sex and a child while discounting the psychological harm of exploiting the looks of a child.

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