Saturday, March 31, 2007
Dear Mom: It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope with my new boyfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Dad and you. I've been finding real passion with Ahmed and he is so nice-even with all his piercings, tattoos, beard, and his motorcycle clothes. But it's not only the passion Mom, I'm pregnant and Ahmed said that we will be very happy. He already owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. He wants to have many more children with me and that's now one of my dreams too. Ahmed taught me that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone and we'll be growing it for us and trading it with his friends for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want. In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Ahmed can get better; he sure deserves it!! Don't worry Mom, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm sure we'll be back to visit so you can get to know your grand children.
Your daughter, Judith
PS: Mom, none of the above is true. I'm over at the neighbor's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than my report card that's in my desk center drawer. I love you! Call when it is safe for me to come home.
-An e-mail
1. I can see your point, but I still think you’re full of shit.
2. I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ll bet it’s hard to pronounce.
3. How about never? Is never good for you?
4. I see you’ve set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.
5. I’m really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my way.
6. I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter.
7. I’m out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
8. I don’t work here. I’m a consultant
.9. It sounds like English, but I can’t understand a damn word you’re saying.
10. Ahhhh .. I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again.
11. I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.
12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
13. I have plenty of talent and vision; I just don’t give a damn.
14. I’m already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.
15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.
16. Thank you. We’re all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.
17. The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.
18. Any connections between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Our pale little blue dot
October 2nd, 2006
This is a picture of Earth. Yes. If you look very carefully and closely, you’d see it. Just below the center line, on the right side, bathed in sunbeam. Yes, it’s that speck of dust.
“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
This photo was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it was returning from a space mission. The photo itself would not have been remarkable without the inspiring quote from Carl Sagan (an astronomer), that reminds us of how small we are, even though some times we think that we are the center of the universe, or even, the universe.
Shut Up I Hack You
In case you don't speak German (just as this hacker), I've tried a little translation to English. I might have made some spelling errors, but the original spelling wasn't perfect either. The guy really said "buy buy" in the German version.
For information:
- The dangerous hacker is called bitchchecker and the one being hacked and original author of the comments, who is talking here, is known as Elch.
- 127.0.0.1 is always the IP address of the computer you're currently using; any request there will return to your computer.
- Notice that in Germany we get Daylight Savings Time (DST) earlier than in the US.
The story starts (I'm shortcutting here) with a kid insulting everyone on the #stopHipHop IRC channel. Most people there believed it was rather funny, but it got even more funny...
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
What happened is clear: That guy entered his own IP address in his mighty Hack-Tool and crashed his own PC. This way, the attack on my PC was a failure.
I was already starting to think that I did not have to worry, but a good hacker never calls it a day. Two minutes later he returned.
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-b5cd558e.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
There was a tension in the room... Would he manage, after these two failures, to crash my PC? I waited. Nothing happened. I felt relieve...
Six minutes passed by until he prepared the next wave of attack. Being a Hacker, who usually cracks whole data centers, he knew what his problem was now.
He calls me girly and says only his grandma would use a firewall. I know that elder people are much more intelligent then younger, but I couldn't let that rest. To see whether he really is a good hacker I lie and let everything as it is. I don't have a firewall at all, only my router.
In panic I started the Windows Explorer, my heart beating faster. Had I under-estimated him?
Yes, true, G: and F: were gone. Did I ever have them? Doesn't matter, I did not have time to think, I was scared. bitchchecker was comforting me with a music tip.
Drive E:? Oh my god... All the games are there! And the vacation pictures! I instantly take a look. Everything still there. But the hacker said it was deleted....
Or isn't it happening on my computer?
The guy is good: My CD-drive is allegedly deleted! Bitchchecker turned my ancient disk sucker into a burner! But how did he do this? I'll have to ask him. Some encourage him. He himself is giving advice how to avoid the disaster on my hard drives.
Should I tell him he's not attacking my computer?
Too late... It's 20:22 when we get the last message of our hacker with the alias "bitchchecker". We see that he has a "Ping timeout".
We haven't seen him since then... must be the Daylight Saving Time.
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