CRYPT NEWSLETTER 44 August -- September 1997 Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.) INTERNET: 70743.1711@compuserve.com crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt Mail to: Crypt Newsletter 1635 Wagner St. Pasadena, CA 91106 ph: 818-568-1748 Who reads Crypt Newsletter: ========================== The great majority of Crypt Newsletter readers do it on company time. While there are accesses at all hours, heaviest usage and downloading of current issues occurs during U.S. business hours, beginning at around 7:30 EST and continuing to 4:40 Pacific time. Readers of Crypt Newsletter log in monthly from organizations like Lucent Technologies, Loral, Lockheed, MITRE Corporation, MITRE Technology, NASA-JPL, Midwest Research Institute, Electronic Data Systems, Intel, Digital, CSIRO, Science Applications, Unisys, the World Bank, Fujitsu, DuPont, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Boeing, FermiLab, the US Dept. of the Treasury, the Department of Energy, the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the EPA [?!], Disney [?!?], Oak Ridge National Lab, Argonne Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley, Vandenberg AFB, China Lake Naval Weapons Research, the SPAWAR Submarine Command Office, the Pentagon and many anonymous U.S. military Internet domains that refuse open telnet connections and "finger" queries. Others log in from media organizations like the BBC, The Bloomberg Business News Service, New York Times, the Sacramento Bee, various newspapers from the hinterlands, Federal Computer Week, The Net magazine, and The Age, too. Crypt Newsletter articles may not be copied or reproduced in or on other media, on CD-ROM collections of data, or offered - in part or in toto - as part of any database, data survey, information or research service for pay without consent of the editor. Rates based on word count are reasonable. Queries by e-mail are welcome. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ Contents: Crypt Newsletter #44 ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ THIS ISSUE NEWS Perversions of science: Non-lethal weapons and restaurant software "Underground:" An Australian book on hackers burns the mind Paranormal memoirs found in the Hudson Institute's bathtub More memoirs found in a Pentagon bathtub On hacks and hackers: Stereotypes furnished by Associated Press Reuters as an instrument of corporate marketers It's about computer time, it's about a man in a funny place MISCELLANY Letters page -- We get letters! Crypt Masthead Info Credits/Acknowledgment
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PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE
Recently, US News & World Report featured a cover story on the weird world of non-lethal weaponry. Regular Crypt Newsletter readers know this translates to electromagnetic pulse, infrasound, ultrasound, and other assorted perversions of science which military planners and futurists dream of weaponizing.
In a fascinating development, the US News & World Report article cited a Huntington Beach, California, company called Scientific Applications and Research Associates (SARA).
The company is said to lurk in an industrial park -- developing weapons to turn your bowels to mush. Company CEO Parviz Parhami implied his company's inventions might work in anywhere from two to ten years. They're ". . . just one more tool," he screeched for US News. "Like any tool, I suppose this can be abused." Parhami suggested they be used for humane purposes but the story did not vigorously indicate what these might be.
Interestingly, SARA has a Website (www.sara.com). Cryptic and brief, the company uses a clutch of clever euphemisms for its development work in what it dubs "Future Technologies."
"SARA is engaged in advanced technology development for future applications . . . new objectives are emerging that include limited effects technology (LET), low collateral damage, incremental denial and area/perimeter monitoring and defense," reads the site. This refers to the development of infrasound guns and resonators for use against people, and the site continues, "Included is our development of compact, high power infrasound generators for the US Army as a potential (Crypt News emphasis added) non-lethal weapon . . . "
Further, the company brochure states its interest in the development of "compact high energy laser technologies," another area with a non-lethal spin-off: the controversial blinding laser. And, no discussion would be complete without the mention of electric rays: "Other SARA future technology areas include electromagnetic pulse weapons, directed/triggered electric discharges and intense low frequency electromagnetic fields."
All of these things are listed under "future technologies" and "development." There is no insistence they even exist. However, one product that SARA does say it sells, and Crypt News is not making this up, is Restaurant Master, software designed to help you run your restaurant business.
If you are a computer programmer or hardware engineer in need of work, SARA is interested in hearing from you. Of course, you will have to be an American citizen. And it would be helpful if you already had multiple security clearances for working on Department of Defense black projects. In addition, you will have to have the mental agility -- or lack of it -- to be able to work for supervisors who can rationalize the development of restaurant managing software and potential weapons for inducing prostrating or possibly lethal diarrhea in civilians, all under one roof.
And if this is not sufficiently "mad scientist" to suit your fancy, consider that U.S. News and World Report interviewed the Pentagon's Charles Swett -- who is not a scientist -- but who nevertheless was attributed by the publication to maintain that the military plans "to conduct human testing with lasers and acoustics in the future . . . and that the testing will be constrained and highly ethical."
If true, Crypt News poses these questions:
If the projects are classified in the Pentagon's black budget how can it be assured that human testing will adhere to informed consent laws and protocols for conducting research on human subjects? As an exercise, review historical examples of unethical military testing of weapons on human subjects -- for example: Japanese testing of microbial pathogens on prisoners of war during World War II, U.S. military testing of poison gas on soldiers during World War II, U.S. military testing of the effects of atomic bomb detonations near troops in Operation Tumbler Snapper (1952), Operation Upshot Knothole (1953), the Smoky Test Shot (1957) and the Galileo Test Shot (1957).
And if a soldier or volunteer is injured or killed while being a test subject for such a classified research project, what assurances exist -- other than the blandishments of Pentagon-Charles-Swett-types -- that proper scientific overview by the unbiased was conducted, or that his family will even be able to find out what occurred during a particular experiment?
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AN "UNDERGROUND" BOOK ON AUSTRALIAN HACKERS BURNS THE MIND
Crypt News reads so many bad books, reports and news pieces on hacking and the computing underground that it's a real pleasure to find a writer who brings genuine perception to the subject. Suelette Dreyfus is such a writer, and "Underground," published by the Australian imprint, Mandarin, is such a book.
The hacker stereotypes perpetrated by the mainstream media include descriptions which barely even fit any class of real homo sapiens Crypt News has met. The constant regurgitation of idiot slogans -- "Information wants to be free," "Hackers are just people who want to find out how things work" -- insults the intelligence. After all, have you ever met anyone who wouldn't want their access to information to be free or who didn't admit to some curiosity about how the world works? No -- of course not. Dreyfus' "Underground" is utterly devoid of this manner of patronizing garbage and the reader is the better for it.
"Underground" is, however, quite a tale of human frailty. It's strength comes not from the feats of hacking it portrays -- and there are plenty of them -- but in the emotional and physical cost to the players. It's painful to read about people like Anthrax, an Australian 17-year old trapped in a dysfunctional family. Anthrax's father is abusive and racist, so the son -- paradoxically -- winds up being a little to much like him for comfort, delighting in victimizing complete strangers with mean jokes and absorbing the anti-Semitic tracts of Louis Farrakhan. For no discernible reason, the hacker repetitively baits an old man living in the United States with harassing telephone calls. Anthrax spends months of his time engaged in completely pointless, obsessed hacking of a sensitive U.S. military system. Inevitably, Anthrax becomes entangled in the Australian courts and his life collapses.
Equally harrowing is the story of Electron whose hacking pales in comparison to his duel with mental illness. Crypt News challenges the readers of "Underground" not to squirm at the image of Electron, his face distorted into a fright mask of rolling eyes and open mouth due to tardive dyskinesia, a side-effect of being put on anti-schizophrenic medication.
Dreyfus expends a great deal of effort exploring what happens when obsession becomes the only driving force behind her subjects' hacking. In some instances, "Underground's" characters degenerate into mental illness, others try to find solace in drugs. This is not a book in which the hackers declaim at any great length upon contorted philosophies in which the hacker positions himself as someone whose function is a betterment to society, a lubricant of information flow, or a noble scourge of bureaucrats and tyrants. Mostly, they hack because they're good at it, it affords a measure of recognition and respect -- and it develops a grip upon them which goes beyond anything definable by words.
Since this is the case, "Underground" won't be popular with the goon squad contingent of the police corp and computer security industry. Dreyfus' subjects aren't the kind that come neatly packaged in the "throw-'em-in-jail-for-a-few-years-while-awaiting-trial" phenomenon that's associated with America's Kevin Mitnick-types. However, the state of these hackers -- sometimes destitute, unemployable or in therapy -- at the end of their travails is seemingly quite sufficient punishment.
Some things, however, never change. Apparently, much of Australia's mainstream media is as dreadful at covering this type of story as America's. Throughout "Underground," Dreyfus includes clippings from Australian newspapers featuring fabrications and exaggeration that bare almost no relationship to reality. Indeed, in one prosecution conducted within the United Kingdom, the tabloid press whipped the populace into a blood frenzy by suggesting a hacker under trial could have affected the outcome of the Gulf War in his trips through U.S. computers.
Those inclined to seek the unvarnished truth will find "Underground" an excellent read. Before each chapter, Dreyfus presents a snippet of lyric chosen from the music of Midnight Oil. It's an elegant touch, but I'll suggest a lyric from another Australian band, a bit more obscure, to describe the spirit of "Underground." From Radio Birdman's second album: "Burned my eye, burned my mind, I couldn't believe it . . . "
["Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier" by Suelette Dreyfus with research by Julian Assange, Mandarin, 475 pp.]
Excerpts and ordering information for "Underground" are on the Web at http://www.underground-book.com .
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MEMOIRS FOUND IN A THINK TANK BATHTUB
Stanislaw Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" tells the story of a future in which one man is driven to suicide after wandering endlessly in an underground fortress modelled on the Pentagon. "The reader will witness how the fanatical servants of Kap-Eh-Taal created the myth of the Antibuilding, how they spent their lives in mutual surveillance, in tests of loyalty and devotion to the Mission, even when the last figment of the Mission's reality had become an impossibility and nothing remained but to sink ever deeper into the pit of collective madness," Lem writes in the introduction. The Antibuilding is, of course, the "enemy" -- anyone not an insider in Lem's future Pentagon. Inside Lem's military-industrial fortress-gone-mad everyone is either dangerously clueless or suffering from weird delusions. In this world, existence is static. Paranoid fantasies are the lingua franca and no reality intrudes.
Although Lem's story was satire -- an extended joke -- it made for excellent reading. Sometimes the declarations of think tank national security mandarins in service to the Department of Defense are like Stanislaw Lem's fantastic tales -- good reading, especially if you peruse them in a satirical state of mind.
The Hudson Institute, founded in 1961 by one of the prototypes for Dr. Strangelove -- Herman Kahn, recently burped out something fit for a fictional appendix to Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub." Although Kahn is dead, his legacy of Cold War-flavored national security study is still very much alive at Hudson. For example, it should be noted that ex-NSA chief (circa 1985) William Odom is its current director of security studies.
And so it is in this rarefied atmosphere that Mary C. FitzGerald, one of the institute's research fellows, a self-confessed "computer illiterate," came to write about a subject she called "Russian Views on Electronic and Information Warfare."
The Russians, she wrote recently, are planning on using computer viruses delivered over the Net or through laser transmission to smite telephone networks, the control suites of ballistic missile sites and air traffic controller equipment. As proof of the veracity of the plan, FitzGerald cites the story of a computer virus, written by the U.S. military, that struck down the Iraqi air defense network in the Gulf War.
The only trouble with this particular story is that it is, indeed, only that. In fact, it's one of the more persistent myths about computer viruses.
In FitzGerald's report, it reads like this:
"For example, one cannot exclude the use of software inserts in imported gear used in the Iraqi air defense system for blocking it at the beginning of the war." And a few paragraphs on, ". . . Iraq could not use the air defense systems bought in France . . . Their software contained logic bombs that were activated with the start of hostilities."
This particular legend was the result of an April Fool's hoax run amok. Appearing in an April 1991 issue of Infoworld magazine, the Gulf War virus story was a cleverly written joke by reporter John Gantz who called it "totally a spoof." Gullible editors at US News & World Report bit hard and paved it over as a hot scoop. The news magazine subsequently immortalized it in its 1992 book on the conflict, "Triumph Without Victory." Since then it's also been passed on in a number of official U.S. Department of Defense documents.
Unsurprisingly, FitzGerald refused to believe it was an April Fool's joke. The Russians believed it, she said. Experts from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory believed it -- she said. Representatives from Northrop Grumman were coming to visit her because of this paper, FitzGerald said.
"If you think this is a myth why don't you just write an article and get it published by the New York Times," FitzGerald commented tartly. (Actually, Crypt had called to interview her about this for an article in the Netly News on TIME magazine's Pathfinder Net site, not the Times.)
"I don't think it's a myth, based on not only what the Russians say, but on what our people say," FitzGerald added.
FitzGerald's paper is quite detailed, lengthy reading. Portions of it address subjects Crypt Newsletter readers have grown quite fond of.
For example, the use of psychic divination for military intelligence collection is discussed.
"Presently, one can single out four basic directions of military-applied research in the field of bio-energy. First, elaboration of methods of intentionally influencing a person's psychic activities. The second direction includes an in-depth study of paranormal phenomena that are of greatest interest from the standpoint of possible military use -- clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathic hypnosis, and so forth," writes FitzGerald.
"The framework of this phenomenon is quite broad: on a strategic scale, it is possible to penetrate the enemy's main command-and-control facilities [with the clairvoyant scout] to become familiar with his classified documents; on the tactical level, reconnaissance can be conducted on the battlefield and in the enemy's rear area (the 'clairvoyant-scout' will always be located at a safe place). However, problems do exist -- the number of individuals possessing these abilities is limited, and the data received cannot be checked."
Which would seem indisputable.
Telepathic warriors, non-lethal weapons, emp guns, and fantastic applications of science such as the battlefield use of anti-matter and creation of earthquakes and tidal waves with bombs of cataclysmic power are also touched upon by FitzGerald's paper.
"['Geophysical weapons'] are weapons that generate natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, torrential rains, tsunamis, and destruction of the ozone layer. It is possible to trigger earthquakes with underground explosions of powerful nuclear charges . . ." writes FitzGerald of the "Russians" and their alleged belief in the military practicality of earthquake bombs.
And, "According to Russian military experts, using psychokinesis to destroy command-and-control systems and disrupt the functioning of strategic arms is already feasible," writes the Hudson researcher, in a vein similar to John B. Alexander, the former Los Alamos non-lethal weapons and paranormal guru.
"The ability of a human organism to emit a certain type of energy has been confirmed by photography of a radiation field known as the Kirlian effect. Psychokinesis is explained by the subject's generation of an electromagnetic force capable of moving or destroying some object. Studies of objects destroyed as a result of [paranormal] experiments conducted have shown a different form of breakage than under the effect of physical force," reads the Hudson Institute paper.
Further, "Discovering the mechanisms of controlling telepathic hypnosis will make it possible to conduct a direct transfer of thoughts from one person or group of people (telepathic subjects) to a selected audience . . . For example, personnel of an enemy formation executing a sudden breakthrough of defenses, instead of exploiting the success, will try to consolidate on the line achieved or even return to the starting line."
Correct! Enemy formations will be defeated by telepathic command.
"Many 'Western experts,' including military analysts, assume that the country making the first decisive breakthrough in this field will gain a superiority over its enemy that is comparable only with the monopoly of nuclear weapons. In the future, these types of weapons may become the cause of illness or death of an object (person), and without any risk to the life of the operator (person emitting the command). Psychotronic weapons are silent, difficult to detect, and require the efforts of one or several operators as a source of power. Therefore, scientific and military circles abroad are very concerned over a possible 'psychic invasion' . . . " writes FitzGerald.
FitzGerald also writes the Russians have commenced research on a "biological electronic device" -- a machine that not only communicates in human language but also is "an artificial biological field generator," "a bio-electronic transceiver," and a "holographic laser."
"Research has shown that a BED is capable of sensing the specifics of biological radiation from diseased human organs, of influencing the physical and chemical processes taking place within the organism, and of revealing the connections between the cortex and subcortex of the brain. A BED detects a diseased organ, receives its signal, boosts it many times over, and creates a field of the given type of radiation with a large effective range," FitzGerald writes.
Crypt Newsletter translates: A BED is not something you sleep in, it's a killer computing machine that talks, can survey diseased organs and project the electromagnetic field they radiate into someone else, rendering them sick or dead.
Information warriors at the USAF's College of Aerospace Doctrine at Maxwell AFB in Alabama have coined the term "fictive environment" to describe what happens when bogus tales are spun to deceive the enemy during Net war. Ironically, FitzGerald is also an adjunct professor at Maxwell. At Crypt News, we don't call this "fictive environment." We call it being gored by your own bull.
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Afterwords:
1. The trotting out of urban legends-as-fact as well as telepathy, superweapon mythology and the paranormal in military application in non-fiction is hardly new. For that matter, neither is the idea that "the Russians" are interested in cataclysmic transformation of the environment. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, for example, write about these subjects in much the same manner as Mary C. FitzGerald in the book "War & Anti-War."
On page 96 of "War and Anti-War" one can find the entertainingly entitled section "Toward Military Telepathy." In it, the time-honored stratagem of argument from authority -- by the way, also employed in "Russian Views in Electronic and Information Warfare" -- is used to give credence to crack-pot material. In this case, an American general, Sidney Schachnow of the Special Operations Command, is caught mumbling about the development of "synthetic telepathy" by the year 2020. Further, on page 123, in another section divertingly called "Super Plagues," the Tofflers attribute the ingenious plan of melting the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean to Lenin.
[Additional material can be found on the Crypt Newsletter website. Links to the Netly News piece on Mary C. FitzGerald can be accessed from the page as well as the hypertext edition of this newsletter.]
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MORE MEMOIRS FOUND IN A BATHTUB
Lest you begin to think that technological fictions and the mania for paranormal or mind-blowing military applications in direct contravention of common sense that we've read of in this issue are restricted to only a few fringe DoD publications, consider another example harvested from the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a recent Crypt News FOIA request.
In the spirit of the times, "Information Warfare: Legal, Regulatory, Policy and Organizational Considerations for Assurance" (published July 1996) speaks of a number of "information warfare technologies" which appear to exist only in the minds of the people who dreamed up the terms for them.
"Computing with DNA molecules," "protein-based computer," "nanomanipulator" -- these are a few of "emerging technologies" which, of course, will be or could be weapons of information war. The Joint Staff document gives no explanation for any of them.
Typically, at least one urban legend is rolled out as fact. And, so, in the Joint Staff paper, on page 107 under "Adversary Capabilities" the emp weapons "from Russia" chupacabras flashes its goat-sucking teeth. The source, as is common in these cases, is unsupported by recognizable citation. It's also conflated with a partial quote from Boris Yeltsin that actually has nothing specifically to do with electromagnetic pulse -- an argument from authority strategy.
"Marketing materials from Russia offer a wide range of Electromagnetic Pulse weaponry, from hand grenades to mortars. Printed advertisements show the weapons being utilized in several different environments, from office settings to commercial airports," reads the Joint Staff report. "Boris Yeltsin recently stated that 'While maintaining our nuclear potential at the proper level, we need to devote more attention to developing the entire range of means of information warfare . . ."
Pro forma usage in these types of reports also requires that threats, be they electromagnetic pulse hand grenades or Gulf War winning computer viruses, always be attributed to uncited sources, "the Russians," anonymous authors among the Joint Chiefs, "advertisements," "marketing materials," "emerging technologies," and/or "new physical principles." (The latter is commonly brandished by writers with zero scientific training). Anything squishy will serve but never precisely identifiable sources, or thorough technical papers written in clear English and published in mainstream, independent peer-reviewed scientific journals.
This Joint Chiefs of Staff info-war report is credited as a proxy effort by Science Applications International Corporation, a firm that is very aggressively involved in selling info-war protection to the Department of Defense.
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ON MEDIA HACKS AND HACKERS: THE TROUBLE WITH JOURNALISTS IS . . . THEY JUST WON'T STOP
In as fine a collection of stereotypes as can be found, the Associated Press furnished a story on July 14 covering the annual DefCon hacker get together in Las Vegas. It compressed at least one hoary cliche into each paragraph.
Here is a summary of them.
The lead sentence: "They're self-described nerds . . . "
Then, in the next sentence, "These mostly gawky, mostly male teen-agers . . . also are the country's smartest and slyest computer hackers."
After another fifty words, "These are the guys that got beat up in high school and this is their chance to get back . . . "
Add a sprinkling of the obvious: "This is a subculture of computer technology . . ."
Stir in a paraphrased hacker slogan: "Hacking comes from an intellectual desire to figure out how things work . . ."
A whiff of crime and the outlaw weirdo: "Few of these wizards will identify themselves because they fear criminal prosecution . . . a 25-year-old security analyst who sports a dog collar and nose ring, is cautious about personal information."
Close with two bromides that reintroduce the stereotype:
"Hackers are not evil people. Hackers are kids."
As a simple satirical exercise, Crypt News rewrote the Associated Press story as media coverage of a convention of newspaper editors.
It looked like this:
LAS VEGAS -- They're self-described nerds, dressing in starched white shirts and ties.
These mostly overweight, mostly male thirty, forty and fiftysomethings are the country's best known political pundits, gossip columnists and managing editors. On Friday, more than 1,500 of them gathered in a stuffy convention hall to swap news and network.
"These are the guys who ate goldfish and dog biscuits at frat parties in college and this is their time to strut," said Drew Williams, whose company, Hill & Knowlton, wants to enlist the best editors and writers to do corporate p.r.
"This is a subculture of corporate communicators," said Williams.
Journalism comes from an intellectual desire to be the town crier and a desire to show off how much you know, convention-goers said. Circulation numbers and ad revenue count for more than elegant prose and an expose on the President's peccadillos gains more esteem from ones' peers than klutzy jeremiads about corporate welfare and white-collar crime.
One group of paunchy editors and TV pundits were overheard joking about breaking into the lecture circuit, where one well-placed talk to a group of influential CEOs or military leaders could earn more than many Americans make in a year.
Few of these editors would talk on the record for fear of professional retribution. Even E.J., a normally voluble 45-year-old Washington, D.C., editorial writer, was reticent.
"Columnists aren't just people who write about the political scandal of the day," E.J. said cautiously. "I like to think of columnists as people who take something apart that, perhaps, didn't need taking apart."
"We are not evil people. We're middle-aged, professional entertainers in gray flannel suits."
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REUTERS -- INSTRUMENT OF CORPORATE SHILLS
Reuters: an international misinformation vendor.
Usage: By merely changing the use of pronouns within a company promotion, Reuters often swindled its readers in passing off press releases as original news.
---from the "JOSEPH K GUIDE TO TECH TERMINOLOGY"
Late in August, Reuters passed an Iris Anti-virus press release as breaking news. The Iris promotion was hooked to an alert about the OneHalf computer virus, a bug that's now close to three years old.
One of the giveaways was the quote of Iris' marketing manager, Alan Komet, as a technical expert on viruses. In this case, Reuters paraphrased a discussion attributed to Komet on the virus' somewhat unusual ability to encrypt the cylinders of an infected hard disk.
While the average American user has a statistically more likely probability of being smashed flat by a runaway Peterbilt outside his home than infection by OneHalf in 1997, the Reuters piece was written -- like the Iris press release -- to create the impression that only the anti-virus company's software could remove the virus and that it was significant threat to users. Neither are true.
The use of OneHalf as an Iris anti-virus marketing tool was hooked to a new set of promotions for the company's software undertaken in cooperation with US Robotics, Dell, Packard Bell and CompuServe.
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IT'S ABOUT TIME, IT'S ABOUT SPACE, IT'S ABOUT A MAN IN A FUNNY PLACE
by Stephen M. Poole
Telling time should be a relatively simple thing, should it not? After all, we've been doing it for thousands of years -- so why are we facing a Year 2000 problem?
Is it, as one investment advisor insisted a few months ago, that we programmers just don't know what we're doing?
I don't think so. I don't think we programmers can be blamed for this one.
It's the blamed computers themselves.
For some reason, the concept of Time 0 is important to a computer. It's not enough that a computer knows that I'm typing this at 1:50 AM on 08-03-97, way past my bed time -- I've already turned into a pumpkin. A computer must have a Reference. He must know when Time Began.
The problem is, time begins at different . . . well, times.
Under Windows, for example, there are several different ways to measure time. First, there's "DOSTime," which is hours, minutes, and seconds squeezed into a single 16-bit number, based on 1980 as Year 0. Then there's "NetTime," which is the number of milliseconds since 01/01/1970.
(Apple has a really good one: Their networks use the year 2000 as time 0, so right now, all times in the system are actually NEGATIVE numbers. Shoulda known Apple'd be different . . .)
But my personal favorite is "Win32Time," which is a 64-bit number containing the number of 100 nanosecond intervals since January 1st, 1601.
Yes, you read that right. The number of 100 NANOSECOND intervals since 1/1/1601. No Year 2,000 problem here!
Now, Win32 time would appear to be the ultimate in TechnoGeek Time Measurement, especially given that the average PC's clock is only accurate to within a few minutes, at best. But even it won't be enough to forestall the Year 2000 Problem and the resulting Collapse Of All Civilization And Life As We Know It, so there's obviously room for improvement.
Or is there? Would the cure be worse than the disease?
I thought about proposing a new measurement, BBTime, which would be the number of femtoseconds since the Big Bang. But on second thought, I'm just not sure it'd be worth the cost.
For one thing, it would be controversial. The Church would probably insist on something like the number of picoseconds since Adam's creation, but there'd be sectarian battles in affixing a precise interval to his birthday.
Of course, should they agree, there could be daily Adam Updates
broadcast so that we could stay on time: "At the tone, it will have
been 189,345,600,324,568,412,111,245 picoseconds since Creation.
Please synchronize your computer.
And then the real squabbles would begin. Women's groups would say that Time 0 should be based on Eve's creation, not Adam's. Animal-rights activists would insist that Adam Time is too anthropocentric, and would rather have a calendar based from the first butterfly, ARTime. Vegetarians would want time measured from the first corn nut, VeggieTime. Pretty soon, you'd have a million different Times, with each group insisting on its own Time 0. Clocks would become inaccurate. School teachers would become confused. The government would collapse. Grocery stores would run out of milk and Cheezums. It'd be horrible.
So we should leave well enough alone and stick with Win32 time. This means I'll never know precisely when Charlemagne was crowned, but what's a little imprecision against the collapse of civilization?
Postscript:
"What time is it?"
"189,345,600,346,132,167,111,200."
"Oh, I'd better hurry, I have a doctor's appointment at 189,345,600,845,569,861,321,400!"
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LETTERS ======= AND NOW, A FEW WORDS ABOUT SCIENCE APPLICATIONS You will die for the suffering you have done to the people of America and stop your evil plans now or I will E-mail the Pentagon or FBI and you will go to jail! Gerald Lee READERS ALSO GREATLY INTERESTED IN CRYPT NEWS' ANALYSES OF EMP CHUPACABRAS Hi Crypt: I've just come across Crypt Newsletter and am in agreement regarding EMP weapons for alleged bank robberies. You would be incinerated if you had a gun capable of performing as advertised against banks, cars, etc. I do wonder about one thing, though. I stumbled upon a number of abstracts written by scientists working on HAARP-related projects. Reading between the lines, I would guess that the true purpose of HAARP is to scramble the electronics of incoming hostiles, probably missiles. Here's the source of some of the abstracts (look for "Intense Microwave and Particle Beams II"): SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering, P.O. Box 10, Bellingham, Washington, 98227-0010, USA. To order books from SPIE, call 360/676-3290, fax 360/647-1445, e-mail bookorders@spie.org, or telnet to spie.org, login SPIE and choose PUBLICATIONS SEARCH Regards, John Bruni Hi Crypt: Your newsletter is always a great read and I think it's good that you are debunking so much of the crap that people are coming up with in these fields. You might be interested in [Carlo] Kopp's paper on EMP Bombs, which, if you haven't seen it, provides some interesting details about possible technologies, confirming your stance that an EMP weapon would probably cause a reasonable amount of localized physical destruction. The URL is http://www.cdsar.af.mil/kopp/apjemp.html I do wonder what impact superconducting technology might have in this area though . . . Anyway, keep up the good work ! - James Morris, Australia STILL MORE ON EMP Crypt: I suggest some of your data on emp guns is exaggerated. High-power microwave weapons, sometimes included in that population by the less informed, DO exist and I can provide photographs if necessary! I recommend visiting my site at www.dallas.net/~pevler for a discussion of the threat these weapons pose society. I welcome any public or private debate on the topic. Ed Pevler KAFKA FAN ENJOYS JOSEPH K GUIDE Dear Crypt: I have long been an ardent fan of the Crypt Newsletter and its ongoing -- albeit despairingly futile -- quest to keep public discourse on the Internet bullshit-free. Until today, however, I had never experienced your "JOSEPH K" GUIDE: AN OCCASIONAL GLOSSARY TO TECH TERMINOLOGY. Holy cow -- what a riot! This is (other than just about any Microsoft press release) one of the funniest things I've ever read on the Net. You hardly seem to be the self-aggrandizing sort, but I think it would be a favor to your readership if you could find some way to plug this _excellent_ feature of your website. (If you don't have the time to think anything else up, feel free to do so by way of this unabashed testimonial.) Best wishes, Mark Albright Allentown, PA [The JOSEPH K GUIDE, which changes when I want it to, is on the Crypt Website at http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/other/josefk.htm Readers are invited to submit their own entries for consideration.] ON BEING PULLED OVER BY THE CYBER PATROL Dear Crypt: Wish I had read your great guest column earlier. 6/19/97 C/NET story by George Smith Banned by Cyber Patrol http://www.news.com/Perspectives/Guest/gs6_19_97a.html Will keep you updated on how we are dealing with similar problems on our terminals in the local public libraries. It's very ironic that our main library building is named for John Henry Faulk because of his efforts on behalf of free speech. Mike Workman ------------------------- -=The Crypt Newsletter welcomes thoughtful mail from readers at crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu. Published letters may be edited for length and clarity or anonymized to protect the naive from themselves.=- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS =============== Rob Rosenberger, editor/webmaster of Virus Myths. Visit -- http://www.kumite.com/myths for a savage read. Alan Dunkin of On-Line Game Review for useful press releases. ------------------------------------------------------------- George Smith, Ph.D., edits the Crypt Newsletter from Pasadena, CA. copyright 1997 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.
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