BAM! To behold, a public bulletin board, built of both brilliance and barbarity by bastards with boners. This bastion, no mere bulwark of boredom, is a brutal barrage of blistering bullshit, barely benevolent… but behind the bigotry and boobs, beyond the bitter broadcasts of bragging buffoons: here be the body politic. A brotherhood of blasphemy, blessed with more balls than brains, battling the bland, the bogus, the benign. Bedlam? Bring it on. But I babble… better to be brief. You may call me /b/.
– Anonymous

I am bored

I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet. From the days of eWorld, PPP dialup access, 2400bps modems, the excitement when 14.4bps modems came out. Then came broadband. After the tech installed the cable modem, I really didn’t know what to do first - sure, seeing big sites load really fast was nifty. Then came fast Usenet downloads, Hotline replaced the dialup BBS, no more having to first transfer downloads to my ISP and then to my computer. It was great.

Then came bigger and better - Web 2.0, AJAX, MySQL, PHP, and so on. Now, even with 5Mbps downstream at home, things still move slow. BitTorrent, Gnutella, Flickr, YouTube - I’d kill for more speed. Not the 7Mbps I could get from jumping to some sort of DSL package, but the 40Mbps promised by fiber connections.

So I’m stuck with a so-so connection, but on-demand entertainment is lacking. Nothing is on-demand when music and movies can take more than a week to “obtain.” How do I get my fix when I need to kill time, or when I’m just bored?

The answer is /b/.

A chance encounter

This article contains graphic imagery. You have been warned!

I was turned on to /b/ while lurking at Encyclopedia Dramatica. ED is a great source of entertainment and… education, in a sense. While it started out cataloging a lot of LiveJournal drama, it is now the premier repository of Internet knowledge. Of course if you need real information, stick to Wikipedia - for the rest of us with an “Internet” sense of humor, stick to ED.

Now I don’t quite remember how I ended up at ED, but I do recall how hard I was laughing at the definition of Lulz. It was genuinely funny, but strictly geared towards those of us with a sense of humor that has been nurtured by all of the crap on the Internet.

While browsing around ED, I came across their series of articles on 4chan. Not knowing what to make of it at first (as it seemed like a very niche forum) I popped it into Wikipedia:

4chan (Japanese:: Yotsuba, lit. “four leaves” Channel) is an English language imageboard, based on the famous Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. It was first announced and created as an offshoot of the Something Awful forums, but soon attracted anime fans from around the world. On 4chan, many pictures (often related to anime and manga) are posted and critiqued.

Wikipedia goes on to to explain how 4chan is a mix of 35 different image boards, and mentioned something about how UK ISPs shut down access to one of the image boards due to the posting of illegal content. So far, sounds tame.

Now, Encyclopedia Dramatica defines 4chan as:

…an anonymous Japanimation-themed collection of image boards. The site is vaguely affiliated with Something Awful and is a spinoff of the Japanese-only Futaba Channel, the image board of 2ch.

Not surprisingly, most of the image boards consist of hentai. Furries are banned everywhere on the site, with the exception of “/b/”, the “random” board, which has no rules (although mods often delete furry pictures there too). This has led to much internet drama and the creation of the furry-only fchan.

Many catchphrases, such as “sauce plz”, originated at 4chan.
Also, many image macros are created there, being the most popular the O RLY and YA RLY owls.

Alright, now it’s beginning to sound interesting. I love me some offbeat humor. Of note, the only genuinely relevant image board is the /b/ board - the “Random” board:

…the playground of our beloved Internet, those joyful enough to enter here should be well advised to make friends with its inhabitants, for they like to frolick playfully. Residents include racists, pedophiles, Cracky-chan, Desu Desu Desu and Azumanga Daioh fanboys.

So I bit. And I lurked. I stayed removed from the insanity and observed, collected and cataloged. Here is just a sampling of what goes on in /b/, and my thoughts on it.

Keep in mind that this is only a brief glimpse at the state of /b/ - I’ve been following along and selecting the most attention-grabbing pieces for a little over a month.

It’s taking over my brain

/b/ is not quite a forum, not quite a chat room. By definition it is an “image board,” where folks can easily post text along with a picture. It is fast and lightweight. And it is never static.

Spend ten minutes at /b/ and you will be treated to an exhausting amount of material. So much so, that if you delay reading a thread, chances are it will be gone into the ether the next time you reload. It is constantly changing and evolving. What is in good taste and funny at 5pm will be passé by 10pm. With 10 pages of content, there is tons of stuff that gets quickly pushed to the back, while an equal amount of stuff gets an incredible amount of recognition. I’ve even read opinions that “/b/ may as well be one page long, since it moves so quickly.” A post about a guy breaking up with his girlfriend, whether true or not, can generate responses from helpful suggestions to downright electronic assault. A post on the state of Israel will bring up snippets about racism, religion, abortion, and sometimes, Israel. While most of it is completely idiotic, there’s always a diamond of intelligence that will pop up.

Along with all of this text, there are tons of images. Image macros, where someone will stick a funny line of text over an image, are the most popular type. Internet memes, such as the whole Chuck Norris thing, started here. Acronyms are born and die here. /b/ is the frontier of Internet humor, bad taste, offensive behavior and, sometimes, illegal content.

You should note that /b/ is completely anonymous. No user names, no registration, no passwords. Access it right and you’ll be nearly untraceable. This aspect has led to some of the most incendiary content I’ve ever seen posted in a public place - if /b/ was the real world, we’d be in World War III. That, or we’d be living in perfect acceptance of one another, and everyone would be happy. It would be one or the other.

Hanging out in /b/, I found myself asking - are these people building walls, or tearing them down? Are they hate-mongers and racists, or just making fun of everyone on the planet? Is all of this in the worst taste imaginable, or on the bleeding edge of humor and irreverence?

Honestly, it is hard to come up with the words to perfectly describe /b/. I figure it is different for each anonymous person. While one may be a 40 year-old racist posting about anime, the other might be a 15 year-old anime fan posting racist propaganda. Regardless, almost all of it is offensive to someone out there.

And with almost all of it offensive - you have to laugh. At least a little.

At /b/, everyone is accountable, and no one can hide. Your skin color doesn’t matter, nor does your gender, age, weight, height, intelligence, talent, skill, and anything else that makes you, you. You are taken to task for your words, your beliefs, your statements. Government officials, terrorist attacks, pro-life vs. pro-choice, suicides, murders, video games, anime, porn of every type - it is discussed, analyzed, and torn apart. You will never need to defend yourself nor get a chance to, because everyone is anonymous. As /b/ says - “Anonymous does not forgive.”

To give a tour of /b/ to those that do not know, requires images. Somewhere over 1000 images should do the trick, and that’s what I’ve prepared. This article is useless without pictures. Along with each notable situation I’ve run into in /b/, you will find an image gallery or two. Viewing these is absolutely necessary to understanding /b/.

Two notes of interest. First, the repeated use of the word “Desu” in some of the images, and on the board itself, comes from Suiseiseki - a character from the anime Rozen Maiden “who says it extremely frequently as a kind of catchphrase. She is often simply called DESU because her name is difficult for some people to spell. Desu is a word commonly added to the end of sentences in Japan, meaning “it is/be/are/am” and so on; it is considered more formal than usual and is mainly used when talking to people you don’t know or to a superior. Desu is often a spam reply when an unwitting newcomer asks for the definition; this was probably inspired by the Dan Kim webcomic where she is constantly repeats [the word].”

Second, the use of the term “an hero.” To “become an hero” usually means to kill yourself, but it has also seen use as literally, “a hero,” only grammatically incorrect. This originates from the story of Mitchell Henderson, a young boy that shot himself supposedly due to issues in school. Something his friends wrote for him started out with “He was such an hero.” Meme born.

Please take note - chances are you will be offended by the following content. Consider yourself duly warned.

The Meat

The main content in /b/ are memes. These are snippets of text or images that just happen to get a good bit of mindshare, and are then repeated endlessly. It is artistically chaotic how these memes evolve. Like a remix of a song, multiple memes are constantly mashed together. As long as you’ve seen one meme before, you can’t help but to laugh at the new and creative, and idiotic, ways this media gets mangled.

Below are three image galleries with over 250 images total. I have taken the images out of their respective threads, so the focus would be strictly on the visuals, not how they factored into a discussion or argument. When you’re all done, we’ll move on to the next topic.

       

Azumanga: 4chan’s semi-official anime

Azumanga Daioh is a comedy/drama manga by Kiyohiko Azuma, that was later adapted into an anime series. The series follows a group of students at a Japanese high school - it is similar in some ways to Charles Schultz’ Peanuts comic strip. The most popular character on /b/ is Osaka, apparently due to her “spacey manner and nearly constant smile.” She plays into many memes, though is more of a carrier of other memes than one herself - she could be considered a mascot.

Below is a perfect example of meme mash-up: an image of Osaka with a blank face is perfect material for mixing memes.

Cutting

During my time in /b/, I happened upon a request for pictures of cutting. Cutting is the practice or habit of inflicting pain on oneself to avoid or put off emotional pain. Of course, this being /b/, the images that were put up were the most extreme examples of this.

A day in the life of a /b/tard

MS Paint is a pretty big meme. Those that can’t use Photoshop, use MS Paint. It is like watching kids with crayons - sometimes the most rudimentary scrawl with a thick brush can be funnier than the most extravagantly Photoshopped image.

The idea for this thread was, “A day in the life of your average /b/tard.” Hilarity ensues.

Dickshirt

The Dickshirt meme started with the posting of a young man wearing a shirt, with the phrase “Bitches dont know bout my dick” on it in large block letters. All caps, no punctuation. The residents of /b/ proceeded to tear into it - kind of like throwing a hungry shark some chum. Old memes, as well as attempts at creating new ones, were slapped all over the guy.

While we’re along the lines of copying and pasting, there’s a delightful 4chan term - “copy pasta.” This is basically funny bits of text (stories, jokes, whatever) that get copied and pasted all over the board. Some of it is considered meme material, while other is just filler. It can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between original content and this copy pasta, especially on an anonymous board - but sure enough there’s almost always someone pointing it out. Most folks in /b/ have folder full of images and a file full of copy pasta, ready to whip it out when needed.

Doom

Comic mashups are a big part of /b/ life. While this isn’t a meme (yet), I thought this series of Doom comic alterations was pretty funny and creative. Not much else to say on it, as you’ll either get the humor or you won’t.

Jesus

While there are numerous discussions on religion in /b/, no one is more ridiculed than Jesus. Chalk it up to the millions of historical (and inaccurate, or overblown) images available. However it started, Jesus is just an easy target for all manner of blasphemy.

Katamari

Katamari Damacy is a video game in which you play a prince, that needs to roll a sticky ball around, collecting enough material to make the ball into a star. For more details see Wikipedia, but for those that know, this was one of the funniest threads I saw in /b/. Someone started it by posting a picture of the prince and his sticky ball. The nest posted stuck something onto the ball. And so forth, over more than 4 hours of activity. The beginning and end of the thread is included in the gallery below, so you can see how it all went down.

Lazer

The “shoop da woop/lazer” meme looks like an anime character with blackface Photoshopped onto it. It’s a huge /b/ meme, making appearances almost everywhere. The first few images in this gallery are the “core” images, followed by a selection of “remixed” ones. Not quite sure of the origin. One /b/ poster told me that it “comes from the new star wars movie and the star wars kid also known as Numa Numa guy.” I’m pretty sure that’s not it though.

Motivation Posters

This was one of the best memes I’d seen on /b/. You know those Motivation Posters you see every so often - the ones that say things such as “Teamwork: You can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” /b/ manages to take every image and meme they can get their hands on, and crank out their own versions of these posters. The results are offensive, hilarious, sobering and sometimes brilliant. Below are nearly 200 of these works of art, split into two galleries.

    

Optimized GIF Dude

Back in 2004, a Deviant Artist named Miika Jokinen (aka Verdot) created a little character called Optimized GIF Dude. Created in MS Paint and then uploaded to 4chan, it has since spawned hundreds upon hundreds of variations - some based on memes, others completely random. He says on his site:

Yes, I have made quite a lot of these seen here, but I couldn’t have done all of them without the help of fellow /b/tards… thanks to OPTIMIZATION, even [an image] with 240 different [variations] put together (about 5984 x 5503 pixels) barely reached 1.3MB in size.

The gallery below contains 325 different variations of Optimized GIF Dude for your viewing pleasure.

Paperclip

Ah, the humble Microsoft Office Assistant, the paper clip. His real name is Clippit, believe it or not. He’ll pop up every so often while you’re working with Office to lend a hand - more often than not, he’s just an annoyance. Which leads to the remixing of Clippit, the very annoying and pushy paperclip.

Pedobear

This is one of the situations where /b/ will cross the line for some people in terms of taste. Pedobear was originally a Japanese character from another image board, *2ch. I will let Lurkmore’s great wiki explain the exact origin:

Spawned the Pedo Bear Seal of Approval shopped from old Nintendo games. Originally “Kuma” from 2ch, who is not a pedophile at all, is a nature lover, and supposedly hates Ronald McDonald.
A few users started an in-joke whereby one would post Osakaphone saying something, and the other would post Kuma with a response. As the posts began getting more and more sexually oriented, paired with the innocence and widely-held immaturity of Osaka, led some to dub Kuma as being “pedo” for her. Now Pedobear is placed after pictures of underage girls.

Pedobear gets mixed up in plenty of image macros and memes - a selection of images is below.

What 4chan cries out during sex

Like the Azumanga thread before it, this one started with an image of two people in bed, with an empty word bubble over the man’s head. Forty images later, it represented the history of memes at /b/.

Video game paintings

I came across these while on /b/. Unfortunately my attempts to find out who made them were unsuccessful. They’re “real-life” paintings of a variety of old video games, such as Super Mario Bros, Dig Dug, and more.

September 11th

I was born and raised in New York City, so the Twin Towers are a part of my upbringing. Even though it was a shock to have them both collapse on September 11th, 2001 - I laughed at these images, but very nervously. Yes, they’re offensive. Yes, they trample on the memories of those that lost their lives. Yes, they’re in the worst taste imaginable. But you can’t ignore the humor - it’s too bold and brazen.

Legendary Threads

Every once in a while, a thread pops up that everyone agrees is legendary - it’s funny, offensive, or vulgar, and often all three at the same time. Some have points, others are completely pointless. Some are even completely recursive and make no sense. Have a peek into some of the best threads of /b/ below.

Webcam abuse and invasions of privacy, or, When common sense should prevail

Please note, this section contains graphic imagery, somewhat more risky than previous images.

Time to get serious. As /b/ is an anonymous board, illegal content often pops up. Pirated music, movies and games distributed by BitTorrent or, more often, RapidShare. The biggest scourge of /b/, though, is the posting of child pornography. Technically, /b/ is a public board, so you would think people would not be tempted to post this kind of content. It is the anonymity that allows people to do what they normally would not. Thankfully the moderators remove child porn (which /b/ has nicknamed “CP”) relatively quickly, and users also have the ability to report posts of this nature.

While in reality the reaction to child porn is usually one of shock and sadness, on /b/ it is treated with a certain light-heartedness that can be very disquieting.

Stickam is a webcam community, like MySpace in a way, where users set up video feeds with their webcams and can offer chat rooms, prerecorded videos, photos, and more. /b/ loves a “camwhore” - that is, someone that will show some skin, or at least do things like writing “/b/” on their hand, over their webcam.

Furthering this agenda are Stickam raids. One person will acquire a “target” - say, a girl that looks like she may fold easily under pressure to remove her top. They’ll post this repeatedly on /b/ - soon enough, the /b/ raiders will pile into a chatroom, and spam it with line after line of nonsense. Every so often, they’ll coordinate to sweet talk the girl instead of bombarding her with /b/ material - but it’s usually memes, copy pasta, trick URLs, and of course, the infamous request “TITS OR GTFO.”

For the uneducated, that means “show your chest or leave,” to put it very nicely.

If the target agrees to demands, it is considered a “WIN.” Anything less is usually considered a “FAIL” - unless there are other goings-on that are considered entertaining.

Once of these Stickam webcam incidents involved a 15 year-old girl. While I did not see this happen live, I did see the materials posted to /b/ afterwards. This young brunette, in what looked like her bedroom, was chatting over her webcam. No sound. It looked innocent enough until she started leaning back. From there, it devolved into stripping, and then masturbation. On camera.

Did you see the movie 8MM? Remember the scene where Nicholas Cage is watching the snuff film for the first time? It felt just like that.

Who was this girl talking to? Was it one person in a private room or many in a public one? Was it a public room in the middle of a raid? Was this girl drunk or on drugs - or did she just like the attention and/or the audience? If it was many people, how did they coax her into this? They obviously broke her down over time - the entire incident was over an hour and a half. Did this girl not think that someone would record it and distribute it? Did she not realize what males on the other end would be doing while watching this - did she enjoy that? How old were the people on the other end - 16? 26? 46? Husbands, brothers, fathers? Sisters, mothers? Extrapolating this incident, was this statutory rape? Assault on a minor? Was it just bad judgement on her part but completely voluntary? If so, is this child pornography or just “blue” material and in extremely bad taste?

Once you’re on /b/, at best you’ll be on people’s hard drives. At worst, you’ll be reposted on /b/ for a long, long time. A while after the incident, her name is still references and screenshots are still posted.

I debated putting up a gallery for this - I can’t write about /b/ if I ignore it. It is censored, of course. Additionally, I tried getting in touch with this young woman, but have not heard back as of posting this article. Should I hear back from her, this section will receive an update.

Another incident I came across involved a video that a young girl made for a boy that she was “in love with.” The girl could not have been more than 16. In this video, she tells the boy how much she loves him - then proceeds, in a move that appeared quite desperate, to demonstrate her “sexual side” to him.

This of course, I could not censor properly. But the audio tells the story just fine - sensitive material has been bleeped out. Click here to listen. (5.4MB MP3)

In summary

This was my time in /b/. What I saw in this community were artists, comedians, idiots, geniuses, and perverts. It felt like a cross section of Anytown, USA - but where everyone was allowed to do anything they wanted without fear of consequences. As often as I was impressed by the material that this group cranked out, I was more shocked overall. But it has this strange attractiveness - you end up wanting to go back to see just how far they will push the envelope.

/b/ is in a constant state of de facto war with other online communities, despite the fact that many visitors to /b/ have come from these communities. Most notably, /b/ is at odds with YTMND, Gaia Online, Habbo Hotel, eBaum’s World, and others.

Something I did notice is, although no one really knows anyone else on the board, their ability to organize is incredible. I’ve seen some /b/ raids on other boards and online services that just boggled my mind, most notably the Great Habbo Raid. This was an organized raid on a community called Habbo Hotel - a semi-3D chatroom targeted towards 13 to 20 year-olds. Thousands and thousands of /b/ residents stormed the service with avatars dressed in afros, black suits and black pants. They blocked doors with their dancing, and the swimming pool areas with cries of “Pool’s closed due to AIDS!”

It was one of the most pointless, yet unbelievably funny things I’ve ever seen on the Internet.

/b/ definitely deserves their tag of being the Random board.

Reading material

To close this out, I’ve included a few PDFs of a few large /b/ threads - one even surpasses 200 pages. Have a look for a sampling of what /b/ is like on a busy day.

If you dare, you could check out /b/ on your own. Make sure to be funny, creative, and you’d better have some pretty thick skin - chances are your first few posts will get lambasted. Lurk for about three months before posting. And don’t cry if you get reamed. You’ll notice that I haven’t linked directly to /b/ - find it yourself.

Hope you enjoyed!

• The /b/ “Manifesto.” (85K JPEG)

• Abusing an anti-porn forum populated primarily by women. (412K PDF)
• And, a standard /b/ reply. (40k JPEG)

• Saturdays are known as Caturdays. Cats get posted everywhere. (1.3MB PDF)

• Someone had uploaded child pornography to a porn-oriented version of YouTube, called PornoTube. (332K PDF)
• The page on PornoTube before the movie was taken down. The movie had well over 2500 views before it was removed. (36K JPEG)

• Discussion on the state of Israel. (420K PDF)

• “What /b/ image should I put on my neighbor’s door?” (344K PDF)

• An erotic story, with a meme-related plot twist. (268K PDF)

• Abusing a site called QuestionSwap. (564K PDF)

• A discussion on race. (824K PDF)

• A massive, 244-page sticky thread (a thread that gets attached to the top of /b/’s first page). Mostly pointless, but funny. (4.7MB PDF)

Thanks

Thanks to the following:

• David Lanham, one of the greatest artists and GUI designers, who whipped up the custom gallery icon.

• Lurkmore’s 4chan wiki, where I was able to get background on the origins of a few memes.

• Wikipedia, for strangely having odd entries such as YTMND in it.

• Encyclopedia Dramatica, for properly having odd entries such as YTMND in it.

• And of course, /b/ and all the /b/tards. Thanks for destroying my childhood.

Technorati Tags: /b/, 4chan, anonymity, art, children, depravity, humor, images, israel, offensive, pornography

*ring ring*

Bush: Don, it’s the W. Who’s next on our list of Freedom Candidates?

Rumsfeld: Looks like North Korea could be a good one. Folks there are all under the thumb of that Kim Jong-Il fella. Big human rights violations, and let’s not forget they’re just plain insane.

Bush: Sounds like a bad shitchashun! How we gonna go about getting in there?

Rumsfeld: Well, they’ve been making noise lately about having nuclear weapons, and -

Bush: Doubleyoo Em Dees? Motherfucker. Wait, do they have them or are they just wagging their tongues?

Rumsfeld: They don’t have them now, but they have expressed interest in obtaining them from Russia or China. See, here’s where we turn the table - what we’ll do is broker a sale of base missile technology to them through a few third parties. Once we bury the trail there’ll be nothing connecting the USA to the sale. They’ll do a test run, we’ll all say “What gives?” Then we start sanctioning, and perhaps even a little invasion.

Bush: Invasion, eh?

Rumsfeld: Sure, you know, to “look” for more WMDs. But really we’ll just be bombing the shit out of Kim’s house. We’ll leave a few thousand troops there, help them set up an interim government, throw ‘em some MREs then bulldoze half the country to make way for the New American Embassy like the one underway in Iraq.

Bush: Wait, that all sounds too simple…

Rumsfeld: That’s because it is simple. In one movement we’ll have liberated a people, destroyed an aggressor, and put surrounding countries at ease. It’s win-win-win! In fact, they tried to sell this plan to your father, but he turned it down as he felt it didn’t jive with the Spirit of America.

Bush: Fuck daddy, I’m a cowboy! Let’s rope ‘em and dope ‘em!

Later, in the Sitchashun Room…

Bush: Computer!

Computer: WhaaaAAAT?

Bush: Find me the right person to begin the transfer of missile technology to North Korea!

Computer: Searching…. searching… searching… one match found.

Bush: Fabian Basabe? Are you shitting me, computer?

Computer: His father is from Ecuador - start the sale in Ecuador and work your way to North Korea.

Bush: But there’s no way that gimp is gonna agree to this! Computer, advise!

Computer: *groan* Don’t tell him that you need his father to broker missiles. Tell him that they are a gift of goodwill for North Korea: giant penis statues. Label the boxes in Korean, which would be “Taepodong.” You know, “kind of penis .”

Bush: Sounds nifty, let’s get rolling!

Later, at Crobar…

Fabian: Oh my god, of course mi papa will get these to North Korea! Thass like, so nice of you!

Bush: This music is great, I need another bump! Listen, just make sure that he goes through a few other brokers before they get to North Korea, we want this to be hush-hush.

Fabian: Oh my god, no problem! And sorry for touching your daughter’s nani, I did no mean to…

Bush: S’all good Fabi, you wouldn’t have been the first.

Months later, in North Korea…

Peon: Mr. Jong-Il, a gift has just arrived for you! In boxes, marked From China, by way of Russia, by way of Syria, by way of Egypt, by way of Germany, by way of… the rest is too torn up to read.

Kim: Does it say what they are?

Peon: They are marked “Taepodong.”

Kim: “Kind of penis?”

Peon: Yes sir. They appear to be missiles, sir.

Kim: Ah ha, finally someone responded to our Craigslist ad, “Looking 4 missles 4 NK ASAP will pay $$$!” Get those setup and launched straight away!

After the failed missile launch…

Kim: Fuck! We’re fucking fucked! Those missiles did nothing! Who the hell set those up?

Kidnapee: I did, sir.

Kim: What the hell went wrong?

Kidnapee: Not sure sir, but I’m going blind due to malnutrition. That may have caused it.

Kim: Dammit.

Later on, in the Middle East…

*ring ring*

Israel: They did what?! Two soldiers? And rockets?! Where the hell do they get off kidnapping our people? Hold on, let me ask.

Israel: (shouting out window) HEY LEBANON!

Lebanon: (in distance) What do you want?

Israel: (shouting out window) DID YOUR CREW JUST KIDNAP TWO OF OUR GUYS?

Lebanon: (in distance) Um, who wants to know?

Israel: (shouting out window) YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS!!

Lebanon: (in distance) Sorry, no one is home at the moment.

Israel: God dammit, they did it. That’s it, they are going to get proper fucked. Time for us to show the world what messing with the Jews is all about!

Israel proceeds to rape Lebanon with aluminum baseball bats, but Lebanon has a board with a nail in it, and tries its best.

Meanwhile, simultaneously in North Korea and the USA…

Bush: What the fuck!

Kim: What the fuck!

Bush: Fucking Israel and Lebanon just completely stole the thunder of our North Korean operation! We’re completely out of the news!

Kim: Fucking Israel and Lebanon just completely stole the thunder of our Attention Whore operation! We’re completely out of the news!

Back at the White House…

Bush: Great, so now we’ve got to save our people, right? Fuck. I’ve only got a few bucks on me. How ’bout you, Rummy?

Rumsfeld: All my cash is tied up in burying this whole eavesdropping scandal…

Bush & Rumsfeld: Condi!

Rice: Yes Massas?

Bush: We still charging for getting our citizen’s stupid asses out of warzones? We’re a little short.

Rice: Yessir, but there’s been some recent heat over it, considering the rest of the world is doing it for free.

Bush: Goddamn college kids and their self-righteous bullshit, what the hell are they doing in a place like that anyway? What happened to Daytona Beach fer chissakes?

Rice: I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Drugs and hookers, probably.

Bush: Well I can’t slight ‘em for that, I’ve been there. Hell I was there last night, if ya get me! Hoo boy!

Rice: Yessir, whatever you say.

Bush: Just get our people out of there. But don’t go overboard or anything - one ship should be enough, just pull all 25,000 people out bit by bit. Bombs biting their heels should remind them to stop traveling to dangerous fucking places!

Technorati Tags: bush, humor, israel, lebanon, north korea, wmd

Onion routing, as defined in Wikipedia, is “a technique for pseudonymous (or anonymous) communication over a computer network. [It utilizes] the concept of “routing onions”, which encode routing information in a set of encrypted layers.”

Tor, or The Onion Router, is a client/router implementation of onion routing. Originally developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory, it become an EFF project from late 2004 through late 2005. It is currently provided under a BSD license.

What is important to understand is, using Tor, someone can provide a completely hidden service - one that can be accessed completely anonymously. What better place for mischief?

We could go on about what onion routing is, what Tor is, and so forth. You can find out more by visiting the pages linked above. We’re going to cut through the technicalities and get down to business.

We wanted to write an article about this emerging “hidden internet.” But we wanted to get to the meat - the stuff you couldn’t find elsewhere. We were thinking hacking programs, manifestos by lunatics, banned documentation, pirated movies, phone numbers for gov’t offices, the sort of stuff you used to get on dialup BBSs back in the day. The stuff that, on the web, is hidden by pop-up ads, misleading links, spyware, malware, and general garbage.

So off we went. And you won’t like what we found.

From Wikipedia:

Although Tor’s most popular feature is its provision of anonymity to clients, it can also provide anonymity to servers. By using the Tor network, it is possible to host servers in such a way that their network location is unknown. In order to access a hidden service, Tor must also be used by the client.

Hidden services are accessed through the Tor-specific .onion top level domain. The Tor network understands this TLD and routes, anonymously to the hidden service. The hidden service then hands over to standard server software, which should be configured to listen only on non-public interfaces. Services that are reachable through Tor hidden services and the public Internet are susceptible to correlation attacks, and consequently are not really hidden.

An added advantage of Tor hidden services is that, because no public IP address is required, services may be hosted behind firewalls and NAT.

An .onion URL looks like this (non-working example):

http://www.voehtr2k943bo9bh.onion

It is a hash created when setting up a Tor server, and is completely unreachable unless you are running a Tor client. Once your browser is properly configured to direct traffic through Tor, you’re set.

So with all the commotion about the government dropping eaves (although not on the ‘net, it doesn’t bode well for the future), Tor seems like a good solution for sensitive information - secured server, secured client, untraceable, anonymous, not accessible via shallow web (coined!).

We configured Tor, and a companion filtering component called Privoxy (to hide details about our computers). All we needed was a starting place…

Where do you find a starting place for hidden services? It felt like trying to get into an exclusive club when the only way in is a short guest list, and through a really big bouncer. Right off the bat, there is the Hidden Tor Wiki, located at http://6sxoyfb3h2nvok2d.onion/tor. For the curious, this is a good place to start:

This wiki houses a list of hidden servers - hidden to the outside world, at least. The thing we noticed though, was that most of the content was available elsewhere. If not on the web, then on Usenet or IRC:

Which is when we realized that we’d have to treat .onion like an exclusive club, and go out looking for an invite. Not really sure what we were looking for, we started out at the asshole of the internet - /b/!

After a few hours of browsing page after page of drivel, poking around and following leads, we had ourselves two .onion servers - servers not mentioned too much, not really talked about with any sort of detail, so we didn’t know what to expect. At worse, we figured they’d be pages of pr0n.

With the giddy anticipation that only pretending to be investigative journalists can bring, we punched the URLs into our Tor-enabled setup, and waited. And waited. Tor bandwidth is provided by peers, so it is a good bit slower than the usual internet. Think 28.8kbps - it was like being in 1995 again, the days where you’d “stay up all night and only see eight women.”

Slowly but surely our jaws pretty much dropped as each image thumbnail loaded. What we had stumbled on wasn’t porn. It wasn’t even what passes as “fine art photography.”

We hit a huge vein of kiddie porn.

(Wait, what do you even call that? Coven of witches, flock of birds, vein of… child pornography? Hope you can tell that we talked a lot about how to deliver this line, and frankly nothing fit. Nothing should fit.)

Just to make this clear, this wasn’t some guy’s photo of his cousin without her shirt on, or a photo stolen by a creepy uncle of his brother’s kid in the bathtub. Full on, man-girl sex. Sometimes boy-boy, sometimes man-boy, sometimes girl-girl, sometimes woman-girl - it just went on and on, for pages and pages and pages. This was a standard image board, the kind you’d find anywhere on the web, but completely dedicated to the distribution of child pornography.

And the language - we’re not repeating anything specific here - but it was frightening: “Post moar!” “Can anyone identify this girl and post?” “Too old.” “Too young.” Even in the most depraved areas of society, it looks like there are standards.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we had another site to access. With a deep breath, we punched the second one in and waited.

What greeted us was a page in Japanese. So we thought, no big deal, it’s just a BBS. Scrolling down, we found a few posts in English. Right away the language grabbed us: “Good action!” “Post more with sound!” “There looks to be a third in the series, the girl was reaching down at the end.”

This site, while nowhere near as in-your-face as the first one, hosted a little selection of videos. It turned out that we did not have to download anything for proof - this second site referenced the first site for obtaining screencaps of the movies.

Behind the curtain of anonymity, hidden from the public’s view, lies a little world of depravity. Photos and videos from what looked like the 60’s and 70’s, right up through what could have been yesterday, of girls and boys from toddler through preteen. Sometimes the subjects looked happy, sometimes sad, sometimes scared.

What was most jarring though, was the emptiness. No matter their expression, the eyes gave them away. They looked like they knew what was going on was horrifying, but had a reason forced onto them to smile through it all. Who were the men? Were they fathers? What father could do that? Brothers? What brother could do that? What kept hitting us was how sociopaths (read: serial killers) react to images of voilence - they don’t react at all. This easily extrapolated to child molestors. What sort of person could just sit there idly while being shown some of the images we came across? We went in circles attempting to fathom where this came from - what in us, in humans could possibly account for this behavior.

We gave up after a while.

Now here is the question. You have this Tor technology - something that, living in the world we do, we’re going to need. As government gets more and more involved in tearing down personal privacy, this could be a way out. (Hell, when the revolution comes, we’ll use it to hand out orders!)

The Tor site has a FAQ up about Tor Abuse. We’ll post a few notable quotes from it, as they’re on the same tack that we are, but they sound a lot more professional:

…criminals could in theory use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on.

There is nothing the Tor developers can do to trace Tor users. The same protections that keep bad people from breaking Tor’s anonymity also prevent us from figuring out what’s going on.

Some … have suggested that we redesign Tor to include a backdoor. There are two problems with this idea. First, it technically weakens the system too far. Having a central way to link users to their activities is a gaping hole for all sorts of attackers; and the policy mechanisms needed to ensure correct handling of this responsibility are enormous and unsolved. Second, the bad people aren’t going to get caught by this anyway, since they will use other means to ensure their anonymity (identity theft, compromising computers and using them as bounce points, etc).

So we find ourselves in an interesting situation. What, if anything, do we do? We don’t know if the people posting the content were the creators - it may be a very fine line (morally, nonexistant), but there is indeed one between the creators and the consumers. And yes, we’re ignoring the potential future activities of such consumers, driven by their choice of smut, at the moment.

Obviously the first choice in any other situation would have been, call the Feds. Two problems though - first off, we don’t want to get in trouble. No one read up on what the hell could happen to us in a situation like this. We’re assuming nothing, as we’d be turning over a mountain (well, a nice sized hill) of evidence. But you never know with the police state we live in lately.

Secondly - what harm would we be doing to a technology that is already very valuable, and will definitely be more valuable in the future? What sort of irreversible harm could we cause by shining a spotlight on Tor? Legislation forcing backdoors into every single encryption scheme? Changes to TCP for tracking individual packets via massive mandatory logs? A government-mandated “Internet ID”? With alarms going off if this digital ID was missing? We can imagine a million scenarios - unfortuantely, none are good. Not very realistic either, but with Senator Tubes in D.C. - anything goes, kids.

The only good to potentially come out of us bringing this to the fuzz, would be shutting down two hidden servers engaged in illegal activities. If they could even find them, which after reading the technical documentation of the Tor protocol, seems a bit hard. And as the Tor folk themselves state, real criminals already have better ways to hide - shutting down two sites won’t do much to stem the flow.

It seems like a decision between the future of online rights and privacy, versus making a little chip in a worldwide criminal enterprise. Two big deals - honestly, deals way bigger than the scope we’re discussing here - but what would the effects of our actions be?

And what if the things that we could bring to light, saved the life of a little girl somewhere?

I say, maybe bring it to the Feds, very carefully: if we can perhaps save a life, it’s worth it. The internet itself has never killed anyone (to my knowledge!), and it will go through many more ups and downs that we could never foresee. My associate, who is more conspiracy-minded than myself, says no way: with this country going the way it’s been going the past few years, this kind of technology will serve a genuine purpose sooner than later, and it needs to be kept open despite usage by criminals.

So, what do we do?

This is how the article ends, just an open invitation for your thoughts.

Technorati Tags: anonymity, child pornography, depravity, privacy, tor

We’re also going to provide a mirror of the AOL Retention Manual, courtesy of Joel Johnson’s Consumerist. Check out their great critique!

Click here to download (7MB PDF).

CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE!

Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that the tic tac (yes it’s all lowercase and there is no hyphen) is the perfect sugar-based… candy… mint… thing? They’re cheap, they taste good as long as you buy the orange ones, they’re a great way to keep your hands and mouth occupied while you quit smoking, and they’re low in calories. They also barely freshen your breath. So what are they? Not mints, despite packaging stating otherwise. Not quite candy. I guess they’re just a confection, plain and simple.

So why mess with it? As that jackass Seinfeld put it, why do people mess with the toothbrush? It’s perfect as it is, bristles on a stick. The only change to tic tacs I want to see are new flavors. They have lime now. Awesome! And once they even mixed lemon and lime. That blew my god damn mind. I couldn’t deal with it. I was panicking every time I went to pop one out of the case (yes, it’s a case) - “Will it be lemon? Lime?! Ackg! The suspense!”

And so, I was quite taken aback when I went into 7-11 and saw…

Holy Fucking Shit.

They’ve emboldened tic tacs! I mean, wow! I thought those orange bastards were perfect as is, but now they’re offering a whole new epoch of flavor! But then, a pause. They have two flavors - the ubiquitous Mint, and the devilishly mysterious “Fruit.” And you know where I’m going with this - how the hell could I resist the juicy mystery that lay within the new, sleek and slender tic tac containment unit labeled “Fruit”? Well I’ll tell you - I couldn’t. I couldn’t resist, with its bright red container and softly contoured lines. And what kind of fruit flavor would await me? Was each little tic different from the next tac? Or were they all the same?

I was planning on finding out.

So, I slams them down on the counter and tell the (very adorable light-eyed busty) register drone “Woman! Ring these up post-haste, I have product testing to perform!” Suffice it to say that that more than likely eliminated any chance I had of getting her in the sack, I ignored it for the moment and proceeded home with my newly purchased tic tacs laughing maniacally in anticipation.

On a sidenote, 7-11 exists purely as a test platform for products that companies are afraid to unleash on the mass market, much like large truck stops. Where else can you find Nestlé Crunch cookie sticks, or Hershey’s Cocoa Peanuts? It’s a total trip.

I get home, leave the lights off, sit at my desk and proceed to pop open the access tab. “Thank god” I thought, “they left the very unsafe paper-tear access panel in place!” Those that know, know what I mean. I slowly let one slide into my hand…

… and I’m all “Wait.”

Turns out the tics and tacs themselves, aren’t that wild red color. They’re white. I mean, white! I stared at the tic (or tac, I’m not sure which it was) for a solid minute. I realized that in this day and age of packaging, I should have known that the bright red plastic container was that color to lure unsuspecting rubes like me into a purchase, thinking the vittles inside are more exotic than they really are.

Oh well. I popped that bad boy into my mouth. As any tic tac aficionado knows, they have two stages - a sweet outside, and a tart inside. Right away, it has a delightful little tang. I’m all “Ooooooo.” And then. Then…

You know what Amoxicillin is, right? That burnt-bubble-gum flavored antibiotic that they give you for ear infections and stuff? I was 10 years old and sick again, making a ghastly face at the taste of the little capsule that I allowed into my food hole.

This shit tastes like motherfucking antibiotics.

I promptly spit it out, not wanting to suffer through the candy outside to the formerly enticing tart center. God knows what would have happened if I did. Maybe it would have tasted like a nice strong dose of cod liver oil. I cared not to find out.

These tic tacs… no, these bastardized imitations of tic-tacness… are now sitting at the corner of my desk, where I give them an evil glance every so often. As if to say…

A knife through my heart, tic tacs. A knife through my heart.

Hush gives tic tac Bold™ an F. Thanks for stopping by!

The good:
- It’s fast as hell
- No graphical glitches
- Support native resolution
- Sound works

The bad:
- Can’t close the screen as it won’t wake up from sleep
- Can’t boot it without an external monitor attached - once started up it can be disconnected
- No wireless

Click here for photos, with a photo of TuxPaint running on my 770 for the heck of it.

So, the girl got me into watching Lost. A while back I had torrented the first season and part of the second, figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. First episode… meh. Second episode… so apparently there’s this giant monster on the island knocking down trees and whatnot.

First thing I thought was that, if this was a biological creature that falls in line with the basics of physiology, then there’s no way that the island would be quite as lush - since the monster would have to eat enough to support its size and energy expenditure, the foliage couldn’t keep up to well in regenerating. So the monster would have probably had a short lifespan. Anyway, I kept watching, until…

… there’s the big fat guy and the british preggo, and they’re sitting underneath a hunk of flaming plane, rending metal and all. For some reason, everyone around hears a piece of metal about to fall except for the two people sitting under it. At that point, I turned it off.

So, back to the girl. She went so far as to draw a comic of what my life would be like if I didn’t re-obtain Lost and watch it with her.

So, being me, I do.

We watch it, and then they find that goddamn hatch. And I’m like, “Bitchin’!” Finally there’s something juicy, a little surreal sci-fi mystery to the whole storyline. And I sit through all the episodes of the first season until the end, when they open that sucker up. (Oh sorry, did I ruin it for you? Bite me.)

And so began the second season, the first few episodes of which were absolutely awesome. They go into the hatch, find this guy preventing the island/the world from fucking ending, a friggin Commodore Pet or whatnot controlling the armageddon countdown, a lot of arguing about what to do to prevent the countdown, that ridiculous series of numbers finally has a meaning (albeit still unexplained), the beginnings of a backstory about the installations on the island with a whole lot of creepy foreshadowing thanks to a creepy film reel, a huge fucking door with some uberpowerful electromagnetic entity behind it…

… but wait, we need to spend the next N episodes talking about… people.

People are the worst kind, I tells ya.

So there I am, sitting through episode after episode of flashback after flashback. Awwe, the black dude was a lousy father and didn’t fight enough for his child? The british punk’s mommy got him a piano? Awwe, that totally plays into surviving on an island, now I see why person X did action Y and how they feel about it.

Get the fuck out of here.

Who gives a flying fuck why this person speaks English but hides it from her husband? Or why the kid has a hard time bonding with his recently-discovered father? I don’t care. And if you say you care, you’re lying to yourself. You don’t give a shit why, and if you really genuinely cared, a less-than-two-minute flashback would be enough to explain said person’s actions.

I knew I was in deep mung when a few weeks ago, the episode description stated that “…Sawyer gets a haircut.”

“No, stop, you’re kidding” I told Yahoo TV. “Get outta here” I told Time Warner’s DTV Guide. “Surely there’s going to be something juicy, and they just don’t want to let on, right?” I thought.

Oh, foolish foolish me. Sawyer actaully did get a haircut.

And that’s all that happened. Really, that’s it. I could have missed the entire episode and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye come the next week’s episode. Oh, and that next episode totally wowed me when “Charlie has to protect Claire’s baby”.

I’m thinking, “Ooooo, n’er-do-wells are going to bring Claire’s baby to some crazy structure and Charlie has to sneak in, uncover more of the mystery and get the baby out just in time for a nail-chewing cliffhanger! Shuga bean!”

But no. Charlie, the ex-horse junkie has some vision that make him think he has to save the baby. No plot movement, just Charlie freaking out.

If a white pony rider was stranded on an island with me and tried to steal my kid, I’d either tie him up (if there were people around) or just stab him in the eye (if we were alone). No really, you’d do that too. Say you’ve survived on an island for 2 months. There’s no room for doubt or psychopaths - if anything is going to kill me it goddamn better be a monster, or a hurricane, or dengue fever - but not the junkie-with-the-heart-of-gold. Oh, and like everyone was so surprised when they found out Charlie was stockpiling H - he’s a fucking junkie! That’s what they do!

Come on, you know you hate it. Say it with me now: Grrrrrrrrr.

Oh yeah, at one point we get to see the “monster.” It looks like a big black cloud. Guess what, they’re nanotech robots gone mad. Sorry, did I ruin the season 2 finale, that hasn’t aired yet? Well, that’s what they are. I’ve got $20 on it. Read Michael Crichton’s Prey and get over it.

Then there was tonight’s episode. Sayeed, the Insane Iraqi tortures some schmuck that might be an “Other.” Of course, he doesn’t get any answers because Jack stops him Just In Time. And Jack pretty much lets that damn armageddon time run out - that was fucking crazy, I was waiting with baited breath for like, the electromagnetic hanger to open and unleash all sorts of skull-crunching insanity. The timer hits zero, turns into red Egyptian hieroglyphs, a great humming noise spools up, but then that fucker Locke clumsily enters the code to reset the clock.

So I’m all “Too late, fucker.”

Imagine my surprise when, despite the timer running the fuck out, it resets to zero. “Wait a second, that’s bullshit! That thing was at zero!” It was too late! I mean, what the fuck, they threw a fucking McGuffin* into the show! Some sort of phantom “forgiveness” timer just in case you didn’t hear the loud-ass alarm. Bullshit! Once you launch an ICBM there’s pretty much no going back without a whole lot of effort, right? Why should the Lost Armageddon Timer be any different? If the people that installed that bad boy meant business, there would have been serious ass-handing once that sucker hit zero.

So what does this all mean?

Basically, the writers had a really great, deep storyline that just happened to take place on a deserted island. Once the viewers started getting suckered (yes, suckered), ABC told them “Hey, hold on - how long can you stretch that story out? We need to get at least fifteen seasons out of it. And by stretch, we mean giving-birth-stretch. We mean rims-instead-of-gas-stretch.”

Writers said “You got money?”

ABC said “Believe it, bitch.”

And so the writers stretched it to the point where, if you never saw the show and sat down for an episode, you’d think the show was about a bunch of touchy-feely pretty people on a goddamn island that want to screw each other but their feelings keep stopping them. You’d think it was Gilligan, only not funny.

But, I keep watching it. Why? Because seeing those little bits of actual plot are worth seeing Sawyer get his fucking hair cut. Because when all is said and done, and the show loses viewers and ratings, it’s so going to be worth seeing that timer hit zero and wipe these fuckers off the face of the planet.

And when they’re sitting pretty in the afterlife, they can flashback on all the time and energy they wasted being a pack of bitches instead of getting shit done - tie Charlie up, let Michael die looking for his kid, let Sawyer’s hair grow out, and find out what in god’s name is behind that huge ass electromagnetic Door To Hell.

If I was on Lost, I’d regulate.

* Yeah, not the best use of the term here, but as that damn timer-forgiveness-alloance is a device that furthers the plot, I thought it relevant. So there.

First, take 100 sheets of construction paper. Or more depending on the size of the box. 12 hours and a pack of smokes later (with breaks for food and fluid release) my box isn’t nearly as full as I’d like it to be, so I’m probably doing another 150-200 sheets tomorrow…

Get some goooood scissors.

Cut long slivers of paper and fold them in half. Cut half-hearts along the folded edge, just like you did in grade school, but on a much smaller scale. 10-12 hearts per sliver or less depending on what size you prefer. I go for a mix.

Put scraps aside for garbage. I mean, composting! (Environment, remember? We talked about this earlier, weren’t you paying attention?)

Fill box with newly-born heart confetti.

Add your gifs, make sure they’re covered a bit with confetti, and give to loved one.

Of course, once I was halfway through I remembered that my Ma has a heart-shaped paper punch. But that’s just silly, because it would look like a machine did it, and machines are not capable of emotion. My hand hurts, my fingers are numb, RSI is setting in…

That’s love, baby.

Hey, click the images - they grow!

CAUTION: Bad English and Heady Language alert!

So that Pong Clock is finally available to order. So what do you get for your $240? A custom circuit board, 5×7 (from the looks of it) screen, and the ability to play it.

How about… no. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, I love the fact that the whole piece is a custom work. But surely we can make one of our own!

Luckily, the software is available as a screen saver that you can download free of charge, albeit with a copyright on the bottom.

So, first take a Pismo PowerBook and get it into working condition! Ditch the battery and the optical drive - leave those bays open for airflow.

Did that? Okay, on to the real work. You may need this.

Take the screen off and remove the casing, but keep the thin metal frame around it and the hinges. Disconnect the cabling going from the display to the powerbook, and unwrap the display cable (orange) from the hinge to get the most length out of it. Also unplug the white & black power cable from the board it is attached to. Remove this long thin circuit board - this is the power inverter board. Put it aside for later.

Re-attach the display, but backwards. Run the orange display cable back to the motherboard and plug it in, taping it to the back of the LCD. We have display action! Now you need to fiddle - as you can see from the photo, I was lazy and just slapped the inverter board to the back of the LCD. Make sure to get it and the power cable from the display just hidden enough by the LCD panel, then tape it to the panel.

The better way to do this would be to split the board in two, or better yet, extend those power cables - you can do that if you want. I’d be proud of you.

Take the antenna assembly (3 cables in a Y shape with a circuit board in the middle, with a thin metal antenna on one of the Y ends. It was in the display casing you removed. Pay attention!) Wrap all of the cabling around that thin metal antenna, making a nice tight little antenna package, with enough length to still plug into the AirPort card. It should look like a scary version of a transistor radio kit antenna assembly. Stick this wherever - as you can see in the photo, I’ve Velcroed (ah, verbs) this to the Pismo’s internal battery. Voila, a surprisngly strong AirPort antenna.

Remove the keyboard completely, we won’t be needing it where we’re going. From here on, you can do what you like to close it up, but I’ll tell you how I did it…

There are two holes on the top-right and -left sides of the metal frame attached to the LCD. I Dremeled (ah, more verbage) two screw holes in the plastics, so that I could keep this monstrosity closed up using two small screws that I repurposed from the LCD’s plastic casing. Done.

But look! There’s a nasty bit of inverter board sticking out of the bottom. Yikes. Plus the metal hinges look a bit… Brazil. So, I took the plastic hinge cover, cut out enough room for the corner of the inverter board, then covered that hole up with a Dremeled (cut, shaved and screw holes added) cover piece - I used a bit of the display casing for this. I think it gives it a nifty homebrew look.

The hardware is finished! Go ahead and hang it on your wall as you see fit.

Now for the software. Grab that Pong screensaver from the Pong Clock site linked above. Install it on a Windows PC. Go into the installation directory, and grab the pong_clock.swf file. Install this along with a copy of SAFlashPlayer - it is a Flash runtime that comes installed with the full version of Flash, but I’m pretty sure you can nab it from Macromedia’s site. Open the pong_clock.swf file with it, and run it in full screen mode.

And you are done, man! Enjoy the hypnotic, Pongy delights that only a hacked Pong Clock can offer. And what did you spend? Nothing, right? Maybe $3 on some epoxy to mount a hook or two to the back of the unit?

You’re welcome.

]]> http://hush.cc/?feed=rss2&p=9 http://hush.cc/?p=3 http://hush.cc/?p=3#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2006 04:18:30 +0000 JD Where Is My... http://hush.cc/?p=3 * NOTE: Site still under construction. May be buggy! *

First post! Someone smack me.

It’s 2006. Major companies are pooping out hardware faster than you can memorize the model number of that phone you really wanted - as soon as you do there’s the new improved model. You know, that one with faster Bluetooth so your pairing can get dropped twice as fast.

Where’s all the good stuff that we’ve been promised for decades? I’m so tired of getting hyped for some “major new development” just to finish reading the press release to find out “the first consumer products should be available within the next five years.” Everything is always just over some horizon that we’ll never reach.

Where is the nanotechnology? Or the biotechnology? The stuff that can genuinely change the way we look at our everyday products and environment for the better, even if not in earth-shattering ways?

Give me a can of paint that is self-healing when it gets scratched. I want my implanted tattoo that I can change when the mood suits me. And a coating for computer displays (LCDs, TV, plasmas, PDAs) that cleans itself. And it should also be dent-resistant (goodbye screen protectors).

Why am I still cleaning my oven? Coat that bad boy with something that completely repels grime and stains just like a duck repels water. Why aren’t my shoes made of a material that breaks down water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, then releases it harmlessly so my feet don’t stink after a long day in my overheated office?

I can’t think of one thing in my lifetime that has really made me say “Hey, that’s fantastic, what a great development!” The internet, more powerful computers, modern wireless technology, materials science, it’s all just evolutionary. It’s going where you expect it to go - faster and stronger.

Why aren’t we like, embedding wireless signals directly in the Schumann Resonance so we don’t need satellites (or even cell towers) to make calls - the 8Hz wave is omnipresent all around the globe, why can’t we make it work for us? I’m talking out of my ass though - it’s a ULF wave and all. That means it’s slow, but even the slowest human can pull back a wind-up toy car, so make that wave push some EV-DO or something!

Or what about the practical application of quantum physics? You know, light particles getting to their destination before they even leave their origin? How awesome would it be if someone picked up their phone before I even called them? Your skull would crack just trying to comprehend it - that’s how awesome it would be.

I want some skull-crackingly awesome developments that I can actually blow money I don’t have on, before my unborn kids turn 30. This world is boring as all get-out.

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