meehawl

Someone found this old, unintentionally hilarious TV news report about the 1988 Morris Worm that took over many of the machines comprising the Internet at that time. I remember blissfully playing hack when the sysadmin ran in, panicked, demanding that the PDP-11 be shut down immediately because “something” was going on. It turned out that that because the Trinity College Mathematics Department has bought such an old, cheap and dodgy Unix machine it was not being targetted by Morris’ code and we were safe.

Anyway, the check out the goofy guy with glasses that begins at 40 seconds:

The TV identifies him as Mark Eichin. That was then. This is now. Less than a minute of Google stalking to track someone down and confirm their identity. We are now indeed living in the surveillance society. Of course, this was made easier by the fact that, because Mark was on the Internet in the 1980s as well, he has left an impressively long trail of digital detritus.

I was also reminded of the Small World Phenomenon when, upon checking LinkedIn, I found he is apparently 3 degrees of separation away from me in my “business” network. Lost in a maze of directed acyclic graphs, all alike…

Tags: 1980s, internet, Mark Eichin, Morris Worm, panopticon, small world, surveillance society, Unix by mike
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Morley, a chef, was found guilty today of murdering Oldfield, who was his boyfriend, before carving flesh from his thigh, seasoning it with fresh herbs, frying it in olive oil and chewing a section.

Tags: cannabilism, Mr Gay UK, necrophagy, What The Fuck? by mike
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It is clear that there is a shortage of means of payment during a period of crisis. The convertibility of bills of exchange replaces the metamorphosis of commodities themselves, and so much more so exactly at such times the more a portion of the firms operates on pure credit. Ignorant and mistaken bank legislation, such as that of 1844-45, can intensify this money crisis. But no kind of bank legislation can eliminate a crisis. In a system of production, where the entire continuity of the reproduction process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur — a tremendous rush for means of payment — when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity. At first glance, therefore, the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis. And in fact it is only a question of the convertibility of bills of exchange into money. But the majority of these bills represent actual sales and purchases, whose extension far beyond the needs of society is, after all, the basis of the whole crisis. At the same time, an enormous quantity of these bills of exchange represents plain swindle, which now reaches the light of day and collapses; furthermore, unsuccessful speculation with the capital of other people; finally, commodity-capital which has depreciated or is completely unsaleable, or returns that can never more be realised again. The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values. Incidentally, everything here appears distorted, since in this paper world, the real price and its real basis appear nowhere, but only bullion, metal coin, notes, bills of exchange, securities. Particularly in centres where the entire money business of the country is concentrated, like London, does this distortion become apparent; the entire process becomes incomprehensible.

Tags: banking, capitalism, Das Kapital, economics, Karl Marx by mike
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The most pervasive global strain of HIV began spreading in humans around 1900 in sub-Saharan Africa, a new study claims. The research, which is published in the current issue of Nature, found that HIV began spreading between 1884 and 1924, around the same time urban centers in west central Africa were established. This estimated time of origin is decades earlier than the previous estimate of 1930.

Using a database of HIV-1 sequences and an estimate of the rate at which these sequences change over time, the researchers modelled when HIV-1 first surfaced. Their results showed that the most likely date for HIV’s emergence was about 1908, when Léopoldville was emerging as a centre for trade.

The model with a general, non-parametric prior (the Bayesian skyline plot tree prior) that indicated a more complex (and biologically plausible) demographic history had a statistically indistinguishable degree of support (TMRCA 1908, 95% HPD 1884–1924).

Tags: AIDS, colonialism, HIV, urbanisation, urbanization by mike
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