meehawl

In the process of packing I found an old teeshirt that’s been at the bottom of a drawer for a *very* long time. I think I used to have around 20 of these. For our university’s 400th anniversary, they gave a bunch of us tens of thousands of pounds (pre-Euro!) to throw a multi-day Science Fiction party called “TrinCon“. Around that time, amazingly enough, the science fiction society was the largest voluntary (that is, dues-paying) student group on campus with around one-sixth of the undergrads signed up (an accident of history involving limited new movie release availability (which we pwned) and some aggressive marketing). With so much cash thrown at us, we could pretty much afford to encompass all of the genres (we even had a special room set aside for the Trekkies that just looped old Star Trek reruns over and over as a honeypot to keep them safely segregated). Because our college society, the “DUSFS” had been on the campus networks and the Internet since around 1986 or so, we had pretty good emails and connectivity (for 1992!) and handled quite a bit of the correspondence and organising online. We even had ambitions to upload some of the video that was shot but we never did get around to that.

High-res front back.

Tags: Quatercentenary, TrinCon by mike
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So the total cost for Bin Laden’s war against the US is now hovering around $6 trillion. He accomplished exactly what he said he planned: enmeshed the US in a war in the Middle East and a war in Afghanistan.

Superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand.

One need look no further than Inspire, the English-language magazine of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP), the group’s Yemen affiliate. A special issue of the publication released in November 2010 commemorated a plot that managed to place pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) bombs inside printer cartridges that were flown on FedEx and UPS planes. The issue outlined the great disparity between what the plot cost the terrorists and what it cost their enemies — a $4,200 price tag for AQAP versus, in the magazine’s estimation, a cost of “billions of dollars in new security measures” for America and other Western countries.

Tags: Bin Laden by mike
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So in Oakland, if you use public WiFi, within 10 minutes some arsehole is portscanning and trying blind connects on 5900, 3389, 135 etc. NMap “intense scan” right back at you (x4 multi-location), with ping of death on top!

Tags: 1337, l33t sk11llz by mike
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So it seems as if this Democratic President learned one hard lesson from his predecessor Carter’s aborted attempt to stage a commando raid: if there are helicopters involved, some of them will malfunction. Carter’s raid into Iran was comprehensively knackered by multiple malfunctioning helicopters. Obama apparently took no chances, sending four main copters first, and two reserve copters on the assumption that something would probably go wrong. One copter did stall, and was apparently blown up by US troops. Which accounts for that liveblogger in Abbottabad (apparently a Pakistani version of Carmel, CA) tweeting about helicopter crashes. Around half the time I drive past MCAS Miramar there are multiple huge copters in the air apparently practicing transport and refuelling in that weird, lumbering way only massive military air craft can manage. Not I will be even more nervous driving under them.

Tags: Uncategorized by mike
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Staying by Oakland Marina. Yes, there is a Marina! With little boats and everything! I was as surprised as anybody. But I did see a prostitute a couple of blocks away, so it still has that authentic vibe going for it, which is nice…

Tags: Oakland by mike
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