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This chapter is dedicated to BakkaPhoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. Bakka is the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world, and it made me the mutant I am today. I wandered in for the first time around the age of 10 and asked for some recommendations. Tanya Huff (yes, the Tanya Huff, but she wasn’t a famous writer back then!) took me back into the used section and pressed a copy of H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy” into my hands, and changed my life forever. By the time I was 18, I was working at Bakka — I took over from Tanya when she retired to write full time — and I learned life-long lessons about how and why people buy books. I think every writer should work at a bookstore (and plenty of writers have worked at Bakka over the years! For the 30th anniversary of the store, they put together an anthology of stories by Bakka writers that included work by Michelle Sagara (AKA Michelle West), Tanya Huff, Nalo Hopkinson, Tara Tallan –and me!)
This chapter is dedicated to BakkaPhoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. Bakka is the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world, and it made me the mutant I am today. I wandered in for the first time around the age of 10 and asked for some recommendations. Tanya Huff (yes, the Tanya Huff, but she wasn’t a famous writer back then!) took me back into the used section and pressed a copy of H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy” into my hands, and changed my life forever. By the time I was 18, I was working at Bakka — I took over from Tanya when she retired to write full time — and I learned life-long lessons about how and why people buy books. I think every writer should work at a bookstore (and plenty of writers have worked at Bakka over the years! For the 30th anniversary of the store, they put together an anthology of stories by Bakka writers that included work by Michelle Sagara (AKA Michelle West), Tanya Huff, Nalo Hopkinson, Tara Tallan –and me!)3
12
I’m a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco’s sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced “Winston.”
12
I’m a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco’s sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced “Winston.”4
2
Not pronounced “Double-you-one-enn-five-tee-zero-enn” — unless you’re a clueless disciplinary officer who’s far enough behind the curve that you still call the Internet “the information superhighway.”
2
Not pronounced “Double-you-one-enn-five-tee-zero-enn” — unless you’re a clueless disciplinary officer who’s far enough behind the curve that you still call the Internet “the information superhighway.”5
I know just such a clueless person, and his name is Fred Benson, one of three vice-principals at Cesar Chavez. He’s a sucking chest wound of a human being. But if you’re going to have a jailer, better a clueless one than one who’s really on the ball.
I know just such a clueless person, and his name is Fred Benson, one of three vice-principals at Cesar Chavez. He’s a sucking chest wound of a human being. But if you’re going to have a jailer, better a clueless one than one who’s really on the ball.6
4
“Marcus Yallow,” he said over the PA one Friday morning. The PA isn’t very good to begin with, and when you combine that with Benson’s habitual mumble, you get something that sounds more like someone struggling to digest a bad burrito than a school announcement. But human beings are good at picking their names out of audio confusion — it’s a survival trait.
4
“Marcus Yallow,” he said over the PA one Friday morning. The PA isn’t very good to begin with, and when you combine that with Benson’s habitual mumble, you get something that sounds more like someone struggling to digest a bad burrito than a school announcement. But human beings are good at picking their names out of audio confusion — it’s a survival trait.7
5
I grabbed my bag and folded my laptop three-quarters shut — I didn’t want to blow my downloads — and got ready for the inevitable.
5
I grabbed my bag and folded my laptop three-quarters shut — I didn’t want to blow my downloads — and got ready for the inevitable.9
8
My social studies teacher, Ms Galvez, rolled her eyes at me and I rolled my eyes back at her. The Man was always coming down on me, just because I go through school firewalls like wet kleenex, spoof the gait-recognition software, and nuke the snitch chips they track us with. Galvez is a good type, anyway, never holds that against me (especially when I’m helping get with her webmail so she can talk to her brother who’s stationed in Iraq).
8
My social studies teacher, Ms Galvez, rolled her eyes at me and I rolled my eyes back at her. The Man was always coming down on me, just because I go through school firewalls like wet kleenex, spoof the gait-recognition software, and nuke the snitch chips they track us with. Galvez is a good type, anyway, never holds that against me (especially when I’m helping get with her webmail so she can talk to her brother who’s stationed in Iraq).10
1
My boy Darryl gave me a smack on the ass as I walked past. I’ve known Darryl since we were still in diapers and escaping from play-school, and I’ve been getting him into and out of trouble the whole time. I raised my arms over my head like a prizefighter and made my exit from Social Studies and began the perp-walk to the office.
1
My boy Darryl gave me a smack on the ass as I walked past. I’ve known Darryl since we were still in diapers and escaping from play-school, and I’ve been getting him into and out of trouble the whole time. I raised my arms over my head like a prizefighter and made my exit from Social Studies and began the perp-walk to the office.11
5
I was halfway there when my phone went. That was another no-no — phones are muy prohibido at Chavez High — but why should that stop me? I ducked into the toilet and shut myself in the middle stall (the furthest stall is always grossest because so many people head straight for it, hoping to escape the smell and the squick — the smart money and good hygiene is down the middle). I checked the phone — my home PC had sent it an email to tell it that there was something new up on Harajuku Fun Madness, which happens to be the best game ever invented.
5
I was halfway there when my phone went. That was another no-no — phones are muy prohibido at Chavez High — but why should that stop me? I ducked into the toilet and shut myself in the middle stall (the furthest stall is always grossest because so many people head straight for it, hoping to escape the smell and the squick — the smart money and good hygiene is down the middle). I checked the phone — my home PC had sent it an email to tell it that there was something new up on Harajuku Fun Madness, which happens to be the best game ever invented.12
1
I grinned. Spending Fridays at school was teh suck anyway, and I was glad of the excuse to make my escape.
1
I grinned. Spending Fridays at school was teh suck anyway, and I was glad of the excuse to make my escape.13
I ambled the rest of the way to Benson’s office and tossed him a wave as I sailed through the door.
I ambled the rest of the way to Benson’s office and tossed him a wave as I sailed through the door.14
4
“If it isn’t Double-you-one-enn-five-tee-zero-enn,” he said. Fredrick Benson — Social Security number 545-03-2343, date of birth August 15 1962, mother’s maiden name Di Bona, hometown Petaluma — is a lot taller than me. I’m a runty 5′8″, while he stands 6′7″, and his college basketball days are far enough behind him that his chest muscles have turned into saggy man-boobs that were painfully obvious through his freebie dot-com polo-shirts. He always looks like he’s about to slam-dunk your ass, and he’s really into raising his voice for dramatic effect. Both these start to lose their efficacy with repeated application.
4
“If it isn’t Double-you-one-enn-five-tee-zero-enn,” he said. Fredrick Benson — Social Security number 545-03-2343, date of birth August 15 1962, mother’s maiden name Di Bona, hometown Petaluma — is a lot taller than me. I’m a runty 5′8″, while he stands 6′7″, and his college basketball days are far enough behind him that his chest muscles have turned into saggy man-boobs that were painfully obvious through his freebie dot-com polo-shirts. He always looks like he’s about to slam-dunk your ass, and he’s really into raising his voice for dramatic effect. Both these start to lose their efficacy with repeated application.16
3
“W1n5t0n,” he said, spelling it out again. He gave me a hairy eyeball and waited for me to wilt. Of course it was my handle, and had been for years. It was the identity I used when I was posting on message-boards where I was making my contributions to the field of applied security research. You know, like sneaking out of school and disabling the minder-tracer on my phone. But he didn’t know that this was my handle. Only a small number of people did, and I trusted them all to the end of the earth.
3
“W1n5t0n,” he said, spelling it out again. He gave me a hairy eyeball and waited for me to wilt. Of course it was my handle, and had been for years. It was the identity I used when I was posting on message-boards where I was making my contributions to the field of applied security research. You know, like sneaking out of school and disabling the minder-tracer on my phone. But he didn’t know that this was my handle. Only a small number of people did, and I trusted them all to the end of the earth.17
“Um, not ringing any bells,” I said. I’d done some pretty cool stuff around school using that handle — I was very proud of my work on snitch-tag killers — and if he could link the two identities, I’d be in trouble. No one at school ever called me w1n5t0n or even Winston. Not even my pals. It was Marcus or nothing.
“Um, not ringing any bells,” I said. I’d done some pretty cool stuff around school using that handle — I was very proud of my work on snitch-tag killers — and if he could link the two identities, I’d be in trouble. No one at school ever called me w1n5t0n or even Winston. Not even my pals. It was Marcus or nothing.18
1
Benson settled down behind his desk and tapped his class-ring nervously on his blotter. He did this whenever things started to go bad for him. Poker players call stuff like this a “tell” — something that let you know what was going on in the other guy’s head. I knew Benson’s tells backwards and forwards.
1
Benson settled down behind his desk and tapped his class-ring nervously on his blotter. He did this whenever things started to go bad for him. Poker players call stuff like this a “tell” — something that let you know what was going on in the other guy’s head. I knew Benson’s tells backwards and forwards.20
2
“I will just as soon as you explain what this is, sir.” I always say “sir” to authority figures when I’m messing with them. It’s my own tell.
2
“I will just as soon as you explain what this is, sir.” I always say “sir” to authority figures when I’m messing with them. It’s my own tell.21
He shook his head at me and looked down, another tell. Any second now, he was going to start shouting at me. “Listen, kiddo! It’s time you came to grips with the fact that we know about what you’ve been doing, and that we’re not going to be lenient about it. You’re going to be lucky if you’re not expelled before this meeting is through. Do you want to graduate?”
He shook his head at me and looked down, another tell. Any second now, he was going to start shouting at me. “Listen, kiddo! It’s time you came to grips with the fact that we know about what you’ve been doing, and that we’re not going to be lenient about it. You’re going to be lucky if you’re not expelled before this meeting is through. Do you want to graduate?”23
2
He slammed his hand down on the desk and then pointed his finger at me. “The problem, Mr Yallow, is that you’ve been engaged in criminal conspiracy to subvert this school’s security system, and you have supplied security countermeasures to your fellow students. You know that we expelled Graciella Uriarte last week for using one of your devices.” Uriarte had gotten a bad rap. She’d bought a radio-jammer from a head-shop near the 16th Street BART station and it had set off the countermeasures in the school hallway. Not my doing, but I felt for her.
2
He slammed his hand down on the desk and then pointed his finger at me. “The problem, Mr Yallow, is that you’ve been engaged in criminal conspiracy to subvert this school’s security system, and you have supplied security countermeasures to your fellow students. You know that we expelled Graciella Uriarte last week for using one of your devices.” Uriarte had gotten a bad rap. She’d bought a radio-jammer from a head-shop near the 16th Street BART station and it had set off the countermeasures in the school hallway. Not my doing, but I felt for her.25
“We have reliable intelligence indicating that you are w1n5t0n” — again, he spelled it out, and I began to wonder if he hadn’t figured out that the 1 was an I and the 5 was an S. “We know that this w1n5t0n character is responsible for the theft of last year’s standardized tests.” That actually hadn’t been me, but it was a sweet hack, and it was kind of flattering to hear it attributed to me. “And therefore liable for several years in prison unless you cooperate with me.”
“We have reliable intelligence indicating that you are w1n5t0n” — again, he spelled it out, and I began to wonder if he hadn’t figured out that the 1 was an I and the 5 was an S. “We know that this w1n5t0n character is responsible for the theft of last year’s standardized tests.” That actually hadn’t been me, but it was a sweet hack, and it was kind of flattering to hear it attributed to me. “And therefore liable for several years in prison unless you cooperate with me.”28
“If there’s evidence, sir, I think you should call the police and turn it over to them. It sounds like this is a very serious matter, and I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a proper investigation by the duly constituted authorities.”
“If there’s evidence, sir, I think you should call the police and turn it over to them. It sounds like this is a very serious matter, and I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a proper investigation by the duly constituted authorities.”31
We stared at each other across the desk. He’d clearly expected me to fold the second he dropped the bomb on me. I don’t fold. I have a trick for staring down people like Benson. I look slightly to the left of their heads, and think about the lyrics to old Irish folk songs, the kinds with three hundred verses. It makes me look perfectly composed and unworried.
We stared at each other across the desk. He’d clearly expected me to fold the second he dropped the bomb on me. I don’t fold. I have a trick for staring down people like Benson. I look slightly to the left of their heads, and think about the lyrics to old Irish folk songs, the kinds with three hundred verses. It makes me look perfectly composed and unworried.32
2
And the wing was on the bird and the bird was on the egg and the egg was in the nest and the nest was on the leaf and the leaf was on the twig and the twig was on the branch and the branch was on the limb and the limb was in the tree and the tree was in the bog — the bog down in the valley-oh! High-ho the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-oh –
2
And the wing was on the bird and the bird was on the egg and the egg was in the nest and the nest was on the leaf and the leaf was on the twig and the twig was on the branch and the branch was on the limb and the limb was in the tree and the tree was in the bog — the bog down in the valley-oh! High-ho the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-oh –33
“You can return to class now,” he said. “I’ll call on you once the police are ready to speak to you.”
“You can return to class now,” he said. “I’ll call on you once the police are ready to speak to you.”35
“The procedure for calling in the police is complicated. I’d hoped that we could settle this fairly and quickly, but since you insist –”
“The procedure for calling in the police is complicated. I’d hoped that we could settle this fairly and quickly, but since you insist –”39
I got out, keeping my expression neutral. He wasn’t going to call the cops. If he’d had enough evidence to go to the police with, he would have called them in the first place. He hated my guts. I figured he’d heard some unverified gossip and hoped to spook me into confirming it.
I got out, keeping my expression neutral. He wasn’t going to call the cops. If he’d had enough evidence to go to the police with, he would have called them in the first place. He hated my guts. I figured he’d heard some unverified gossip and hoped to spook me into confirming it.40
3
I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my gait even and measured for the gait-recognition cameras. These had been installed only a year before, and I loved them for their sheer idiocy. Beforehand, we’d had face-recognition cameras covering nearly every public space in school, but a court ruled that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lot of other paranoid school administrators had spent our textbook dollars on these idiot cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person’s walk from another. Yeah, right.
3
I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my gait even and measured for the gait-recognition cameras. These had been installed only a year before, and I loved them for their sheer idiocy. Beforehand, we’d had face-recognition cameras covering nearly every public space in school, but a court ruled that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lot of other paranoid school administrators had spent our textbook dollars on these idiot cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person’s walk from another. Yeah, right.41
I got back to class and sat down again, Ms Galvez warmly welcoming me back. I unpacked the school’s standard-issue machine and got back into classroom mode. The SchoolBooks were the snitchiest technology of them all, logging every keystroke, watching all the network traffic for suspicious keywords, counting every click, keeping track of every fleeting thought you put out over the net. We’d gotten them in my junior year, and it only took a couple months for the shininess to wear off. Once people figured out that these “free” laptops worked for the man — and showed a never-ending parade of obnoxious ads to boot — they suddenly started to feel very heavy and burdensome.
I got back to class and sat down again, Ms Galvez warmly welcoming me back. I unpacked the school’s standard-issue machine and got back into classroom mode. The SchoolBooks were the snitchiest technology of them all, logging every keystroke, watching all the network traffic for suspicious keywords, counting every click, keeping track of every fleeting thought you put out over the net. We’d gotten them in my junior year, and it only took a couple months for the shininess to wear off. Once people figured out that these “free” laptops worked for the man — and showed a never-ending parade of obnoxious ads to boot — they suddenly started to feel very heavy and burdensome.42
1
Cracking my SchoolBook had been easy. The crack was online within a month of the machine showing up, and there was nothing to it — just download a DVD image, burn it, stick it in the SchoolBook, and boot it while holding down a bunch of different keys at the same time. The DVD did the rest, installing a whole bunch of hidden programs on the machine, programs that would stay hidden even when the Board of Ed did its daily remote integrity checks of the machines. Every now and again I had to get an update for the software to get around the Board’s latest tests, but it was a small price to pay to get a little control over the box.
1
Cracking my SchoolBook had been easy. The crack was online within a month of the machine showing up, and there was nothing to it — just download a DVD image, burn it, stick it in the SchoolBook, and boot it while holding down a bunch of different keys at the same time. The DVD did the rest, installing a whole bunch of hidden programs on the machine, programs that would stay hidden even when the Board of Ed did its daily remote integrity checks of the machines. Every now and again I had to get an update for the software to get around the Board’s latest tests, but it was a small price to pay to get a little control over the box.43
3
I fired up IMParanoid, the secret instant messenger that I used when I wanted to have an off-the-record discussion right in the middle of class. Darryl was already logged in.
3
I fired up IMParanoid, the secret instant messenger that I used when I wanted to have an off-the-record discussion right in the middle of class. Darryl was already logged in.45
> No. Freaking. Way. If I get caught ditching a third time, I’m expelled. Man, you know that. We’ll go after school.
46
> You’ve got lunch and then study-hall, right? That’s two hours. Plenty of time to run down this clue and get back before anyone misses us. I’ll get the whole team out.
47
3
Harajuku Fun Madness is the best game ever made. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. It’s an ARG, an Alternate Reality Game, and the story goes that a gang of Japanese fashion-teens discovered a miraculous healing gem at the temple in Harajuku, which is basically where cool Japanese teenagers invented every major subculture for the past ten years. They’re being hunted by evil monks, the Yakuza (AKA the Japanese mafia), aliens, tax-inspectors, parents, and a rogue artificial intelligence. They slip the players coded messages that we have to decode and use to track down clues that lead to more coded messages and more clues.
3
Harajuku Fun Madness is the best game ever made. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. It’s an ARG, an Alternate Reality Game, and the story goes that a gang of Japanese fashion-teens discovered a miraculous healing gem at the temple in Harajuku, which is basically where cool Japanese teenagers invented every major subculture for the past ten years. They’re being hunted by evil monks, the Yakuza (AKA the Japanese mafia), aliens, tax-inspectors, parents, and a rogue artificial intelligence. They slip the players coded messages that we have to decode and use to track down clues that lead to more coded messages and more clues.48
3
Imagine the best afternoon you’ve ever spent prowling the streets of a city, checking out all the weird people, funny hand-bills, street-maniacs, and funky shops. Now add a scavenger hunt to that, one that requires you to research crazy old films and songs and teen culture from around the world and across time and space. And it’s a competition, with the winning team of four taking a grand prize of ten days in Tokyo, chilling on Harajuku bridge, geeking out in Akihabara, and taking home all the Astro Boy merchandise you can eat. Except that he’s called “Atom Boy” in Japan.
3
Imagine the best afternoon you’ve ever spent prowling the streets of a city, checking out all the weird people, funny hand-bills, street-maniacs, and funky shops. Now add a scavenger hunt to that, one that requires you to research crazy old films and songs and teen culture from around the world and across time and space. And it’s a competition, with the winning team of four taking a grand prize of ten days in Tokyo, chilling on Harajuku bridge, geeking out in Akihabara, and taking home all the Astro Boy merchandise you can eat. Except that he’s called “Atom Boy” in Japan.51
> I need you D. You’re the best I’ve got. I swear I’ll get us in and out without anyone knowing it. You know I can do that, right?
55
> Come on, Darryl. You’re not going to your deathbed wishing you’d spent more study periods sitting in school
57
> Yeah but don’t you think you might go to your death-bed wishing you’d spent more time with Vanessa Pak?
58
Van was part of my team. She went to a private girl’s school in the East Bay, but I knew she’d ditch to come out and run the mission with me. Darryl has had a crush on her literally for years — even before puberty endowed her with many lavish gifts. Darryl had fallen in love with her mind. Sad, really.
Van was part of my team. She went to a private girl’s school in the East Bay, but I knew she’d ditch to come out and run the mission with me. Darryl has had a crush on her literally for years — even before puberty endowed her with many lavish gifts. Darryl had fallen in love with her mind. Sad, really.61
He looked at me and shook his head. Then he nodded. I winked at him and set to work getting in touch with the rest of my team.
He looked at me and shook his head. Then he nodded. I winked at him and set to work getting in touch with the rest of my team.63
I wasn’t always into ARGing. I have a dark secret: I used to be a LARPer. LARPing is Live Action Role Playing, and it’s just about what it sounds like: running around in costume, talking in a funny accent, pretending to be a super-spy or a vampire or a medieval knight. It’s like Capture the Flag in monster-drag, with a bit of Drama Club thrown in, and the best games were the ones we played in Scout Camps out of town in Sonoma or down on the Peninsula. Those three-day epics could get pretty hairy, with all-day hikes, epic battles with foam-and-bamboo swords, casting spells by throwing beanbags and shouting “Fireball!” and so on. Good fun, if a little goofy. Not nearly as geeky as talking about what your elf planned on doing as you sat around a table loaded with Diet Coke cans and painted miniatures, and more physically active than going into a mouse-coma in front of a massively multiplayer game at home.
I wasn’t always into ARGing. I have a dark secret: I used to be a LARPer. LARPing is Live Action Role Playing, and it’s just about what it sounds like: running around in costume, talking in a funny accent, pretending to be a super-spy or a vampire or a medieval knight. It’s like Capture the Flag in monster-drag, with a bit of Drama Club thrown in, and the best games were the ones we played in Scout Camps out of town in Sonoma or down on the Peninsula. Those three-day epics could get pretty hairy, with all-day hikes, epic battles with foam-and-bamboo swords, casting spells by throwing beanbags and shouting “Fireball!” and so on. Good fun, if a little goofy. Not nearly as geeky as talking about what your elf planned on doing as you sat around a table loaded with Diet Coke cans and painted miniatures, and more physically active than going into a mouse-coma in front of a massively multiplayer game at home.64
The thing that got me into trouble were the mini-games in the hotels. Whenever a science fiction convention came to town, some LARPer would convince them to let us run a couple of six-hour mini-games at the con, piggybacking on their rental of the space. Having a bunch of enthusiastic kids running around in costume lent color to the event, and we got to have a ball among people even more socially deviant than us.
The thing that got me into trouble were the mini-games in the hotels. Whenever a science fiction convention came to town, some LARPer would convince them to let us run a couple of six-hour mini-games at the con, piggybacking on their rental of the space. Having a bunch of enthusiastic kids running around in costume lent color to the event, and we got to have a ball among people even more socially deviant than us.65
The problem with hotels is that they have a lot of non-gamers in them, too — and not just sci-fi people. Normal people. From states that begin and end with vowels. On holidays.
The problem with hotels is that they have a lot of non-gamers in them, too — and not just sci-fi people. Normal people. From states that begin and end with vowels. On holidays.69
Class ended in ten minutes, and that didn’t leave me with much time to prepare. The first order of business were those pesky gait-recognition cameras. Like I said, they’d started out as face-recognition cameras, but those had been ruled unconstitutional. As far as I know, no court has yet determined whether these gait-cams are any more legal, but until they do, we’re stuck with them.
Class ended in ten minutes, and that didn’t leave me with much time to prepare. The first order of business were those pesky gait-recognition cameras. Like I said, they’d started out as face-recognition cameras, but those had been ruled unconstitutional. As far as I know, no court has yet determined whether these gait-cams are any more legal, but until they do, we’re stuck with them.70
“Gait” is a fancy word for the way you walk. People are pretty good at spotting gaits — next time you’re on a camping trip, check out the bobbing of the flashlight as a distant friend approaches you. Chances are you can identify him just from the movement of the light, the characteristic way it bobs up and down that tells our monkey brains that this is a person approaching us.
“Gait” is a fancy word for the way you walk. People are pretty good at spotting gaits — next time you’re on a camping trip, check out the bobbing of the flashlight as a distant friend approaches you. Chances are you can identify him just from the movement of the light, the characteristic way it bobs up and down that tells our monkey brains that this is a person approaching us.71
Gait recognition software takes pictures of your motion, tries to isolate you in the pics as a silhouette, and then tries to match the silhouette to a database to see if it knows who you are. It’s a biometric identifier, like fingerprints or retina-scans, but it’s got a lot more “collisions” than either of those. A biometric “collision” is when a measurement matches more than one person. Only you have your fingerprint, but you share your gait with plenty other people.
Gait recognition software takes pictures of your motion, tries to isolate you in the pics as a silhouette, and then tries to match the silhouette to a database to see if it knows who you are. It’s a biometric identifier, like fingerprints or retina-scans, but it’s got a lot more “collisions” than either of those. A biometric “collision” is when a measurement matches more than one person. Only you have your fingerprint, but you share your gait with plenty other people.72
Not exactly, of course. Your personal, inch-by-inch walk is yours and yours alone. The problem is your inch-by-inch walk changes based on how tired you are, what the floor is made of, whether you pulled your ankle playing basketball, and whether you’ve changed your shoes lately. So the system kind of fuzzes-out your profile, looking for people who walk kind of like you.
Not exactly, of course. Your personal, inch-by-inch walk is yours and yours alone. The problem is your inch-by-inch walk changes based on how tired you are, what the floor is made of, whether you pulled your ankle playing basketball, and whether you’ve changed your shoes lately. So the system kind of fuzzes-out your profile, looking for people who walk kind of like you.73
There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What’s more, it’s easy not to walk kind of like you — just take one shoe off. Of course, you’ll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it’s still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition).
There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What’s more, it’s easy not to walk kind of like you — just take one shoe off. Of course, you’ll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it’s still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition).74
2
The cameras used to set off an alert every time someone they didn’t recognize stepped onto campus.
2
The cameras used to set off an alert every time someone they didn’t recognize stepped onto campus.76
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The alarm went off every ten minutes. When the mailman came by. When a parent dropped in. When the grounds-people went to work fixing up the basketball court. When a student showed up wearing new shoes.
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The alarm went off every ten minutes. When the mailman came by. When a parent dropped in. When the grounds-people went to work fixing up the basketball court. When a student showed up wearing new shoes.77
So now it just tries to keep track of who’s where and when. If someone leaves by the school-gates during classes, their gait is checked to see if it kinda-sorta matches any student gait and if it does, whoop-whoop-whoop, ring the alarm!
So now it just tries to keep track of who’s where and when. If someone leaves by the school-gates during classes, their gait is checked to see if it kinda-sorta matches any student gait and if it does, whoop-whoop-whoop, ring the alarm!78
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Chavez High is ringed with gravel walkways. I like to keep a couple handsful of rocks in my shoulder-bag, just in case. I silently passed Darryl ten or fifteen pointy little bastards and we both loaded our shoes.
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Chavez High is ringed with gravel walkways. I like to keep a couple handsful of rocks in my shoulder-bag, just in case. I silently passed Darryl ten or fifteen pointy little bastards and we both loaded our shoes.79
Class was about to finish up — and I realized that I still hadn’t checked the Harajuku Fun Madness site to see where the next clue was! I’d been a little hyper-focused on the escape, and hadn’t bothered to figure out where we were escaping to.
Class was about to finish up — and I realized that I still hadn’t checked the Harajuku Fun Madness site to see where the next clue was! I’d been a little hyper-focused on the escape, and hadn’t bothered to figure out where we were escaping to.80
I turned to my SchoolBook and hit the keyboard. The web-browser we used was supplied with the machine. It was a locked-down spyware version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s crashware turd that no one under the age of 40 used voluntarily.
I turned to my SchoolBook and hit the keyboard. The web-browser we used was supplied with the machine. It was a locked-down spyware version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s crashware turd that no one under the age of 40 used voluntarily.81
I had a copy of Firefox on the USB drive built into my watch, but that wasn’t enough — the SchoolBook ran Windows Vista4Schools, an antique operating system designed to give school administrators the illusion that they controlled the programs their students could run.
I had a copy of Firefox on the USB drive built into my watch, but that wasn’t enough — the SchoolBook ran Windows Vista4Schools, an antique operating system designed to give school administrators the illusion that they controlled the programs their students could run.82
But Vista4Schools is its own worst enemy. There are a lot of programs that Vista4Schools doesn’t want you to be able to shut down — keyloggers, censorware — and these programs run in a special mode that makes them invisible to the system. You can’t quit them because you can’t even see they’re there.
But Vista4Schools is its own worst enemy. There are a lot of programs that Vista4Schools doesn’t want you to be able to shut down — keyloggers, censorware — and these programs run in a special mode that makes them invisible to the system. You can’t quit them because you can’t even see they’re there.83
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Any program whose name starts with $SYS$ is invisible to the operating system. it doesn’t show up on listings of the hard drive, nor in the process monitor. So my copy of Firefox was called $SYS$Firefox — and as I launched it, it became invisible to Windows, and so invisible to the network’s snoopware.
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Any program whose name starts with $SYS$ is invisible to the operating system. it doesn’t show up on listings of the hard drive, nor in the process monitor. So my copy of Firefox was called $SYS$Firefox — and as I launched it, it became invisible to Windows, and so invisible to the network’s snoopware.84
Now I had an indie browser running, I needed an indie network connection. The school’s network logged every click in and out of the system, which was bad news if you were planning on surfing over to the Harajuku Fun Madness site for some extra-curricular fun.
Now I had an indie browser running, I needed an indie network connection. The school’s network logged every click in and out of the system, which was bad news if you were planning on surfing over to the Harajuku Fun Madness site for some extra-curricular fun.85
The answer is something ingenious called TOR — The Onion Router. An onion router is an Internet site that takes requests for web-pages and passes them onto other onion routers, and on to other onion routers, until one of them finally decides to fetch the page and pass it back through the layers of the onion until it reaches you. The traffic to the onion-routers is encrypted, which means that the school can’t see what you’re asking for, and the layers of the onion don’t know who they’re working for. There are millions of nodes — the program was set up by the US Office of Naval Research to help their people get around the censorware in countries like Syria and China, which means that it’s perfectly designed for operating in the confines of an average American high school.
The answer is something ingenious called TOR — The Onion Router. An onion router is an Internet site that takes requests for web-pages and passes them onto other onion routers, and on to other onion routers, until one of them finally decides to fetch the page and pass it back through the layers of the onion until it reaches you. The traffic to the onion-routers is encrypted, which means that the school can’t see what you’re asking for, and the layers of the onion don’t know who they’re working for. There are millions of nodes — the program was set up by the US Office of Naval Research to help their people get around the censorware in countries like Syria and China, which means that it’s perfectly designed for operating in the confines of an average American high school.86
TOR works because the school has a finite blacklist of naughty addresses we aren’t allowed to visit, and the addresses of the nodes change all the time — no way could the school keep track of them all. Firefox and TOR together made me into the invisible man, impervious to Board of Ed snooping, free to check out the Harajuku FM site and see what was up.
TOR works because the school has a finite blacklist of naughty addresses we aren’t allowed to visit, and the addresses of the nodes change all the time — no way could the school keep track of them all. Firefox and TOR together made me into the invisible man, impervious to Board of Ed snooping, free to check out the Harajuku FM site and see what was up.87
There it was, a new clue. Like all Harajuku Fun Madness clues, it had a physical, online and mental component. The online component was a puzzle you had to solve, one that required you to research the answers to a bunch of obscure questions. This batch included a bunch of questions on the plots in dojinshi — those are comic books drawn by fans of manga, Japanese comics. They can be as big as the official comics that inspire them, but they’re a lot weirder, with crossover story-lines and sometimes really silly songs and action. Lots of love stories, of course. Everyone loves to see their favorite toons hook up.
There it was, a new clue. Like all Harajuku Fun Madness clues, it had a physical, online and mental component. The online component was a puzzle you had to solve, one that required you to research the answers to a bunch of obscure questions. This batch included a bunch of questions on the plots in dojinshi — those are comic books drawn by fans of manga, Japanese comics. They can be as big as the official comics that inspire them, but they’re a lot weirder, with crossover story-lines and sometimes really silly songs and action. Lots of love stories, of course. Everyone loves to see their favorite toons hook up.88
I’d have to solve those riddles later, when I got home. They were easiest to solve with the whole team, downloading tons of dojinshi files and scouring them for answers to the puzzles.
I’d have to solve those riddles later, when I got home. They were easiest to solve with the whole team, downloading tons of dojinshi files and scouring them for answers to the puzzles.89
I’d just finished scrap-booking all the clues when the bell rang and we began our escape. I surreptitiously slid the gravel down the side of my short boots — ankle-high Blundstones from Australia, great for running and climbing, and the easy slip-on/slip-off laceless design makes them convenient at the never-ending metal-detectors that are everywhere now.
I’d just finished scrap-booking all the clues when the bell rang and we began our escape. I surreptitiously slid the gravel down the side of my short boots — ankle-high Blundstones from Australia, great for running and climbing, and the easy slip-on/slip-off laceless design makes them convenient at the never-ending metal-detectors that are everywhere now.90
We also had to evade physical surveillance, of course, but that gets easier every time they add a new layer of physical snoopery — all the bells and whistles lull our beloved faculty into a totally false sense of security. We surfed the crowd down the hallways, heading for my favorite side-exit. We were halfway along when Darryl hissed, “Crap! I forgot, I’ve got a library book in my bag.”
We also had to evade physical surveillance, of course, but that gets easier every time they add a new layer of physical snoopery — all the bells and whistles lull our beloved faculty into a totally false sense of security. We surfed the crowd down the hallways, heading for my favorite side-exit. We were halfway along when Darryl hissed, “Crap! I forgot, I’ve got a library book in my bag.”91
“You’re kidding me,” I said, and hauled him into the next bathroom we passed. Library books are bad news. Every one of them has an arphid — Radio Frequency ID tag — glued into its binding, which makes it possible for the librarians to check out the books by waving them over a reader, and lets a library shelf tell you if any of the books on it are out of place.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, and hauled him into the next bathroom we passed. Library books are bad news. Every one of them has an arphid — Radio Frequency ID tag — glued into its binding, which makes it possible for the librarians to check out the books by waving them over a reader, and lets a library shelf tell you if any of the books on it are out of place.92
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But it also lets the school track where you are at all times. It was another of those legal loopholes: the courts wouldn’t let the schools track us with arphids, but they could track library books, and use the school records to tell them who was likely to be carrying which library book.
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But it also lets the school track where you are at all times. It was another of those legal loopholes: the courts wouldn’t let the schools track us with arphids, but they could track library books, and use the school records to tell them who was likely to be carrying which library book.93
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I had a little Faraday pouch in my bag — these are little wallets lined with a mesh of copper wires that effectively block radio energy, silencing arphids. But the pouches were made for neutralizing ID cards and toll-book transponders, not books like –
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I had a little Faraday pouch in my bag — these are little wallets lined with a mesh of copper wires that effectively block radio energy, silencing arphids. But the pouches were made for neutralizing ID cards and toll-book transponders, not books like –
There isn’t a Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco, though there is an elementary school named after Chavez.
Cesar Chavez was a community organizer and an organizer of farm workers. The reference here may foreshadow the peaceful protests that take place later in the book.
While this is hyperbolic, there are a large number of surveillance cameras in downtown San Francisco. A study published by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society found that the cameras were relatively ineffective in deterring crime or catching criminals (pdf).
“The Information Superhighway” was a term that was popularized by Senator, and then Vice President, Al Gore especially during the 80s and 90s. It suggests parallels to the interstate highway system, and that rhetorical tie was used to encourage federal funding of the development of the internet. It is now rarely used without irony.
“Yallow” is a fairly uncommon name in the US. With most Yallows having arrived from England.
“Winston” is likely an allusion to Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984.
Surely W1n5ton uses a download manager that could pick up where he left off after an interruption?
Given that the title “Little Brother” is a play on Big Brother from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “w1n5t0n” is certainly a reference to the book’s main character, Winston Smith.
R2-D2 (phonetically spelled Artoo-Detoo or Artoo-Deetoo, and called “Artoo” for short), is a fictional droid in the Star Wars universe, an astromech droid. R2-D2 is one of only four characters to appear in all six Star Wars films
He could also just have configured his laptop not to shut down on closing the lid.
While there is no such program as IMParanoid, there are ways of having anonymous or encrypted IM. One such way is Pidgin with the OTR, or off-the-record, plugin. OTR uses a public-key cryptosystem to have end-to-end encryption and authentication, but does not use authentication anywhere other than the initial key exchange, allowing for deniability.
Pidgin supports SOCKS proxies and does not separately resolve domain names, so it can be used with the Tor network with a minimum of leakage for anonymity.
In 2005, the Northern California school district of Brittan established an RFID tracking system for students, to track attendance and identify trespassers. The program was opposed by many parents and the ACLU. (See School RFID Plan Gets an F, at Wired; Privacy Rights Are At Risk – Parents and Civil Liberties Groups Urge School District to Terminate Use of Tracking Devices, at ACLU of Northern California; and Keep RFIDs Out of Public Schools, at EFF.)
The ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse all helped draft legislation in California to limit RFID.
The RFID supplier for the Brittan school district, InCom Corporation, retracted its agreement to provide the RFID tracking system, according to a USA Today article (as noted at RFID Update), Company pulls out of contract to track students.
In October, 2007, InformationWeek reported that ten UK schoolchildren would be tracked with RFID chips in their school uniforms for a pilot program meant to make way for a behavioral reporting and attendance sytem. (See U.K. Kids Get RFID Chips In School Uniforms).
On December 12, 2007, ATT announced that it would offer RFID tracking for schools that would include tracking of buses, assets (like books), student attendance (on ID badges), and visitors. (See RFID Update’s article, “AT&T Steps into RFID Student-Tracking Minefield)
In 2008, the Rhode Island Middletown Public School system established a pilot program to put RFID tags on about 80 children’s school bags. The ACLU responded in ACLU ISSUES ALARM ABOUT MIDDLETOWN PLAN TO ELECTRONICALLY MONITOR SCHOOL CHILDREN.
“Teh” is an internet slang neologism most frequently used as an English article, based on a common misspelling of the. A common typographical error, this typo became a part of Internet slang and subsequently developed grammatical usages distinct from “the”. In this case, “teh suck” is equivalent to the superlative “the suckiest”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teh
The Onion Router (Tor) is a free software implementation of second-generation onion routing – a system which claims to enable its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, and Paul Syverson presented “Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router” at the 13th USENIX Security Symposium.
http://www.torproject.org/
This naming scheme is an allusion to the Sony rootkit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal
The community had it’s own laugh when the rootkit became popular to use to thwart other spyware, such as World of Warcraft’s Warden, by prefixing the game hacks with $SYS$ they became invisible.
See Etsy’s page on Faraday bags. According to Etsy, “English chemist and philosopher Michael Faraday (1791-1867) made perhaps his greatest contributions in the areas of electromagnetism. His Faraday Cage is the basis of the data-shielding Faraday Bag, which uses his principles to shield the personal information contained in RFID chips in credit cards and passports from prying eyes.”
But in the real world, wouldn’t kids exchange school books or deliberately leave them in places where they would have an albi?
The downloads could have been non-resumable: the site could time-out connections and use session IDs to generate unique URLs.
Actually, multiple people are working on IMParanoid, and indeed the whole Paranoid Linux distro
The term, as Alex explains above, is synonymous with infobahn.
The Mission District is a diverse area of California, made up, primarily of Latinos, followed by caucasian, and lastly Asian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_District,_San_Francisco,_California
http://paranoidlinux.org/ has been dead for some time, and has been taken over by domain squatters (it’s become a spam-site).
The OTR plugin for Pidgin and Adium, which lets you encrypt your messages over most IM networks in the world (Jabber/XMPP, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, AIM, etc.) can be downloaded here: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
Pidgin itself can be downloaded, for Windows and Linux, at http://pidgin.im/ If you use Mac OS you need Adium, available at http://adium.im/, instead of Pidgin.
San Francisco’s Mission District has a history of political activism dating back to the 1960s.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5RrdYgh50JMC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=mission+district+activism+%2B+1960s&source=bl&ots=ullvq-xPU0&sig=E2KE1rADMyBZbTjsOibv7l6FJKk&hl=en&ei=n66dSr3nFZrfmQetgIm7Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=mission%20district%20activism%20%2B%201960s&f=false
El Tecolote is a bilingual newspaper that has served the San Francisco area nearly 35 years and it boasts that its archives “represent a historical record of Mission district activism and the social, political, cultural and economic development of our community.”
http://news.eltecolote.org/news/view_custom.html?custom_page_id=22
The author’s assertion that hearing one’s name through audio confusion is a survival trait may be loosely based on the fact that humans’ sense of hearing is critical in survival.
http://www.bcm.edu/oto/research/cochlea/Volta/01.html
“The Man” is a slang phrase that suggests rebellion against oppressive authoritarianism. “It refers to the government, leaders of large corporations, and other authority figures in general, rather than a specific person.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man
Gait recognition technology is very real. Here is one of the 90,000+ hits my cursory search on the subject returned on Google.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021015073446.htm
View Larger Map
In practice, it may be less of a survival trait, and more of a matter of familiarity. In a widely cited study, Mandel, Jusczyk, and Pisoni (1995) found that infants as young as 4.5 months old prefer hearing their own names to other names. They surmised that this was because it was a word they heard very often, and because it was related to their social role.
Moreover, it’s been shown that even in patients who are “locked in” or in a vegetative state show some ability to discern their own name from others (Perrin et al, 2006).
Though the use in this paragraph is clearly meant as a witticism (i.e., being able to hear your own name is important if you need to know when to run), the ability to recognize one’s own name may actually reflect a social survival skill–the ability to learn from others–that is unique to the human animal (see Frith, 2008).
Frith, C. D. (2008). Social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 363(1499), 2033-2039.
Mandel, DR, Jusczyk, PW & Pisoni, DB (1995). Infants’ Recognition of the Sound Patterns of Their Own Names, Psychological Science, 6(5), pp. 314-317.
Perrin, F., Schnakers, C., Schabus, M., Degueldre, C., Goldman, S., Bredart, S., et al. (2006). Brain Response to One’s Own Name in Vegetative State, Minimally Conscious State, and Locked-in Syndrome. Arch Neurol, 63(4), 562-569.
Here are instructions on changing what happens to your laptop when you close the lid for Windows Vista. An application called InsomniaX can help with OS X. In most versions of Linux, you can tell it explicitly what to do on lid closing. This howto is on ACPID (i.e., “suspend to RAM”), but addresses lid actions more generally.
“Perp-walk,” short for perpetrator walk, is a slang term used to describe law enforcement’s practice of parading suspects in front of TV cameras. The suspect is generally donning a prison jumper; and perp walks are often slowed down by TV editors for dramatic effect. Perp- walk shots are often criticized for being staged and rather un-organic. The term reminds me of the days when I worked at Court TV. We had quite the library of perp-walks. One of the most famous perp-walks is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perp_walk
Kleenex is a brand-name that has become synonymous with “tissue” in the U.S. The term for that is “genericized.” Another example of a genericized product is Band-Aid. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex
Sidenote: And apologies to Mr. Doctorow in advance, but shouldn’t kleenex have been capitalized?
BART is an acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit. The Bay being San Francisco Bay. It is a rail transit system that connects to bus services as well. See: http://www.bart.gov/
According to an ABCNews.com report, the first stall is likely to be the cleanest.
Head-shops typically sell drug-related items, but are also known to carry things like blacklight bulbs, posters, and sex toys. Thus, a radio-jammer wouldn’t be entirely out of place, seeing as they also carry substances that allegedly create a false-positive in urinalysis drug tests. There seems to be an “evade the law” theme.
Interestingly, the store credited as the first head-shop just happens to be located in San Francisco! It is the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street.
See map.
Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_shop
It’s a safe bet that this is not an actual Irish folk song, because a) I grew up on all things Irish folklore and have no recollection of it, b) I double-checked with my Irish great-uncle, and c) I Googled the lyrics and only “Little Brother” hits turned up.
Interesting article from the UK’s Telegraph about gait-recognition cameras. It even mentions the Winston Smith character from Orwell’s “1984.”
Leaving a computer downloading can be dangerous to all material on it, here is how to be more safe when downloading, because, let’s face it once you start, you can’t stop!
Windows – http://www.microsoft.com/protect/data/downloadfileshare/saving.aspx
“Sir” is a term used to refer to authority figures with courtesy.
For more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir
A “handle” is a username, fake name or nickname that allows you to communicate with others while keeping your true identity hidden. The word handle became widely used with CB radios (Citizens’ Band radio).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_Band_radio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_%28computing%29
I’ve always found San Francisco kind of chilly, even in July, but the city apparently has microclimates that create different weather condition in different sections. The Mission’s location east of the city protects it from fog and wind, making it sunnier than in other city neighborhoods. For more, see http://books.google.com/books?id=Wb1cks8Qe4IC&pg=PA5&lpg=PP1&vq=Mission&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html
Words like W1N5T0N is a newly emerging form of writing that combines letters and numbers or special characters with similar looks to letters (such as $ to signify an ‘S’) to create words. This combination is known as Leetspeak (the numbers 1337 appearing similar to “leet”) and is becoming particularly popular among gamers. See http://www.giantbomb.com/games-with-numbers-where-letters-should-go/92-103/. Also check out http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/leetspea.htm.
Actually, leet (1337) speak is largely unfashionable by now, except in certain situations, and with certain words that have carried over into general usage (eg “n00b”).
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=1337&defid=9835
The Harajuku bridge is located in an area known for youth gatherings. This is a place many gather displaying a variety of styles. This area is a place Japanese youth display various cultural ways of dressing, sometimes even taking on the identities of famous band members etc. See photos here – http://bit.ly/5eke9 really seems like an interesting gathering spots for these teens.
I find this mention of Harajuku interesting in relation to the way Japanese teens and youth are extremely involved in technology and online gaming. This could be a shout out to the online gamers in Japan who are often the ground breakers.
Web-browsers today come in all shapes in sizes from all major software companies. The most popular include: Internet Explorer (for PC), Safari (for Mac), Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. These software applications provide a means through which to view the World Wide Web. They are becoming more flexible and sophisticated as technologies evolve. They are the applications we rely on to use the Internet effectively.
USB, a term used by millions to refer to the Universal Serial Bus, which is relied on to save and transfer information in millions of ways everyday across the world. USBs today are used for a variety of functions, including saving to external drives, connecting to Mice, digital cameras and much more.
For more see – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus
I was thinking that Katie….then I was wondering if he is using it here as the generalized, everyday vocab term.
The issue of banning mobile phones from schools has become a heated one. Many schools require students to leave their phones at home or check them at the door. Some have gone so far as to purchase cell phone jamming equipment, despite the use of such equipment being illegal in the US. (Despite being illegal to use, they are not particularly difficult to build or obtain, cf. ¶23, below, regarding a radio frequency jammer).
At least some research, however suggests that allowing cell phones in schools provides a significant learning opportunity. This advantage is on top of issues of safety and convenience.
And this today: an honor-roll student in sixth grade was expelled after his phone was seized and images on it were searched. The ACLU is helping to fight the expulsion in Mississippi.
The scientific term for “man-boobs” is Gynecomastia, which is defined as the abnormal enlargement of breast tissue in the male, often because of an imbalance in sex hormones. For more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynecomastia
“Applied security research” is an actual term used by people in the security field. It applies, in part, to the prevention of terrorism and violence. In fact, professionals have their own journal, The Journal of Applied Security Research, found at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/WASR
PA: Public Address System, not to be confused with the state of Pennsylvania.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_address
Webmail is short for web-based email according to this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmail
“Muy prohibido” is Spanish for “very prohibited” according to this link: http://translation2.paralink.com/
A bit more on gait recognition cameras from Scholarpedia.
A bit more on Alternative Reality Games
More about Astro Boy from Wikipedia
East Bay San Francisco’s main cities are “Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Concord, Hayward, Fremont, Livermore and Antioch,” according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bay_(San_Francisco_Bay_Area)
Sonoma, CA: Google Map
School systems in both the United States and the United Kingdom have begun experimenting with embedding microchips in children’s school uniforms. These have become known as snitch chips (or snitch-chips). For more information about an experiment in Rhode Island, go to http://current.com/items/89046661_u-s-school-district-to-begin-microchipping-students.htm. For a reaction in the U.K., go to http://archrights.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/chipping-children/
According to the Urban Dictionary, “squick” is defined as the physical sense of repulsion after one encounters a nauseating situation or condition. For more, see http://archrights.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/chipping-children/
The “hairy eye ball” is defined as a glance with partially lowered lids, and is of U.S. derivation (1960s) and pretty much limited to use by Americans. For details on the history of the term, go to http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hairy-eyeball.html
A very similar Irish children’s song called The Rattlin’ Bog by an unknown author can be found here, and appears to be the basis for this entry: http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/r004.html
Gait is considered by some scientists as “a non-intrusive biometric,” since cameras can be set up at a distance. Video information can look at posture, how an arm or leg swings, and the way the upper body maintains balance and combine these variables to distinguish among individuals. For an explanation of how it all works together, go to http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~rama/Conf.pdf-files/kale-28.pdf. Chillingly, some researchers are even claiming that floor sensors can recognize gaits at an 80 percent accuracy level. See http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1544421
The first PA System was used in 1912 at the Olympics in Sweden which was said to be the most well organized Olympic event of it’s time.
public-address system.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 14 Sep. 2009 .
Scientists have been studying the ability to indentify a person based on “Gait” as early at the 1070’s but the first attempts to develop computer gait recognition came about in the 1990’s by Niyogi and Adelson.
The four periods of gait recognition are basically:
1. Right Stance
2.Left Swing
3.Left Stance
4Left Swing
(periods in between referred to as “double limb support”)
Cited:
http://marathon.csee.usf.edu/~sarkar/PDFs/Chapter06_Gait.pdf
3.
The use of electronic devices in place of textbooks is becoming quite common as textbooks are expensive and become outdated quickly.
Althought the initial cost of switching to laptops and devices like the ipod may seem high, it can actually save school systems money and keep current information readilty available.
Some school sytems that are currently using this ebook approach are:
Cushig Academy Boston, Mass.
Empire High Tucsan, Ariz.
Monticell High Virg.
Some school have implemented some censorship to prevent students from using the devices for extra currucular purposes.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ipods-laptops-replacing-school-textbooks/Story?id=8563292&page=1
The USB Drive was invented by Dov Moran who after having trouble accesing files for an important presentation in 1998.
It is said that he wanted to design a protable light weight devices that could back up files and limit this problem. By 2004 for 51 million USB devices where sold.
Since then USB devices are being carried in many ways including watches and more.
Source:
http://www.eetimes.com/disruption/profiles/moran.jhtml
A “tell” derives from the game of poker, and is “a subtle but detectable change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player’s assessment of his hand.” Poker players who can minimize their own tells (or deliberately use them deceptively) and can read the tells of the other players around them will do much better than those who cannot. In this context, Marcus informs us that an authority figure could reliably know whether he was serious about what he was saying by paying attention to whether he uses the word “sir”. It’s likely this tell would extend to the use of “ma’am”, the female equivalent of “sir”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_%28poker%29
This is a Noodle Incident, a reference to an event that has happened in the past but that no person who was involved in it is willing to give the details of, leaving the audience to fill in the details with their own imaginations. To see what a Noodle Incident might look like to those who were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be there, pay careful attention to chapter 19.
The administration office, defined as a place where a group of school administrators is housed, is often set aside from the hubbub of the school, sometimes in an entirely separate building. While traditional principals’ offices were often located within the area of the school’s main office, administration offices are usually farther away from the central area of activity. Interestingly, perhaps because administration offices are somewhat isolated from the schools themselves, these areas are sometimes neglected when it comes time to set up security procedures for schools. See http://www.schoolsecurity.org/resources/school_office_safety.html. Note that administration offices is a more bureaucratic term than principal’s office, which indicates a single human being as opposed to a rather intimidating group of higher-ups that might include the school superintendent, business manager, principal, director of special education and others.
Yakuza is the name for Japanese crime syndicates, similar to America’s mafia. For more information, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza. Interestingly, there’s also an M-rated Playstation 2 video game created by Sega of the same name. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_(video_game)
Live Action Role Playing, also known as interactive literature, started in the 1970s as re-enactments of great battles. It is seen as a participatory art rather than an art presented to an audience. For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game
According to an electronic pamphlet published by the Social Security Administration and titled Identity Theft and Your Social Security Number, someone might access your information one of the following ways: * Stealing wallets, purses and your mail (bank and credit card statements, pre-approved credit offers, new checks and tax information);
* Stealing personal information you provide to an unsecured site on the Internet, from business or personnel records at work and personal information in your home;
* Rummaging through your trash, the trash of businesses and public trash dumps for personal data;
* Posing by phone or E-mail as someone who legitimately needs information about you, such as employers or landlords; or
* Buying personal information from “inside” sources. For example, an identity thief may pay a store employee for information about you that appears on an application for goods, services or credit.
An academic article by Krauss et al. titled Nonverbal Behavior and Nonverbal Communication: What Do Conversational Hand Gestures Tell Us? explains that much of what social psychologists believe about nonverbal behavior originated with Charles Darwin. Darwin proposed the theory that our “tells” are vestiges of serviceable associated habits– behaviors that earlier in our evolutionary history had specific and direct functions. For a species that attacked by biting, baring the teeth was a necessary prelude to an assault; wrinkling the nose reduced the inhalation of foul odors; and so forth.
According to Wikipedia, hundreds of local and regional science fiction conventions have sprung up around the world either as one-time or annual events since the first conventions in the late 1930s. At these conventions, fans of science fiction come together with the professional writers, artists, and filmmakers in the genre to discuss its many aspects. Despite science fiction’s popularity, it still has the stigma of being a ‘geek’ genre.
The names of eight states begin and end with vowels: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Oklahoma.
The US Patent for video-based gait recognition was issued on February 12, 2008 to inventor Ross G. Cutler of Microsoft Research, USA.
For a helpful how-to video on surfing the internet anonymously using an onion router, see this cnet link.
On August 15, 1962, James Joseph Dresnok, a Private First Class in the U.S. Army, defected to North Korea while stationed at the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
I wonder if the reference to this specific date was intentional?
Your mother’s maiden name is a common security question when creating an online account. It is also an easy question to uncover the answer to. Once a person knows the answer, they can potentially gain access to your accounts that have that question set as the password reminder security question.
This article is about a hacker who was easily able to gain access to Twitter’s online accounts in July.
This story is a Noodle Incident, a reference to an event that has happened in the past but that no person who was involved in it is willing to give the details of, leaving the audience to fill in the details with their own imaginations. To see what a Noodle Incident might look like to those who were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be there, pay careful attention to chapter 19.
(The comment of similar nature in paragraph 78 is in error.)
Little Brother at Griffin Theatre Company Chicago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gvJif3Bds