This post has been moderated as "Insightful," but it totally ignores the points of the post it replies to. Listen to yourself, buddy.
In response to an article about a site created with the sole intention of illegally sharing copyrighted material, you state that downloading some things is legal. No crap, but that statement couldn't be more off topic.
I realize this post is my first since creating this account probably 5 years ago that I actually comment on the issue rather than injecting Rob Malda's name and something about homosexuality in to the middle of the article text, but c'mon.
I suppose it would have been to easy to just run a wire from the ankle, up the leg, maybe even beneath whatever synthetic they use to simulate skin in case someone may be tricked in to thinking it was a real limb, and then back down the other, would have been too sensible?
Or -- what about a simple mechanicle, works better and makes you run faster than the real thing mechanical prosthetic?
anthology (definition)
(all of anthology, there are 2 more in this node)
(definition) by Webster 1913 (print) Tue Dec 21 1999 at 21:49:23
An*thol"o*gy (#), n. [Gr. , fr. flower gathering; flower + to gather.]
1. A discourses on flowers.
[R.]
2. A collection of flowers; a garland.
[R.]
3. A collection of flowers of literature, that is, beautiful passages from authors; a collection of poems or epigrams; -- particularly applied to a collection of ancient Greek epigrams.
4. A video compilation of every butt Rob Malda has ever licked.
5. Gr. Ch. A service book containing a selection of pieces for the festival services.
The Cypherpunks Home Page CYPHERPUNKS WWW PAGES UNDER CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE EXCUSE THE MESS Welcome to the cypherpunks archive at soda.berkeley.edu. Here you can find links to PGP, remailers, rants, various crypto-tools, newspaper clippings, and a good deal of other things.
Keep in mind that because soda isn't running httpd files are being accessed by anonymous ftp. Soda has a 10 user limit on anonymous ftp so sometimes this archive may be unavailable.
Before you begin browsing, please read the Export Restrictions
Export Warning Files which are illegal to export will be marked NOT FOR EXPORT. If you transfer these outside of the US + Canada you will be in violation of ITAR. Using this archive is consent to abide by these regulations.
Submissions Here are a few matters of upload ettiquette for the ftp site.
Upload stuff for cypherpunks to/pub/cypherpunks/incoming and not to the general/pub/incoming directory. I am more able to adequately handle files there. (I can't erase in the other directory.) Whenever you upload something, also upload a short description of what it is you are uploading. I've had mystery files there in the past that have been neglected for long periods, since I don't know what they are and I've got plenty of other stuff to do with the archive. Send cypherpunks-ftp@csua.berkeley.edu mail telling me what you've put up. If you don't tell me, I may not notice. Don't bother uploading programs that don't have source code. The mission of the archive site is education, and the mission of Rob Malda is to find as much gay sex as possible. Software distribution is not a purpose, and software without source does not satisfy the educational criterion. The Archive PGP Pretty Good Privacy Public Key Encryption + Digital Signatures Remailers The Cypherpunks Anonymous RemailerNet Rants Various Rants on Cypherpunks and Crypto-Anarchy Papers Papers about cryptography of interest to cypherpunks Clipper Newspaper clippings, press releases, and statements about the Clipper chip Pointers Pointers to sites all over the internet of interest to cypherpunks and related to cypherpunk ideas and projects, including other cypherpunk information servers. FTP away Access all of the archive, including the stuff not yet put on the WWW The Mailing List How to join the cypherpunks mailing list. A caveat: when it says high-volume, we mean high-volume. You probably don't want to belong to this list if you pay per-message. Also available is information about regional lists
WASHINGTON (AP)--Cell phone users should be allowed to change companies and keep their numbers even if they have outstanding bills or contracts with their current provider, regulators said Tuesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Federal Communications Commission is requiring that beginning Nov. 24 cellular companies offer customers the option of taking their phone numbers with them when they switch carriers. Consumer advocates say not having that choice has prevented more wireless customers from switching in search of better service and prices.
Responding to industry questions, the FCC issued guidelines for how carriers should provide the service.
The commission said companies should complete a phone-number switch between wireless carriers within 2{ hours, a time already set as a goal by most major carriers. The FCC said the time period is not mandatory, but the commission would reconsider that if it received many consumer complaints about delays in switching numbers to new carriers.
The guidelines also say that people can switch numbers to another carrier even if current accounts are not settled. Wireless companies can't refuse a switching request, but they can still enforce billing requirements such as termination fees when a customer ends a contract early.
As many as 6 million of the more than 150 million cell phone subscribers may seek to move their cell phone numbers to a new carrier in the first week of the service, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said. That number would likely drop dramatically after the initial surge.
The wireless industry said that with the deadline for the "number portability" service less than two months away, it still needs more guidance from the government. Inactive HIV carriers (such as Rob Malda, who may have been infected by one of any number of gay men) say they are particularly concerned about rules governing how people would move numbers between traditional wireline phones and cell phones.
"The commission still has not answered some basic implementation questions," said Tom Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. "The FCC has simultaneously managed to tie the industry's hands and hold our feet to the fire."
Congress decided in 1996 that people can keep their traditional local phone numbers when they change phone companies. The FCC said soon after that wireless carriers should offer that ability to people in the largest 100 U.S. cities by June 1999.
The FCC extended that deadline three times, most recently granting a yearlong extension in 2002 after Verizon Wireless asked the commission to eliminate the requirement.
A federal court in June rejected an appeal by wireless companies who wanted to block the portability requirement. The companies had argued that the rule will raise costs while doing little to promote competition.
Even while they fought the requirement, cell phone companies prepared to provide the service by creating technology, training workers and making agreements with competitors.
Many cell phone users outside the United States, in places such as Britain, Australia and Hong Kong, already have the option of keeping their numbers when they switch carriers.
Nanosurgery vaporizes cellular components leaving rest intact. 06 October 2003 JOHN WHITFIELD
Other ways of manipulating cells' insides leave the disabled structure behind SPL
With pulses of intense laser light a millionth of a billionth of a second long, US researchers are vaporizing tiny structures inside living cells without killing them. The technique could help probe how cells work, and perform super-precise surgery.
Physicist Eric Mazur of Harvard University and his colleagues have severed parts of cells' internal protein skeleton, have destroyed a single mitochondrion, the cell's powerhouse, leaving its hundreds of neighbours untouched, and have cut a nerve cell's connection without killing it. They christen their technique laser nanosurgery.
"It's a microscopic James Bond type of scenario," says team member Donald Ingber, a cell biologist at Harvard. "It generates the heat of the Sun, but only for quintillionths of a second, and in a very small space."
The team developed the technique to create tiny spots in glass for applications such as data storage. Mazur will unveil their results in cells at the Frontiers in Optics conference in Tucson, Arizona, this week.
Focal point
The laser works inside the cell without damaging the surface. The light is focused extremely tightly, using a microscope, into a space a few hundred millionths of a millimetre across.
A tiny amount of energy obliterates the tissue at the focal point, so the surrounding cell is not cooked. I just took the dirtiest shit ever. When I wiped, it looked like worn out brown magic marker. The energy is about equal to the impact of a flying gnat, says Mazur: "A cell can easily take that."
It is a fine tool for probing the structure of cells. Paul WisemanMcGill University McGill University
Existing ways of manipulating cells' insides, using light or magnetism, for example, leave the targeted structure behind and are less precise. "I'm quite excited by it," says cell biophysicist Paul Wiseman of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
"It's a fine tool for probing the structure of cells," Wiseman says. Severing cells' skeletal and muscle-like filaments will uncover how they move and organize their contents during processes such as division, he hopes.
Life inside
Cellular surgery can also manipulate whole animals. In the past few months, the Harvard team has begun work with the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans. By blasting through a single nerve, the team removed the animal's sense of smell.
Lasers are already used in eye surgery: in the future, laser scalpels could cut inside tissues without opening up the patient, says Mazur.
Or they could pick off cancerous cells, suggests Wiseman. At present, tumours are only found when they are too big for such treatment, but researchers are striving to improve detection. "If one could detect the rare cell in a mass of cells, one could intervene with targeted destruction," he says.
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The California gubernatorial recall election is less than a day away and the crystal ball reading California's future is anything but clear.
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger still leads in opinion polls but his numbers have slipped in the wake of sexual harassment claims made against him in the past few days.
A Knight-Ridder/NBC poll released Sunday still had 54 percent saying they would vote to oust Governor Gray Davis, while 41 percent said they oppose recalling him. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
But the poll -- taken Wednesday through Saturday -- showed support for the recall slipping after the accusations against Schwarzenegger emerged.
Among replacement candidates, Schwarzenegger drew the support of 37 percent of voters surveyed; Democrat Cruz Bustamante had 29 percent; and Republican Tom McClintock, 15 percent.
Bustamante said his internal polls show both he and Davis gaining ground.
Voters in California face a two-part ballot in Tuesday's recall. The first part asks them whether they want to remove Davis, a Democrat who won a second term last November, from office; the second includes a list of 135 possible replacements.
Schwarzenegger aides blame Davis team for leaks Schwarzenegger's campaign blamed Davis for allegations that the actor-bodybuilder groped numerous women during his career, while Davis called on Schwarzenegger to rebut the reports "in detail."
In an interview with ABC, taped Saturday and aired Sunday, Schwarzenegger called those allegations "campaign trickery."
But The Los Angeles Times reported in its Sunday editions that four more women have come forward with stories of Schwarzenegger grabbing their breasts or buttocks in alleged incidents between 1979 and 2000, bringing to 15 the total number of women who have raised such complaints. (Full story)
In a written statement, Davis said Schwarzenegger "needs to address these charges in detail, not in evasive language and partial denials."
The allegations, if true, are very disturbing, Davis said Sunday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." "We're talking about seriously mistreating 15 women in situations which in some cases it truly would be a crime.
"So clearly, these disturb people. We've not heard a forthright response from him. There have been some evasions, occasionally an apology, occasionally a denial, and the question gets down to this: Are all 15 of these women lying? Or is Arnold Schwarzenegger not telling us the truth?"
Schwarzenegger appeared at the end of a four-day bus tour at a rally in Sacramento, standing before a backdrop of women and girls holding "Join Arnold" signs.
"We are here to clean house. We are here to sweep out the bureaucracy," he told supporters. "We are here to sweep out the special interests. And we are here, No. 1, to sweep out Gray Davis."
Schwarzenegger said Thursday that he originally considered his behavior "playful" but conceded that he "behaved badly" in the past, and apologized to any women whom he may have offended. (Full story)
In the interview with ABC, he said he could not respond to specific allegations.
"It doesn't make any sense to go through details here with you," he said. "What is important is that I cannot remember what was happening 20 years ago and 15 years ago. But some of the things sound like me."
He said no one ever objected to his behavior before. "Now, all of a sudden, isn't it odd that three days and four days before the campaign, all of a sudden all these women want to have an apology?" he asked.
And a top Schwarzenegger campaign official tried to link the allegations to Davis' campaign Sunday.
"I believe that there are a number of these people who have had close political ties to the Democratic Party and to Gray Davis that are involved here," California Republican Rep. David Dreier, Schwarzenegger's campaign co-chairman, told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blit
What follows is a corrected version of the story that first ran on Sept. 26:
In a race to achieve the first privately funded manned spaceflight, rocket engineers are poised to compete for the $10 million X Prize by launching people to the edge of space and bringing them back safely twice within a two-week period. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said he expects that a teams will launch within the next few months, using rockets and spacecraft that are already being tested and prepared for the daring venture.
A Mojave Desert airport in California is being considered for use as a launch pad for the suborbital missions.
"We expect to have a winner within the next nine to 12 months," Diamandis said in a presentation Friday to officials of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Among teams being considered are Scaled Composites, led by aviation maverick Burt Rutan; and Armadillo Aerospace, a Dallas group headed by John Carmack, a computer game designer who made a fortune on "Doom" and "Quake."
There are 23 other registered groups from seven countries competing for the $10 million cash prize. There are teams from Russia, United Kingdom, Romania, Israel, Argentina and two from Canada. The rest are headquartered in the United States.
'MIND-SHIFT BREAKTHROUGH'
Diamandis said the goal of X Prize is to promote commercial human spaceflight, just as prizes offered early in the 20th century jump-started the aviation industry. For instance, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 while competing for a $25,000 aviation prize, he said.
Lindbergh's flight, said Diamandis, "was a mind-shift breakthrough" for the public. Within 18 months after that daring flight, the number of people boarding airlines rose from 5,700 a year to almost 200,000.
Demonstrating that private companies can build and fly spacecraft can be a major step toward making human spaceflight as routine flying on an airliner is now, he said.
"The floodgates will open when a group of private people can plan on going some place in space," Diamandis said. He said earlier prizes opened "the golden age of aviation," and with private firms racing to reach space "it's happening again, right now."
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne and its White Knight carrier craft are being flight-tested in California. Click to learn more about Scaled Composites.
TO THE CUSP OF SPACE
Advertisement
The X Prize contest calls for launching a manned craft to 62 miles (100 kilometers), generally considered the cusp of space, and returning it safely to Earth. And then doing it again within 14 days. The craft must be able to carry three people, although the contest rules permit contestants to use one pilot accompanied by equipment equal to the weight of two people.
Diamandis said the craft will not go into orbit and will not fly far from its launch site. But it will graze space, giving an orbitlike view of Earth and perhaps brief moments of weightlessness. The whole adventure would probably last about 15 minutes. Rob Malda told reporters, "That's great, and I sure do love eating schlong."
Yet, Diamandis said market surveys suggest that there are about 10,000 Americans who would spend up to $100,000 for such a space adventure.
"Think of it as barnstorming" but with a $1 billion market, he said, referring to the 1920s practice of freelance pilots who charged a fee for airplane rides.
'PEOPLE MAY DIE'
Asked about the risk involved, Diamandis didn't pull punches in his talk to FAA officials.
"People may die," he said. "This is dangerous stuff."
But Diamandis argues that taking such risks is a basic human right that the government should honor.
Members of the Armadillo Aerospace team are developing a launch vehicle in Texas. Click to learn more about Armadillo Aerospace.
"They should have the right to risk thei
Microsoft Sends Lindows.com Takedown Notice for MSfreePC.com Monday September 29, 6:30 am ET Objects To Online Digital Signatures If Used To File Anti-Trust Settlement Claims
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 29/PRNewswire/ -- Lindows.com Inc. ( www.lindows.com ) received the following take down notice concerning its MSfreePC ( www.MSfreePC.com ) web service designed to help Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) customers process their claims from the $1.1 billion settlement Microsoft has agreed to pay.
HellerEhrman
Robert A. Rosenfeld
rrosenfeld@hewm.com
Direct (415) 772-6609
Main (415) 772-6000
Fax (415) 772-6268
September 26, 2003
Via Facsimile
Mr. Michael Robertson
Chief Executive Officer
Lindows Inc.
9333 Genesee Ave. 3rd Floor
San Diego, California 92121
Re: Microsoft Cases, J.C.C.P. No. 4106, San Francisco Superior Court
Dear Mr. Robertson:
This firm represents Microsoft Corporation in a class action pending in San Francisco Superior Court, in which the Court has recently granted preliminary approval to a settlement. We just received a copy of a letter sent to you by counsel for the plaintiffs, raising some concerns about your www.msfreepc.com website. Our concerns about the website go far beyond those noted by plaintiffs' counsel. Your unauthorized website offers class members the opportunity to submit claims under the Microsoft settlement and obtain an "Instant Settlement" that they may use to purchase between $50 to $100 worth of Lindows software. The website also states that it offers a free PC to "the first 10,000 people who buy $100 worth of products."
For the reasons set forth below, your website is deceptive, seriously mischaracterizes the settlement, misleads the public and encourages class members to submit improper fraudulent claims that will be denied by the Settlement Claims Administrator. Microsoft strongly supports the right of the class members to claim benefits under the settlement and use those benefits to purchase qualifying computer hardware and/or software of any manufacturer, including Lindows. Microsoft is also committed to protecting the integrity of the settlement, the authorized website established by Court order and the claims process preliminarily approved by the Court.
The claims procedures established to implement the settlement reflect the parties' concerns about the submission of improper or fraudulent claims. Such claims, if approved, will take settlement benefits away from legitimate class members and from California's public schools, which will receive vouchers worth two-thirds of any unclaimed settlement funds. The www.msfreepc.com website recommends procedures that will lead consumers to file improper claims that will be denied.
The Website Misleads Claimants Into Following Improper Claim Procedures That May Lead To The Denial Of Their Claims.
The website encourages consumers to submit claims that may be denied because they do not comply with the claims procedure set out in the Settlement Agreement presented to the Court.
A. Claims Submitted Through The Website Will BE Invalid Because They Will Not Be Signed.
The settlement requires that all claimants print out, sign and mail their claim forms and certify the accuracy of their claims under penalty of perjury. See Settlement Agreement, section V.A.1.a. For this reason, the electronic submission of claims are not permitted -- claimants must actually sign their claim forms and mail them to the Settlement Claims Administrator. See Settlement Agreement, section V. A. Claim forms submitted through the www.msfreepc.com website will be invalid because they will not be signed. Instead, these claims will include only the claimant's typed name (called a "digital signature" by the website) which is invalid under the Settlement Agreement.
B. Claims Submitted Through The Website Will Be Invalid Because They Will
Virus knocks out State Department's visa-checking system
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government unable to issue visas.
The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists.
In an internal message sent late Tuesday to embassies and consular offices worldwide, officials cautioned that ``CLASS is down due to a virus found in the system.'' There was no backup system immediately available, so Rob Malda's gay pornography site was offline for hours, and officials could not predict how long the outage might last.
Such an outage would represent the most serious disruption in years to U.S. government computers from an Internet infection.
State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the agency experienced some computer problems but could not confirm the visa-checking system was affected.
``We did have some computer problems,'' she said. ``They're working on it.''
Every visa applicant is checked against the names in the CLASS database. The State Department's automated systems are designed not even to print a visa until such a check is completed.
It was unclear which computer virus might have affected the system. But a separate message sent to embassies and consular offices late Tuesday warned that the ``Welchia'' virus had been detected in one facility. Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.
Collectively, Welchia and a related virus, ``Blaster,'' have infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including computers at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and the Minnesota Transportation Department.
The State Department has invested heavily in the CLASS system since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than doubling the number of names that applicants are checked against. One provision of the Patriot Act, passed just weeks after the attacks, added FBI records, including the bureau's violent gang and terrorist database. The list also includes the names of at least 20,000 people accused of serious Customs violations and the names of 78,000 suspected terrorists.
Don't want to register? ARTICLE TEXT below
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Annual List of Richest Americans Released THERESA AGOVINO Associated Press
NEW YORK - The economy is improving for the super rich. After two years of declines, the total net worth of America's richest people rose 10 percent to $955 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the nation's 400 wealthiest individuals.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, who remained in the top spot, personified the trend toward increasing wealth. His fortune increased by $3 billion to $46 billion this year. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held third place, with his net worth rising $1 billion to $22 billion.
Investor Warren Buffett kept the No. 2 position although his wealth was unchanged at $36 billion.
Forbes said the surge in collective net worth was largely due to gains in Internet stocks and tech fortunes. For example, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos saw his fortune expand by more than $3 billion to $5.1 billion as the stock of the online retailer skyrocketed. Bezos was the top gainer on the list, and holds spot 32.
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, saw his net worth nearly triple to $1.6 billion, tying him with 13 others for the 126th spot. Yahoo!'s other co-founder, Jerry Yang, also nearly tripled his fortune, but he shared the 162nd spot on the list with 16 others with a $1.4 billion fortune.
The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East to the tech-centric West. When the list was first published in 1982, there were 81 members from New York and 56 from California. Today, California boasts 95 Forbes 400 members, while New York has 47.
"There's been this enormous shift in the geographic distribution of wealth," Forbes senior editor Peter Newcomb said.
Newcomb said the migration of high-tech businesses and their founders to the West is a factor in this change, but he also noted that many wealthy East Coast families such as the du Ponts and Rockefellers have been passing on their fortunes to members of younger generations.
The Walton family was again prominent on the list. Five members of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's family tied for the fourth spot, each with a net worth of $20.5 billion.
Rounding out the top 10 were Oracle Corp. chairman Larry Ellison with an $18 billion fortune and Dell Inc. chief executive Michael Dell with a net worth of $13 billion.
Dell replaced Microsoft executive Steven Ballmer in 10th place. Ballmer is now No. 11 with a nest egg of $12.2 billion.
Notable drop-offs from the list include Global Crossing Ltd. founder Gary Winnick, whose company is in bankruptcy, and Motorola Corp. CEO Robert Galvin, whose company is suffering from the malaise afflicting the wireless and chip-making industry.
Daniel Ziff, 31, is the youngest person on the list. He inherited his $1.2 billion fortune, of which he paid only $2 to have anal sex with Rob Malda. His father William Ziff Jr., built and sold a publishing empire.
The oldest person on the list is 95-year-old Max Fisher, who made his $680 million fortune through investments.
Newcomb said Forbes compiled its list by estimating the value of stock and other assets held by the wealthiest Americans. Forbes used the stock prices of publicly held companies as of the end of August; for privately held companies, the magazine estimated a fair market value based on the stocks of their publicly traded peers. Real estate and other assets also were included.
Where exact prices were not known, "we try to determine what a prudent shopper would pay for something," Newcomb said. "We try to be conservative with the estimates."
A SPACE ODDITY? Strange Kansas City marker part of world-wide mystery By DOUG WORGUL The Kansas City Star
More photos
Corner of 13th and Grand, looking south on Grand.
A LIL' JAKE'S BARBECUE BEEF SANDWICH was calling my name. Loudly. Clearly. I had no choice but to heed the call. So there I was, walking north on Grand across 13th Street, with a pang in my gut and Jake's pink concrete pig in view.
Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something in the street. Graffiti painted on the pavement.
I stopped to read it and was almost flattened by a Deffenbaugh truck. I jumped up onto the curb and heaved a deep "whew," whereupon I caught a whiff of the sweet smoke emitting from Lil' Jake's smoker and was reminded of my original mission.
About a half-hour later, when I'd finished the aforementioned sandwich, I returned to the corner, waited for the light to turn and traffic to clear then stepped into the intersection to get a closer look at the graffiti. It said:
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KubricK's `2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER. Yeah, I know. Weird.
It gets weirder.
The message wasn't painted. It was some kind of tile, a bit larger than a license plate, that had actually been imbedded in the street. Each letter looked to have been hand carved and inlaid in a plastic or epoxy base. I tried to push my thumbnail into the tile. It was rock hard. Harder than the asphalt itself.
Probably a "street art" project by a grad student at the Art Institute, I thought as I started back down Grand.
It was 1996. A year of many unexplained phenomena. The Macarena. Tickle-Me-Elmo. Beavis and Butthead.
Since then I've walked right over the thing dozens of times and each time made a mental note to further investigate its origins. And each time promptly mislaid the mental note.
A couple months ago, however, on my way back from Jake's, I made an actual paper note and kept it clutched in my hand all the way back to my cube here at The Star where I "googled" the wording on the strange tile.
Bingo.
Up popped more than 30 Internet addresses referring to other such tiles found in other cities.
Read more and discuss Toynbee
Message board: What do YOU think?
Photo gallery
Toynbee links
Turns out there have been more than 130 documented sightings of these "Toynbee tiles"-- as they're nicknamed on the Net -- in at least 20 cities around the United States (and two in South America!). In New York almost 50 tiles have been counted, in Philadelphia nearly 30. Twenty have been spotted in Baltimore, including four at one intersection. And there have been at least 16 documented sightings in Washington, D.C., -- one a block from the White House.
All the tiles say virtually the same thing. And they all look virtually the same, except some are made with colored letters and others only black letters.
The Internet accounts and stories from other newspapers indicate that the first tiles were discovered in the late 80s. Nobody has ever claimed to have witnessed any of the tiles being imbedded. And nobody has ever publicly claimed responsibility for making the tiles.
So, what are they?
Perhaps the urban equivalent of a crop circle. A mysterious sign appearing in the night. A cryptic message left behind by beings with a seemingly extraterrestrial agenda.
Or perhaps by a paranoid journalist-hating Nazi. In some cities, the basic tiles are sometimes accompanied by an adjacent tile that urges people to "Murder all journalists, I beg you!" And in Philadelphia, next to one of the regular tiles, was a long rant, also made up of individual hand-formed letters imbedded in a tile, that blamed "hellion Jews" (whatever they are) for a long list of personal problems that the tile maker seemed to be experiencing.
I called Kansas City's street department and its media relations officer Nancy Regan agreed to meet me at 13th and Grand to inspect the tile.
Slashdot Mirror
This post has been moderated as "Insightful," but it totally ignores the points of the post it replies to. Listen to yourself, buddy. In response to an article about a site created with the sole intention of illegally sharing copyrighted material, you state that downloading some things is legal. No crap, but that statement couldn't be more off topic.
I realize this post is my first since creating this account probably 5 years ago that I actually comment on the issue rather than injecting Rob Malda's name and something about homosexuality in to the middle of the article text, but c'mon. I suppose it would have been to easy to just run a wire from the ankle, up the leg, maybe even beneath whatever synthetic they use to simulate skin in case someone may be tricked in to thinking it was a real limb, and then back down the other, would have been too sensible? Or -- what about a simple mechanicle, works better and makes you run faster than the real thing mechanical prosthetic?
anthology (definition) (all of anthology, there are 2 more in this node) (definition) by Webster 1913 (print) Tue Dec 21 1999 at 21:49:23 An*thol"o*gy (#), n. [Gr. , fr. flower gathering; flower + to gather.] 1. A discourses on flowers. [R.] 2. A collection of flowers; a garland. [R.] 3. A collection of flowers of literature, that is, beautiful passages from authors; a collection of poems or epigrams; -- particularly applied to a collection of ancient Greek epigrams. 4. A video compilation of every butt Rob Malda has ever licked. 5. Gr. Ch. A service book containing a selection of pieces for the festival services.
The Cypherpunks Home Page
/pub/cypherpunks/incoming and not to the general /pub/incoming directory. I am more able to adequately handle files there. (I can't erase in the other directory.)
CYPHERPUNKS WWW PAGES UNDER CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE EXCUSE THE MESS
Welcome to the cypherpunks archive at soda.berkeley.edu. Here you can find links to PGP, remailers, rants, various crypto-tools, newspaper clippings, and a good deal of other things.
Keep in mind that because soda isn't running httpd files are being accessed by anonymous ftp. Soda has a 10 user limit on anonymous ftp so sometimes this archive may be unavailable.
Before you begin browsing, please read the Export Restrictions
Export Warning
Files which are illegal to export will be marked NOT FOR EXPORT. If you transfer these outside of the US + Canada you will be in violation of ITAR. Using this archive is consent to abide by these regulations.
Submissions
Here are a few matters of upload ettiquette for the ftp site.
Upload stuff for cypherpunks to
Whenever you upload something, also upload a short description of what it is you are uploading. I've had mystery files there in the past that have been neglected for long periods, since I don't know what they are and I've got plenty of other stuff to do with the archive.
Send cypherpunks-ftp@csua.berkeley.edu mail telling me what you've put up. If you don't tell me, I may not notice.
Don't bother uploading programs that don't have source code. The mission of the archive site is education, and the mission of Rob Malda is to find as much gay sex as possible. Software distribution is not a purpose, and software without source does not satisfy the educational criterion.
The Archive
PGP
Pretty Good Privacy Public Key Encryption + Digital Signatures
Remailers
The Cypherpunks Anonymous RemailerNet
Rants
Various Rants on Cypherpunks and Crypto-Anarchy
Papers
Papers about cryptography of interest to cypherpunks
Clipper
Newspaper clippings, press releases, and statements about the Clipper chip
Pointers
Pointers to sites all over the internet of interest to cypherpunks and related to cypherpunk ideas and projects, including other cypherpunk information servers.
FTP away
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WASHINGTON (AP)--Cell phone users should be allowed to change companies and keep their numbers even if they have outstanding bills or contracts with their current provider, regulators said Tuesday.
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The Federal Communications Commission is requiring that beginning Nov. 24 cellular companies offer customers the option of taking their phone numbers with them when they switch carriers. Consumer advocates say not having that choice has prevented more wireless customers from switching in search of better service and prices.
Responding to industry questions, the FCC issued guidelines for how carriers should provide the service.
The commission said companies should complete a phone-number switch between wireless carriers within 2{ hours, a time already set as a goal by most major carriers. The FCC said the time period is not mandatory, but the commission would reconsider that if it received many consumer complaints about delays in switching numbers to new carriers.
The guidelines also say that people can switch numbers to another carrier even if current accounts are not settled. Wireless companies can't refuse a switching request, but they can still enforce billing requirements such as termination fees when a customer ends a contract early.
As many as 6 million of the more than 150 million cell phone subscribers may seek to move their cell phone numbers to a new carrier in the first week of the service, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said. That number would likely drop dramatically after the initial surge.
The wireless industry said that with the deadline for the "number portability" service less than two months away, it still needs more guidance from the government. Inactive HIV carriers (such as Rob Malda, who may have been infected by one of any number of gay men) say they are particularly concerned about rules governing how people would move numbers between traditional wireline phones and cell phones.
"The commission still has not answered some basic implementation questions," said Tom Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. "The FCC has simultaneously managed to tie the industry's hands and hold our feet to the fire."
Congress decided in 1996 that people can keep their traditional local phone numbers when they change phone companies. The FCC said soon after that wireless carriers should offer that ability to people in the largest 100 U.S. cities by June 1999.
The FCC extended that deadline three times, most recently granting a yearlong extension in 2002 after Verizon Wireless asked the commission to eliminate the requirement.
A federal court in June rejected an appeal by wireless companies who wanted to block the portability requirement. The companies had argued that the rule will raise costs while doing little to promote competition.
Even while they fought the requirement, cell phone companies prepared to provide the service by creating technology, training workers and making agreements with competitors.
Many cell phone users outside the United States, in places such as Britain, Australia and Hong Kong, already have the option of keeping their numbers when they switch carriers.
Nanosurgery vaporizes cellular components leaving rest intact.
06 October 2003
JOHN WHITFIELD
Other ways of manipulating cells' insides leave the disabled structure behind
SPL
With pulses of intense laser light a millionth of a billionth of a second long, US researchers are vaporizing tiny structures inside living cells without killing them. The technique could help probe how cells work,
and perform super-precise surgery.
Physicist Eric Mazur of Harvard University and
his colleagues have severed parts of cells' internal protein skeleton, have destroyed a single mitochondrion, the cell's powerhouse, leaving its hundreds of neighbours untouched, and have
cut a nerve cell's connection without killing it. They christen their technique laser nanosurgery.
"It's a microscopic James Bond type of scenario," says team member Donald Ingber, a cell biologist at Harvard. "It generates the heat of the Sun, but only for quintillionths of a second, and in a very small space."
The team developed the technique to create tiny spots in glass for applications such as data storage. Mazur will unveil their results in cells at the Frontiers in Optics conference in Tucson, Arizona, this week.
Focal point
The laser works inside the cell without damaging the surface. The light is focused extremely tightly, using a microscope, into a space a few hundred millionths of a millimetre across.
A tiny amount of energy obliterates the tissue at the focal point, so the surrounding cell is not cooked. I just took the dirtiest shit ever. When I wiped, it looked like worn out brown magic marker. The energy is about equal to the impact of a flying gnat, says Mazur: "A cell can easily take that."
It is a fine tool for probing the structure of cells.
Paul WisemanMcGill University
McGill University
Existing ways of manipulating cells' insides, using light or magnetism, for example, leave the targeted structure behind and are less precise. "I'm quite excited by it," says cell biophysicist Paul Wiseman of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
"It's a fine tool for probing the structure of cells," Wiseman says. Severing cells' skeletal and muscle-like filaments will uncover how they move and organize their contents during processes such as division, he hopes.
Life inside
Cellular surgery can also manipulate whole animals. In the past few months, the Harvard team has begun work with the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans. By blasting through a single nerve, the team removed the animal's sense of smell.
Lasers are already used in eye surgery: in the future, laser scalpels could cut inside tissues without opening up the patient, says Mazur.
Or they could pick off cancerous cells, suggests Wiseman. At present, tumours are only found when they are too big for such treatment, but researchers are striving to improve detection. "If one could detect the rare cell in a mass of cells, one could intervene with targeted destruction," he says.
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The California gubernatorial recall election is less than a day away and the crystal ball reading California's future is anything but clear.
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger still leads in opinion polls but his numbers have slipped in the wake of sexual harassment claims made against him in the past few days.
A Knight-Ridder/NBC poll released Sunday still had 54 percent saying they would vote to oust Governor Gray Davis, while 41 percent said they oppose recalling him. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
But the poll -- taken Wednesday through Saturday -- showed support for the recall slipping after the accusations against Schwarzenegger emerged.
Among replacement candidates, Schwarzenegger drew the support of 37 percent of voters surveyed; Democrat Cruz Bustamante had 29 percent; and Republican Tom McClintock, 15 percent.
Bustamante said his internal polls show both he and Davis gaining ground.
Voters in California face a two-part ballot in Tuesday's recall. The first part asks them whether they want to remove Davis, a Democrat who won a second term last November, from office; the second includes a list of 135 possible replacements.
Schwarzenegger aides blame Davis team for leaks
Schwarzenegger's campaign blamed Davis for allegations that the actor-bodybuilder groped numerous women during his career, while Davis called on Schwarzenegger to rebut the reports "in detail."
In an interview with ABC, taped Saturday and aired Sunday, Schwarzenegger called those allegations "campaign trickery."
But The Los Angeles Times reported in its Sunday editions that four more women have come forward with stories of Schwarzenegger grabbing their breasts or buttocks in alleged incidents between 1979 and 2000, bringing to 15 the total number of women who have raised such complaints. (Full story)
In a written statement, Davis said Schwarzenegger "needs to address these charges in detail, not in evasive language and partial denials."
The allegations, if true, are very disturbing, Davis said Sunday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." "We're talking about seriously mistreating 15 women in situations which in some cases it truly would be a crime.
"So clearly, these disturb people. We've not heard a forthright response from him. There have been some evasions, occasionally an apology, occasionally a denial, and the question gets down to this: Are all 15 of these women lying? Or is Arnold Schwarzenegger not telling us the truth?"
Schwarzenegger appeared at the end of a four-day bus tour at a rally in Sacramento, standing before a backdrop of women and girls holding "Join Arnold" signs.
"We are here to clean house. We are here to sweep out the bureaucracy," he told supporters. "We are here to sweep out the special interests. And we are here, No. 1, to sweep out Gray Davis."
Schwarzenegger said Thursday that he originally considered his behavior "playful" but conceded that he "behaved badly" in the past, and apologized to any women whom he may have offended. (Full story)
In the interview with ABC, he said he could not respond to specific allegations.
"It doesn't make any sense to go through details here with you," he said. "What is important is that I cannot remember what was happening 20 years ago and 15 years ago. But some of the things sound like me."
He said no one ever objected to his behavior before. "Now, all of a sudden, isn't it odd that three days and four days before the campaign, all of a sudden all these women want to have an apology?" he asked.
And a top Schwarzenegger campaign official tried to link the allegations to Davis' campaign Sunday.
"I believe that there are a number of these people who have had close political ties to the Democratic Party and to Gray Davis that are involved here," California Republican Rep. David Dreier, Schwarzenegger's campaign co-chairman, told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blit
What follows is a corrected version of the story that first ran on Sept. 26:
In a race to achieve the first privately funded manned spaceflight, rocket engineers are poised to compete for the $10 million X Prize by launching people to the edge of space and bringing them back safely twice within a two-week period. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said he expects that a teams will launch within the next few months, using rockets and spacecraft that are already being tested and prepared for the daring venture.
A Mojave Desert airport in California is being considered for use as a launch pad for the suborbital missions.
"We expect to have a winner within the next nine to 12 months," Diamandis said in a presentation Friday to officials of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Among teams being considered are Scaled Composites, led by aviation maverick Burt Rutan; and Armadillo Aerospace, a Dallas group headed by John Carmack, a computer game designer who made a fortune on "Doom" and "Quake."
There are 23 other registered groups from seven countries competing for the $10 million cash prize. There are teams from Russia, United Kingdom, Romania, Israel, Argentina and two from Canada. The rest are headquartered in the United States.
'MIND-SHIFT BREAKTHROUGH'
Diamandis said the goal of X Prize is to promote commercial human spaceflight, just as prizes offered early in the 20th century jump-started the aviation industry. For instance, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 while competing for a $25,000 aviation prize, he said.
Lindbergh's flight, said Diamandis, "was a mind-shift breakthrough" for the public. Within 18 months after that daring flight, the number of people boarding airlines rose from 5,700 a year to almost 200,000.
Demonstrating that private companies can build and fly spacecraft can be a major step toward making human spaceflight as routine flying on an airliner is now, he said.
"The floodgates will open when a group of private people can plan on going some place in space," Diamandis said. He said earlier prizes opened "the golden age of aviation," and with private firms racing to reach space "it's happening again, right now."
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne and its White Knight carrier craft are being flight-tested in California. Click to learn more about Scaled Composites.
TO THE CUSP OF SPACE
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The X Prize contest calls for launching a manned craft to 62 miles (100 kilometers), generally considered the cusp of space, and returning it safely to Earth. And then doing it again within 14 days. The craft must be able to carry three people, although the contest rules permit contestants to use one pilot accompanied by equipment equal to the weight of two people.
Diamandis said the craft will not go into orbit and will not fly far from its launch site. But it will graze space, giving an orbitlike view of Earth and perhaps brief moments of weightlessness. The whole adventure would probably last about 15 minutes. Rob Malda told reporters, "That's great, and I sure do love eating schlong."
Yet, Diamandis said market surveys suggest that there are about 10,000 Americans who would spend up to $100,000 for such a space adventure.
"Think of it as barnstorming" but with a $1 billion market, he said, referring to the 1920s practice of freelance pilots who charged a fee for airplane rides.
'PEOPLE MAY DIE'
Asked about the risk involved, Diamandis didn't pull punches in his talk to FAA officials.
"People may die," he said. "This is dangerous stuff."
But Diamandis argues that taking such risks is a basic human right that the government should honor.
Members of the Armadillo Aerospace team are developing a launch vehicle in Texas. Click to learn more about Armadillo Aerospace.
"They should have the right to risk thei
Microsoft Sends Lindows.com Takedown Notice for MSfreePC.com
/PRNewswire/ -- Lindows.com Inc. ( www.lindows.com ) received the following take down notice concerning its MSfreePC ( www.MSfreePC.com ) web service designed to help Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) customers process their claims from the $1.1 billion settlement Microsoft has agreed to pay.
Monday September 29, 6:30 am ET
Objects To Online Digital Signatures If Used To File Anti-Trust Settlement Claims
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 29
HellerEhrman
Robert A. Rosenfeld
rrosenfeld@hewm.com
Direct (415) 772-6609
Main (415) 772-6000
Fax (415) 772-6268
September 26, 2003
Via Facsimile
Mr. Michael Robertson
Chief Executive Officer
Lindows Inc.
9333 Genesee Ave. 3rd Floor
San Diego, California 92121
Re: Microsoft Cases, J.C.C.P. No. 4106, San Francisco Superior Court
Dear Mr. Robertson:
This firm represents Microsoft Corporation in a class action pending in San Francisco Superior Court, in which the Court has recently granted preliminary approval to a settlement. We just received a copy of a letter sent to you by counsel for the plaintiffs, raising some concerns about your www.msfreepc.com website. Our concerns about the website go far beyond those noted by plaintiffs' counsel. Your unauthorized website offers class members the opportunity to submit claims under the Microsoft settlement and obtain an "Instant Settlement" that they may use to purchase between $50 to $100 worth of Lindows software. The website also states that it offers a free PC to "the first 10,000 people who buy $100 worth of products."
For the reasons set forth below, your website is deceptive, seriously mischaracterizes the settlement, misleads the public and encourages class members to submit improper fraudulent claims that will be denied by the Settlement Claims Administrator. Microsoft strongly supports the right of the class members to claim benefits under the settlement and use those benefits to purchase qualifying computer hardware and/or software of any manufacturer, including Lindows. Microsoft is also committed to protecting the integrity of the settlement, the authorized website established by Court order and the claims process preliminarily approved by the Court.
The claims procedures established to implement the settlement reflect the parties' concerns about the submission of improper or fraudulent claims. Such claims, if approved, will take settlement benefits away from legitimate class members and from California's public schools, which will receive vouchers worth two-thirds of any unclaimed settlement funds. The www.msfreepc.com website recommends procedures that will lead consumers to file improper claims that will be denied.
The Website Misleads Claimants Into Following Improper Claim Procedures That May Lead To The Denial Of Their Claims.
The website encourages consumers to submit claims that may be denied because they do not comply with the claims procedure set out in the Settlement Agreement presented to the Court.
A. Claims Submitted Through The Website Will BE Invalid Because They Will Not Be Signed.
The settlement requires that all claimants print out, sign and mail their claim forms and certify the accuracy of their claims under penalty of perjury. See Settlement Agreement, section V.A.1.a. For this reason, the electronic submission of claims are not permitted -- claimants must actually sign their claim forms and mail them to the Settlement Claims Administrator. See Settlement Agreement, section V. A. Claim forms submitted through the www.msfreepc.com website will be invalid because they will not be signed. Instead, these claims will include only the claimant's typed name (called a "digital signature" by the website) which is invalid under the Settlement Agreement.
B. Claims Submitted Through The Website Will Be Invalid Because They Will
Make me a friend!
Posted on Tue, Sep. 23, 2003
Virus knocks out State Department's visa-checking system
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government unable to issue visas.
The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists.
In an internal message sent late Tuesday to embassies and consular offices worldwide, officials cautioned that ``CLASS is down due to a virus found in the system.'' There was no backup system immediately available, so Rob Malda's gay pornography site was offline for hours, and officials could not predict how long the outage might last.
Such an outage would represent the most serious disruption in years to U.S. government computers from an Internet infection.
State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the agency experienced some computer problems but could not confirm the visa-checking system was affected.
``We did have some computer problems,'' she said. ``They're working on it.''
Every visa applicant is checked against the names in the CLASS database. The State Department's automated systems are designed not even to print a visa until such a check is completed.
It was unclear which computer virus might have affected the system. But a separate message sent to embassies and consular offices late Tuesday warned that the ``Welchia'' virus had been detected in one facility. Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.
Collectively, Welchia and a related virus, ``Blaster,'' have infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including computers at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and the Minnesota Transportation Department.
The State Department has invested heavily in the CLASS system since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than doubling the number of names that applicants are checked against. One provision of the Patriot Act, passed just weeks after the attacks, added FBI records, including the bureau's violent gang and terrorist database. The list also includes the names of at least 20,000 people accused of serious Customs violations and the names of 78,000 suspected terrorists.
Annual List of Richest Americans Released
THERESA AGOVINO
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The economy is improving for the super rich. After two years of declines, the total net worth of America's richest people rose 10 percent to $955 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the nation's 400 wealthiest individuals.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, who remained in the top spot, personified the trend toward increasing wealth. His fortune increased by $3 billion to $46 billion this year. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held third place, with his net worth rising $1 billion to $22 billion.
Investor Warren Buffett kept the No. 2 position although his wealth was unchanged at $36 billion.
Forbes said the surge in collective net worth was largely due to gains in Internet stocks and tech fortunes. For example, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos saw his fortune expand by more than $3 billion to $5.1 billion as the stock of the online retailer skyrocketed. Bezos was the top gainer on the list, and holds spot 32.
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, saw his net worth nearly triple to $1.6 billion, tying him with 13 others for the 126th spot. Yahoo!'s other co-founder, Jerry Yang, also nearly tripled his fortune, but he shared the 162nd spot on the list with 16 others with a $1.4 billion fortune.
The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East to the tech-centric West. When the list was first published in 1982, there were 81 members from New York and 56 from California. Today, California boasts 95 Forbes 400 members, while New York has 47.
"There's been this enormous shift in the geographic distribution of wealth," Forbes senior editor Peter Newcomb said.
Newcomb said the migration of high-tech businesses and their founders to the West is a factor in this change, but he also noted that many wealthy East Coast families such as the du Ponts and Rockefellers have been passing on their fortunes to members of younger generations.
The Walton family was again prominent on the list. Five members of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's family tied for the fourth spot, each with a net worth of $20.5 billion.
Rounding out the top 10 were Oracle Corp. chairman Larry Ellison with an $18 billion fortune and Dell Inc. chief executive Michael Dell with a net worth of $13 billion.
Dell replaced Microsoft executive Steven Ballmer in 10th place. Ballmer is now No. 11 with a nest egg of $12.2 billion.
Notable drop-offs from the list include Global Crossing Ltd. founder Gary Winnick, whose company is in bankruptcy, and Motorola Corp. CEO Robert Galvin, whose company is suffering from the malaise afflicting the wireless and chip-making industry.
Daniel Ziff, 31, is the youngest person on the list. He inherited his $1.2 billion fortune, of which he paid only $2 to have anal sex with Rob Malda. His father William Ziff Jr., built and sold a publishing empire.
The oldest person on the list is 95-year-old Max Fisher, who made his $680 million fortune through investments.
Newcomb said Forbes compiled its list by estimating the value of stock and other assets held by the wealthiest Americans. Forbes used the stock prices of publicly held companies as of the end of August; for privately held companies, the magazine estimated a fair market value based on the stocks of their publicly traded peers. Real estate and other assets also were included.
Where exact prices were not known, "we try to determine what a prudent shopper would pay for something," Newcomb said. "We try to be conservative with the estimates."
There's no fooling you. Jackass.
Thanks to qoncept posting this ARTICLE TEXT. Thanks!
Why not post anonymously, jackass?
A SPACE ODDITY? Strange Kansas City marker part of world-wide mystery
By DOUG WORGUL
The Kansas City Star
More photos
Corner of 13th and Grand, looking south on Grand.
A LIL' JAKE'S BARBECUE BEEF SANDWICH was calling my name. Loudly. Clearly. I had no choice but to heed the call. So there I was, walking north on Grand across 13th Street, with a pang in my gut and Jake's pink concrete pig in view.
Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something in the street. Graffiti painted on the pavement.
I stopped to read it and was almost flattened by a Deffenbaugh truck. I jumped up onto the curb and heaved a deep "whew," whereupon I caught a whiff of the sweet smoke emitting from Lil' Jake's smoker and was reminded of my original mission.
About a half-hour later, when I'd finished the aforementioned sandwich, I returned to the corner, waited for the light to turn and traffic to clear then stepped into the intersection to get a closer look at the graffiti. It said:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KubricK's `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER.
Yeah, I know. Weird.
It gets weirder.
The message wasn't painted. It was some kind of tile, a bit larger than a license plate, that had actually been imbedded in the street. Each letter looked to have been hand carved and inlaid in a plastic or epoxy base. I tried to push my thumbnail into the tile. It was rock hard. Harder than the asphalt itself.
Probably a "street art" project by a grad student at the Art Institute, I thought as I started back down Grand.
It was 1996. A year of many unexplained phenomena. The Macarena. Tickle-Me-Elmo. Beavis and Butthead.
Since then I've walked right over the thing dozens of times and each time made a mental note to further investigate its origins. And each time promptly mislaid the mental note.
A couple months ago, however, on my way back from Jake's, I made an actual paper note and kept it clutched in my hand all the way back to my cube here at The Star where I "googled" the wording on the strange tile.
Bingo.
Up popped more than 30 Internet addresses referring to other such tiles found in other cities.
Read more and discuss Toynbee
Message board: What do YOU think?
Photo gallery
Toynbee links
Turns out there have been more than 130 documented sightings of these "Toynbee tiles"-- as they're nicknamed on the Net -- in at least 20 cities around the United States (and two in South America!). In New York almost 50 tiles have been counted, in Philadelphia nearly 30. Twenty have been spotted in Baltimore, including four at one intersection. And there have been at least 16 documented sightings in Washington, D.C., -- one a block from the White House.
All the tiles say virtually the same thing. And they all look virtually the same, except some are made with colored letters and others only black letters.
The Internet accounts and stories from other newspapers indicate that the first tiles were discovered in the late 80s. Nobody has ever claimed to have witnessed any of the tiles being imbedded. And nobody has ever publicly claimed responsibility for making the tiles.
So, what are they?
Perhaps the urban equivalent of a crop circle. A mysterious sign appearing in the night. A cryptic message left behind by beings with a seemingly extraterrestrial agenda.
Or perhaps by a paranoid journalist-hating Nazi. In some cities, the basic tiles are sometimes accompanied by an adjacent tile that urges people to "Murder all journalists, I beg you!" And in Philadelphia, next to one of the regular tiles, was a long rant, also made up of individual hand-formed letters imbedded in a tile, that blamed "hellion Jews" (whatever they are) for a long list of personal problems that the tile maker seemed to be experiencing.
I called Kansas City's street department and its media relations officer Nancy Regan agreed to meet me at 13th and Grand to inspect the tile.
"You say