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      - ------- ------------------------------------------------ -------- -
        VERITAS            PA1N MAGAZINE, Volume Number 8        AEQUITAS
      - ------- ------------------------------------------------ -------- -

                  [ P A 1 N  +  M A G A Z I N E  +  S T A F F ]
                  
                  Editor In Chief                   alienbinary
                  Co-Editor                           Turnspike
                  Deputy Co-Editor                    angel ice
                  Editor                                Nemisis
                  Contributor                            mephyt
                  Editor                         Manuel O'Kelly
                  Contributor                        Red Dragon
                  Contributor                             Kello
                  Loki Editor                       Danger Girl
                  AB's Personal Fedaykin             Crazy Ivan
      +=8-------- Follow the...                    White Rabbit --------=8+
      |           A.W.O.L.                         Rumbling Sky           |
      |           Bandwidth Lord                         Cheezi           |
      |                                                                   |
      |  V O L U M E . E I G H T . T A B L E . O F . D I S C O N T E N T  |
      !......... .... .. .     .       . ... ..... ......  ... .. .. . . .!
                                                                          
      - PA1Nv8x01 --- Letter From The Editor              alienbinary --- 
      - PA1Nv8x02 --- Letter From The Co-Editor             Turnspike --- 
      - PA1Nv8x03 --- Candle                                   mephyt --- 
      - PA1Nv8x04 --- Requiem For Innocence               Danger Girl --- 
      - PA1Nv8x05 --- Eternity's Ring                     alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x06 --- The Origins of Playing God          alienbinary --- 
      - PA1Nv8x07 --- Playing God                          Red Dragon ---
      - PA1Nv8x08 --- Culture, cyberpunk, and aquariums   alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x09 --- Notebook Memoirs                    alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x10 --- What You'll Never Know                angel ice --- 
      - PA1Nv8x11 --- Kello's Wardriving FAQ: Part One          Kello ---
      - PA1Nv8x12 --- Spyware and Counterspyware          alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x13 --- RantRadio IRC, Feb 2004            RR Community ---
      - PA1Nv8x14 --- A Gentleman's Game                  alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x15 --- Big Brother's Electronic Tags       alienbinary ---
      - PA1Nv8x16 --- Outro                               alienbinary ---
        
        O.o 8-------------------------8 o.O               - ---------- -
        '''     .;$S8#?' ' ' ''#s.      '''                  VERITAS
         !    .;'                '$.     !                - ---------- -
 .'$.    |    ;                    $;    |      .;'. 
 ; '$b..... .;                     !.... . .sd$' .;       Contact PA1N    
 '.           l;                    ;..... ..$$;.s.  
 d$' .'???'';;:.. .               .$'??'''''''. '$.        alienbinary
 '.s'    !    .;. .           . . .:.    !      .s.'     pain@e-lite.org      
         |    .d$#?'''s.  .s;;:'?#$s.    |           
         !    ;'       .% $'       '$    !                  Turnspike
         :    'q$b...:;$' ';s...:;:$'    :           turnspike@spfd2600.org
         .        ;.    .$.     :        .           
                  'o.   '?'   'o'                         - ---------- -
                    'O!o!o!o!O'                              AEQUITAS
           .---.                  .---.                   - ---------- -
           !x x!                  !x x!    
            '^' 8----------------8 '^'        

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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1N
PA1Nv8x01----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     [        Letter from the Editor       ]
                     [              alienbinary            ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x01
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEONEPA1N
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    I think over the course of making this zine, it's evolved from a side
project into a full fledged philosophy. I started this because I've always
wanted to affect some positive change, and historically, the written word is
one of the most potent tools for doing so. I first learned just how far the
internet has taken this idea to the next level when I was regularly writing in
news articles and forwarding peices of information to SKTFM. One episode, April
of '02 I think, he read an email I had sent him during his homework segment. I
won't go into exhaustive detail, because it was a pretty long email, but it
involved how to use the benifits we never reap that are offered at our jobs to
help benifit the homeless or disenfranchised. I think that may have been the
first DISTRIBUTED digital can/clothing drive I've ever heard of. 

    The important thing, though, is that this was all precipitated by relaying
mere action in the written word. So the idea kept rotating in my head, "what
would happen, what could be accomplished, if you made a compendium of these
ideas and peices of information?" The answer was realized in September of 2003
with PA1N Volume 1. At the time, I wasn't sure what the boundaries or direction
of the zine was going to be. It's hard to determine the next course of action
when you have no idea what territory you're entering.

    I did, however, have the benifit of experience with zines like the Midnight
Raid, and what I saw spawn from that magazine became a sort of model for what I
wanted to do. Raid3d, as it became known to those familiar with it, was a whole
archive of the human experience. Everything was there. You could find
everything from error.type.eleven's stream of consciousness to my dissection of
my old school's Nortel Meridian Phone Network. What was born out of the
magazine was a server, needed to host it on. Consequently, the server became a
hang out. The conversations you could find yourself engaged in upon logging
onto TMR's server, run by our very own Cheezi, could range from possible great
backfirings of the metallica vs. napster suite (it was around that time) that
would nail Lars to the floor, all the way to Classical's dissertations on
Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy. It was a community like no other. I
learned more there than anywhere else, and I passed the knowledge along.
Consequently, people like h1tman became fascinated with the Telco and the PSTN,
landing themselves jobs and certifications that survived the dot com bubble. We
were a group of misfits that were determined to find a different way.

    Now, I can honestly say that I think I've found evidence that it's
happening in PA1N, and it makes me feel like it's worth getting out of bed in
the morning, or even trying to do more than I already have. Each day is a
challenge to the day before now. I think it's worth going over some of the
things that have been covered, things that I've received feedback on, things
that I know changed the way people looked at things, because they told me so
personally. First of all, I was particularly proud to have been able to pull of
the article on Mumia Abu Jamal in issue 1. My junior year in high school, I
special ordered the book "Live From Death Row" at a local indy bookstore,
during the injunction hearings when the warden of Mumia's prison was seeking to
ban the sale of the book. After reading it, I became a staunch supporter of the
movement to re-open the case of Officer Daniel Faulkner's homicide. PA1Nv1
contains my first contribution to the effort. In the same issue, Turnspike
covered one of the most controversial (at the time) subjects, that of the
government's involvement in marriage. Several issues later, and Turnspike and
myself aren't beating our heads against the wall to pound out another issue,
because we have contributions from people who know what they're talking about,
and know how to say it. 

    In this issue, you'll find a peice called "Playing God," by Red Dragon. I
personally asked Red Dragon if he would write this peice, because I felt, and
still do, that no one really has a solid perspective on what it means to fight.
Every day I walk past people who challenge me with either words or gestures,
and I just keep walking. At this point, I've trained enough to be able to hold
my own, barring the involvement of a firearm, but that doesn't mean shit. I
don't want to hurt anyone, I just don't have the desire. Too many people these
days don't make the correlation between conflict and bloodshed. Let me tell you
folks, it's fucking reality, and it's sick. A few years ago, the movie
"Valentine" was released, and on the way out, two pre-teen boys who somehow
managed to get into this R-Rated movie got into an altercation that ended in a
fatal stabbing of one of the kids. It went from a few cruel words, to murder. 

    I don't claim to be a pacifist, but I'm by no means naiive about the nature
of fighting. If you learn anything from Red Dragon's peice, I hope it's that
there is a relationship between fighting and playing god-- something no one is
truly equipped to handle. Our world is fucked enough. Maybe if our generation
learns to make the right decisions by hearing uncensored media, then just maybe
we have a goddamn prayer. Read this with an open mind. If you can't open your
mind, you might as well keep your eyes shut too.

                            - alienbinary, 2004


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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1N
PA1Nv8x02----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     [      Letter from the Co-Editor      ]
                     [              Turnspike              ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x02
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETWOPA1N
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

	As I am writing this I am listening to DJ DangerMouse's Grey Album.
It's a sweet remix of Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatle's White Album.
It really is a bit of genious. DangerMouse claims that the vocals are
all Jay-Z and every "kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatle's
White album and is in their original recording somewhere." Today was
dubbed Grey Tuesday by supporters of DangerMouse because the Grey Album
was ordered destroyed by EMI, copyright holders of the White Album. 

	The bosses at EMI were not in the least bit interested in the
artistic expressions of the DJ, nor were they willing to bend in an
attempt to come to a compromise. This knee jerk reaction has been the
norm for copyright holders looking to hoard their relics. And the court
systems are backing the copyright holders over the consumer thanks to
the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The DMCA allows copyright holders
to protect their works, even at the expense of free expression and
consumer rights, effectively tipping the balance of copyright law toward
coporate America. This was most recently seen last week as the 9th
circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 321 Studios, makers of DVD X
Copy, for violating the DMCA by producing software used to circumvent
anti-piracy measures, and therefore defeating the consumer right to copy
the movies they own in any way. And this same copyright law is now
blocking artists from building on the thoughts and expressions of
others. Grey Tuesday is a reaction after EMI sent cease and desist
letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and
websites remove them from their site. 

	The idea of Grey Tuesday is simple. A first ever protest where this
contested album is openly posted on as many sites as possible for
download. This is a full-on, in your face, screw you and your f**king
lawyers message to the powers that be who think that they can control
how we express ourselves. If I am caught whistling "Hey Jude" in the
park, could I be fined for copyright violations? What if I draw an
audience? What if they are moved to the point where they paid me a few
dollars? Where is the line? What is so harmful about a tasteful homage
to a 35 year old album? After listening to DJ DangerMouse's Grey Album,
will people not go back and check out the White Album to see where the
samples came from? Why the lack of assholes at JayZ's record label?
These questions rumble in my head and twist and turn and all this
frustration and anger is refocused on the media cartels. And it's not
just me...we are LEGIONS of music lovers who have been scorned by record
companies and the laws they push through government. Who can blame us
for protesting in this way, or avoiding artists who affiliate with the
RIAA, or for expressing ourselves anyway we choose without ever giving a
DAMN if it steams some record label hoarding music from the 1960s?

	If you are just now learning about Grey Tuesday, you are too late to
participate in this protest, but rest assured that more protests are on
the way. Be active because the tide is turning, and it's not in your
favor.


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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHREEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHREEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHR
PA1Nv8x03----------------------------------------------------------------------
                          [            Candle          ]
                          [            mephyt          ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x03
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHREEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHREEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETHR
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    I'm making this posting in complete seclusion. There is nothing here
besides myself, and the machine from which I convey this message. The doors
have been shut, and locked. The windows have been closed. There is nothing from
the outside world that reflects on me right now. I've removed even the most
basic means of contact. My ears are gone, my eyes have been numbed. It's all
gone. Before me, lays a blank screen, the refresh is almost painful to look at,
because it's yet another means by which I see time pass. This is my landscape.
This is my world.

    I'm feeling more disconnected than ever from the world. The things which
used to make me feel like I was a part of something greater have come, and
gone. The piece inside of me that says that I am worth more than the sum of my
parts has fled, taken shelter from the storm that exists inside myself. As I
write, that storm continues to roll on, and forward, slowly, but surely erasing
any trace of individuality that I once possesed. 

    When I was much younger, I can remember clearly when the snow would start
to fall. It would begin one flake at a time. Building and building, until it
seemed to fall in sheets. Then the wind would come. The beauty which I
previously admired would be pushed aside, be all but removed because of the
bite and sting that it brought. The snowfall would become thicker, and the wind
more driving, until eventually you couldn't see anything but what was directly
around you. The horizon that you saw, possibly even a very short time ago,
would succumb to the powerful tides of winter. Even during the middle of that
though, you could still find solace in knowing that it would eventually go
away. That you could stay in your nice warm house until the wind had worn
itself down, and the snow had stopped falling. You could be comforted in the
fact that it would leave. That there would be a better day coming soon.

    Right now, I'm looking towards the horizon, and as I stare and try to let
my eyes focus on infinity, the snow has begun to fall, and the wind hints that
it is coming. The storm is beginning to brew, and I am naked in the middle of
it. I've been stripped of my protection, my clothing, by choice. I've removed
it, and hoped that the weight that it had possesed would no longer hinder me in
trying to escape that snow. The things that I would use to protect and guide me
before, although they kept me safe and sound, dragged me down, and made me rely
on them. Now that I've rid myself of them, I am completely lost. I have no map
for where I think I have wandered. I have no compass to find even the most
basic direction in this featureless landscape. Not even a shadow to show me
contrast. It is purely dark. Complete and utter blackness. This is where I find
myself.

    I suppose that one could say that you have to make your own light. But
without the tools to create fire, you end up with a wick, and some wax. These
things don't do much good in and of themselves. They sit there, they exist.
They don't change. They have to have a catalyst. Something to give them a
purpose. If you introduce a match into the picture, you are one step closer.
But it often times seems that I'm trying to find a dry spot on the keel of a
boat to strike it from. If I have one match, and I ruin it, I will be sitting
in darkness for a long while. Perhaps someone else will come along, but more
than likely they won't. You have to assume that everything that happens by
chance, may as well never happen. You have to try to strike the match, and hope
the wind doesn't blow too hard when you try to light your candle.  Even then,
unless you protect the small flame, you'll risk losing it in the force of a
gust.

    I sit here, disconnected. I don't know where I am, because I can't open my
eyes. Even if I could, would there be any light to see by? The darkest part of
night is upon me, and I have no way of seeing where I am walking. This is my
landscape. This is my world. 

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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURP
PA1Nv8x04----------------------------------------------------------------------
                        [     Requiem for Innocence     ]
                        [         Danger Girl           ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x04
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFOURP
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    Don't think you're so invincible, like you can conquer the world and
nothing will get in your way. The truth is you can't conquer the world, it will
kick your ass every time. It's a slap in the face and you can and will end up
dead. If only people could have realized this ahead of time, they may not be
where they are now; dead, incredibly screwed over, lost, alone, depressed,
taken for granted.

    Why did you have to think you were so invincible? What makes you so special
that you think you can survive anything and nothing bad will happen to you? Why
did you leave everyone who cared and still do care for you so much? Why did you
leave the people who you made smile? Why did you leave your family and friends?
Why did you leave the gift of creativity you had? Why did you get into the car
that night?

    You had so much going for you. You are so smart and creative and
thoughtful. Why did you have to be so dumb that night not to realize the danger
you were stepping a foot into?

    You thought you were so invincible. Even when you got in trouble with 
teachers, you still smiled at them and acted like it was no big deal and just
shrugged off any punishment handed to you. Im sorry but not everything in life
works that way. Hardly anything ever works that way.

    Fuck you! Fuck that night, March 29, 2003. you would still be here if you
hadn't thought yourself to be so invincible and actually thought for a minute
before stepping a foot into that grey mercury sable. You didn't even know the
driver. Fuck alcohol. Fuck speeding. Fuck fire hydrants. Fuck utility poles.
Fuck it all. You should have graduated with the class. your best friend should
not have had to accept your diploma. Tears of mourning should not have been
shed on that day.

    You and a friend of yours made the decision to get into the car on the
night. You had no idea what was going to happen, for that I can't blame you. I
wish things turned out different for you my friend, and I'm sorry they didn't.

    You were sitting in the back seat behind the intoxicated driver. From that
moment on you were no longer invincible. The car sped up over a bridge and came
to an unexpected turn in the road. It lost control and rammed nose first into a
red fire hydrant. The car ricocheted off the hydrant and slammed into a utility
pole . . . drivers' side first. You were the direct target, not the driver.
Right where you were sitting was completely smashed in, in the perfect shape of
the utility pole. You weren't wearing a seatbelt none of you were. That
wouldn't change anything, not for you. You were gone. The car full of people,
you were the only one to go. Why? You didn't deserve any of this.

    The next few days you were all over the news and in news papers. Pictures
of that night still haunt me. I have them all. I have parts of that car.

    I saw you at the wake. You had so many visitors. Seeing your body so
lifeless made my stomach hurt, it wasn't the same. You were caked with makeup
and your face looked so different. It was and continues to be heart wrenching.

You were so beautiful, mentally and physically. You still are-your beauty will
never die. 

        "Time is a valuable thing, watch it fly by as the pendulum 
        swings watch it count down to the end of the day. The clock 
        ticks life away it's so unreal. Didn't look down below, 
        watch the time go right out the window, try to hold on but 
        didn't even know. Wasted it all just to watch you go. I kept
        everything inside and even though I tried it all fell apart, 
        what it meant to me will eventually be a memory"

                                -- Linkin Park, In the End

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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFIVEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFIVEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFI4MG
PA1Nv8x05----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     [            Eternity's Ring          ]
                     [              alienbinary            ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x05
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFIVEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFIVEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEFIVEP
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    Thousands of years ago, druid and celtic artisans wove some of the most
beautiful and sophisticated patterns into cloth, and tempered these symbols
into steel. The modern image we have of air circulating was depicted by three
feet, running in a circle. To them, eternity was something you could hold. It
was something that although you couldn't really comprehend the breadth of it's
meaning, it was something to celebrate.

    Millennia later, and silversmiths began working with these patterns, passed
down through generations in Ireland and Scotland. The merchants who sold and
still sell these pieces don't much care too often for the meaning of the
pieces, which is truly a shame. Like an eternity, a knot is infinite. You can
follow it's sophisticated weavings until your mind reels and the universe
unfolds and all that's left between you and infinity is an unwillingness to
step over the threshold. I carry many of these symbolic pieces on me, I wear
them on rings and in pendants, occasionally I have them forged into steel
blades or other pieces that I might use often. 

    Even though none of these pieces of celtic jewelry are "authentic" in the
museum sense, in the himalayas the artisans traded with anyone who could
conquer the foothills to a sherpa dwelling, and as a result, I have one or two
authentic pieces made in Tibet, in the tradition of antiquity. On my thumb,
there's a basic celtic knot. It's a sterling piece, common enough to be
reminiscent of one that I pressed into the palm of Eternity several years ago. 

    Eternity was wide eyed and beautiful, and she held the wisdom and
compassion of a million nameless saints. She was off to a battle that I
couldn't win for her, something she had to fight on her own terms, and I had to
wait it out in the land of mortality, letting nature take it's toll as she
struggled with the fabric of fate itself. I'd like to say how the battle ended,
but I don't know for sure. I do know that I haven't lost her.

    Last night, Eternity visited me in a dream. It scared me to see her, at
first glance I thought her eyes looked glazed and Saturnine. In our immortal
braid, we have never truly been angry at each other in a way that I thought I
saw. I felt as if I was stranded on Pluto, trying to find my way out of a
forest by using the constellations, and all the stars were falling. 

    Her black hair was cropped to her neck, and her skin had adopted the shade
of an overripe olive, she had lost at least forty pounds. I awoke twice in the
night, positively drenched in sweat, fear, and a sadness I couldn't place a
name or reason on. The events of the dreamworld are so rarely clear when you
first awaken. For that reason, I endured all three acts of the bitter play. I
was trying to rescue Eternity, but I couldn't hold on, and I wasn't strong
enough. Before I awoke, I realized that her expression wasn't one of disdain,
but of infinite sadness. Infinity, after all, is our bond.

    Braids and knots are delicate in appearance, but they are often the
strongest designs possible. When hemp is braided, you can create some of the
most impressive rope nature alone can offer. Such is our relationship, myself
and Eternity. 

    Today was cruel, every minute passed like an hour, but every second took
five minutes with it. Time was stretched, bent and refracted as I tried to
understand what was on my mind. All traces of my nocturnal telegrams had
vanished from my conscious mind, burying themselves far down into a part of my
psyche that I couldn't reach. I should have known to just let time do it's
number, as I was invulnerably shrouded in Eternity's cloak.

    Like following each line of a complex knot, I tried to unweave my sadness
and straighten out my thoughts, until, all of a sudden, the horror of the night
before engulfed me in a sea of grief. The whole interplay of the early morning
tribulations had unfolded and the very roots of the tree were exposed. I was
looking back into Eternity's face, and I realized she had been speaking, moving
her chapped lips in sync with her watercrystal eyes. 

    Like a creature from some Gaelic folk tale, I had been visited in the
night. But to her credit, she had delivered a message that may have saved me
from my own unconscious downward spiral. By appearing in a withered form, she
had stretched the bindings of the knot thin, and shown me how close I was to
tearing the fabric of everything that mattered. 

    In a deluge of tears and salt and anguish, I was overcome with emotion. I
looked down at my silver-encrusted hand and traced the path of our knot, and in
the shining sterling, I could almost see Eternity smiling back.
 
    It seems like forever ago that I gave her that ring, with the endless knot
of friendship and love on it. It was painful and I'll never forget it, but I
don't have to. Maybe it was forever ago, but that's not really such a long time
anymore. Not while I still have her. Not while I have Eternity.

-----------?----------??????????????-?????---------------????????????----------
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1N
PA1Nv8x06----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     [     The Origins of Playing God      ]
                     [            alienbinary              ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x06
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESIXPA1N
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

                                READ ME FIRST:
                                
    Editor's note: This originally evolved from an idea I had about putting out
a peice on self-defense. I'm trained officially in a couple styles of Japanese
martial arts, and unofficially trained in black belt level Judo and Ju-Juitsu.
I've taken a shitload of classes and lessons and I'm reasonably okay with the
idea of defending myself in hand to hand combat. Having had a rough year, in
which I had the unfortunate occasion to watch friends get hurt because they
couldn't defend themselves, I wanted to put out something that could maybe curb
that. I didn't really get it, though. Red Dragon and I talked for a long time
about this project, and ultimately, he explained to me how he feels about
fighting, and I found that it's closer to my own philosophy than anyone else's
I've heard yet, with one exception. I hate guns. Actually, I don't hate them,
per se, I'm just not enamoured with them. Too much pain for so little
provocation. 

    As far as RD's advice about killing an intruder in your house,
remember who he is, as he makes it very, very clear in the beginning paragraph.
Red Dragon is a soldier. I'm not. Chances are, statistically, you aren't
either. But sadly, you might come into that scenario. The thing that ultimately
matters is that you do not take this article verbatim, necessarily, but that
you understand the more important message, which is that it's not a game. 

    Anytime you get physical, you are engaging in something that isn't even
remotely related to a game. In Israel or Pakistan, I imagine you can walk 
down the street and see dozens of children with guns. Probably half of these 
kids have lost someone very dear to them in a firefight. But here, in America, 
we just don't have that perspective. The best way I could think of to get 
this sort of combat veteran perspective, was to ask a combat vet. I must warn 
you, this is an incredibly graphic peice, because nothing is sugar coated. The 
views of Red Dragon, like the views of every author in this magazine are their 
own, not necessarily a reflection of the views of the zine as a whole. PA1N is 
about freedom of speech, and I think that people should hear what RD has to
say. - alienbinary

                                the origins.
                                
    Everyone on the western side of the planet who isn't in a developing nation
most likely has some opinion on the war, or more accurately, wars going on. The
key to the Presidential election coming up is alleged to be this very topic. I,
like a lot of people, have an opinion, but mine changes quite a bit. Our
society is obsessed with guns, violence and warfare. The corporate media is
spewing out loads of really abstract rap music and TV shows that try to depict
gun fights and gangster life styles, but it's all drivel. I'm no expert in
combat (although I'm trained to a degree) and most people aren't. This is a
good thing, in my opinion. Unfortunately, big media and news execs are pushing
it with this idea that you can synthesize the reality of combat without a
checksum to make sure you're close to the mark.

    If there's something you'll never really see a lot of on prime time
television, which is one of the reasons I gave up TV, it's the consequences of
an action. We have our movies to make us feel empowered, and our television to
make us afraid again. The show '24' recently aired something (according to an
advertisement I sat through way too often in movie theaters) about a deadly
virus being spread via cocaine. I'm no doctor, but I do know that cocaine is
cut often with ether, which is incredibly powerful as an antiseptic. After the
cutting process that will be undergone dozens of times before a gram of dope
hits the streets, the end product is incredibly unlikely to look like what it
started out as. Therefore, this strikes me as a really stupid fucking plot.
Regardless, this scared the hell out of a lot of my friends, not because
they're drug users, which they aren't (I don't think) but because it
perpetuated a feeling of helplessness. 

    Then you have your movies like "Enough," which, I actually enjoyed. Seeing
an abusive husband get turned into hamburger meat, and I won't spoil the
rest... it was good, it was refreshing, and it condoned self defense, which I
also condone. Thing is, the story isn't likely to end well in these scenarios.
But that could be changed.

    Imagine a society where it was encouraged to learn how to take a knife from
an intruder, or to escape a rapist's hands, or one where responsible gun owners
successfully took care of their own house security. Imagine a school system
that replaced the useless "don't take candy from strangers" shit with a course
in Tae Kwan Doe. I would have a block party if I saw in the newspaper that a
little girl who was targeted by a pedophile came out on top because she just so
happened to know how to knife-hand (a TKD hand position. Also used in some
styles of Kung Fu, I beleive) the attacker in the traechea, and the police were
able to detain him, since he spent the whole time on the ground after the girl
called 911 clutching at his throat, gasping for air.

    But even with all of this, everyone has an opinion. I like idea of the
society I mentioned in the last paragraph, but I'm all too aware of the fact
that I haven't a clue as to what the reality of it would be. I've never taken a
person's life, and I don't ever want to. Like many people, I am trained in how
to do it, but I've never had occasion to apply my skills. I simply train and
train, because it provides me with discipline and confidence. Still, I get
criticism. People walking by my dorm room hearing a kya (see below) might open
the door and shake their head to see that I'm practicing five point kicks at
average neck level. They assume I want to hurt someone. It's not that at all. I
just don't want to get hurt. But still, the judgement remains.

    Going back to the war scenario, you have someone with a very strong
opinion, but chances are, they have never been in war. They might insult a
combat vet and call him or her a butcher, but they will never know what that
even means. PA1N seeks to offer perspective, as many perspectives and unique
outlooks as possible, and there isn't enough GOOD literature out there from the
point of view of an actual former highly trained and veteraned soldier. 

(key-YAH, a shout done in exact synchronisity with most throws, kicks and
punches. The kya serves to put your opponent on edge and therefore give you the
advantage, and the explusion of air clears your diaphragm in case of a
counterfeint. If you get hit and you have a lung full of air, it can kill you.)

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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEV
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                     [              Playing  God            ]
                     [               Red Dragon             ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x07
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLESEV
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

(Author's note: AlienB asked me to write about this subject a few months ago.
Why did it take so long? Easy. Even though I've written for many zines over the
years, I still think I suck at it, and it takes me a while to get my thoughts
across so that people have some small chance of understanding them.)



                "Do you really want to confront me? Do you really 
                want to deal with me? No, I really don't think so."

                                        Henry Rollins, "Step Back"


    The above quote pretty much sums up my entire way of thinking. Why? Because
it's true. I'm a killer. In my time on this planet, I've taken the lives of
men, women, children, maybe a half-dozen African boar, and 2 camels. I'm a
combat veteran. My confirmed kills number more than 100, unconfirmed probably
closer to 200. I was one of about 6500 highly trained and skilled professionals
known as U.S. Army Special Forces. Why am I telling you all this? Simple.
Because I know what it feels like to take a human life. To play God. To watch a
human being bleed out, or to see that pink mist spray out as a result of a
successful head shot from 1500 meters. I'm telling you this so that you may
understand that the taking of a human life is no fucking joke.

    Every human being has the right to defend themselves or their loved ones.
Every human being has the right to use deadly force if they feel they or their
loved ones life may be in danger. But how do you know what constitutes a
life-threatening situation? Is there some set standard? No, there isn't. It's a
judgement call. And unfortunately, there aren't too many people on this planet
right now who I would be comfortable with trusting them to make the right call.

    Let's say you're a guy out for a night on the town with your
girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/little sister/mom/grandma/pet hamster/pocket
pussy/whatever. Now let's say that some semi-retarded monkeyboy in a bar
somewhere decides that it'd be a good idea to talk shit to you and/or your
companion for the evening. Are you the type to walk away? Or are you the type
to jump right up in someone's shit when that situation arises? If you answered
walk away, then I applaud you. If you answered the other, I say "See you in the
morgue." Why? Because you aren't nearly as tough as you think you are, Pedro.
Yes, that goes for me, too. Even with all of my years of training in various
fighting disciplines and weapons, and all my combat experience, I KNOW that
there is someone out there who is tougher or stronger than me. The only reason
I'm still breathing is that I haven't found that person yet. But every year I
live (and this goes for the rest of you too, so pay attention), my chances of
surviving another one incrementally decrease. It's the law of averages, folks.
Get used to it. 

    Okay let's get back to the point. In the aforementioned scenario, the
monkeyboy has just talked shit to you and/or yours. Why should you walk away?
Because it's JUST WORDS. Nothing more than that. Here's a little tip from your
friend Red Dragon; If some says "I'm gonna..." (ie, "I'm gonna kick your ass,
or whatever), THEY'RE NOT. Why? Because if they were, they would've already
done it, and not given you the benefit of a warning. Just words, people. Just
words. Not worth dying over, and certainly not worth living with the fact that
you took someone's life over. If the situation prevents you from walking away,
and monkeyboy is bound and determined to get physical, ask him this (in a
perfectly calm and neutral tone). "Are you ready to die tonight? Because I am,
and I'll have to assume that since you want to fight me that you will try and
kill me. And that being the case, I'm going to do my damndest to kill you as
well. Is that something you're prepared for?" Trust me, it works. If you talk
in a normal tone, without getting all excited and yelling and shit, monkeyboy
WILL back down. I promise.

    Different situation. Let's say that it's 3 AM and you're at home in bed
asleep with your significant other, and your kids are asleep in their bedrooms.
And some crackhead (or speedfreak, or rapist, or whatever) decides that this is
gonna be the night he breaks into your house to steal money or possessions or
rape your woman or whatever. Now speaking as a man with a beautiful wife and
four (yes, four) beautiful kids, I say the following. KILL HIM. If you have a
gun in your home (a Constitutional right, unless you're a convicted felon)
empty that motherfucker into the bastard that dares to invade your home.
Speaking for myself, there are two Glock Model 22 .40 caliber handguns in my
bedroom, both with two pre-ban high capacity 15 round magazines, loaded with
185 grain Hydra-Shok rounds, one in my wife's nightstand, and one in mine (yes,
the weapons get locked up in the daytime, I'm a responsible gun owner). My wife
knows to keep shooting until the slide locks back, then reload and do it again.

    But chances are that I'm different than most of you who are reading this
now. I have no problem taking someone's life in defense of my own or my
family's. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it, either.

    Just remember this: If a situation goes from bad to worse (ie, from a
verbal argument to a physical altercation), you have a HUGE decision to make.
And the only one who can make that decision is you. Taking a life is no joke.
When that happens, you're permanently removing someone from the face of the
planet. That person may have a wife and kids of his own, or brothers and
sisters and parents who will miss him. And when you take him out, it's not just
his life you're ending. You could be effectively destroying many others in the
process. You need to be prepared for the aftermath of your choice. Because if
you're just an average person on the street without the benefit (some would say
handicap) of my experience and training, that aftermath will more than likely
include a lot of sleepless nights, and a lot of nightmares on those rare
occasions that you actually do manage to fall asleep.

Choose wisely, folks.

Red Dragon
RedDragon@spfd2600.org    

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PA1Nv8x08----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     [  Culture, cyberpunk, and aquariums.  ]
                     [             alienbinary              ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x08
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEIGHTPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEIGHTPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEIGHTP
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    When I was in either fifth or sixth grade, I found two things out about
myself that are somehow interrelated. I think they have to do with an affinity
for the darkness and the idea of light spilling into a dark room. The first
thing I found, was that I was fascinated with fish tanks. There is nothing more
relaxing to me, well, nothing non-pharmaceutical, than watching fish go about
their movements. I bought a fifteen gallon tank and blue stones, a fluorescent
light and a little porcelain sign that said "no fishing." This was the first
era of my fish tank. At the time this was going on, I was quite the misfit in
school. I may have got along well with some kids, but I was, for a while, a
social outcast. At the beginning of fifth grade, we were all assigned
First-Class Client e-mail accounts for electronic messaging between students
and teachers. This would prove to be one of the more interesting avenues of my
young teen angst as the next year or two went by. Come sixth grade, I was using
my computer for everything. I was on a dial-up, which is one of the more
painful ways to connect to the internet, but I still loved it. Everywhere I
went, I felt out of place. But when the screaming modem made noise, I felt
vitality again.

    Subsequently, two things became my avenue of escape. First, I was
fascinated by my computer, and all the things possible with it. The second was
my fish. I wanted to talk to them, to know what it was like in the water, to
feel a completely new environment. I found this, however, in cyberspace.

    I spent a lot of my early teens in dark rooms dimly lit by some sort of
florescent light. In the case of my bedroom, it was in front of the fish tank,
where I could watch and commune with the submarine community I had built with
my father around the time of my birthday. Which birthday it was, I can't
remember. The other dim light source was the harsh light emitted from a glowing
computer monitor. Although I was raised originally on an old Apple IIe, and
then graduated to a IIgs, I nevertheless found myself fascinated to the point
of absurdity with the Macintosh LCIII that we bought for christmas one year. I
would spend entire afternoons bathing in nothing but the light of the cathode
ray tube. To me, it was ecstasy. In many ways, it still is.

    My diurnal habits were diminishing, however. I was less interested in what
I was going to do during the day, than when I could be alone, at night, and
consequently, in turn, be in the company of millions of people. There were
various settings for First-Class server, and the client was capable of a lot of
interesting resource hacks, using the old indispensable ResEdit version 1.2.3
from Apple Computer. I think one of the first times someone actually
acknowledged my presence in the computer lab of their own accord was when I
loaded a new settings file freshly coded the night before by myself onto the
campus appleshare network, and a splash screen would show up. The sounds, icon,
splash screens and extra features I added to the client made the experience of
puttering around on the school computers actually enjoyable. I should admit, I
didn't learn to do that entirely on my own. The resource hacks, often called
registry hacks, although that's a misnomer on anything except a windows box,
had been first explored by a pothead who had the startup screen show up as the
outer limits and some drug and pop-culture related replacement icons. By
opening the settings files he distributed, I was able to learn the nature of
the program, and soon, much to his chagrin I noticed, my settings were becoming
more popular, probably because I was putting an insane amount of time into
them. One version was custom made by request, and seeing as I was a young
adolescent male, I wanted to see girls as much as the next guy, I made this
version the slightly erotic version. It's models and icons, however, didn't go
beyond the pale in terms of taste. Even as a kid, I was inspired more by the
Vargas style of pinup than the Playboy to Penthouse style anything-goes junk
that was becoming insanely prolific on the net. I stopped working on that
version very quickly, because while I was coding it, several girls I had major
crushes on had walked into the computer lab. This was too embarrassing. Seeing
as I was just a little kid, I didn't know what exactly I wanted or desired when
it came to girls, but some budding hormone stash in my pituitary gland was
telling me that I needed to cut it out, because I would be called a pervert and
never get a date if I didn't. I would like to blame the adult-oriented settings
files on my relatively sparse romantic life during middle school through junior
high, but I can't, because it's just not feasible. Besides, seeing as every
other guy I knew also would have liked a convenient excuse for his
inexperience, I think it's safe to say that I was in the norm. That doesn't
make it any more fun. 

    As time wore on, the classes became more authoritarian and the internet
became more broad. I was wardialing by then, building boxes for phone
phreaking, and I had every version of the stupid so-called anarchist cookbook
on floppy disk, since I was under the misguided notion that it was illegal to
own. In junior high, even, they don't let students in on the fact that the
first amendment protects almost all printed information, and that this
generally applied to text files in digital format as well.

    I left before my freshman year to go to another private school, at which
all the kids there were just getting into computers. It was amazing to see
every demographic beta-testing the concept of a laptop computer as a study aid.
There were machines known as alpha-smarts also, which had a standard "QWERTY"
keyboard, and a line or two of liquid crystal display so that you could at any
point start taking notes in class without the bulk of an entire computer. I
never found these to be a whole lot of fun. There wasn't any programming
environment for me to escape to. Regardless, I was on my own for a bit. At this
point, I was heavily into my fish tank, and I had a computer in my room, as
well as a phone jack. This began my penchant for living in dark rooms with
electric lights illuminating only certain parts thereof, giving me a sort of
cybernetic feel. To me, the cold electric glare of the CRT was warm and full of
invitation to come an enjoy the fruits of modern technology and to meet other
kids with no where else to turn to. It was a utopia, sort of. And next to me,
was a fish called "Mx," who I named after the MacAddict Magazine mascot, also
named Max. Mx was a medium sized zebra danio fish, and for those of you who
don't know much about freshwater aquariums, this meant that Max's estimated
life span was a week at best. Danios are not notorious for immortality. 

    Maybe it was my relationship with the fish, though. I did spend all my free
time reading and coding and chatting right near the tank, even sometimes
casually leaving printouts of hacker zines or source code on the hood of the
overhead light inside, because it was a convenient space to leave such
materials. Fish aren't like most creatures, in that they don't necessarily
sleep the way we do, in terms of a rigid schedule. Although the conversations
were rather one sided, this way, I would still bounce ideas off my fish and I
would come up with the replies by means of logic. Talking to, or in the general
direction of max and his glowing tank gave me the means to let my mind wander.
It was a sort of rhetorical socratic method. Whatever it was, it worked. At the
private school I attended right before transferring to a public high school for
a year, I learned that I had a learning disability associated with mathematics.
I was told that I had a superior intelligence, according to the entire battery
of IQ, EQ and other tests they ran, but that I did have a derivative of
dyslexia known as discalculia. This being the case, I had to use a calculator
all the time in class. I bought my first Texas Instruments TI-86 Graphing
Calculator, and I read the manual through and through. By the next month, I was
coding all of my math assignments into algorithms in interfaces I wrote on the
calculator in TI-BASIC, which allowed me to keep my head above water, so to
speak, in class. I distinctly remember being in class one week, and wishing I
was at home, in the dark, in my room. That being the case, I wrote a screen
saver animation program for the calculator that simulated a fish swimming
around an ASCII generated aquatic landscape. I think I showed it to Mx when I
was done, but obviously he wasn't much for verbal feedback. 

    I had to go to a public high school after that for a year, where I met
'Nemisis,' and then eventually I moved once again, away; but this time to
boarding school until I graduated from high school. During the entire time this
happened, as I became more entrenched in the cyberculture, it should be noted
that the same fish, specifically max, was alive. I don't know how I
accomplished this, or rather, how he made it, but I read all the FAQs online
about aquarium care, I visited marine biology servers using Gopher or UseNet to
gather information about caring for him, and he survived. Mx is still alive as
I write this, but he's dying. As far as I can remember, it's been something
like 8 or more years that I've had max, and the entire time, I've always had
the same kind of nocturnal ritual. It was like a conference call between the
land of meat, the marine world, and the land of the ether, or the web.

    The two are somehow connected, although Max's health is failing right now.
The connection was and is, one of community. Those long, late nights I would
spend talking on Hotline Protocol servers and learning the underground lingo of
the hacker subculture, I was also spending time with my fish. I used to think
it was a proximity thing, but I distinctly remember that I would always have
every monitor on, the lights off, but I would illuminate the fish tank for
ambiance. It added to the feeling of being submerged in a culture. 

    I've seen a lot of analogies for cyberculture, and a lot of "how I became a
leet hacker" stories, most of which I sort of skimmed through thoroughly
disinterested, but I don't recall the fish tank connection. Soon the tank will
be devoid of animal life, save for bacteria, phytoplankton, and paramecium, but
I will still have that tank. I was talking with the person who relayed the sad
news to me, about the plans for the tank now, and after I hung up, I realized
that I was doing the same thing any hacker would. I was going to hack my tank.

    Sometime this summer, when the money is a little freer than it is now, and
I have more time on my hands for these sorts of projects, I'm going to retrofit
that tank. It's an old model, there are superior tanks on the market now with
stronger exterior walls and insanely shock resistant paneling, but I don't want
a new tank. I want to take my old tank, and over clock it. At the moment, I'm
thinking of going for an H.P. Lovecraftian theme, maybe to create a "Sunken
R'Lyeh" model of my own. Regardless, Mx will live on, and he will leave a
legacy. At the end of this piece are some photographs that I've enclosed, of Mx
in his tank, and those images will forever be able to travel through the ether
of the internet, reaching all parts of the world and maybe farther. And, even
as I write this, my habits haven't changed. The room is dark because the shades
are down and the lights are off, save for one bedside reading lamp focused on
my keyboard, and the glow of my iBook's screen. 

    Somehow, I think there's something to be said about the cyberpunk culture,
and the conclusion can be drawn from my story as laid out in this essay. On the
'net, we are free. Like a fish in the ocean, all areas are explored, some are
just less traveled. There are small networks of highly skilled like-minded
people, like the cipherpunks who make the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
website front page news all the time for breaking new encryption, and there are
vast networks like rantradio, where people from all over convene in an
otherwise dark room to bring light. Together, we all make the internet a
community, a world where you can go to and be whoever you want to be, even
yourself. Unlike many cultures, cyberculture doesn't condemn the darkness.
Instead, we make our own lights, just as Siddhartha Guatama said one should do
when he announced to his disciples "be a lamp unto yourself," or "make your own
light, find things out for yourself. 

    It's already been a crazy trip, and I like the idea that I'll never have to
abandon this community. It's like a hermetically sealed fish tank in the way
that although anyone can come and go as they please, the inhabitants of the
tank learn to live in harmony with each other, regardless of species. Likewise,
on the internet, we live and we operated without race or gender bias in mind.
We seek to broaden our horizons and to make it a more interesting place every
day and night. Looking back on those years of being illuminated only by the
glow of the monitor and a fish tank, and maybe a lava lamp, I realize that I've
always been, and always will be a cyberpunk. It's a part of my nature to live a
step ahead of the rest, yet in sync with a noble few, those who share my vision
of a better world, and those who make my vision of the world as it is, much
better. This is for you, Max.

                http://thorn.e-lite.org/maxtank.jpg
                http://thorn.e-lite.org/max.jpg
                
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                     [           Notebook Memoirs          ]
                     [              alienbinary            ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------PA1Nv8x09
PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLENINEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLENINEPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLENINEP
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

                    [ Transcribed from one of many notebooks ]

    I'm in a classroom where the professor is talking, but I don't really
recognize the language. I have the song "Schools are Prisons" by the Sex
Pistols stuck in my head, taunting my stupid ass for being so foolish as to
waste my day inside a dark room when spring is struggling with the winter to
realize itself. This meek struggle to retain inapplicable information is almost
trivialized by the transformations going on right outside the window. I hardly
slept last night. To be precise, I only slept a little this morning. I get
worried for my own sanity when I start to debate whether I should even get out
of bed at all.

    The song still sings loudly in my head, Johnny Rotten's gluehead voice
lamenting the "best years of my life." I don't know when those were, in fact, I
fear that they passed when I was busy being angry at life itself. If you miss
your calling, can you be given a new one, once you're ready? I don't even know
what my calling would be. Then again, this seems to fall back on the concept of
vocation as the source of your identity.

    I find myself falling deeper and deeper into my thoughts, digging through 
the cache of lyrics and quotations; I'm searching for answers in the one
database that stays true to me. In my mind I can recall Henry Rollins'
weathered voice as it describes the incredible emotional pain he felt watching
the Black Flag tour bus drive away from his friend Ian McKaye's house. At times
like this, I can hear his words resonating in my cerebellum, "That night at
work, everything in my life felt meaningless. I knew that somehow, I was
blowing it."  At the moment, I feel like a nail in everybody's front tire. Life
is a series of events and consequences, hopefully in that order, but not
always. The events that drew me to this place, this chair, this laptop, this
room are all derived from my actions in the past. If I feel as though nothing I
do has any purpose anymore, then all my preceding actions must have been
building up to some grandiose and over glorified anticlimax. 

    We pity the dead because otherwise we would be forced to turn to ourselves,
to examine how we live, and the state of our lives. I can conceive of no more
intense psychic torment than to be faced with one's own situation. 

            [ This just sort of evolved. I was trying not to scream. ]

            "I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every 
            panda that wouldn't screw to save it's species"
            
                                - Fight Club by Chuch Palahniuk

    There is oil in my bloodstream. I can feel the junk wearing down my heart,
as it renders me immobile. Anxiety is a disease. It can spread and course
through your body with a vengeance, and it takes no prisoners. I'm not stuck in
this body, I'm exiled. As long as I'm trapped to the confines of this fragile
skin, I'll forever be enmeshed with the struggle to make mind triumph over
matter. The chair is creaking, it sounds like the labored breathing of an old
man dying of a stroke. Outside the weather piles snow upon the other humans in
my vicinity. In retort, these creatures use machinery to combat nature. They
have never learned, and probably never will, that nature is indeed cruel and
kind at the same time. She teaches us that we are not superior to anything else
on the planet, but her cruelty is in not giving mankind the capacity to
understand this concept. 

    Right now, hardworking men and women plow the streets on their days off,
told that if they don't, their jobs are going to vanish like so much exhaust.
One such man smiled at me as I walked into my dormatory today. He was using an
old shovel, possibly to spite his boss who has a penchant for anything deseil.
I recently strapped steel treads onto my doc martens, then surrounded the
exposed area with a set of boot garders. As other people scramble up hills and
swear and curse at the clouds for the nasty weather, I walk casually through
them, over wet ice and packed snow, as if I was naturally built for this
weather. This man was making too little progress for the downpour of the snow,
and we exhanged knowing glances. He knew that I was already prepared for this
weather, and correctly surmised that I was from around the area. I knew that he
didn't care what happened to his day, because ultimately, his day's labor would
mean nothing. When his shift ends in six hours, he'll go home, and nature will
pile on another foot or two, submerging the now partially clear walkway that
has been his work site for the last hour or two. Once the landscape is
obscured, the inner circle of beurocrats that run the company he works for will
complain that they see no progress, and he will be instructed to start again,
just like Sysiphus, pushing the boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll all
the way down of it's own accord.

    Somewhere else in the world, people who have ventured in and out and back
into my life are doing their jobs aboard US Navy vessels, Army tank divisions
and Coast Guard Cutters. At any moment, the President could send them directly
into a suicide mission, and for financial reasons, they accept this. There's
more than a sense of sacrifice or selflessness with them, there's an
exceptional sense of perspective in relation to the grand scheme of things.
They know that if they die to protect my truancy, no reward awaits them. Only I
reap the benifits of their deprived safety, and the only thing I can do with it
at this moment is squander such a privilege, because my brain won't stop
pounding me into myself.

    Introspectively, I see a combination of ice and molten lava. The steam is
so thick it chokes me. The heat is intense, but the chills are worse.
Intuitively, I understand that there is no pain being felt in the pit of my
stomach, but my brain is sending signals to the pain receptors. Somehow, this
doesn't matter. A weeks worth of acid food and energy supplement drinks boils
down in my digestive system like an angry storm, and I can feel the vortex of
the tornado from my larynx down. Something churns down my spine, and all the
vertebrae are locked together in a fatalistic dance of surrender. These are the
death throws that I engage in every time I let my mind wander this far.



    The song Black Coffee is really, really loud coming from my hk speakers
right now. I'm past anger right now. You know what's the worst, yet truest
lesson in life? This is the hardest part to learn, but maybe the most
important. The lesson is simple. Life is a let down. For the most part, people
are not worth your respect, but you give it anyways. You work your ass into a
lather, and as you're towelling off from your work, you notice your pink slip
on the desk. Good deeds are followed by other people taking advantage of you.
Somehow, this strikes me as more than a little off. 

    I've still not stopped thinking about that kid who bitched about, well,
everyone else's bitching the other day. I'm no longer of the opinion that if
you don't want to hear it, then don't listen. I disagree. If you're made
uncomfortable by someone elses complaints, then it's possible that the reason
you can't handle it is because they're one hundred percent correct. If you
can't be bothered to listen to some criticism, then you can never actually
improve. If you have no interest in improving who you are, then, well, fuck
you. 

    Iron Maiden on the speakers. The song is The Trooper, I wanted to hear the
line where the singer says "you'll take my life, but I'll take yours too.
you'll fire your musket, but I'll run you through." That's probably one of the
best ways to express how it feels to be dicked around like this, and I don't
see any other way of getting out of the situation I'm in. I run the risk with
that last sentence of making the reader think I'm in a life or death sort of
thing, or that I've just found out something terrible and I'm reacting. It's
not that. Not entirely. It's how I feel. 

    I remember how I felt when I heard certain peices of news in my life. I
remember when my knees buckled and I fell the ground sobbing. The realization
that's washed over me just a little while ago is directly analogous to how I
felt when I lost my best friend. It feels like everything in the world is
utterly pointless and just doesn't matter anymore. All the work you have done,
all the time you have put in on the daily grind, now you just feel like taking
every shred of progress and setting it on fire. 

    The song is now Flight of Icarus. I know I can't sit in this room all day
and just wail on the keyboard as I've been doing almost every day of this week.
I have to get up like Icarus and recognize that although I may be doomed, I can
still burn out in a spectacular blaze of glory. If the world wants to pound me
in, I'll just keep pounding back. "Fly as high as the Sun."

                        [ I'm twenty one. who cares. ]

Type O Neg on the harmon kardons. The song is Angel, probably one of the most
beautiful modern goth rock songs I've ever heard. It makes me think of the
people that have come in and out of my life, and how so many of them I wish I
could just talk to. Just one more time. When you're depressed, it seems like
everyone else is that much smarter than I am. I miss the wisdom of a thousand
people come and gone.


                "Seems three years, maybe four. Someone drops dead, 
                whom I adore. You love someone, there will be grief. 
                The kiss of death, lips of a theif." 
    
                    -- Type O Negative, 'Everyone I love is Dead'

    The song's "Everyone I love is dead," now. This song sends me reeling into
an introspective self-examination that I despise. Of all the people I've known,
I still can't make sense of the fact that I'm the one that's still around. I
sometimes wonder what the joke is, because I feel like I'm on the cruel end of
one, and my whole life is the punchline. You invest so much time into learning
about another person, or defining a relationship, and your reward is it's
dissolving into dust right in front of your eyes.

    You could be asking yourself if I'm this down, and I'm legally of drinking
age, why aren't I at a bar? The answer is because most of the people that I
think of when I hear this song I lost because of behavior like that. It's so
easy to just crack open a bottle of beer and intoxicate yourself until your
nerves are liquified; a lot easier than working things out. I guess that's why
everyone seems to be doing that these days. Alcohol just isn't part of my trip
anymore, I can't even stand it's smell now. Sometimes the smell of alcohol
makes me want to break glass with my bare fist. 

    
                               .d$$P'  '$Hb.
                               $$'       '$$
                              $$'         '$$
                              $;           ;$
                              ;;           ;;
                              ';;.       .;;'
                   PA1N Volume  ';$t.  .d$$' Continues...
                               .4$$'    '$$b.
                              .$$'        '$$.
                              $$;          ;$$
                              ;;;          ;;$
                              ::;          ;$$
                              '$$;.      .;;$'
                                '$$$.  .$$$'
                                    
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                     [       What You'll Never Know        ]
                     [              angel ice              ]
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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLETENPA1N
-?------------?---???????---???---?????????????--------------????????----------

    "God damnit! Why is he doing this to me again? Ahh!! I hate him! Who the
hell gave him all the power? Why won't he just leave me alone?! Fuck him! Who
needs him?!... I need him... Oh Christ not now. Ok, don't cry... Oh come on
calm down. He's not worth it. You'll ruin your makeup." Slowly, a single tear
slides down her cheek. "Oh this isn't happening! Not now!" Suddenly she is very
aware of the familiar symptoms. She jumps up from her chair and starts to pace
around the room as she curses herself and runs down the list. "Ok... racing
heart? Check. Shallow breathing? Check. And of course the incessant screaming
in my head... Ok so we're just missing... oh shit... oh yeah there's the
dizziness." She drops into the chair she had just gotten out of and slams her
fist on the desk. "Ow... Oh I hate this!" She grasps her head in her hands as
if trying to block out the internal screams and begins to rock back and forth.
The anxiety is already very present in her system and she knows the rage is not
far behind.

    Slowly she begins to form fists still over her ears, and her teeth
start to clench. Her eyes have glazed over into an icy glare at nothing in
particular. Her adrenalin is flowing so strong in her body that it threatens to
tear her apart. Her instincts are screaming at her to run, just desperate to
get away. But how do you escape yourself? "No, no, not now..." She wanted to
throw up. She was disgusted at herself, at the whole situation. She was shaking
uncontrollably now, mostly with adrenalin, but also with fear, and a longing
for someone to save her. For someone to grab her and shake her until she came
to; someone who would hold her so tight she could barely breathe and force her
to face everything, force her to feel. "No! I don't want to! I can't do this, I
can't, I can't!" She let out a loud painful scream in her head and in one swift
motion, flung open her desk drawer, grabbed her scissors, and without
hesitation, dragged the blade across her arm. 

    Again and again she cut perfect little lines. Her tears were uncontrollable
now and she was trying to gasp for air between sobs. "Look at it," she
commanded herself. "Feel the pain... this is real. Focus here. Nothing else
matters; not him, not that night, not anything. This is the only thing that's
real. This pain has a purpose. Don't block it out." Little beads of blood were
traveling down her arm and finally, after what seemed like ages, she started to
calm. The anger, the rage, the anxiety, the tears, they were all leaving her.
"You're ok now," she told herself. "You're gonna be ok now. See? You don't need
anyone else. You know how to deal with it. Just lay you're head down for a
second until you relax. You did well. Hey, anything's better than having to
face your thoughts and your emotions right? You don't need to be saved... Yeah,
sure I don't. 

    I just wish that someday I won't have to run. But for now you do what you
can. I know you miss him... But you don't need him. You're so much better off
without him. He's the reason you're like this anyway. It started with him. You
need to stop depending on other people. All they do is leave you. They promise
to save you and then what do they do? They leave, and you never hear from them
again. So fuck him, fuck all of them, you've got yourself and that's all you
need. Yeah... I know." She drew in a deep breath, and slowly she lifted her
head off the desk. "I know," she repeated out loud, just to reassure herself.
"Ok, you're alright now. You know the drill. Wipe up the excess blood, put some
lotion on it so it doesn't dry up, and then wrap it up. Some people aren't so
excepting this particular form of therapy." When she finished wrapping her arm,
she ran a brush through her hair and went to the bathroom to reapply the makeup
that didn't make it through the attack. As soon as she had gotten back in her
room there was a knock at her door. She tossed a "come on in" over her shoulder
as she threw a sweatshirt on. She turned to see Pat standing in the doorway and
gave him a picture perfect smile.

   "You ready to go?" he asked her.
   
   "Been ready," she replied. 
    
    "Ok then... let's go," he said to her as he held the door open and followed
her out.


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PA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEELEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEELEVENPA1NVOLUMEEIGHTARTICLEE
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                     [    Kello Smith's Wardriving FAQ Part One  ]
                     [                  Kello                    ]
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Kello Smith's Wardriving FAQ 
 
Part I. The Basics
What is wardriving?   

    Wardriving is the gathering of statistics about wireless networks in a
given area by listening for their publicly available broadcast beacons.
Wireless access points (APs) announce their presence at set intervals (usually
100 milliseconds) by broadcasting a packet containing their service set
identifier (SSID) and several other data items. A stumbling utility running on
a portable computer of some sort (a laptop or PDA) listens for these broadcasts
and records the data that the AP makes publicly available.

    When you wardrive, you drive around in your car while running a stumbling
utility, and record beacons from nearby APs. Most stumbling utilities have the
ability to add GPS location information to their log files, so that the
geographical positions of stumbled APs (often called "stations" by insiders)
may be retained and plotted on electronic maps like those produced by
Microsoft's MapPoint software.

    The overwhelming favorite among stumbling utilities is called Network
Stumbler (informally, NetStumbler) and this FAQ will focus primarily on the use
of NetStumbler. Other stumbling utilities exist, and I will provide pointers to
them later on.

    Wardriving as we know it was first developed by Pete Shipley in April 2001.
Others had run around with laptops, sensing AP beacons and taking notes (often
on paper!) but Pete was the first to automate the process with dedicated
software, and also the first to integrate GPS location data with databases of
detected APs. What put wardriving on the map, however, was Marius Milner's
NetStumbler utility, which is by far the most widely used wardriving utility.
Lots more on NetStumbler later in this FAQ.

Why "war"? 

This is kind of an unfortunate prefix, in these rather twitchy times.
Wardriving has nothing whatsoever to do with war. The term is the offspring of
the term wardialing, which was the (now mostly extinct) practice of dialing
random phone numbers via computer to see if you could find an answer modem.
Wardialing, in turn, came out of the 1983 cult movie War Games, in which a
teenager got himself (and the rest of the world) into serious trouble by
creating an autodialer that eventually found its way into a DOD computer
programmed to wage nuclear war. The kid was looking for computers supporting
online games and had no strong intent to "break into" anything. The problems
that developed lay with an essentially undefended military computer.

    If I were the one coining a term, I'd coin something else, but the word is
out there and we're using it. 

Why is wardriving useful?   

    Wardriving provides a unique opportunity to gauge the growth of a
technology market segment by direct inspection. In other words, we don't have
to take a vendor's or research firm's word for how many wireless networks are
out there. We can go out and look for ourselves. This isn't possible for things
like digital cameras and DVD burners. In conjunction with some understanding of
the demographics of an area, it's possible to use wardriving data to get a
sense for how "connected" or "tech savvy" a neighborhood or region is.

    This sounds dull, but in fact wardriving is fun in the sense that a
scavenger hunt is fun: You never know what you're going to find when you go
out, and you expect to be surprised. The wardriving community is (as you'd
expect) heavily connected via the Internet, and you can meet a lot of
interesting and extremely skilled network and radio people by becoming part of
the community. There is a lot of sharing of technology knowledge within the
community, in things like network configuration and troubleshooting, antenna
construction, cabling and power infrastructure, and so on. Even though I've
been a licensed radio amateur (ham) since 1973, I tripled my knowledge of
microwave radio techniques by taking up wardriving.

Do you have to drive a vehicle to wardrive?  

    Not at all. In fact, in extremely dense urban cores like that of New York,
Washington DC, London, and Paris, it's much more effective to simply walk
around with a Wi-Fi equipped PDA in your pocket running a stumbling utility
like MiniStumbler on a PocketPC or Kismet on a Zaurus. People have reported
stumbling while riding bicycles and flying airplanes. (In the air, it helps not
to get too high.) What to call these activities is unclear, so most of us just
hang "war" on the front of however we happen to be traveling. I go "warcabbing"
when I travel and don't rent a car, by opening my laptop in the back seat of a
taxi. What do I need to have in order to wardrive?   

What most wardrivers call their "wardriving rigs" include the following:

    A computer you can haul around with you. Most people use laptops. Some use
PDAs based on the PocketPC OS or Linux.  
A "stumbler" utility. By far the best known is Marius Milner's Network Stumbler
for Windows, which most people call NetStumbler. Most major operating systems
have stumbler programs available. Linux has Kismet; MAC OS has MacStumbler.
Marius has ported NetStumbler to PocketPC, for which it's called MiniStumbler. 
A Wi-Fi client adapter supported by your chosen stumbler utility. By far the
best and most widely supported client adapter is the Orinoco line of PC card
adapters, now manufactured by Proxim. The Orinoco line is inexpensive, very
sensitive, and unlike 90% of PC card Wi-Fi adapters, has a small jack for
attaching an external antenna. 
An external antenna attached to your client adapter. Ideally, this is an
omnidirectional vertical mounted on the vehicle roof. These are small and
resemble cell phone antennas. You can wardrive with nothing more than a PC
card's built-in antenna, but these antennas are wretched and (being inside the
vehicle) will be shielded from signals to some extent by the vehicle's metal
structure. Note well: I do not think that Pringle's potato chip cans make good
wardriving antennas, but they're, well, legendary. 
A GPS receiver that emits NMEA 183 formatted data. This allows the stumbler
program to record where stumbled stations are located in the physical world.
Technically, GPS is optional, but the stumbled data is much less useful without
GPS information. 
I'll cover most of these points in more detail later on in this FAQ;
specifically, Part III.

Where can I find more information?   
Some suggestions:

        Keep reading this FAQ! (Lots more below!) [ ed. note: and in issue 9 ]

    Read the threads on the NetStumbler forums. Note that I said read. Although
the forums are well-used for asking questions, asking simple, obvious,
asked-every-ten-minutes kinds of questions will not make you friends on the
forums. Don't be a doof. Read and learn to use the Search function be fore
posting questions. 

    Monitor Marius Milner's Stumbler.net blog. Marius is the author of
NetStumbler, the most widely-used stumbling utility. His blog contains notes on
release levels for the program, new support for Wi-Fi client cards, and other
things. 
    
    Beyond that, well, just Google around on the Web. The term "wardriving" has
only one meaning, so you won't get a lot of false hits. Many individuals have
posted enthusiast sites on wardriving, and you can learn something from almost
all of them.

 
Part II: Legalities and Ethics

Is wardriving legal?   

    The legality of wardriving hasn't been tested, but few people think that
wardriving itself is illegal. What is certainly illegal is connecting to and
using networks without the network owner's permission (which is what most
people call "breaking into a network") and wardriving has taken some hits in
the press because network crackers will sometimes use wardriving tools to
locate networks to break into. It's the ancient conundrum of the uses to which
tools are put: A crowbar is handy for taking apart pallets for use as firewood,
but a crowbar can also be used to break into buildings. Should crowbars then be
illegal? Hardly. The gotcha is that this is a very new phenomenon, and the law
hasn't entirely caught up with networking as a whole, much less the peripheral
issues that emerge with regularity from the seething cauldron of technology
innovation.

    To keep wardriving legal, it's important to 1) obey the law as it exists
today, and 2) do our best to encourage journalists to draw the distinction
between wardriving tools and their abuse by crackers. Public perception is
extremely important. If you connect to other people's networks illegally, it's
your butt in a sling and nobody else's, but if you brag about it and the press
picks it up, you hurt us all.

    How do I stay on the right side of the law while wardriving?   
My fellow wardrivers and I adhere to a relatively strict code of ethics that
can be cooked down to the following: 

Don't look. 
Don't touch. 
Don't play through. 

    In other words, 
    
    1) don't examine the contents of a network; 
    2) don't add, delete, or change anything on the network, and 
    3) don't even use the network's Internet connection for Web surfing, email,
    chat, FTP, or anything else.
    
    Somebody else paid for the bandwidth, and if you don't have permission to
use it, you're stealing it. Basically, unless you have permission, don't
connect. Consider it a matter of personal honor, even when it's unlikely that
you'll be caught. (If you get too used to feeling that you won't get caught, 
sooner or later you will get caught!)

What is autoconnection and how do I avoid it?   

    You  don't always have to do anything deliberately to connect (illegally)
to someone else's network. Some client adapters are more "promiscuous" than
others and will hook up with any non-WEP AP that comes into range, given enough
time to perform a DHCP transaction. This is called autoconnection, and it's a
problem for wardrivers for two reasons:

It's illegal to connect to a non-public AP without permission. Period. 

Some client adapters will autoconnect to an AP, and then place the SSID of that
AP in the SSID field of the client adapter's operating profile. After this,
your stumbler program will not log any additional stations with SSIDs other
than that one. Your wardrive is then basically over, even if you drive another
fifty miles. 

    Avoiding autoconnection is essential. Sometimes it can be prevented by
unloading your client adapter's client utility before setting out on a
wardrive. That may not, however, be enough. The only foolproof way I know to
prevent autoconnection is to disable all networking protocols (TCP/IP, NetBEUI,
NetWare, or anything else) on your wardriving computer before setting out.
Without a networking protocol like TCP/IP in operation, the computer has
nothing to connect with or the machinery by which it connects is simply "not
there." However, the Wi-Fi client adapter will still log stations through a
stumbler utility. 

    How you disable networking protocols depends on what operating system
you're using. On Windows, you need to bring up your network connection's
Properties window and un-check any networking protocols that are currently
enabled and active. Then reboot.

    It's a serious hassle to keep enabling and disabling networking protocols,
so I recommend finding yourself a cheap Windows laptop that can run at least
Windows 98, and making it a dedicated wardriving machine. I've seen functional
if slightly creaky machines like the IBM Thinkpad 560E available on EBay for as
little as $150. Pull out all the networking stuff, install NetStumbler, and
don't use it for anything else. If keeping your nose legally clean is important
(and it should be!) do not load the machine up with a lot of network packet
sniffing or "password recovery" utilities. You probably won't run into trouble
with law enforcement, but if you do, you want a machine on your back seat that
simply doesn't have the stuff in it to commit a crime.

    Obviously, if everyone enabled WEP on their APs, autoconnection would not
be a problem...but hey, when was Hell scheduled to freeze over?

What do I do if I get pulled over while wardriving?   

    First of all, cooperate fully with the officer who pulls you over. Stay
calm and don't act like you're smuggling dope or have an open container under
the seat. Let the officer lead the conversation, and answer his/her questions
honestly. Don't assume the officer knows nothing about wardriving. This might
have been true in 2001, but it's not true anymore.

    Even if you're a networking consultant or IT staffer and have multiple
legal uses for packet sniffers and password crackers, I suggest not having such
tools installed on the computer you use for wardriving.

    A side note: You're more likely to be pulled over if you have a laptop on
the passenger's seat and you're constantly trying to watch what's going on, and
thus weaving all around the road like a drunk. I suggest leaving your laptop on
the back seat. Wardriving really isn't interactive. Your stumbling utility logs
stations automatically and doesn't require any input from you while it's
working. Don't let it be a distraction that gets you into a crackup.

    Also, there are laws in some states that prohibit watching screens like TVs
and computers while you're driving. You can definitely get a ticket if you're
pulled over in those states and are found to have a working laptop in the front
seat somewhere, and the ticket has nothing to do with wardriving per se. Even
if you keep your laptop in the back seat, try to turn off video if you wardrive
at night, so as not to have the interior of your car awash in a bluish glow.
The police are always watching for weird stuff going on in their turf. That's
their job. Try not to stand out. (I do all my wardriving during the day.)

to be continued...


check PA1N 9, (coming soon, as 8 is the number before NINE... [ that was me
again, ed. note. ] ) for the next part of Kello's Wardriving FAQ.


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                     [    Spyware and Counterspyware       ]
                     [              alienbinary            ]
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    [ Defining Spyware ]

    I think that every person on the planet with access to a computer, radio,
fax or TV has heard the term "spyware." A great deal of companies put out
software to get rid of such nuisances, and a whole lot of fuss is made over the
existence of such software. Thing is, almost no one outside the tech community
has an idea as to what spyware actually is. 

    Spyware is a pretty ingenious idea. It has an unlimited number of
applications, and, incidentally, it also scared the shit out of me when I first
stumbled on it. Simply put, Spyware is a nickname assigned to a program or
subroutine within a program that monitors your activity on the computer and
reports it back to a remote server. This is not a farfetched idea, because the
applications are almost unlimited to corporations.

    Here's one application: a given company signs a contract with
AOL/Time Warner to advertise over AIM. The company must pay AOL each time the
image or advertisement is displayed. In order to maximize their profit margin,
each company tries to target the ads to be sent only to people who are likely
to click on the link. 

    How spyware works then, is let's say you have the news ticker on your
favorite instant messenger application open. For the purposes of this
explanation, let's just go with the AIM protocol. Every so often, the news
ticker refreshes, and a marquee of headlines passes by on your screen. You
click on a link referring to the entertainment industry, and the next day,
suddenly the WB is advertising on your buddy list instead of some career search
oriented company. Is this a coincidence? No, it's not. And it's not magic,
unless you ask the greedy executives who condone this sort of practice. 

    The above situation may not be true for all instances of AIM, but when I
first found spyware on one of my systems, I was running AIM on my Apple g4, OS
9.1, and Interarchy was in the background monitoring all traffic on my ethernet
port. All of a sudden, I saw a streak of data going the OTHER way when I
received my news ticker update. When I tracerouted this packet, it was going to
a server that didn't have any obvious connection to the news server that I
could think of. I asked a couple of friends online, and they told me that AIM
uses the stock ticker and the news ticker to piggy back user data to a central
server to monitor users. This, if you know me, obviously made me want to break
something.

    I asked Nemisis about this, and he told me about the "report a bug" feature
which included much more than just the relevent information for working on a
better build of aim. Apparently, the developers weren't the only people
receiving the bug reports. 

    It isn't, however, hard to find spyware. You don't even need to run
software to find it, either. Just open your end user license agreements. See
that clause about information being distributed to various third parties
without your permission? When you use the software, you agree to these
conditions. Therefore, none of this, in my opinion, criminal behavior, is
actionable. It's just obnoxious. There's other stuff to watch out for, too. If
at any point in the registration process of a given service or peice of
software you ask yourself "why do they want to know this?" then you have a good
question on your hands. The answer is: "so they can sell it."

    [ port sniffing ]

    The first thing that I would recommend to anyone who is worried about
having their actions monitored, marketed, and being labeled as a number, is to
start running a port sniffer.

    Operating system: MacOSX, Darwin
    Recommended Software: Interarchy or Anarchie (same software, 
    different versions.)
    
    Use the "Watch Net Traffic" feature, and you'll get a full transcript of
the activities of your internet connection. Chances are, you'll be surprised by
what you see being flung around the internet without your input.

    Operating system: Windows, all versions
    Recommended software: AdAware
    
    Running adaware is a lot like running an antivirus application, except
you'll be alarmed as hell by the number of positive hits you get. Almost every
peice of commercial software has at least one compounded subroutine that sends
information about who you are, where you live, and what you do on your computer
back to the developer.

    If you're using the x11 or x86 window system, you can use Ethereal, which
is probably the cream of the crop when it comes to packet sniffing. Ethereal
allows the user to take advantage of a full range of options, including packet
decoders and labels, so that even a novice user can get a basic understanding
of what every instance of traffic is. Other software to check out for port
sniffing includes Snort, NetSniffer, NetMonitor, etc. they all have their own
positives and negatives, but for the purposes of detecting spyware, running an
ethereal session for just a little bit, even ten or fifteen seconds, you can
get a lot of insight into all of the traffic going to and from your computer.

    It should be noted that users of MacOSX either darwin, Jaguar or Panther
have the benifit of running XFree86 in "rootless" mode. Using rootless, you
don't even have to boot into a full XWindows screen to run GNU software. This
is especially useful for people who are running a Mac, and want to test their
osx software for spyware. Also, because of the BSD kernel in osx, you can open
up terminal, which is just xterm by another name, and run ettercap without
having to boot up XDarwin at all. All this requires is a term window size of at
least 25x80. Not a lot to ask for. Also, remember to type in su, suid, or sudo
when launching ethereal or ettercap, etc., otherwise you're likely to run into
a menu that won't allow you to enter promiscuous mode.

    [ what to look for ]
    
    When running these programs, you should notice that traffic is going both
ways on your computer. Your IP should be the one receiving most of the
information. If you notice streams going to peculiar port numbers on IP's you
don't recognize, traceroute or resolve these IP addresses and find out where
the information is going. If you have a stock ticker sending your computer
info, demographics, and high school locker combination to a server that has
nothing to do with news, then you have to ask yourself what the information is
being used for. A lot of companies bank on people assuming that the servers for
various services require specifics about your machine, browser and operating
system. Be skeptical of this. Markup languages are for the most part universal,
and there's rarely a cause for a server to custom make a packet to fit your
operating system. The real reason this information is transmitted is for
marketing purposes; but you're not a demographic, so fuck them.

    If you don't have much experience with port sniffing, and you're new to
this, here's a short list of the common ports. I should give credit here to the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for an incredibly extensive free listing
that covers most ports: http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

    Regular Ports:
    
    Port #:             Purpose
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
      25                Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, SMTP
      23                Telnet
      20                File Transfer Protocol Data
      21                File Transfer Protocol
      22                SSH Remote Login (protocol)
    1080                Socks (firewall)
      80                world wide web, hypertext transfer protocol 
    8080                http and WWW as well. 
    
    If you find that you're getting strange port numbers when you're not even
browsing a website, ask yourself what the hell it's coming from. Using the IANA
list, you can possibly look it up, but your best bet is to use someting like
Ethereal with an up to date library. This will be your best friend when hunting
any unwanted traffic.

    [ on Web Sites ]
    
    It's an arduous process to go through the source code of every website, but
running something like Interarchy in the background will at least give you the
option of passively observing certain tags. A type of spyware that's becoming
increasingly prolific uses embedding in web pages. If you start seeing tags
that say something like: input="hidden", then you might consider looking up
what that input is. Often, the website is checking your browser preferences for
your email address. This seemingly harmless but obnoxious practice accounts for
the vast majority of junk email lists. Web pages and content providers claim
that they're just keeping the revenue up. That's fine, but they should let us
know first.

    [ Alternative Clients ] 

    There are also ways to get around spyware altogether. If you are running
KaZaA, switch to KaZaA Lite, which is the same program, same protocol, but with
all the spyware stripped out. If you don't want to get bombarded with ads, try
an alternative Instant Messenging client. The most popular for Linux/BSD would
probably be gAIM, and is available free on sourceforge. In addition to not
having everything you do monitored, all your actions logged, and having a
shitload of ads to deal with, gAIM features a lot of functions that commercial
IM packages don't have. 

    When installing new software, select custom install. If you use LimeWire,
there's a program called LimeShop. LimeShop is a little peice of spyware that
you can disable or just not install at all. Obviously, this sucker should be
unchecked. As for other software packages, if you don't know what a given
component is, then check the readme file. By law, developers are supposed to
tell you if they monitor your activity.

    [ Conclusion ]

    I hope this gives you an overall idea of the basic things you can do to
keep other people at bay when it comes to privacy on your computer. You have a
right to privacy, don't assume that just because you don't necessarily
understand what something does or how it works means that you have to submit to
it. If something looks suspicious, check it out. Spyware isn't just an invasion
of privacy, it's also been known to cause security holes, so it's a valid
threat.

                                alienbinary, 2004

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                     [     RantRadio IRC, Feb 2004         ]
                     [            RR Community             ]
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---------------------------- *.ogg fuck yourself. -----------------------------

<megaprogman> this version of temple of love sounds like crap
?1;33mc4rc4s/#rantradio is going afk yet again
<megaprogman> no wonder, its an ogg file

------------------------------------- it's all about atmosphere. --------------


<alienbinary> holy shit there's a lot of chatting going on.
<CimmWork> Shhh, you're ruining the ambience...
<alienbinary> fuck, sorry
<CimmWork> ~mvoice
??1;31m? mode/#rantradio [+v _Sparky] by Socrates
?1;33mJibkat/#rantradio meows
<alienbinary> sssh jib, you heard cimm!
?1;33mJibkat/#rantradio meows in tune
<alienbinary> with the ambience?
<Jibkat> Yes
<alienbinary> oh damn, we broke it.
<CimmWork> You keep breaking it! And so do I!!! Shhh.!!!!
<CimmWork> ;-)
?1;33mJibkat/#rantradio rides Cimm
<Jibkat> Weee!
<[-_-]winxp> jib... bad news man
<alienbinary> it almost feels wrong to type in the caht now. it's like
desecration...
<alienbinary> oh, we're screwed now. bad news = lots of chatting. sorry
cimm
<[-_-]winxp> megghan is sick... shes been getting a cold for the last
week and
now shes all out
             sick
<[-_-]winxp> :(
<CimmWork> Okay, well, it's ruined now anyway...
<[-_-]winxp> no movie tonighgt
<[-_-]winxp> my date is cancelled
<Jibkat> :(
<Jibkat> Try riding Cimm 
?1;33mJibkat/#rantradio gets off
<CimmWork> No riding the Cimm

------------------------------- on contraception ------------------------------

<zandad> dude
<zandad> i didnt even notice
<zandad> i bet i scared poor michael away
<zandad> i had a trojan her pleasure condom laying on the table
<zandad> hm
<spliff> hahah
<megaprogman> hehe, trojan is such a funny term for a condom
<alienbinary> are "her pleasure" any better than lifestyles extra
pleasure?
<zandad> dunno
<zandad> havent used her pleasure yet
<spliff> fuck HER pleasure, its all about busting a fat load
<zandad> but i will soon :)
<spliff> right guys?
?1;33mzandad/#rantradio eyes tim
<spliff> :P
<alienbinary> lol
<spliff> just kidding, of course.
<zandad> lol
?1;37malienbinary tries not to snicker
<megaprogman> i just wish i could bust any kind of load
<zandad> you can bust that fat load right by yourself then :p
<megaprogman> damn wife wont wake up

---------------------- the internet is all about sharing. ---------------------

?1;37malienbinary considers whether or not he wants to work on this issue any
more for tonight
?1;37malienbinary wants a cigarette
<Motekye> Hey, if Kim Jong quit smoking, don't you think you ought to as
well?
<alienbinary> I quit smoking too
<Motekye> I mean, brutal dictators are just the bestest role models.
<crossfire_software> (____(___________##       <---- e-mail a
smoke?!?!
<alienbinary> thanks man. :D
<alienbinary> pain@e-lite.org
<alienbinary> I'll write a lighter script in perl

--------------- the world really does get wierder by the second. --------------

<CimmWork> When I get off my busy ass and dedicate a week or two to it.
??1;31m? Topic (#rantradio): changed by CimmWork: .:www.rantradio.com:. New
Show: Rant Speak, This
          Sunday Night w/ Host Cimmerian!  [QOTD] [09:38pm] <zandad> i've
got
huge balls
<Jibkat> Houston student arrested for carrying explosive GBA
<Jibkat> http://www.nbc5i.com/news/2838961/detail.html
<alienbinary> a gameboy?
<Jibkat> Thieves Escape After Trying To Steal ATM
<Jibkat> Incident Fourth In Fort Worth Area In Past Several Months
<alienbinary> damn. you know jib, you seem to only see wierd news
headlines. got any more?
<Jibkat> sure give me a sec
<alienbinary> holy shit, it was a gameboy advance
<Jibkat> http://www.dadi.org/beateach.htm
<alienbinary> that's kinda neat in a way I... don't ... condone.
<Jibkat> A Sam Houston High School student was arrested in the alleged
assault of a science teacher who told him to stop loitering and go to class.
<alienbinary> fuck it, that's crazy
?1;33m[-_-]winxp/#rantradio sulks in his own lonlieness again
<Jibkat> Another arictial on the gba bomb
http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=1657132
<[-_-]winxp> how the ... do u spell that
<alienbinary> did he use a playstation?
<alienbinary> the guy who assaulted the science teacher, I mean.
<Jibkat> http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1056814/posts
<Jibkat> Saudi pleads guilty to killing Jewish friend
<Jibkat> No motive established but Houston student went to mosque
afterwards
<Jibkat> Mohammed Ali Alayed, 23, pleaded guilty to the Aug. 6 attack on
Ariel Sellouk, also 23, who almost was decapitated with a knife, the Houston
Chronicle reported. 
<alienbinary> um, I'm putting this transcript in pa1n.
<alienbinary> this is good stuff.
<Jibkat> Alayed broke off contact with Ariel about two years ago after
undergoing a "religious experience" and became a devout Muslim

[ editor's note: A lot of people who read this, have probably never read the 
Holy Koran. I have, and I must say, there's nothing in the teachings of true
islam that promotes decapitating your best bud, even your estranged best bud.]

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                     [        A Gentleman's Game           ]
                     [            alienbinary              ]
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    In a few hours, I'll be twenty one years old. That doesn't matter to anyone
really, except for me. I don't drink, not anymore, and I don't intend to buy
beer for kids. I've earned no priviledges, just responsibilities. I was bummed,
and drinking some bright blue fizzy pop energy drink, sitting on the wrong side
of the couch in the lobby. There was a cartoon of a bunny on the front, telling
me that my life would suck less if I drank this soda. Trust me, it doesn't
really matter what you drink. Life is both exceptionally beautiful and a
profound tragedy at the exact same time, so take it for what it's worth.

    An international student from Kuwait was chilling in his room, when he came
out, he found my sorry ass burying myself in Neal Stephenson's "In the
beginning was... the command line." I never really hung out with him before
tonight. He's a chill kid. A good apple, rare these days. So he sees me and as
intoxicated as he is, he probably looked lightyears better than I did for the
wear and tear. He asked me if I was alright. He meant the question. One thing
about this kid that I cannot stress enough is that he's one hundred percent
genuine. He doesn't play games. If he likes you, you know it, because he's
courteous and will go out of his way to make sure that you're safe, or at least
too stoned to feel pain. If he doesn't like you, it's because you've crossed
his path, and wronged him. He doesn't exact revenge, he just nods and
recognizes that the person isn't worth shit. Anyway, rudely, I ask a question
in response to his query. He tells me the time, and as I'm trying to figure out
what shade of red his eyes would be in paint colors, I do the math. I tell him
that I've got about five hours until I'm 21. He doesn't make a big to-do about
it, because he senses that I just don't want to face another year, but instead,
he invites me into his room. I went in with him, and surveyed the place. He was
living out of boxes, pretty much. A stack of Busch Light cans towered almost to
the smoke detector. I knew what color his eyes were. Bloodshot. That should be
a new shade of red. 

    Anyway, he pulls out some papers and the kindest bud I've seen in a while.
I don't smoke pot, not any more, but I know the plant damn well. It's a
beautiful plant, if for no other reason than it's survivability. Marijuana is
ancient, timeless. Only an american like me could have fucked it up. Anyway, he
mixes the buds with some turkish tobacco, the way many countries roll joints.
The tobacco adds flavor and the nicotine kicks the pot in. It's a symbiotic
narcotic. Neat, huh? Anyway, he rolls the spliff like a master, and offers me a
toke. I tell him that I can't. A few question and answers later and he gets the
drift. It's all cool.

    I went down with him anyway, I smoked one of his cigarettes despite the
fact that I quit a long time ago. It's not that I wanted to fit in, it's
because it seemed only polite when he offered. I figure that if he's going to
go out of his way to include me in his night's plans, I might as well be chill.
Besides, I could use a smoke. Sometime's I joke that I might live too long.

    Several hits later, and the bud's gone, wafting up into the stratosphere to
get even god stoned, I imagine. Not a bad way to say thanks for the nice
weather, if you ask me. So we kicked around the lobby downstairs in the dorm
for a while, until this girl who I don't know and immediately become irritated
at suggests that we go play chess. She was bluffing, she can't actually play,
it turns out. So me and my friend square off, so to speak. For a drunk and
stoned freshman, he's a motherfucker on the chess board. 

    We played in a room on the third floor, on a board carved out of oak and
mohogany. Each peice was wittled by hand, you can tell. It was a work of love.
The two students who occuppied the room were asian exchange students, I'll
venture that guess because they were talking in a chinese dialect that sounded
a little like cantonese. I could be wrong. Regardless, neither of these kids
are rock solid with their command of the english language, but it doesn't
matter. I'd spent part of the day with a deaf girl, another with a girl who
talked like a gangster's wench, and my high as a kite friend who eventually
knocked me out of the ring in the game. I'll admit, he nailed me. I was cocky
going in, and I had the benefit of the fact that he was drunk as fuck, but I
was just glad for the human interaction.

    As that girl I mentioned who irritated me goes on about Ghandi in a way
that's impossibly wrong, historically and in indoctrination, I start to get a
little bit testy with her. She leaves to smoke a cigarette and pass out
somewhere. The room was suddenly more lively without that member. Regardless,
my new opponent is the one who owns the board, as far as I can tell. He almost
had me in a three move checkmate, until I pointed out that in his
overtiredness, he had moved the queen like a knight. It was a lucky break, but
he was cool about it. In two moves I knocked the queen out, saying that I
always take the two out when I play against my palm pilot. He smiles, and in
very careful english he says knowingly, "now it's a real game." 

    Think about the massive cultural leap that just occurred. I'm an American,
born in a northeast coastal state, raised in the suburbs and the city. I've
never even been on the asian continent. I brought up something interesting that
a lot of people don't know, which is that one of the earliest instances of
chess was in India. This explains why the queen has so much power, where she
shouldn't if it was a eurocentric game. In actuality, the queen is Kali the
destroyer, the goddess of death. That fact sinks in, and we play on. Neither of
us are trying to sink the game, because it's too engaging. I don't know how
much of a conversation I could hold with him in dialog, but we spoke in chess
moves for over an hour. I understood him, and he understood me. I still don't
know what my host's name was, but he felt comfortable enough to lay his pockets
out on the table, showing a trust. A lot of people won't leave a pack of
cigarettes out, for the obvious fear that they'll disappear into the
motherfuckin night. But this was a gentleman's game. 

    It was so cool to play with this kid who had obviously been playing for a
long time. He was as into it as I was, it was a dance, and we were trying to
keep it up as long as possible. I explained that the knights used to be
elephants instead of horses, and he lets out a smooth "no way" as he took one
of my more valuable peices. I realized that as I'm teaching him about the
history of the game, he's teaching me strategy. I explain how life and chess
are a lot alike, and that if you live your life like a game of chess, you can
expect to have reasonable success. He appreciates this. He came halfway around
the world from a culture full of such rich philosophy only to find out that he
dug the theories of an aging american punker. And he was cool with it. We're
all tripping out on this. I can feel the isolation in the room. These kids
don't get much respect from anyone but my Arabian friend, because they're
exchange students. The year is 2004, as I write this, yet racism is that blunt.
I felt like a minority too. I was the only white boy on campus who was
interested in how other people lived. 

    I thought back to when I used to fence in tournaments while I was playing
the game with him. Feint, counterfeint. There's a comradery that should build
up out of every such match, and it was growing exponentially here. We were
sharing strategies with symbols instead of words, and exchanging philosophies
using the board as a metaphor for the playing field of life. I admitted that I
had learned to play chess from a psychiatrist who was a grand master in chess.
He was like the black belt of chess players. This intrigued both him and his
roommate, who had been listening to japanese (I think) pop music and talking to
friends overseas using YIM! and AIM. We talked for a bit after the game, I lost
again, and I lost well. He didn't understand my last move, and why I was proud
of it. I did the last part to confuse him, because I knew he was going to win.
I was breaking convention. A smile of understanding breached his face and he
laughed right out loud at the concept. We shook hands, and I bid my host and
his roommate goodnight, before coming down here. I think of all the things that
I'll value most about my twentieth year on earth, it was a connection I made
between four continents, just using  a game of chess. Before I left, he looked
up the history of chess, and sure enough, there was a picture of an assyrian
chess peice in some museum. He said something in a dialect I didn't recognize,
but he was impressed. I think I had just made a friend. They're rare these
days. Sometimes you have to lay your troubles out on something like a grid with
a combat overtone to understand it all. Order to chaos, understanding to Babel.
It was a gentleman's game. The gentleman in question, was my friend from
kuwait, however, because if it weren't for him, I'd still be pounding around in
the lobby. I feel pretty good right now. I learned something. 

I guess I have a homework assignment for everybody. If you don't know how to
play chess, learn. That's it. That's all. It'll be such an improvement in your
life that it will positively affect change overall, so go get a board and join
our game.

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                     [     Big Brother's Electronic Tags    ]
                     [               alienbinary            ]
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[ Introduction ]

    People don't see it, companies won't discuss it, but it's here. Electronic
surveillance has arrived and in forms that you wouldn't expect. From tagging
your cellphone to putting adhesive circuits on packages of gum, electronic
surveillance databases are skyrocketing. As someone who beleives in the
individual's right to privacy, I find it a little disturbing that there isn't
more public outcry. In case you're in the dark about this whole thing, here are
three scenarios in which you're being monitored, even though (as far as I know)
you haven't committed any crime.

[ let's find ab's cell ESN! ]

    Here's an experiment. Take a Motorola 120c or 120e, or pretty much any
motorola phone, and click on the menu button. Go ahead, fucking do it. You'll
get a menu that looks a lot like figure 1. Now that you have your menu up,
select "settings." You'll get another menu. This menu, if you have the phone
that using as my model as I'm writing this, a 120c with the Verizon proprietary
interface. Same one as when it came out of the box. Anyway you'll get your next
menu looking like figure 2. Open up the Phone Status menu. Now You get Figure
3. Don't worry, we're almost at our destination. The very next menu has the
first item listed as "ESN." See where I'm going? 

        [ figure 1 ]      [ figure 2 ]          [ figure 3 ]
                    
        > Recent Calls    > Ring/Vibrate      > My Tel. Number
        > Phonebook       -> Phone Status     > Phone: line_1____ 
        > Messages         > Connection           > Battery Meter
        > Shortcuts       > In Call Setup    -> Other Information
        > Voice Notes      > Security
        > Browser         > Other Settings
       -> Settings      
       
       Now, I'm going to select ESN on my phone to see what I get. A window
pops up, and all the sudden I'm looking at an 8 character string that is my
cellphone's Electronic Serial Number. This is the very number that makes my
phone available for tracing. Tracing a cellphone? Yeah. It's possible. Unless
you remove the ESN...

[ Inventory Control... population control? ]

    Here's another scenario. I got really fucking sick last week, no linda
blair in "the excorcist" shit, just my sinuses. Like most people, I'm a fan of
the Dennis Leary approach to being sick. At the first symptoms, I ran to the
store and grabbed all the NyQuil and DayQuil I could hold. As it turns out,
they were doing a promotion in this one. This box that I got was both dayquil
and nyquil, so it was a special bubble pack kind of thing.

    When I got on the shuttle to go back to school, I wasn't prepared to wait
for my releif, I opened the box and found that in the top center square of the
bubble-pack wrapping, there were no liquid gels in this one square. Instead,
there was an indentation. Now, I just dissected one that was laying around, and
there was nothing in there, but I have found shards of metal inside before.
What are these, you ask? These are little shoplifting tags. The company builds
something to set off the anti-theft alarm right into the packaging. Not a big
thing, right? Well, go pick up a package of Nicorette, and take a look at that
motherfucker. It's a an electrical circuit. In theory, you could put inventory
control information on that that would enable a store to keep track of what
customers buy, and in conjunction with what other products.

    It started with inventory control, but we've all heard of the RFID tags, or
at least seen "RFID" in the news headlines. RFID is an acronym for Radio
Frequency ID tags. In a city that I can't remember, one of the "marts", (eg;
kmart, walmart, something like that...) was caught having slipped RFID tags
into lipstick. Now what do you use something like that for?

    I don't answer surveys.
    I don't tell strangers where I live.
    The average company doesn't know what kind of condom I use.
    
    Unless...

    An RFID tag database is used to keep track of what demographic of customers
are likely to use a given product. It's hard to get people to fill out forms
about shopping habits these days, thank god. Unfortunately, if you stick an
RFID tag in the casing of the lipstick, you can track it's location and who
buys it, and store this information in a database. It should be noted that this
is completely illegal, but it happens anyway. 

[ EZ Pass ]

    One final example of how we're being monitored before I wrap this up. For
those of you living in New York, Massachusetts, or any city with an E-Z pass
system of some sort, you probably have a square panel mounted on your
windshield of your car. We all know what this is for, but have you ever
wondered what is actually transmitted? Here's a breakdown of what happens.

    1. Either an IrDA or RFID packet is sent out to the sensor on the
tollbooth.
    2. The tollbooth acknowledges the tag, and prepares to receive the data.
    3. Your little EZ pass sends out the following information:
    
            a) your bank account number
            b) your license plate number
            c) your address
            d) how long you've been traveling.
            
    Ask yourself why this is necessary. Shouldn't it be a simple prepaid
system, or a paypal style man-in-the middle deal? Actually, an EZ pass is
hooked up to your bank account. Every time you pass through a toll booth, at
least in MA, it withdraws whatever the fare was directly from your bank
account. However, instead of working out an authentication system that would
protect consumer privacy, they settled for this system. Here's why:

    In a Federal matter, it's often necessary to determine if a suspect has
traveled accross state lines. Previously, law enforcement relied on sightings,
on post office signs and wanted posters. Now, the FBI, DEA and ATF can simply
requisition your bank account records, and look for the EZ pass signature. It
should have a location on there for each tollbooth. Using a bank statement from
a network of RFID EZ passes set up like this, the FBI has been able to map out
the exact travel route of a suspect during the day a crime was committed.
There's no longer any need for a roadblock. If your pass shows up as being
"wanted," expect a long day. 

    Sources:
    
1. Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC Digest 11.06.01,             
[ online - http://www.privacy.org/digest/epic-digest11.06.01.html ]
       
2. Geek.com, Geek News "RFID Gaining Momentum",
[ online - http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Jan/gee20040127023623.htm ]


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                     [               Outro                 ]
                     [            alienbinary              ]
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    As I draw this issue to a close, I want to discuss and annotate some of the
articles in this issue. In case you've read the whole thing, you will have seen
that it's a lot more in your face than all previous issues. This time, there
was no holding back, no holds barred. Nothing should prevent us from speaking
or expressing our thoughts and ideas. This is a place to set some things right
again. If we don't recognize the problems of our world as it is, and as it has
been, and probably how it will be, we are in grave trouble. For the most part,
our species has developed an apathetic trait that seems to protect them from
the horrible prospect of having to give a shit about another person. We are
killing our young as a culture, as a society and as a race. We are doing it
through the socialization process, and by making each person feel more akin to
a number than an identity. We, the PA1N staff, refuse to let this happen
without a fight.

    About "What You'll Never Know." This happens. This is real. It's written in
the third person so that you can put yourself in her shoes. Go ahead, try it.
Maybe next time you see someone walking down the street and they have scars on
their wrists or lines on their forearms, you won't gawk. Maybe you'll
understand that this is a very, very real issue, and it's not a cry for help.
Cutting is a symptom of a vast spectrum of psychological disorders, and it
manifests itself in different ways. Some people burn themselves, some people
snap rubber bands on their arms, others scratch away at themselves and pull on
their own hair. The thing is, this isn't something that's so obvious, like
everyone thinks. Most people reading this, chances are, have partaken in some
form of self mutilation. What that suggests to me is that we stop hiding, or
forcing others to hide from us what they go through. I don't advocate, and
neither does angel ice, the practice of self mutilation, but to not discuss it
is assenine. This is probably one of the biggest trends these days, it appears
to get worse every year. Sometimes I walk past a schoolyard and I wonder if
I've missed something. Kids are developing fast, but before they can handle it.
The byproduct of an overproductive country is that our children will suffer the
brunt of our insecurities.

    I don't pretend to have the answers when it comes to this situation. People
are often determined to do harm to themselves, and it almost always takes many
many people down as well. The first thing you have to recognize, though, is
that you will get nowhere yelling at these people. Someone who is suffering bad
enough to rend their own flesh is hurting on a very, very deep level. They
don't need you to punish them as well. Instead, look for the source of their
misery. Sometimes, just one person can make all the difference, and save
another from themselves or from some unknown harm. And this is a divine act. 

    About "Requiem For Innocence," this piece arrived in my inbox as a complete
surprise. Danger Girl and I had discussed a peice on this event, but I never
saw anything like this in any of her writings before, which were thumbnail
sketches of what this article turned out to be. In the other versions, it read
a lot like a police report. Everything was catalogued, the story was
heart-rending, but it didn't have the sort of kick that I knew DG was capable
of adding to it. When you write a requiem for someone, you should aim to make
it as real and raw as possible. This peice is raw, but at the same time, it's
been carved out of diamond, to make something even more complex. It takes an
incredible amount of fortitude to write a peice about losing someone that dares
to be angry, and sober at the same time. I applaud her for that.

    About "Eternity's Ring," this is a peice I've been working on in my head
for several years. It's a tribute to someone, who in the peice, is known as
"Eternity." Some of you will get this on the first reading, some might never
understand it. Simply put, this is a requiem. I didn't want to dirty the water
by making it depressing, I wanted to create something that was beautiful. The
events in the essay, particularly the waking up three times in one night, those
are all true. PA1N is a non-fiction forum, true, but that doesn't mean that it
can't be abstract. I hope you enjoy this peice, it really is something I've
wanted to write for a very long time. Only recently, did I have the words.

                                    - alienbinary
                                    

