Author Archives: Jeff Porten

Bulwer-Litton 2010

She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.—Steve Lynch

As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, “Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead.—Dennis Pearce

The wind whispering through the pine trees and the sun reflecting off the surface of Lake Tahoe like a scattering of diamonds was an idyllic setting, while to the south the same sun struggled to penetrate a sky choked with farm dust and car exhaust over Bakersfield, a town spread over the lower San Joaquin Valley like a brown stain on a wino’s trousers, which is where, unfortunately, this story takes place.—Dennis Doberneck

Researchers tout new weapon in Internet censorship arms race

Trying to get out in front of what they call a censorship arms race, a team of researchers has come up with technology that lets users exchange messages through heavily censored networks in countries such as China and North Korea in hidden channels via user-generated content sites such as Twitter or Flickr.

Collage has two components: a message vector layer for embedding content in cover traffic; and a rendezvous mechanism to allow parties to publish and retrieve messages in the cover traffic, according to one of the Collage authors Sam Burnett, a researcher with Georgia Tech.

Computer peripherals for the completely insane

I’m trying to figure out whether this mouse is just complex enough to be a completely awesome controller for all of the macros and scripts I write, or so damn complex that I’ll never use it.

Two predictions:

1. This is going to be the explanation for decades among the pro-military types for why civilians prevented us from winning Afghanistan.

2. You’re going hear it first from the Republicans, explaining how the Democrats lost the war.

History of Afghanistan: need not apply to this argument.

How I amuse myself: I just hid an Easter egg on my website which maybe a dozen people on the planet will understand, and which only appears 10% of the time.