decreased_sales http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/ a blog on books and computers en Copyright 2008 Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:57:11 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Slow week. Peteris Krumins's blog on programming, science, google, etc. has become a must-read.

I'm having fun with Nikto, a simple Perl scanning tool.

Top Shelf is having a $3 sale. Authors include James Kochalka and Eddie Campbell. They've also discounted a number of items, including signed editions of some of Alan Moore's work. Among the items is my favorite comic of all time, Eddie Campbell's After the Snooter.



How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time. (via Security Roundtable podcast, July 2008)

Rick Moody on Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf


(via Constant Siege)

Issue 13 of The Quarterly Conversation

The Secret Code of Diaries

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/slow-week.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/slow-week.html after the snooter botnets code constant siege diaries eddie campbell nikto peteris krumins quarterly conversation rick moody security roundtable stephen wirtz victor pelevin Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:57:11 -0500 Cornucopia Urban Velo Issue #9 is out.

Futurese: The English Language in 3000 A.D. (via Maud Newton)

From The Guardian: "The Top 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube" Both good and bad, but a nice list. Still, they completely left out "Basement" by nuglah.

Searching for the origins of an everyday thing:


The vetting of Sarah Palin

Walter Benjamin's Tips for Writing (via kottke)



I'm not a hippy. Really.


I like The Shield

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/cornucopia.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/cornucopia.html cheney cycling english hippy michael chiklis palin the shield urban velo walter benjamin youtube Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:11:26 -0500 Jerry Reed
]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/jerry-reed.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/09/jerry-reed.html jerry reed Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:51:55 -0500 Missing Parts "Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun and bought it."

A New Taxonomy of Gamers (via Versus CluClu Land)

Audio and Transcripts of NYPL events. Topics vary and include politics, art, literature, and technology.

Ungovernable press has a number of chapbooks for download via scribd.
Laura Carter's book, Situations, is recommended.

I've wasted the last half hour on the the DanKaminskyBox.

Chris Nakashima-Brown on last night's speech. I like Chris Nakashima-Brown.

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/missing-parts.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/missing-parts.html chapbooks chris nakashima-brown dan kaminsky games gaming laura carter laziness patty hearst poetry Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:15:19 -0500 Discussion about BGP attacks has been all over the 'tubes, due in part to Wired's Enquirer-esque headline, "Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole" (Nice to see Mudge get a mention, though). Despite the title, the article is well-written and informative. There's also a follow-up here.

Poem: "CHE GUEVARA CAME TO ME IN A DREAM" The whole of the issue of almostisland is worth a read. (The page loads slowly (deliberately).)



It's been approximately 389 years since the first African slaves were brought to what is now the United States. Source

The entire Fugazi Live Series is back in stock at Dischord. According to their post, they'll also be releasing more shows as downloadable MP3s.


From "Witnesses to Dream Speech See a New Hope":

At least five veterans of [the march on Washington] traveled to Denver this week as Democratic delegates, among them Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who is the last man alive of the 10 who spoke that day at the Lincoln Memorial. This son of sharecroppers, who was almost beaten to death by police officers in Selma, Ala., when he marched with civil rights activists across a bridge, stood on a sun-splashed street in Denver and considered the distance traveled.

His bald head still bears near half-century-old scars.

"We've had disappointments since then, but if someone told me I would be here," Mr. Lewis said, shaking that head. "When people say nothing has changed, I feel like saying, 'Come walk in my shoes.' "


The Fetshization of the Notebook, which reminds me of William Gass's "In Defense of the Book."

I just found, and am enjoying, the blog "Wood's Lot."

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/-discussion-about-bgp-attacks.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/-discussion-about-bgp-attacks.html barack bgp che guevara dischord fugazi john lewis mlk mudge notebooks slaves william gass wood's lot Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:29:09 -0500

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/post.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/post.html wake up Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:47:39 -0500 I swear I'm not melancholy NSA Declassification Initiatives. There's some good stuff here on the history of cryptography and the history of the NSA. (via Cryptome)

Graphical topology visualization in Zenmap.

Fucking hippies:


Excerpts from Woody Allen's diary during the filming of Vicky Cristina Barcelona

MIT OpenCourseWare: Major Authors: John Milton and Special Topics in Literature: Milton's "Paradise Lost"



Your Free Will Astrology for the week.

"And I am nothing of a builder,
But here I dreamt I was an architect,
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world.
But the angles and the corners,
Even though my work is unparalleled,
They never seemed to meet
This structure fell about our feet
And we were free to go."
"Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect," The Decemberists

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/i-swear-im-not-melancholy.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/i-swear-im-not-melancholy.html cryptography cryptome denver dnc free will hippies john milton nsa paradise lost police riot the decemberists woody allen zenmap Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:21:58 -0500 Gettin' up, fallin' down, gettin' up Whit Diffie and Susan Landau on internet eavesdropping. This is one article in a full issue of Scientific American on the future of privacy.

A nuanced look at John Edwards's confession, Rousseau, and the American ideals of truth and forgiveness. Even if the string is lost somewhere in the middle of the post, it's worth reading. It made me think of Gary Vaynerchuck's pleas for transparency, which are coupled with, in my mind, the implicit threat of public shame. For, as Warner points out (quoting Joseph Coates), Rousseau's is, ultimately, a "utopian and inherently totalitarian goal."



Kevin Mitnick looks back in Forbes.

Vernor Vinge in the NYTimes.

A conversation with R. Crumb:


Galactic 'spaghetti monster' powered by magnetic fields. Also: "Many species - including birds and salmon - are known to use the Earth's magnetic fields in migration, rather like a natural GPS."

How magnetic fields affect me ("It ain't pretty"):

"Well my heart's runnin' round like a chicken with its head cut off
All around the barn yard falling in and out of love
Poor thing's blind as a bat
Gettin' up, fallin' down, gettin' up
Who'd fall in love with a chicken with its head cut off? "
]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/gettin-up-fallin-down-gettin-u.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/gettin-up-fallin-down-gettin-u.html chicken john edwards kevin mitnick magnetic fields privacy rousseau singularity vernor vinge whit diffie Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:14:43 -0500 Much too young Artists' Books Online

Thomas Pynchon on power, outlaws, disappearing, the internet, Control and realm capital-M Magic

Recent Ph.D. Dissertations related to Medieval History and Society

Josh Brolin in Oliver Stone's W.. As AICN points out, "Do not underestimate Josh Brolin."



Martin Amis is scared. And he hates Muslims.

Roger Ebert's love letter to blogging.

Eddie Campbell has drawn a series of bookmarks for Bent Books in Australia.


Robert Pinsky on John Milton in America

On being remaindered. It's odd that people feel the need to point out, to the author, when a book is placed on sale.
"They have your book in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble!"
"Oh. Thank you. My book didn't sell well enough at full price, so now it's in the bargain bin next to books on Taoism and Phaidon's book of record covers. Thank you. I'll pass that along to all my friends."

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/much-too-young.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/much-too-young.html blogging dissertations ebert eddie campbell john milton martin amis medieval muslims oliver stone pynchon remaindered robert pinsky Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:34:27 -0500 designboom's "a brief history of the female robot"

Mono has been incorporated into the main grid of Second Life. From the wiki: "We've run some benchmarks to compare the performance of the original scripting engine and the Mono VM. When we run the tests side by side we found that Mono is up to 220x faster than LSL2."



Math is fun! Seriously.

I'm really enjoying the Silver Bullet Security Podcast. Interviews with luminaries of the security community. (It kind of weirded me out, though, when Dan Geer said his smokehouse was currently full (Weird imagery of Dan Geer standing over a slain hog, bloody axe in hand, set in Resident Evil 5).)

Bruno Taylor's Playful Spaces (via Wooster Collective):


Charles Simic and Tomaž Šalamun

Black Hat USA 2008 Archives

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/-designbooms-a-brief-history.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/-designbooms-a-brief-history.html black hat bruno taylor charles simic dan geer hogs mono robots second life security silver bullet south ossetia tomaz salamun Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:40:54 -0500 Holy shit. ]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/holy-shit.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/holy-shit.html Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:11:14 -0500 Punished. What, what.

A critical view of Big Numbers. Every couple of years the internets hosts a revival of interest in Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz's Big Numbers. That's not a bad thing.

Self indulgence, pt. 1


Your Free Will Astrology

Rand on the future (via Bruce Sterling )

Self indulgence, pt. 2:


Versus CluClu Land on Foucault

Laura Carter on Barrett Watten's Progress/Under Erasure and Kristeva's Revolution in Poetic Language within the context of the Language School.

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/punished.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/punished.html alan moore at the drive in atlanta barrett watten big numbers bill sienkiewicz bruce sterling comics free will julia kristeva language laura carter laurie anderson mosque one-armed-scissor poetry the blood brothers Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:26:08 -0500 The one in which I admit defeat. I fail at all of these, I think. ]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/the-one-in-which-i-admit-defea.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/the-one-in-which-i-admit-defea.html meta Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:04:00 -0500 Digitization "Watching an Old Friend Die" A rememberance of the Excalibur poker room, which has fired all its dealers and is going digital.

Hooray and congratulations.

Marc Owen's explorations of gender and role-playing in virtual worlds:


"Physicists spooked by faster-than-light information transfer". Quote: "We think space and time are important because that's the kind of monkeys we are." Terence Rudolph, Imperial College London

"An Army of Ones and Zeroes: How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar." I continue to be skeptical about the whole thing.



Eddie Campbell is back from his American tour, which means new blog posts, which is good.

Democratic National Convention Protesters: Welcome to the Terrodome

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/digitization.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/digitization.html cyberwar eddie campbell excalibur georgia marc owen poker protesters russia warp drive Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:27:46 -0500 Uno An interview with Dirk Deppey. (Journalista has become my primary source of comics news.)

"Photography as a Weapon," Errol Morris



Dancho Danchev sums up where the war is happening online in Russia v. Georgia

An old interview with James Carter.



The Disintegration of Hillary Clinton's Campaign in Emails

Your Free Will Astrology for the week.

]]> http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/uno.html http://www.decreasedsales.com/blog/2008/08/uno.html dancho danchev dirk deppey errol morris free will hillary clinton james carter Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:34:20 -0500