SplaTT's Blog : A collection of random ramblings on technology, marketing, culture and all things geek...
5January2009
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Music; The 80's; Videos.
In 1998 the Australian band, The Church, released the song “Under the Milky Way” which won them the Australian ARIA award for best song in 1989.
The Church - Under the Milky Way
YouTube link
No Comments » | 48 views
1January2009
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Misc.
Whatever you get up to in 2009, may the year be good to you.
No Comments » | 51 views
25December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Misc.
Have a great Christmas :)
No Comments » | 113 views
24December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Geek Culture; Movies; Videos.
Following up from my “The Conscience of a Hacker” post the other day, i thought this post should be a bit more light hearted :)
Released in 1995, the movie “Hackers” (wikipedia / imdb) was an interesting interpretation of hackers of that period, and while it had many inaccuracies in it, they were actually so inaccurate that to members of the hacker/cracker, phreak and warez scenes that i knew at the time they were quite funny and the movie ended up having a cult following with the group.
No Comments » | 140 views
23December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Geek Culture.
I remember running across “The Conscience of a Hacker” on a pre-public internet Bulletin Board System (or BBS) sometime during 1987 or 1988 and thinking that “The Mentor” (Loyd Blankenship) had really hit the nail on the head when he wrote this…truly brilliant.
It was originally published in the ezine Phrack (wikiepedia entry).
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The following was written shortly after my arrest…\/\ The Conscience of a Hacker /\/
by
+++The Mentor+++Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms.
Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I
screwed it up.
Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is
found.“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.+++The Mentor+++
_______________________________________________________________________________
No Comments » | 125 views
22December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Music; The 80's; Videos.
The Australian band, Hoodoo Gurus, released “What’s My Scene” in March of 1987 which reached the number three position on the Australian charts.
In 2007, the Hoodoo Gurus were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
The citation for the band’s nomination includes:
“For two and a half decades the Hoodoo Gurus have consistently been one of the most inventive, lyrically smart and exciting rock’n'roll bands Australia has ever produced… along the way they’ve influenced an entire generation of bands which explains why the likes of You Am I, The Living End, Dallas Crane, Grinspoon and many others queued up a few years back to pay tribute to the band’s 1984 debut album, Stoneage Romeos.”
Hoodoo Gurus - What’s My Scene
YouTube Link
No Comments » | 144 views
18December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Books; Geek Culture.
I have a largish book collection, and my two largest genre’s are made up of crime fiction from the 1930’s to the 1990’s and cyberpunk (of which i also have a large DVD collection)…and cyberpunk is by far my favourite :)
From the Wikipedia Cyberpunk page:
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life”. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.
Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations. They tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators (”the street finds its own uses for things”). Much of the genre’s atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.
I’ve listed some of my favourite Cyberpunk related sites below:
The official Cyberpunk homepage
The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
Wikipedia sites:
“Neuromancer” by William Gibson (official Gibson site)
“Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson
I’ll finish up with two quotes from the brilliant William Gibson cyberpunk novel, “Neuromancer”.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”
No Comments » | 172 views
16December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Music; The 80's; Videos.
“Slice of Heaven” is a single by New Zealand singer/songwriter Dave Dobbyn, which was released in 1986 alongside the animated motion picture, Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale.
The single charted at #1 in both New Zealand and Australia.
Dave Dobbyn - Slice of Heaven
YouTube link
No Comments » | 177 views
12December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Mobile Technology.
During the middle of this week, i finally purcahsed a new phone after my old Motorola RAZR got a crack on its front screen. After being on a really frequent upgrade path and always having the latest and greatest phones between 2000 and 2006, the RAZR was a really good simple phone and survived everything i threw at it.
So…in looking for a new NextG phone three things were on my list of must haves:
After visiting the new T [life] store in Melbourne, i found all the things i was looking for in the ZTE T165i.
The phone specifications are:
Durable candy bar design with extendable antenna for maximum coverage. Ideal for all users offering top coverage performance in a durable case. Includes FM radio, daylight viewable QVGA display and 2 megapixel camera.
Main features:
Daylight viewable TFT LCD display
FM radio, MP3 player and ringtones
A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) support
Tri band UMTS, Quad band GSM
Extendable antenna
Bluetooth 1.2 with stereo headset support
2.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with digital zoom
Dual camera design for video calling
T-Flash memory up to 4GB microSDHC
Personal organiser / calendar
Speakerphone
Java MIDP 2.0 for games and applications
USB connectivity included
Compatible with handsfree car kit with external antenna
Predictive text and built in dictionary for easy SMS
Large Li-ion battery for long lifeComes with:
USB cable
Windows 2000 (SP4), XP (SP2), Vista compatible PC software
MAC OS drivers and Dial Up Client
Personal handsfree kit
AC charger
User manualTechnical Specifications:
UMTS 850 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps*
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
250 hours standby, 3.5 hours talk time
TFT display 240 x 320, 262K colours
Java MIDP 2.0
Bluetooth 1.2 - FTP / HFP / A2DP (Stereo) / DUN
Size 117mm x 51mm x 16mm
Weight 119g (including standard battery)
The phone was apparently designed by ZTE in Australia, after Telstra’s request for a good regional NextG phone, and manufactured by ZTE in China.
At the country property, about 100km east of the Melbourne CBD, i have never been able to get my mobile phone to work or had any luck getting a working internet connection (except with a very funky modem and high gain antenna from work). I can’t get ADSL or ISDN because the place is to far from the closest exchange, the standard NextG modem won’t work accorsing to the NextG website, so that left me looking at a possible dual satellite setup. Even with the government rebate, the cost is excessive…for $500 a month you et a 4GB plan (15c per MB on excess) and speeds of 800kbps for downloads and 128 kbps for uploads.
Well…the T165i works fine as a NextG modem (with the external antenna) as i wrote this post with it from the country property :)
1 Comment » | 282 views
11December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: IBM; Videos.
After we saw this ad, the phrase “we can do that” became a favourite at the office :)
Pep Talk
No Comments » | 185 views
10December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Music; The 80's; Videos.
From Wikipedia:
Adam and the Ants were a New Romantic band during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were one of the bands at the time that marked the transition from the 70s punk rock era to the New Wave/post-punk era.
The song Ant Music, was the third single to released from their 1980 album, Kings of the Wild Frontier. The single peaked at number two in the UK and spent five weeks holding the number one spot in the Australian charts.
Adam and the Ants - Ant Music
No Comments » | 216 views
9December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Geek Culture; Movies.
There can never be enough Star Trek movies :)
No Comments » | 231 views
9December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: IBM; Videos.
This ad, and the next one, are two of my favourite IBM ads.
Hot Seat
No Comments » | 212 views
8December2008
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Music; The 80's; Videos.
Not quite a music video clip, but an extract of Pink Floyd’s spectacular performance of “Learning to Fly” from their 1988 tour.
The song initially appeared on the 1987 album “A Momentary Lapse of Reason”.
Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly
I worked as a lighting technician at the Melbourne concert they did and it was truly amazing :)
No Comments » | 214 views
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