CRYPT NEWSLETTER 25
May 1994

Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
INTERNET:  ukouch@delphi.com
COMPUSERVE: 70743,1711
Crypt Newsletter BBS:  818.683.0854
Crypt Newsletter voice: 818.568.1748

[The Crypt Newsletter is a monthly electronic magazine
distributed to approximately 12,000 readers
on the Internet. It features media handling of
issues dealing with computers and society, news in science
and technology, and satire.]
----------------------------------------------------------

IN THIS ISSUE:

A new uniquely stupid US fad: E-mail 
death threats . . . The psycho death struggle
of one English programmer and his American 
nemeses . . . Michael Milken and more breakthroughs
in mentufacturing . . . Reviewed: Philip Kerr's
"A Philosophical Investigation" . . . Mr. Badger
on supernerds and CD-ROM . . . much more.


                
THE NEWEST UNIQUELY STUPID AMERICAN FAD: E-MAIL 
PRESIDENTIAL DEATH THREATS 

When President Clinton and colleague Albert Gore 
announced the opening of their electronic mail 
addresses on the Internet, they probably did not 
expect rude and threatening techno-riffraff to take 
up anonymous death threats as a hobby.

In early December, Christopher J. Reincke, a University of 
Illinois student sent President and Mrs. Clinton unfriendly 
electronic mail. 

"How would you feel about being the first president to be
killed on the same day as his wife? You will die soon. 
You can run, but you cannot hide," warned Reinke balefully.

The Secret Service subsequently ran Reincke to ground, and the
local district attorney claimed he was content to let the 
student off with probation, presumably because Reinke is only
a menace to himself and his parents' peace of mind.

On February 26, the Secret Service intercepted another e-mail      
death threat, this time from the blind of a hacked computer
account at an undisclosed private school.

On April 2, the Secret Service commented such e-mail threats 
against the president were "infrequent." 

By April 22, another teenage student, Matthew M. Thomas of
Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, was
indicted on two counts of sending electronic mail threats 
to the White House on April 7. His initial plea was not guilty.

The Secret Service visited Stephen F. Austin after it traced
the mail from the school's computer lab. 
  
This fad, notes the Crypt Newsletter, is a pricey one as such
mail entails possible 5-year federal prison terms without 
parole and $250,000 in fines per nastygram. 

The Crypt Newsletter is curious, however, as to what kind of
diplomatic relations the US government has with the anonymous
Internet mail servers in places, like, uh, Finland.

We would also like to know how anyone got the stupid idea
that politicians personally read their electronic mail anymore
than they do the old-fashioned kind.


"DR. SOLOMON'S PC ANTI-VIRUS BOOK" EXPOSES
THE CREEPING EVIL OF PEOPLE WITH FUNNY NAMES WHOM 
YOU WILL NEVER MEET

Sometime at the dawn of the personal computer age, 
publishers reversed the laws of good writing for the
specialty niche of computer books.  In place, readers 
got anti-consumerism which mandated that, usually,
books about computers, computer issues, or software
would be written only by presidents or employees of
computer manufacturers, consulting firms peddling advice
on computer issues defined by the same consultants or
software developers and their publicity stooges.

This means that if you actually buy such books, you're
getting a pig in a poke.  Nowhere is this more obvious
than the "DOS For Dummies" series, a line of
pamphlets so easy to sell competitors have rushed
out mimics written for "Idiots" and/or "Morons."
"Imbeciles" anyone?

And, in the true spirit of American mass marketing, you
can now purchase attractive yellow and black "DOS For
Dummies" baseball caps, suitable for wearing inside the
house, restaurant, bowling alley or local smart bar.
In reality, the hats are a fiendishly clever IQ test.  
If you buy one, you fail, signalling to the corporate 
office that you are the kind of Pavlovian consumer 
ready to invest in a fax subscription to weekly company 
press releases.

Which is a long way of bringing the reader to "Dr. Solomon's
Anti-Virus Book" (New-Tech/Reed Elsevier), which fits all
the, uh, _good_ characteristics of the _computer book_.

On the cover are always tip-offs.  Look for concocted
venal plaudits and non-sequiturs.  For instance, "The 
Anti-Virus Book" is "THE book on how to eliminate 
computer viruses" ". . . from the foremost anti-virus 
experts" and exposes "computer games and viruses - the 
truth!"  The publishing inference is that readers have 
somehow become too stupid in 1994 to recognize 
something decent without a gratuitous amount of 
pettifogging and boasting.

Alan Solomon and his co-author, Tim Kay, do realize the
bogus nature of computer literature.  On page 26 they write,
"If you hadn't the money to start manufacturing, or the
knowledge to program, you could always aim at the book
market . . . Anyone who could persuade a publisher that he
had an area of expertise and could write, which wasn't
that difficult, could get into print.  One author was reputed
to be writing four or five books at once by using several
different typists in different rooms.  The story went that
he walked from room to room dictating a sentence to each
typist as he went.  Looking at some of the output, there is
no reason to doubt this story."

That's a good tale.  But rather ill-spirited when 
considering "The Anti-Virus Book" is a higgledy-piggledy 
assembly of reprints from the S&S International 
(Solomon's company) corporate organ Virus News 
International, Solomon interviewing himself and
bursts of writing which make absolutely zero sense. 

For example:

"It would be difficult to create more [virus] experts, because
the learning curve is very shallow.  The first time you 
disassemble something like Jerusalem virus, it takes a 
week.  After you've done a few hundred viruses, you could 
whip through something as simple as Jerusalem in 15 minutes."

Or:

" . . . the DOS virus will become as irrelevant as CPM 
(an obsolete operating system).  Except that DOS will still 
be around 10 or 20 years from now, and viruses for the new 
operating system will start to appear as soon as it is 
worth writing them."

And this favorite:

". . . take the game of virus consequences:

"In the game of Consequences, you start with a simple
phrase, and build up to a convoluted and amusing story.  In the
virus version of consequences, you start off with a false
alarm and build from there."

The computer underground also figures highly 
in Solomon's book as he spent a great deal of time over 
the past couple years attempting to track down and 
telephone American hackers from the United Kingdom.

Nowhere Man - the author of the Virus Creation Laboratory -
is in the book.  Although VCL viruses never seemed to make it
into the wild, mentioning the software without pointing this 
out has always been in vogue.  Members of the hacking group
phalcon/SKISM appear, as does John Buchanan, a Virginia Beach
resident, who sold his virus collection to numerous takers, 
making about $6-7,000 in the process.  Solomon didn't have 
these numbers - they're mine. He also fails to mention that at 
one point Buchanan contributed his virus collection to 
S&S International and was nominated for membership in 
the pan-professional Computer Anti-Virus Research Organization 
by Solomon, one of its charter members.

Solomon's book wouldn't be complete if it didn't invoke the
creeping evil of virus exchange bulletin board systems.
"The Hellpit" [sic] near Chicago, is one.

And "Toward the end of 1992, the US Government 
started offering viruses to people who called one of 
their BBS's . . . In 1993 the Crypt newsletter blew the 
whistle on the US Government [AIS bulletin board] 
system . . . " Solomon writes.

Since I edit the newsletter, this is a surprise to me and I'm
sure, Kim Clancy, the AIS system supervisor. But it's almost 
identical to the nutty claim made by American computer 
security consultant Paul Ferguson when the black-balling 
of AIS was featured news in Computer underground Digest.  As 
the story developed, Ferguson - egged on by Solomon - planted 
complaints about AIS in RISKS Digest and, later, the Washington 
Post. Solomon has been a reader of the Crypt Newsletter and it 
must have seemed logical to embroider the story because a back  
issue featured an interview with Clancy after she was profiled 
in Computer underground Digest.

However, Clancy had been a target of CARO since opening 
her system to hacker underground files.  Finally, Solomon 
and his colleague's negative publicity campaign did that 
part of the AIS system in.

What a lot of people don't know is that other public systems
have been a target of the same people.  About a year earlier,
Hans Braun's COM-SEC computer security BBS in San Francisco had 
been a target of a similar smear campaign for carrying 
issues of 40Hex, a phalcon/SKISM-edited virus-programming 
electronic magazine. In a recent interview for the book "The
Virus Creation Labs," Braun mentioned security workers 
David Stang (who has by turns been involved with or worked 
for the National Computer Security Association in 
Carlisle, Pennsylvania; the International Computer Security 
Association - now defunct - in Washington, DC; and Norman 
Data Defense of Falls Church, Virginia) and Alan Solomon as 
responsible for the pressure. Since COM-SEC wasn't politically 
sensitive like AIS, Braun said the efforts to tar him 
were unsuccessful. COM-SEC still carries 40Hex magazine.

"The anti-virus software industry is going through a shake-out;
not everyone is successful anymore," said Braun.  "It's my
opinion, most of these kinds of things are really attempts
to keep access to information from competitors."

"The Anti-Virus Book" also has annals of alleged virus-related 
computer crime, which illustrates the same rush to seize 
everything without leveling criminal charges as seen in the 
United States.

In the book there is the case of an unnamed man in the town of
Rugby, who had his door broken down by a sledgehammer and all
his equipment grabbed by New Scotland Yard officers in December 
of 1992 after taking out an ad selling a virus 
collection in the English periodical Micro Computer 
Mart. The charges were ethereal to non-existent.

The case remains open.

About the same time, a hacker was arrested for 
stealing phone service from his neighbor's line and 
his equipment confiscated, too. The hacker turned out 
to be Apache Warrior, a member of the small United 
Kingdom virus-writing group called ARCV (for 
Association of Really Cruel Viruses).

Some background information not included in the book:
Alan Solomon was apparently able to convince New 
Scotland Yard's computer crime unit that they should also 
try to prosecute Apache Warrior as a virus-writer and that 
the rest of the group should be rounded up, too.  In 
conversation, Solomon has said Apache Warrior turned over 
the names of other group members. Subsequently, New 
Scotland Yard and local constabularies conducted raids 
at multiple sites in England, arresting another man.  
Paradoxically, prior to the arrests, Solomon joked that 
ARCV was better at cyber-publicity than 
virus programming and its creations were little more 
than petty menaces.  The book offers no reported 
incidences of ARCV viruses on the computers 
of others, although Virus News International, by 
extension S&S International, solicited readers for 
such evidence in 1993.

Later in the year, Solomon telephoned John Buchanan to 
tell him he had been implicated as a member of 
ARCV - he was not - and that Scotland Yard might be 
interested in extraditing him for trial.  It turned 
out to be so much air.

Apache Warrior settled with the telephone company for the 
fraud and the virus-writing prosecutions remain unresolved. 
Most of this is left out of "The Anti-Virus Book" except 
parts about the necessity of jailing virus programmers.

The final part of "The Anti-Virus Book" is devoted to 
around fifty pages of leaden legal boilerplate addressing 
computer meddling supplied by a lawyer named 
Wendy R. London. Only those required under penalty of death
or the mentally ill would be interested in paying 
attention to it.

A computer book must also include poor reviews of the 
author's competitors' products. "The Anti-Virus Book" toes 
the line in this regard, criticizing McAfee Associates and 
Central Point Software.

Also included is a diskette containing an extravagant 
color advertisement for S&S International and
a poster-sized Virus Calendar for 1994 and 1995.

The calendar was fun.  I'm thinking of sending it to
some middle manager in computer services at a large,
boring corporation (or an editor at a computer
magazine).  Then they can vex their underlings
(or readers) every day with network e-mail 
like, "It's May 31. Be on the lookout for 
Tormentor-Lixo-Nuke, VCL-Diogenes, AntiCad-COBOL, 
Month 4-6, Ital Boy, and Kthulhu computer
viruses."

Finally, it would be unfair not to mention 
"The Anti-Virus Book's" GOOD parts.  The technical 
analyses of well known PC computer viruses were 
fascinating as was Solomon's description of how he 
developed specialized virus identification programming 
for S&S International. Solomon's development project, 
called Virtran, was capped when John Buchanan - the
same fellow who was denounced by him for selling
viruses in America - gave the programmer a copy of 
the NuKE Encryption Device, or NED - a piece of code
written by Nowhere Man and designed to encrypt viruses
in an esoteric manner.  At the time Solomon 
received it, the NED code wasn't actually in any viruses.
It still isn't, in fact, except for one called 
ITSHARD. And the story of the development of Solomon's 
anti-virus software shows how the virus underground
and one developer in 1993 had each other in a weird 
involuntary combination stranglehold and symbiosis.

". . . it does everything in a hundred different ways;
it uses word and byte registers, there are lots of
noisy nonsense bytes, little jumps . . . The NED looked 
like something out of a Salvador Dali nightmare and I
thought it was going to take a month of programming
[to detect ITSHARD]," writes Solomon.

According to the book, Solomon threw up his hands and
decided to revive a stalled project called the Ugly 
Duckling. The result was a major revision of his software, 
the fruition of the proprietary Virtran programming 
techniques used in it and a Queen's Award for 
Technological Achievement in 1993.  The one NED 
virus - ITSHARD - still isn't in the wild almost two 
years after Nowhere Man wrote the original encryption code.

These sections didn't suffer at the hands of the patchwork 
editors who threw most of "The Anti-Virus Book" together. 
Unfortunately, they comprise a small part of "The Anti-Virus 
Book" and were written so that only someone already acquainted 
with the field - not your average computer user - would get 
much from them. Just like most of the dubious literature
marketed by computer book publishers.


BREAKTHROUGHS IN MENTUFACTURING, CONTINUED: MICHAEL 
MILKEN JUMPS ON INFO HIGHWAY & THE RETURN OF 
FICTUAL FACTS AND FACTUAL FICTIONS

     
In the first week of April, former imprisoned Drexel 
Burnham Lambert financier Michael R. Milken conducted a 
special public seminar for educators at the new Milken
Research Forum for the Reconstruction, Acquisition, and
Understanding of Data (MR-FRAUD) on the campus of UCLA
in Los Angeles.

Milken lectured educators on how computer-assisted teaching can
and must level the playing field for rich and poor students. 
"Education can find you in South-Central Los Angeles, East 
St. Louis, Newark, just as easy as it can find you
in Connecticut, Palo Alto or Beverly Hills," said Milken.

Joining Milken at the forum was Sega of America Vice-President 
Douglas Glen who pledged one Sega game system to every public 
school district in the state of California.

"Video games breed self-esteem by challenging kids," said Glen, 
"I challenge the state of California to match my contribution
to the children of this great state by contributing an equal
number of Sega game systems - a few over 10,000.  Our 
kids are the ultimate resource.  We cannot ransome 
our future by being miserly with the technology of 
it for the students of today. Not only does excellence 
in Sega game-playing culture self-esteem,
confidence and strategic planning, it aclimates the children 
to the in's and out's of silicon chip-based processing - the 
universal on-ramp to the data superhighway.  And everyone 
knows kids, games and computers click."

The first school to receive Glen's Sega initiative is Greater
Northridge in the San Fernando Valley, due north of Los 
Angeles. Los Angeles United School District superintendent 
Beryl Ward accepted the system from Glen.

Milken also unveiled a new mathematical paradigm for the
handling of vast amounts of data, information and 
communications.

"Based loosely on Claude Shannon's ground-breaking 1948
treatise 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication,' the
Milken Electro-data Sorting System (MESS) can be 
licensed to corporations or schools and paid for under 
the National Information Infrastructure 
initiative," said Milken.

Milken stated that information glut is one of the 
key obstacles to effective innovation. Presently,
separating the wheat from the chaff takes up 
too much time, imposing a bottleneck on productivity. 
The Milken Sorting System relies upon the fact that 
no organization can any longer supervise every packet 
of information flowing through its environment.  So, 
it introduces and manages a randomizing agent which 
ensures that every bit of data, if circulated to every 
point on the system, must eventually hit upon the 
right one.  

Milken said that the idea was based upon his recent 
reading in the field of cosmology and how unknowable 
quantities of near atomic dust move through the
intergalactic spaces.


REVIEWED: PHILIP KERR TOO PHIL-OH-ZAW-FI-GULL FOR
MR. BADGER

"Philip Kerr's ingenuity is unquestionable . . . This 
is probably the crime story of the year for computer buffs, 
amateur philosophers, and would-be time travelers."

                                --London Review of Books


"A Philosophical Investigation," by Philip Kerr (Penguin/Plume, 
$10.95), is a futuristic detective/suspense story set in England 
in the year 2013.  To set the tone, the story is replete 
with references to nicotine-free cigarettes, cholesterol-free 
bacon, and voice controlled elevators
and hotel room doors.  Portable computers have envelope-sized
screens, miniature keyboards, and cellular connections to 
networks. Compact discs are now the size of a coin and 
recordable on both sides.  The European community has adopted 
a standard currency - the EC dollar.

Serial killers are common, too.  So common, that
Scotland Yard has a "Gynocide" division to track down those that
prey on women.  Serial sex killings account for 20 per cent
of all murders - a total of 4,000 each year in the European 
community.  ID cards, carried by everyone, contain the 
"genetic fingerprint" of their bearers.  Instead of prison 
sentences, criminals are put into "Punitive Coma," that 
is, drugged into vegetation for the length of their 
sentences.

Kerr's attempts to create a futuristic milieu are 
doomed to failure, however, because he continually shoots 
down his creations. "Punitive Comas" are used because jail 
is too expensive. Yet consider Kerr's description of the 
unit where the comatose inmates are stored:

"The sight of one open drawer, slightly larger than a coffin, 
interrupted her step.  Curious, she stopped to examine it 
more closely.  The bottom of the drawer was upholstered in 
soft black calf leather, which was the only concession made
to prevention of pressure sores.  A number of tubes and 
catheters, which would be attached to the convict's body,
protruded from the drawer's sides.  On the front of the
cabinet was a small flat screen on which the body functions
could be read and a card key lock to prevent anyone from
interfering with the drawer's occupant."

Right. Nothing but leather needed to prevent that tissue 
breakdown. Mr. Badger has seen comatose patients under 
hospital intensive care procedures develop bedsores clear 
to the bone while on $10,000 Clinitron beds.  All leather 
would do is hold the really memorable aroma of . . . oh, 
never mind.  In any case, the medical costs of maintaining 
a patient in a coma are horrendous. To believe
that the human body can be drugged up, plugged in, and 
stored for several years as a cost cutting measure is 
ludicrous.  Hell, even canned ham doesn't last that long.

Even more silly - the same paragraph that gives us the 4,000
serial murders per year states that the "European Bureau of
Investigation" estimates 25 to 90 such killers are responsible. 
Let's see. Twenty-five killers responsible for 4,000 deaths 
per year works out to . . . each one killing 
every 2-3 days.  Even 90 killers works out to each one killing 
every 8-9 days.  With universal DNA fingerprinting, the police 
can't catch these guys?  That works out to 44-160 crime sites 
per serial murderer, per year, and they _still_ can't catch 
them?  Bah, humbug!

Other issues are worse.  The stupidest blunder - and you 
have to remember, I'm a gun nut - is the actual murder 
weapon, a .44 caliber "gas gun."  The bullets are described 
as weighing _forty_ grams apiece.  They are fired from
a machined brass cartridge case with a self-contained, 
reloadable, high pressure air reservoir, all designed to 
fit in what appears to be a conventional handgun.  When 
fired, the gun has no recoil and makes "no more noise 
than a hand slapping a desk top."

There are several problems with this, all of them having to do
with defying the laws of physics.  The first is that a forty
gram bullet is two to three times heavier than those used in a
conventional .44 magnum.  The air pressure needed to propel such
a bullet would be immense.  This means that the "brass 
cartridge" would have to be built to contain pressures 
above 100,000 pounds per square inch - 50 tons! This means 
the walls of the cartridge would be, of necessity, so large 
there would be no room for the compressed air, much less the 
necessary valve system.  

[Ordinary cartridges don't have this problem, as the pressure 
doesn't build up until the gunpowder within burns.  When this 
happens, the cartridge is inside a chamber that supports the 
brass.  In the case of this supposed "gas gun,"
the cartridges would have to be strong enough to take the air
pressure even before being placed in the firearm.]  Both the noise
and the recoil when shooting a firearm are felt _after_ the
bullet has left the end of the barrel.  Think about it. It's the
escaping gas out of the end of the gun that produces the backward
recoil.  The sound is produced by the escaping gas as well (along
with the bullet, should it break the speed of sound).  The gas gun,
as described, has the same retort as a standard firearm.  Robert
Parker wouldn't screw up like this.

Some Crypt readers may be wondering why I dwell on such
things anal, because, after all, literary license is a 
long-standing tradition. But, errors like these are the 
hallmark of a lazy writer and editor.  They could be 
corrected in half a dozen ways, without damaging the 
plot at all.  The failure gives you a clue about the 
computer-related portions of the text.

The actual plot begins with the government sponsored Lombroso
program, which attempts to identify potential serial killers 
based on anatomical features of the brain.  Lombroso is an 
acronym for Localisation of Medullar Brain Resonations 
Obliging Social Orthopraxy. It shares the same name as 
the Victorian criminologist that attempted to classify 
criminals by external physical measurements of the body.  
Men are encouraged to come in for a brain scan and, if 
found to be of the correct profile, offered hormonal 
treatments and counseling under a pseudonym.

Their anonymity is guaranteed, as all employees know 
them only by the computer-assigned pseudonym.  The same 
computer will release their actual name only if it is 
cross-referenced by a police computer during the course 
of a homicide investigation.

One of the men who is singled out by the process, code-named
Wittgenstein, takes exception, and succeeds in accessing the
Lombroso database with the goals of erasing himself and targeting
others in the program for assassination.  The details make 
for a turgid combination of fancy, conjecture and ignorance. 

The author seems to understand one verity of hacking.  In
Wittgenstein's words:

"The image of the computer-hacker spending many hours in front
of a screen trying to break into a system is a false one. 
He is more often to be found scavenging in a company's refuse
bins in an attempt to find a piece of information that will
provide a clue as to the computer system's password."

Yet, how does the Wittgenstein get the password?  While waiting for
his screening with Lombroso - before even knowing that he will be
singled out - he tinkers with a television set in the waiting room.

"The problem was a simple one -- a channel improperly tuned -
and I had just started to rectify this when I noticed that
the set, which was rather an old one, was picking up 
electromagnetic radiation from one of the other computer
installations in the building.  Somewhere in the Institute
a VDU was radiating out harmonics on the same frequency as
television set."

This interference, of course, turns out to be a terminal.  
The villain ends up seeing the "basic entry code, an 
individual operator's personal 'key' word, and the Lombroso 
system's password for the day."  While feasible, one can't 
wonder if the much vaunted concept of HDTV hasn't come about yet,
or if it is simply so shoddy that it still can't ensure picture
quality.  Still, the author threw in the comment about the
television being rather old, and I let it slide. 

So having the necessary passwords, what tools are needed 
to break into the network?

". . . I possessed . . . all the equipment for such 
a task -- PC, modem, the telephone company's Jupiter 
computer information system, [and] digital protocol 
analyser . . . "

Say what!  Just what in Sam Hill is a digital protocol
analyser, anyway?

"A protocol is a set of rules.  An analyser is a portable 
device with its own miniature screen and keyboard.

OK, but what about the Lombroso's security systems?  Get 
a load of the following, and bear in mind that RA, Reality 
Approximation (aka Virtual Reality) is the buzzword of the day.

"They must have anticipated having to deal with unauthorized
entrants to the system, because the very first thing that
happened was that a nude Marilyn Monroe graphic appeared
on my screen and, with a wiggle of her lifelike bottom,
asked me if I felt lucky.  'Because if you can answer three
little old questions you and your reality approximation 
software get to fuck my brains out.'

"Marilyn was referring to the software which controlled
the computer's optional body attachments and which 
enabled one to enjoy an approximate physical sensation
of whatever kind of reality was being created . . . The
point of Marilyn was to trap the unwary schoolkid 
hackers into wasting their time and not progressing
any further within the system.  I knew the chances were
that if you did manage to answer Marilyn's questions
correctly . . . you were liable to discover that your own
computer software had been infected with a very nasty,
possibly terminal virus."

How droll.  Computer security employees have the time and
will to generate "Reality Approximation" graphics. They feel 
free to send viruses to suspected hackers.  They have no
fear of public censure for sexist and other lewd and/or 
politically incorrect themes. And they work for a bureaucracy.

In any case, Wittgenstein bypasses these security measures by
typing in "goodbye" and the Lombroso system password for the day. 
His next hurdle is Cerberus:

". . . suddenly there he was on-screen, a three-headed black
dog graphic with blood-chilling sound effects, and guarding
the system . . . From the size and number of his teeth I was 
very glad I had not been wearing my Reality Approximation
body suit.  It was clear that I wasn't going any further
until I had dealt with him."

Yeah, you read right.  Not only does computer security entail
designing "Reality Approximation" characters, but the makers can
arm them with the ability to actually hurt hackers wearing
appropriate suits.  

"Exiting the system once more I tried to remember how dead 
Greeks and Romans had been able to pass into Pluto's 
kingdom without molestation . . . the trick would be to create
a cake that would enable Cerberus to fulfill a standard         
legitimate routine . . . but which would hide a piece of           
unorthodox active instruction, specifically to fall
asleep . . . the general effect was similar to a computer virus,
except that the basic premise was to limit the action of the
binary mechanism to Cerberus himself.

"Back in the super-op directory, I offered the shiny black
beast the cake and, to my delight, he snapped it up 
greedily . . . almost as quickly as he had appeared, Cerberus
fell to the bottom of the screen with a very audible
computer SFX thud, and remained motionless."

Yeah, you read right, again.  Computer security also encompasses
programming the graphics and sound effects for moments when your
security is bypassed.  It is mandatory to program
defects in line with whatever theme is being used, as well.  

Eight months and eight dead bodies later, it finally occurs to
someone to check the Lombroso database for signs of intrusion. 
They have a log showing when and how the database was altered.  At
this point, you would think that they simply compared the backups
from that and the previous day to find which records had been
deleted.  Wrong!  There are no backups.  It's not that they are
missing, corrupt, or inaccessible.  It's not that the database
managers were slack or inefficient.  Even worse, while the best and
brightest from the Police Computer Crime Unit of New Scotland Yard
investigates and accidentally sets off a logic bomb left by
Wittgenstein, he hasn't made a backup either.  Backups simply
don't exist.  

Apparently databases can't be recreated.  Nobody ever thinks
of going through the brain scans and rescheduling appointments to 
recreate the data.  The data is simply assumed to be -- GONE.  

That "A Philosophical Investigation" could reap praise from 
the Library Journal, the NY Times Book Review, and the Wall 
Street Journal shows the state of modern fiction in the 
English-speaking world . . . and something of the mental acuity of
its nincompoop reviewers.  It doesn't need to be consistent, 
believable, or well-researched.  As long as it
joins in worship with the Church of the Twisted 
Psyche, it's good. 

You see, sometime in the Sixties, the praise of the bizarre 
crossed from the medium of paint to writing.  Where once we had
to suffer with surrealist's worship of the unconscious, we 
now have the novelist's worship of the unconscionable.  
"A Philosophical Investigation" has a man-hating, sexually 
unresolved, robotic female investigator.  It has a 
sociopathic intellectual.  It has half-baked philosophy like 
what Nietzsche babbled when he broke down crying
over a horse and got carted away to rot in solitary madness.  
It has sub-plots and supporting characters worthy of a 
television movie. Heck, maybe it was written to be a TV 
movie in America - on Sunday night right after SeaQuest DSV! 
[A producer could even get someone from the MIT Media Lab
to chatter crazily at the audience near the end of the show 
just like Bob Ballard does for Seaquest and Steven Spielberg.]
"Investigation" isn't about the year 2013 -- it's about 
the 1990's.  

In a different era work like this would have brought 
its author hunger, neglect, and shameful death.  The spirit 
of man is now so poor that one gains praise for 
pretentious inferiority.

MR. BADGER'S SATURDAY AFTERNOON MEXICAN
HORROR WRESTLING HOUR:  ON SUPERNERDS AND CD-ROM

Stop the presses!

USA Today (March 28) just discovered 
that hand-held "computers" are suffering major problems.  
Those already on the market - like the Apple Newton - are 
suffering because they're packed with features no one
cares about.  Those in pre-production are still
plagued with bugs.  Compaq is even questioning 
the Holy Grail of hand-held computing:  The ability 
to process handwritten scribble. Just a hint to all those 
manufacturers out there:  It helps to know what the 
product actually is _before_ you start marketing it.

You may recall my arrant jibe at The Village Voice last
month concerning the worth of drag queens as a hard 
news topic.  Well, Lord help us, life mimics art 
as The Voice menacingly continues to insist on 
assigning writers used to La Dolce Musto on cyberspace. 
A March 15 copy featured a piece called "E-Male or 
Female: Cross-Dressing Online."  That's right!  A whole 
story on "The Politics of Online Gender Bending."  Sigh.  
I'd endorse kidnapping the editors of The Voice and flogging 
them with rattan canes . . . but they would only enjoy it. 

That magazine for the mentally ill aspiring upper-middle 
class white social climber, TIME, put a malevolent Bill 
Gatesian caricature on its April 11 cover, claiming 
"high tech [Wall Street] supernerds are playing dangerous 
games with your money."

The "supernerd" article was a mix of strong but 
vague half-fabrication and jargon which editor James R. Gaines 
must have cunningly sensed made snazzy, unverifiable copy.

"Swaptions . . . Caps . . . Floors . . . LEAPS . . . Yield-Curve
Notes . . . I/Os and P/Os . . ." were terms TIME threw at the
reader.  Did the writer know what they meant?  No.  Maybe 
TIME artists did since the terms were packed into an 
illustration of what looked like a flame-spitting bowling ball 
being shot at with dollar signs beaming out of radar dishes.

Yes, this _stuff_ is invented by "data miners" who 
wear "high water pants" and "mate . . . in one night 
stands."  "The [data miners] are in prayerful communion 
with the computer" and "[no one] knows what they're talking 
about."  Including TIME.  Or you and me. But that's the 
point. Ah, ah, help, help, start legislation, the sky is 
falling, the sky is falling, meta-computing, Fourier transform,
eigenvalue. 

What TIME's journalism by committee should really
be telling you - in English - is there are a bunch of young 
Wall Street financiers experimenting in a non-real world 
economy construct assigned the jargon-term "derivatives."  
These goings on have no meaning for the average American 
who couldn't affect any of it anyway.  Which is the 
real nub of the piece, something TIME has never had the talent 
to get across.

These workers in "high water pants" trade in financial 
computer-generated fictions created purely from the instantaneous 
electronic technology of the information age.  It's disruptive 
to the world economy but decoupled from the bedrock of real 
trade in which services are rendered, products produced and 
the infrastructure built.  "Data miners" is just another
stupid name which disguises what the phenomenon really 
is: The work of assholes.

In the same issue TIME struck out to interview 
outraged Americans who are pretending to have just discovered 
what anyone with half a brain has known for the last three 
decades: convicts lift weights in prison. The magazine 
interviewed Roger Quindel, an amateur body-builder who should, 
perhaps, bend his mind to the mental Soloflex a little more 
before pegging statements like, "Do we really want stronger 
criminals?  I'd rather buy them computers . . . "  with the
implication prisoners named "Maggit" are too stupid to
operate PC's.

Subscribe to TIME so you're always well-informed.

In the first week of April, Rolling Stone ran a piece on "ROM and
Roll."  The contents page looked like this:

        "It's difficult to love CD-ROM.  Expecting slick machinery,
         we get something cranky instead.  Yet the significance
         of this new medium lies not in pie-in-the-sky technology
         but in the way we can use it to explore our own lives."

The story managed to gerrymander an intro/history of the format
with reviews of several current CD-ROMs and threw in vague
speculation on multimedia's future.  Surprisingly however, Mr.
Badger is starting to share some of the optimism concerning
multimedia.  I was much impressed with the Terminator 2
laser disc and have seen a couple of musical instruction CD-ROMs
that were quite interesting.  

Unfortunately, we're still dealing with stillborn formats.  Face
it. We're squeezing the last dregs of utility from the basic DOS
and PC frameworks.  We have video and sound boards but 
second rate animation and music.  We have CD-ROMs but fall
asleep while they're loading.  If Windows NT and OS/2 are to be
our salvation in this area, it's time to arrange for mass
seppuku.

The other end of the spectrum is filled with those attempting to
modify audio CD and game players, yet another instance of turbo-
charging antiquated technology.  If and when something new
comes along that _is_ actually worth using, count on it to be 
locked between the copyright claws of a money-mad megacorporation 
bent only on manufacturing mind-numbingly boring video games for 
the high school/collegiate idiot savant market.

For those not keeping track, U.S. Patent No. 5,241,671 was 
essentially struck down - at least for the moment - last
month.  Norman Bastin - who looks a little like the bleached
"What izzit" Bohemian in the Zima commercial - of Compton's 
New Media has been stymied in his attempt to license all 
general sort, retrieve and index functions for 
CD-ROM multimedia.  You could think of it as similar
to a grab at licensing the English language, which apparently
escaped the usual faceless dolts in government responsible for
keeping track of such things, namely the U.S. Patent Office.

Bastin, however, stormed on, telling the Los Angeles Times on
April 17 that Compton's wouldn't be stopped until it completed 
a coffee-table book/CD-ROM [?] devoted to the TV program
"Babylon 5".  Thank heaven for these small favors.

Gratifyingly, the supremacy of the written word looks assured 
for the foreseeable future although, if Norm Bastin has his 
way, CD-ROM will multiply to the point where it 
eclipses regular television and videotape in triteness.  
The few exceptions will still be meager promises of what 
someday _might_ become reality. Until then, I demand we 
rename "multimedia" into "Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-media."

Finally, Mr. Badger must apologize.  Last time
I shamelessly flacked for my hometown newspaper, The State.  
Needless to say, days later The State ambushed me and saw 
fit to reinforce the first rule of the American press:  

"If we didn't betray their trust, we simply weren't trying
hard enough!"

The March 22 edition contained a feature article in the
Health/Science section - I know, I know, it sounds awful
already - on Virtual Reality.  As a piece of
journalism, it had the all the wit and savvy of Beaver 
Cleaver on methaqualone.  As a pro forma press release 
extolling the amount of money Clemson University and 
Georgia Tech are wasting in "research," it ignited a vicious 
migraine.  You, the Crypt Newsletter reader, will be spared.  
I've run out of Percocet and Midrin, and I just can't bear 
to repeat any details right now.


ODDS & ENDS: COMPUTER ETHICS BOOK MIRRORS THE VIRTUAL 
BOSS AND OTHER STUFF RECEIVED

A revised edition of "Computer Ethics" (Prentice Hall)
by Deborah G. Johnson arrived on our doorstep.

The book is assembled around cases for discussion,
most of them rather interesting.  Johnson explains
a student was actually enlisted to concoct some of
the ethical conundrums she feels worth discussing.
One from a chapter on computers and privacy is
worth mentioning here:

"Estelle Cavallo was recently hired to supervise a 
large unit of a medical insurance company . . . One 
of the first things [she] will do when she starts 
this job is to install a software system that will 
allow her to monitor the work of each and every 
claims processor.  The software will allow Estelle 
to record the number of keystrokes made per minute 
on any terminal in the unit.  It will also allow 
her to bring the work of others up on her computer 
screen so that she can watch individual work as 
it is being done.  As well, Estelle 
will be able to access copies of each employer's work
at the end of each day.  She will find out how much
time each worker spends with the terminal off; she 
will see what correspondence the person prepares;
she will review the e-mail that the worker sends
or recieves . . . "

Johnson's book invites the students to chew 
this over, among others.

Anyway, the scenario formalizes one of the 
major points of the best piece of computer fiction 
in the last twelve months or so, Floyd 
Kemske's "The Virtual Boss" (Catbird Press) which 
tosses the reader into a nightmare of computer-enforced 
management and bureaucratization. Since Kemske's book
isn't about computers, but people, it sucks the
reader into a totally believable America fucked up
beyond all recognition by the supremacy of corporate
paranoids, hermits, and psychopaths who've hitched
their drays to total computerization.

In fact, "The Virtual Boss" and "Computer Ethics"
would make a great pair of books for any course 
covering controversial issues at the juncture
of computing and society - a pretty big field, 
we think you've noticed.  Someone should have 
mercy on college students - let them at something 
they'd enjoy - and take the Crypt Newsletter 
seriously on this one. Leave all the dry crap from 
the ACM legal briefs for optional reading.

Also received: "Computer Communications Security: 
Principles, Standard Protocols and Techniques" 
(PTR Prentice Hall) by Warwick Ford, a standard text 
covering the current thinking on network security 
from system architects.

FINDING/OBTAINING/READING THE CRYPT NEWSLETTER:

"I, too, hate Star Trek, WIRED and the National Security        
Agency.  Keep up the good work Crypt!"

                    ---a satisfied Crypt Newsletter
                       reader

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Professional. (Kudos to Cassandra Birzes and Wallace Wang for 
getting the ball rolling in this area.)

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For the Apple Mac crowd in greater Los Angeles County and
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On COMPUSERVE, straight text editions of the newsletter
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On DELPHI, these versions are warehoused in The Writers
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On GENIE, the Crypt Newsletter can be found in the
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--------------------------------------------------------------
Editor George Smith edits The Crypt Newsletter from
Pasadena, CA, when not working on "The Virus
Creation Labs". Andy Lopez lives in Columbia, SC. 

(c)opyright 1994 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.