Aimster Pig Encoder

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:17:52 GMT

Geek with Guns is active again after about a month of hiatus.

The Aimster Pig Encoder encodes your file names so that Napster's new filtering software won't recognize them. Hehe. I doubt this will stop Napster. They'll just have to look at the data in the files instead of the names. This is of course possible to scramble as well just by resampling the audio, but that's a little harder to do. Still, someone will do it if necessary. Copy protection doesn't work. [/.]

The Aimster Pig Encoder encodes the file names by simply changing the words in the file name very slightly. For example, "Music" becomes "usicM", "Hello" becomes "elloH", and you can guess what becomes "uckF ouY, ouY pyS astardsB".
...
IMPORTANT WARNING: DO NOT TELL ANYONE how the Aimster Pig Encoder works. Disclosing how the Aimster Pig Encoder works may be a violation of a federal law called the DMCA and subject to up to a $500,000 fine and 5 years in prison! Seriously, we are not joking about this, although we would agree that the situation sounds quite funny (if it wasn't so sad). There is already a similar case in which someone has been found guilty simply for printing an encoder secret on a t-shirt!
If anyone asks you how the Aimster Pig Encoder works, tell them to download it and find out for themselves!

Steven Chase at The Globe and Mail - Napster clone may set up shop offshore: Matt Goyer plans to set up a Napster server on the HavenCo island. [/.]

More excerpts from The Emperor Wears no Clothes:

By the start of this century almost four generations of Americans had been using cannabis.
Virtually everyone in this country was familiar from childhood on with the "highs" of cannabis extract--yet doctors did not consider it habit forming, anti-social, or violent at all after 60 years of use.
This leads us to an important question: If it was not fear of health or social consequences that led to the eventual ban of cannabis use in America (and later forced on the rest of the world), what did?
...
the first federal anti-marijuana laws (1937) came about because of William Randolph Hearst's lies, yellow journalism, and racist newspaper articles and ravings, which from then on were cited in Congressional testimony by Harry Anslinger as facts.
...
American newspapers, politicians, and police, had virtually no idea, for all these years (until the 1920s, and then only rarely), that the marijuana the "darkies" and "Chicanos" were smoking in cigarettes or pipes was just a weaker version of the many familiar concentrated cannabis medicines they'd been taking since childhood, or that the same drug was smoked at the local "white man's" plush hashish parlors.

Randall N. Herrst at JPFO - School Shooting in California.... some thoughts on the most recent Brady Bunch fodder. It happenned in Kalifornia, home of the countries toughest gun laws. Obviously, gun laws don't work. What would work? Israel figured this out a long time ago. If your kids are in danger, protect them. Yawn. The thing that got me about this story is that the guy reloaded four times, but noone tackled him during a reload. Very strange. Well, I wasn't there... [jpfo]

Angus Glashier - Wednesday, March 07, 2001: not only is Angus no longer a libertarian, he's turned into a gun grabber. Naughty Angus. Naughty.

Remember: the harder it is for kids to get guns, the less likely it is that they will go on shooting sprees.

opensecrets.org contains lots of information about political contributions. They even have a database of donors, including 118,977 donors to GW for the 2000 presidential race. [brianf]

Contra Costa Times via the Media Awareness Project - Marijuana Activist's Convictions Slashed: Judge John L. Cosgrove reduced Steve Kubby's felony convictions to misdemeanors and dismissed all the remaining counts against him. Mr. Kubby "was fined $2,700 and ordered to serve 120 days of alternative sentencing." He will also be on probation for three years. Apparently, the Placer County DA, Bradford Fenocchio, requested this reduction. Good for him. [cures-not-wars]

There's a new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:

Repeal Depression-era libel law ... for starters - Nevada may finally repeal a 1931 law that makes it illegal to criticize a bank.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph - Euro-court outlaws criticism of EU: The beginning of the end of free speech in the European Union. [unknown]

The European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties.

Joshua Rozenberg at The Telegraph - Double jeopardy rule may be axed: Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The reason we have jury trials and the reason that acquittals are final is because that was one of the conditions for the king to be allowed to continue living. Break the power of the jury, oh modern kings, and you will swing. [unknown]

The ancient right of a person not to be tried again for the same offence should be abolished in murder cases, according to a recommendation from the Government's law reform advisers.

Ant 1.3 is available from the Apache Jakarta project. [cafe]

Robert X. Cringely at InfoWorld - Software giant looks to bury test results as @Home digs a new hole: An independent testing lab recently discovered that SQL Server 7 runs half as fast on Windows 2000 as it does on NT. Microsoft couldn't fix it so they chose to quash the test results by threatening legal action over the "no publication without authorization" clause in the SQL Server license. Fie on Microsoft. And again fie.

Mr. Cringely also retracted his previous claim that Java won't run on the new Intel processor. He hasn't, however, investigated whether the new processor will require a new version of Sun's Java VM.

RANDI SAYS I must have been having a senior moment recently when I passed along a tip that Intel's Pentium IV didn't work with Java. I do know better. As many astute readers have pointed out, Java's a platform-independent language. It doesn't matter if it's Pentium IV or Amiga. If there's a compiler for it, it will run.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair