I Heart NY

What a bunch of geeks.

I've never seen so many misfits in my life. Then you haven't been to downtown Royal Oak lately. Yes I have, I was just there, this is worse.

Hey, check out the guy with the beard over there. No, that guy. Yeah, the guy with the four-foot beard. Wow. Don't these people own mirrors?

What are they doing over here? Lock-picking. Why? Let's check it out. Yep, they're picking locks all right. Why? Who knows?

Will I stick out if I carry my notepad around? Yes, but there's all kinds of people here, and you're going to belong to one demographic or another no matter what you do.

So, what's weirder, the people at the hacker convention, or the ham radio swap meet? There are more weird people at the ham swap, but there are weirder people at the techie convention.

Nothing sadder-looking than a hooker in the morning sun.

There's a certain shorts length on a man below which you just shouldn't go. Well, in case you haven't figured it out… Yes, I figured it out.

World Trade Center: how exactly does one look at something that's not there?

…and on it went, the conversation between Bruck and son of Bruck last weekend in the Big Apple, where we attended the 2600 (hacker) conference along with a couple thousand geeks, nerds, misfits, tools, anarchists, lemmings, bohemians, mods, and rockers. And a few normal, healthy-looking people, just to mix things up.

We both learned quite a lot. For one thing, a hacker is not necessarily a law-breaker. The positive side of their activity is to expose vulnerabilities. And hackers aren't necessarily computer geeks, either. Geeks, to be sure, but there are phone geeks, privacy geeks, communications geeks, even legal geeks. It's not so much a skill set as a mindset.

Of course if you cared what goes on in the mind of a hacker, you'd already know, so for now I won't tire you with my amateur psychological deconstruction. Instead, let's talk about our weekend!

We took a bus to NY and back, between a stop in DC's Chinatown and NY's Penn Station. The bus ride was dirt cheap, $35 round trip for each of us. None of the usual amenities one would find on an airplane or train, such as toilet paper in the latrine, but for that price…! And no worries about traffic, tolls, parking, etc.; it probably won't be the last time I use the DC/NY bus.

NY is pretty much the same as when I used to go there to visit college friends in the '80s; if anything, there's just more of it. Well, less of it if you count the World Trade Center, the site of which we visited on Saturday morning. If I saw nothing else in NY, I had to see the WTC site. Right now there's nothing left of the wreckage of course. The foundation is in place for some new towers that are being erected there, and a lot of construction activity was evident, even on a Saturday morning.

The conference itself was quite entertaining and educational, and I don't mean that in any kind of condescending sense. Well, maybe a little condescending. The attendees were mainly young non-conformists who all managed to look, dress, and think alike. The speakers were a mixed bag, some good, some terrible, but the actual topics - some of the coolest stuff you could imagine. The ones I attended were on privacy, copyright laws, lockpicking, safecracking, surreptitious surveillance, social engineering, and a rather strange one by a group that harasses the Church of Scientology.

Yes, you heard that right, safecracking, as in how to open actual safes without benefit of the combination or dynamite. I've never been offered the opportunity for a primer in safecracking, and probably never will again, so naturally I jumped at the chance. Very informative! It's not like I could go help myself to the contents of Fort Knox based on what I garnered from a one-hour seminar, but it was cool to see how safes work and how their weaknesses can be exploited. As it happens, safes are rated by how quickly an expert safecracker could open them. Your basic hardware store-bought safe will protect your valuables from such a person for 15 to 30 minutes. The state-of-the-art lock, on the other hand, would protect the same from all known methods of attack for 190 days. In this case, it would be easier to exploit other mechanisms for obtaining access, such as:

Social Engineering

Social Engineering, as the hackers define it, is simply using psychological tools to extract information to which one is not entitled. We attended a fascinating panel discussion on this topic, in which several experts discussed their techniques and traded stories. One such expert demonstrated his techniques by calling (and patching the conversation to the PA system) airlines, and through various ruses, extracting information on passengers of certain flights. Pretty tame, all things considered, but a good example of how easy it is to exploit helpful, trusing people. One of the panelists also claimed to make a pasttime of calling various businesses, getting them to voluntarily release sensitive customer information such as credit card numbers, and then informing them what fools they were for doing so.

But the really weird topic was the panel discussion by an anonymous group that calls itself "Anonymous" and harrasses the Church of Scientology. I won't go into too much detail, as I don't think all of their activities are completely above-board, but you're welcome to give yourself a webucation on the subject by googling "anonymous" and "church of scientology" or "scientologist." The Anonymous group stages various protests at Scientology events and attempts to publicize the religions's ludicrous claims and practices that it would rather keep secret. Actually, the panel discussion could have been a lot better - they were not very good public speakers, and were not pretty well prepared, but they still did manage to convey their basic message.

Some of you may be wondering, is NY now part of the Bruck Empire? The answer is no, I didn't really want NY all that badly, so I decided not to challenge the rights of the myriad bums and winos who stake that claim daily.

The High Price of Gasoline

Mr. & Mrs. I., loyal readers of the VOB and a young couple comprised of the sister-in-law of Bruck and the brother-in-law-in-law of Bruck (SILOB & BILILOB), whom, despite their tenuous association with a deranged blogger, Bruck holds in high esteem, visited Hawaii for their honeymoon several years ago. Running off to the airport, they made a perfect happy, starry-eyed, loving couple whose only real mistake up that point was Mrs. I.'s choice of suitcase.

Grandma H., GOSILOB (& GOWOB of course) was in from out of town for the wedding, and when she opened her suitcase to get dressed on the day after, she noted with alarm that it was filled with the clothes and accoutrements of the newly-appointed Mrs. I., therefore…! We still chuckle at the prospect of Mrs. I. looking for her swimsuit and sunblock and instead finding Grandma's flannels and Noxzema. Hopefully Mrs. I. will be able to laugh about it herself some day.

I was reminded of this comical episode during a recent workation in sunny HI. I managed to fit some R&R in between work, including a pathetic luau to which I referred in a previous dispatch. The irreproachable Mrs. Bruck joined me for about half of the trip and so we were able to enjoy the volcanic paradise together, wearing our own clothes.

Overall, I'd say HI is a nifty place. Not sure I'd go out of my way to live there but if Uncle Sam issued me permanent change of station orders to that locale, only a small number of wild horses would be required to drag me there. The weather is pretty nice all year - sunny, 70's & 80's, it rains occasionally but it's a very polite, unobtrusive rain that you don't even notice unless it's a monsoon. The tropical fruit there is fantastic, including fresh coconut, which is way better than anything you'll find in a grocery store in the midwest or eastern seaboard. BTW, coconuts falling from trees is enough of a public health hazard that they routinely remove the ripe coconuts from the palm trees on the street to prevent it (this according to a tour bus guide, and why would he lie?).

HI is fairly expensive, rivaling New York and southern CA for real estate prices, but it is possible to live decently on a professional salary or two. You'd just have to make certain sacrifices. The people with whom I was working all seemed pretty happy to be there. They do mention the tendency toward "island fever," a malady I started to suffer after about a week.

But that's not what I came here to talk about today. What I wanted to talk about is the price of gasoline.

It's too high.

Or is it?

Just how high is too high?

Does anyone remember the gas crunch of the 70's & early 80's? In 1981, the peak price of gas was $1.66/gallon. In today's (2007 actually) dollars, that's $4.92. So I think you'd have to agree that the media are being a bit disingenuous when they claim that gas prices are at record highs. We're close, but we're not at the record yet. But again, the question, how high is too high?

Let's say gasoline didn't exist. And then someone comes along and offers you a magic potion, a gallon of which, when poured into a certain machine, could move you, a few of your friends, and a fair amount of your personal junk 20 or 30 miles. How much would you pay for this mojo?

But, you say, gasoline does exist, and it has for umpteen years. And we've built our society around its abundance and affordability. This has worked for a long time, so long in fact, that few if any of us can remember a time when it wasn't so. So long, that we consider it our birthright, our heritage as the world's "chosen people." Notwithstanding our surprise to discover that the suppliers of this commodity don't see us in the same light, we're incensed that the standard rules of economics, price=demand/supply, applies in this case in such a way as to not favor us privileged citizens of the United States of Obama. The supply isn't necessarily changed, but demand is way up and therefore so are prices.

So it comes down to a question, not of how much you will pay, but how much will you buy, at these large prices. So far, it seems, about the same amount as before. The way I see it, there's no such thing as too high or too low, but simply a prevailing market price and an amount we're willing to buy at that price.

Meanwhile, to keep it in perspective, I was really thirsty during my layover in the LAX airport on the way back from HI. I paid $2.50 for a 16oz. bottle of water. That's $20.00/gallon. Even at a typical vending machine price it would be about $10.00/gal. For water, in a clear plastic bottle. Speaking of which, let's see a show of hands - how many of you have paid $5.00 for a fancy-pants cup of coffee at Starbucks? Even if it were a 16oz. cup, that would be $40.00 per gallon.

But Bruck, I don't use nearly as much bottled water and frou frou coffee as I do gasoline! True enough, but you also have to admit that these purchases are pretty much completely discretionary. $4.00 for a gallon of anything is starting to look like quite a bargain!

So what's the answer? Do everything in your power to reduce the price of gasoline. For that, you receive my undying gratitude, which, along with $5.00 will buy you a decent cuppa joe.

And one last thing - for those of you keeping track of the ever-expanding Bruck Empire: Hawaii.