Wed, 20 Aug 2008
Lamers
Kragen Sitaker and his wife Beatrice were very gracious in hosting me and my brother for a week in Buenos Aires.
I was looking for something on Kragen's website and found a ten-years-old discussion of how to find security problems in software. In it, he writes:
Body text last updated 1998-07-22. Recently has become the most popular page of mine, presumably because a bunch of lamers want to learn how to break into things. [...]
I wouldn't be surprised if calling 100-200 people a day `lamers' results in electronic attacks on me or my machine (kragen.dnaco.net.) All I can say is that people who do this would thereby demonstrate their lamosity.
Lamers, you say? Nelson took this picture of me a few years back. Look at the thumbs-up from the driver!
(Photo available for re-use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.)
Note: Mako addressed this topic earlier this year, and then again more recently.
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Sun, 17 Aug 2008
Fake Out in Buenos Aires
"Falso," he said.
I accepted the 100 peso (US$30) note back. The only place we had gotten 100 peso notes were ATMs.
I found a different one with a good watermark and handed it to him. (This happened a bit over a week ago.)
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Mon, 04 Aug 2008
Francisco
Francisco is the name of the very energetic hostel attendant at America del Sud El Calafate.
After offering me a key (literally) for the wireless, he told me the password.
"What are you doing there?," he asked me. "It's email," I answered.
"Email? And how can you see? I can't see any letters." (The fonts are pretty small on my laptop.) "What program is that?"
"Pine," I said. "It's called Alpine."
He paused for a moment, and reported, "You look like a hacker with that." He patted me on the shoulder and wandered off.
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Argentina for two weeks
For those of you I haven't told, I'm in Argentina. I've been here since Friday July 31. The idea is to take a week's vacation before heading to Mar del Plata for a week of the Debian conference, Debconf. This year, Debconf is held that beach resort town in the winter. From what I read, Mar del Plata is worth visiting even in this off season. On August 17, I'll be back in the Untied States (*).
The gracious Kragen Sitaker and Beatrice Murch are hosting me and my brother for a week in Buenos Aires. As a side note, right now I'm not in Buenos Aires but in a cold place called El Calafate.
On an overcast wintery day, B.A. looks like someone took a remix of Belgium and Paris and let it wear out a litte more than you'd expect from the Continentals. On any sort of day, from Kragen's and Beatrice's roof, it looks like someone ported Blade Runner to Europe.
(*.) [sic]
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