This Mind Intentionally Left Blank

Some quick hints for this aspiring photographer:

1) If you want it to look like you shot it on film, SHOOT IT ON FILM.

2) If you want to fake shooting on film, DON’T MARK YOUR FILM WITH “320TXP” because that film, Kodak Tri-X Panchromatic 320, is BLACK AND WHITE.

3) The aspect ratio suggests the film would be 6×9cm, in which case the film markings would be on the SIDES.

44) There is no medium-format film long enough to take 44 pictures in any common format, let alone 6×9.

5) If you’re going to include the film frame counter, then make sure it’s showing the SAME NUMBER on both sides. “44″ and “3″ are different numbers.

Love,
Tore.

(Shot by the entrance to the Aker Brygge shopping center)

As you may know: When developing black-and-white film, you periodically have to shake the tank for the chemistry to be effective, normally every 30 seconds. This is called agitation, and it’s quite boring.

I wanted to create a device which you can prop the film tank onto, which agitates the film according to a preset – continuous, 30 sec, 60 sec, etc – with a little LCD display or similar – which, when turned on, would print a random selection of Soviet propaganda phrases.

I wonder if it isn’t too much effort for a single pun, but I’m not sure it is.

The story behind it…

Recently, I decided to set up a subscription with a VoIP provider, Phonzo, here in Norway. On their webpage, Phonzo advertised a VoIP service which actually gave you the SIP information and allowed the user to connect their own equipment to this service. “That’s really cool“, I thought. “I can play with Asterisk on the PSTN now!”. They also advertised an offer with rent of a Linksys SPA2102 included, at a very affordable rate.

Now, I suspected that the box might be locked – as I’d heard they were with some providers – so I searched all over their webpage for any hint that it might be. None was to be found – and since they included the specific model designation of the adapter rather than mentioning a generic “Analogue Telephone Adapter”, I basically assumed it wouldn’t be crippled.

But when it did arrive (impeccable delivery time, and telephony worked out of the box, btw), I found to my dismay that the box was indeed locked. So I sent a polite email to customer service, saying basically that I know this is a matter mostly interesting to enthusiasts, but they’ve advertised “an SPA2102″, and what I have receieved is “a crippled SPA2102″. They basically replied “It says “rent”, so it belongs to us.” I replied “Renting does not exempt you from marketing laws; you’ve sold me something else than what I paid for”. I got the reply: “We can’t open it, it contains sensitive information – and it’s not crippled, it’s optimized for Phonzo service[sic]“(!). Yeah, that’s really what they said.

A few more emails back and forth, and nothing of value came forth. When I received a letter from customer service saying “Stop your nonsense, we’re providing you a service and the adapter is a part of it” – I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere there. I’ve sent an email to the address in the SSL certificate (who also seems to be one of the founders) hoping I’d get in touch with someone of relevance, but I don’t have great hopes. (There’s a copy of the correspondance – in Norwegian, if you’re interested.)

So over to my plan B.

The Linksys SPA2102 has two interfaces for an administrator: The first is the HTTP interface – bog-standard, with an admin password. The second is the “Interactive Voice Response” menu – you know the kind, “Press 1 for x, 2 for y, … “. Now, this menu has several different options, including one to “enable HTTP access on the WAN port”. By default, this option is set to False, and changing it requires an administrator password. But how do you enter an alphanumeric password on a DTMF dialpad? Aha – the admin passnumber is derived from the admin password! The mapping is 1=1, [2ABCabc] = 2, [3DEFdef] = 3, …, (everything else) = 0. This reduces the keyspace quite dramatically!

So basically, what I’ve done is kludged together a shell script which tries the different combinations and sounds them out using a software DTMF tone generator, with earphones serving as acoustic couplers. (For now, I’ve skipped numbers containing a ‘1′. The number 1 only represents itself, and thus its value is quite low.) It then tries port 80 on its WAN IP every 100 attempts to see if a passnumber has succeeded. The shellscript is accessible here: http://simula.gunkies.org/~toresbe/dtmfbruteforce.bash.

The phone adapter has two lines, but the second one is locked by Phonzo – however, it is not possible to disable the IVR menu on this thing, so I have full use of the box while this is happening. (It nearly goes without saying that I’ve spoofed the DNS so it connects to my Asterisk box. )

I’m now averaging about one passkey per second. According to my calculations of each passkey representing the number of symbols per digit raised to the power of the number of digits, I am trying 16807 passwords per second – and will be trying 117649 passwords per second when I get to six digits. I have a quite technical readership so please do correct me in the comments if I’ve made an error in either the calculations or anywhere else. If there are any Phonzo users out there with an SPA2102, I would very much appreciate it if you contacted me — brute force works a whole lot better when it’s parallelized.

I am currently at #302362. I have not yet been contacted by anyone in the same situation.

In the news on the Iranian revolt, I keep reading about the Supreme Leader.

…but what does Diana Ross have to with any of this?

I’m a social democrat/democratic socialist, and I’m baffled by the health care system in the United States. I thought I’d jot down/brain dump my main arguments for public health care:

Everyone needs health care, but nobody seeks it out

Health care is a necessity in unpleasant circumstances. When you break your leg, you need health care. Very few people break their legs intentionally to stay at a nice hospital. Therefore, it is not a resource likely to be wasted once people are given free access to it. Given that everyone needs it when they need it and don’t when they don’t, paying it via the state budget is unlikely to cause waste.

Hospitals become badly run when run for profit

I think the point of motivation from the objective self-interest is overstated and harmfully over-emphasized, but the point bears making. For-profit hospitals are run… for profit. Fancy that. A for-profit institution has an interest in your using their services as much as possible, at the expense of who-ever is paying the bill, be it your health insurance, or your fifth mortgage. A public institution wants to get you out of the system as soon as possible – by curing you. So the self-interest of the patient aligns much better with a public hospital.

Although a certain measure of inefficiency is added when run by a governmental organization, I believe the inefficiency induced by the hospital’s profit motive is probably much greater, perhaps more so in countries without a “corporate culture” in the government that seems to accept ineptitude. “Close enough for government work” is *not* a phrase used in Norway – for a reason.

(Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that the most efficently-run hospital in the United States is the government-run Veteran’s Aid.)

Denying health care to people who need it is not nice

The justification that a system “has to be that way for the greater good” is dangerous and bad and wrong. People needing health care should have it under all circumstances, and I consider it a matter of elementary respect for the dignity of human life that health care should be a right of citizenship. What kind of society measures the worth of a human being by the size of their wallet?

Healthy people are more productive

If you’re the bean-counter sort, this point may appeal to you. I don’t think it very relevant, but it seems quite plausible. The societal cost of people calling in sick is probably greater than any potential cost in efficiency from nationalization.

One point specific to the US:

The current implementation in the US is, AFAICT, deeply flawed and needs Change (WCBI) anyway.

The US health care system is insanely flawed. It needs to change anyway – why not do so with a bang rather than a whimper. I think that the Democratic resurgency has given the party a mandate for quite a lot of bang. When a president wins on a single word, “change”, then… go change things.

Got any more points? Disagree? I’d love a conversation in the comments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXE is the best Wikipedia article I have seen for a long, long time.

Cute meme du jour:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Well, OK. Page 56, fifth sentence: 

“The functions of other software interrupt service routines are quite variable; The I/O postprocessing interrupt service routine has a specific function to perform but is data-driven by the I/O request packets (IRPs) in its work queue.”

I know at least one of the slightly more than one people (I count too, right?) who read my blog (Hi, Ian!) might well realize what book this came from: VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures, by Ruth Goldenberg and Lawrence Kenah.

Yes, the book really was the closest to me – I have an overdesk shelf, and it was the furthest out. The book, by the way, is a fascinating read; I don’t know of any other book that lays out the design of an entire OS kernel in the really quite elegant way that this book does. I got mine signed by Ruth, too, which is pretty damn cool.

One highlight of this book are the quotes at the beginning of each chapter – sometimes funny, sometimes profound, frequently both. I decided to list those from the first part here, for the enjoyment of both my readers. 

For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate.

 - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“By indirections find directions out.”

- Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2, i

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine.

William Wordsworth, She Was A Phantom Of Delight

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

What you want, what you’re hanging around in the world

waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

Robert Frost

“Time,” said George, “why I can give you a definition of time. It’s what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Ray Cummings, The Man Who Mastered Time

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Abraham Lincoln, Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864

‘Tis in my memory lock’d

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1, iii

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, 

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

John Donne, The Sun Rising

It is equally bad when one speeds on the guest unwilling to go, and when he holds back one who is hastening. Rather one should befriend the guest who is there, but speed him when he wishes.

Homer, The Oddysey

I was alone and unable to comunicate with anyone. I did not know the names of anything. I did not even know things had names. Then one day, after she had tried a number of approaches, my teacher held my hand under the water pump on our farm. As the cool water ran over my hand and arm, she spelled the word water in my other hand. She spelled it over and over, and suddenly I knew there was a name for things and that I would never be completely alone again. 

Helen Keller

Dear majority of the United States of America,

Yes you could. You rock. 

The gravity of this event is difficult to describe. I’m at the official Oslo election wake. Watching elderly, dignified men in suits silently weep is a rare sight.

Significantly more love than previously,

Tore Sinding Bekkedal

Dear United States of America,

Please don’t fuck this up for everyone.

With loving regards,

Tore Sinding Bekkedal

UPDATE: This is fake, just so you know! Thanks, Arnt. Still funny, but not written by Heart, even though I wish it were. Now, wouldn’t ya, ba-ra-cu-daa-ah!

Due to Sarah Palin’s nickname, the Republican National Convention has been playing the tune “Barracuda” by a group named Heart.

Being very much not a child of the 1970s, I’d never heard of Heart. But after reading this hilarious letter, I took a listen, and it’s pretty good music. I think this fantastic letter is as good a reason as any to buy their album…