Free Kevin

I saw a picture that had the words "Free Kevin" on it, and at first I didn't get it.

Then it hit me. "Duh, stupid. Kevin Mitnick."

"Who's Kevin Mitnick?"

To that I can only say...WHAT?!?!

Kevin David Mitnick is only the freaking God of the Internet (or should I say "phreaking?"). He pioneered modern day hacking and became so adept at the manipulation of electronics and people that he coined the term "social engineering."

Now, all of us good little kids know that he was largely innocent of the crap they claimed he did. The government, at one point, held him in solitary confinement prior to trial and without a bail hearing for four and a half years claiming that he could 'start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone.'

If you don't know about Mr. Mitnick, you should look him up. Most of the stuff on the net is outdated, so I'll save you the trouble of trying to find post 1995/2000 stuff and tell you that his probation expired in January of 2001 and he has gone on to write two books: The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion. Intrusion, though written more recently, is already out of print, and even the printed copies do not have the opening chapter. The banned chapter can be found here.

There's also a movie about him, but it's all bullshit. Out of curiosity I watched it anyway, and it's definitely far too dramatized. If you're wanting to know, it's called Takedown. I don't encourage paying to see it, if you know what I mean.

I also placed an order for Reise, Reise by Rammstein. It's their new album, which won't be released until mid-November. I'll deal though. Since the album and Deception are shipping together I'll have time to finish the book I'm reading before Mitnick's gets here. I'm on a waiting list for Intrusion...undoubtedly it'll be a long wait considering the demand for it and that it's out of print. There are only three people in front of me now though, so that's good.

I don't usually say this sort of thing, but I've gotta use the snowboarder lingo here, 'cause I'm like, totally amped, bro. I'll flip when that parcel comes.

Mitnick and Rammstein goodness. I won't know what to do first...I'll probably have to put the album on repeat while I read the book and hope I don't have a joy-overload.

As a side note, there's this lovely "Next Blog" button at the top right of the page that takes you to a random blog. Sometimes I hit it just to see how terrible America's youth has become. The very first journal written in English (if you'd call it that) started out as follows:

"i had my english paper 1 and 2 today.. it was real horrible! hope that i pass.. "

Something tells me she shouldn't be too optimistic. She didn't capitalize proper pronouns, proper nouns, pluralize, didn't spell out single digit numbers, made an improper anticedent reference, misspelled an adjective, and used double punctuation (not including the malformed ellipse).

IN THE FIRST LINE.

God, I can't stand stupid people. No wonder I wasn't that into girls as a teenager.