Crimes against music
How do Journey's crimes against music compare to those of, say, Justin Bieber?
E.g. the damage caused by 1 x Bieber.CAM could equal 1000 x Journey.CAM
Maybe this could be the start of a whole new El Reg unit of measurement!
An entire block was shut down around the Duke Energy building in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday after mail room staff reported "a small manila envelope handwritten and addressed from out of state" to police. The workers were right to be concerned. Further investigation by a bomb squad revealed the package to …
Shockingly, I totally agree with @DJV. Worse still, I actually quite like what little of their stuff managed to impinge on my consciousness.
(Icon reflects the total lack of real relevance to IT for this article. That the tape is reported as being a DAT doesn't really get it over the IT hurdle IMHO. That said, the article was welcome light relief from a tedious code review I've been trying to finish for the last 2 days.)
"total lack of real relevance to IT for this article. "
Mr/s what?, may I introduce you to Bootnotes?
Bootnotes covers all journalistic sins. Even the crime of linking to a Journey tune ... although that's pushing it a trifle. Remember, ElReg is a RedTop, they have to publish this kind of thing once in a while or they get kicked out of the guild. Besides, all work and no play makes a dull vulture.
The IT angle is that if you were around at the beginning of the UK home computer revolution in the early 1980s, the humble audio cassette most probably was the medium you would have had to use for data storage.
Hmmmm ..... I suppose that makes me officially Old.
Hmm, not a bad thought. Maybe the tape didn't actually contain the works of Journey, but rather a C64 copy of Leisure Suit Larry, complete with virus? I hear the recipient was a power company, prime target for hacking. Maybe somebody wanted to prove that hacking can be done without the internet... if the recipient owns a Datasette, that is...
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
this is a jazzy progressive rock album which focuses mainly on the band's instrumental talents
I once bought some of their later albums (having heard their first one).
I was not a happy progster.
(CP: Kaipa - Notes from the past (part two) - which seems somehow appropriate)
Probably explains why we don't have music today
Although music can still be found clinging to the nooks and crannies, resisting being washed away by the tides of audio vomit coming from the commercial music world..
(Going to see "Spock's Beard" and "The Flower Kings" in December - at the same venue. On the same evening! Yay!)
Remember: Home taping kills music
Probably explains why we don't have music today
My god you're right. We killed music. Now the only music we get is produced by those TV appeals aired on a Saturday night where they use phone in donations to bully halfwits into singing for our amusement.
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Back in the early 70's when I was doing my BA, someone reported a "strange package" left near one of the campus buildings. Our security folks responded and took the package to the student health center where it was X-rayed. They saw a couple of cylindrical objects and what looked like a bunch of wires. Scary!
The quad was cleared, the package placed in the center. They tied a rope around it and, from a safe distance, jerked the rope hard. The package fell apart. The janitor was annoyed that his lunch - two egg rolls and some chow mien - would up on the quad lawn.
Given that there were over a dozen IEDs mailed to various democrats only a week ago, it is probably fresh in the minds of anyone who is tasked with opening the mail. Duke Energy may not be owned by a democrat, but they certainly have their enemies. One thing we know is that sending something bad through the mail which achieves a lot of attention is likely to attract copycats, who may have a different target list.
Besides, even if you X-rayed it and looked like a cassette you'd probably think "its gotta be a decoy, who would mail a cassette to Duke Energy in 2018"?
When I was in the armed forces (civilian division, and therefor unarmed), we were waiting for our new plastic ID cards to arrive. One morning, a large brown paper parcel arrived at Bentley Priory (HQ), but as it had no sender's information on it, the Bomb Squad were called. They cleared the car park and placed the parcel in the centre, and proceeded to blow it up with a small "controlled explosion". The whole car park was covered with thousands of badly scorched and distorted ID cards. Needless to say, we had to wait for a complete set of replacements.
I read a story in the Fortean Times a very long time ago, when bombing was a thing in the UK, about a 'mystery' package that had been found outside an Army Recruiting Centre (iirc) by the key-holder when they arrived in the morning to open the aforesaid centre. The Bomb Squad were called in to 'deal' with it whereupon the small controlled explosion they used revealed that the package was a stack of hand-out leaflets warning people about 'mystery' packages.
> I'd guess that most cars on the road have a tape player.
The article says it was a DAT tape. Car tape players play normal tapes, not DAT tapes. DAT has a different physical form factor and stores the music digitally - it's a Digital Audio Tape.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
I wouldn't bet much on that. My car was built 20 years ago and while admittedly it did come with a tape player 20 years ago pretty much the first thing I did with the car was to rip the tape player out and substitute it with a modern 2din touchscreen radio/mp3/cd/dvd/satnav android device which gives the same functionality as people buy new cars for.
Not any cars made this century. I'd be surprised to even see a CD player in anything made in the last couple of years.
My current car, and pretty much all previous ones (at least ones that still had original factory installed audio) have all been equipped with radio/cassette.And in some cases also with cd-changer. Even with factory sat-nav and tv (analogue). Now if I could only find any of the old cassettes I used to have, but some things as best forgotten I think. Yes, current and several previous have been made this century.
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There's a whole vintage and retro thing that's making cassettes desirable among people in the late teens / early 20s. Recently played a gig where the millenials in the support band were very proud of their four track cassete deck (some ancient Portastudio thingy). Chatted to them about it, and found out that reel to reel machines are even more desirable. Time to dust off my trusty Revox B77...
The actions of the authorities seems troubling... They're called to a potential bomb scene. Pick up the "bomb" and take to be x-rayed. Look at the x-ray. Take "bomb" to open field. Tie rope to "bomb" and give it a good pull.
Seems weird this day and age. Seems more likely they'd check in situ and determine if it can be moved.
I doubt the article gave an exact description. They can check for RF emissions or bomb residue with meters and dogs, if neither of those hit they're probably safe from bombs and just do the Xray/tug test as a matter of procedure in case it is something else like anthrax (not Anthrax, only a truly sadistic terrorist would send one of their cassettes through the mail)
What does a cassette mass? What is the energy density of TNT? A package containing a cassette (analog or DAT) is not going to mass enough to be an explosive of much strength. There would also be some of that mass that would be needed to trigger any sort of explosion which leaves even less margin for an energetic material. An easy check on whether it would be a concern or not would be to contact the person that it was addressed to and see if they were expecting a package.
That the package had a handwritten label is also something that should point to a non-terrorist package. The recent fake bombs were sent with machine printed labels. If the most damaged crazies know that hand writing the info should be avoided, it's unlikely that a hand addressed package is of much concern.
Could the package have contained a poison/toxin/biohazard? Yep and a very small charge could disperse it over a whole office PDQ. At some point paranoia and trying to guard against every sort of bad thing that could happen can only lead to suicide. Somebody could break into your house and spray a teflon infused oil in your shower so you slip and injure yourself. Does this mean that you should check all your bathroom surfaces carefully every day just in case?
... as I was reading this article, The Ace Of Cups was live in the news room for Channel 7 here in the Bay Area.