Pandora online music

Music, on of the things I learned to love actually just a since a couple of months. This might sound strange but it is true. I listened to music, I have listened to gabber music back in school, I have listened to rock and hard rock somewhere more down the line but in all that time I was just listening. I could not state that I was found of a particular kind of music. I just liked a certain kind of music during some time and besides that I listened to everything that was playing on the radio. However since a couple of months I have discovered the Pandora website where you can listen to music you like for free the entire day.

As a developer you tend to like to lock out the rest of the world and be with the code you are working on. This can be hard if you are in an environment where there is a lot of background noise. A headphone is one of the basic things you will need than. During some time I was transporting CD’s and MP3’s from home to my work however this was becoming some boring due to the fact that my collection was not that big.

Pandora was the solution and also brought a new problem to be solved. The principle of Pandora is that you add some bands or songs you like and that the system will provide you with music that equals this kind of music. You can tell per song if you like it or not and the system will adapt to your personal taste. The problem I was facing was that I did not know what kind of music I did like. I started out with putting in some bands I already had in my MP3 collection. Using the system now for a couple of months it turns out that I am listening to bands I never heard about but who I really like.

The intention of Pandora is that people can listen to music they like and Pandora will advise you on some possible new bands in the hope you will start buying the CD’s. I have to say that this tactic is working really well. I have not bought a single CD for years but now I am starting to buy CD’s again. Even do I am still searching for a good online store where I can buy CD’s for a reasonable price this is bringing me back to legitimately buy music.

I have seen other options to listen to music online for free or a small price, think iTunes, but until now I think I will stick to the Pandora solution.

Comcast technician

“A Comcast technician came over to a man’s house to repair a faulty cable modem (one of two) after missing three appointments. The tech ten spent an hour on hold with Comcast’s central office and then fell asleep on the guy’s couch. Is there any more perfect scenario to highlight the unprofessionalism of both the repair guy and the central office?”

This was what I could read on a website I found after listening to the ‘bits of silicon hell’ podcast. A video of a guy sleeping on a couch is not that interesting however,…. if this happens to be a guy repairing your cable modem you don’t want him to get comfortable on your couch. Luckily the owner of the couch got out his video camera and posted it on the internet. A downside of this story is that the Comcast guy now lost his job after the video came to the attention of Comcast management.

I have been reading some things on Comcast service and other cable internet providers and in most cases the service is terrible. I have a other story… a little side note,… most of the stories I have been reading where from cable internet customers in the US maybe the service in The Netherlands is just better or I have been one lucky guy.

A couple of months ago I moved into my new apartment to be joined by Krista a couple of months later. Being without a internet connection is something I can not stand so I signed up for cable internet, have a television signal and a phone number in a single package with the internet made it all more comfortable. The moment I signed up I received a video signal on my television.

A couple of days later I was notified that a repair guy would come over to my house to install somewhere around noon. A quick call to there customer helpdesk was all it took to make sure the guy would come in the evening instead of somewhere around noon. That evening I received a call from the repair guy on my cell. He happened to be in the area and had a spare half hour and asked me if I was already at home and if it was convenient to me if he came over a hour earlier to install my new cable modem.

The new apartment is in an area where they where still building a lot of new apartment complexes and it just happened to be one of those days. During construction work a contractor had hit the main cable and put an internet and television blackout to the area.

I told this to the repair guy and he answered he already knew and that a repair crew was on his way to solve the problem. A couple of minutes later he arrived and installed the cable modem. He left me his mobile phone number so I could call him if anything turned out to be wrong after the cable was repaired. He happened to be in this area a lot the upcoming days so if I hade some problems all it would take was a call to him directly so he could come by and solve the problem. a hour later the repair crew repaired the cable and I turned on my cable modem for the first time. I was so happily surprised that all worked without any problem, we did not yet test anything but it just happened to work the first time and if this should not have been the case I could have called a repair guy driving around in my area to solve the problem within a hour. And that is what I call service.

I knew it all along,…

I knew it all along,… I have posted it in the discussion on homelandstupidity.us the guys from 2600 are after the number stations on the internet thing. Well let me rephrase this a little, they are behind number station four. Members of 2600 do not do the first number stations or at least they are not admitting it. However, I would still not be surprised if they also have done these.

There are however a couple of things to say for them that they are not behind the other number stations. The number station they created was from a other sound quality, there was missing some pattern missing that is just recently discovered in the other messages. All those things can make this number station different from the others. This could indeed indicate that the only number station created by a member of 2600 is indeed number station four.

During the ’Off The Hook’ show one of the co-hosts admitted that he had created this one and that the one that would solve it should get free tickets to there upcoming conference. ‘Lose the five’ this was the hint that he was willing to give away.

My little root dance.

Most likely people reading this weblog are interested by IT and technology in a whole. Some of them might be able to understand the following thing I have to say: “After eight hours of hacking code I was able to do my little root dance.” Some people reading this weblog will not have the faintest clue on what this means, some of you might be able to extract from it that I was hacking for eight hours strait, and some of you might think I could do the root dance because I became root.

Maybe some of you might be able to extract the correct meaning of the words.

I have been programming for eight hours without a break and have been able to tackle the problem I was working on. That is what this means. After I finished the hack and did the dance I was on the phone with a old co-worker from one of the non-it companies I worked for in the past to invite him for a couple of drinks. During the phone conversation I used the exact same words and he was unable to understand the correct meaning at first and I had to explain it to him.

I cannot blame him, there are some very common misunderstandings on the words hacker and hack. Most people refer to a person breaking into a computer network as a hacker and therefore a hacker becomes synonym for people gaining unauthorized access to computer networks and computers. A hack is then referring to the action of getting this access. However this is not the origin of the word, a computer hacker is someone who masters the computer in such a way that he is able to make the computer do exactly what the hacker wants.

A hack is a way of letting the computer do things the hacker wants is to do, and not even a computer is needed. You can hack a telephone but even a microwave or any other sort of equipment. Hacking code is a smart way of writing computer code and programming code in such a way that it will do exactly what you want it to do.

The word hacker has become a acronym for people conducting criminal activities with computers, the word hacker means someone who masters the art of using a computer not misusing it. Hackers are the people with the brightest minds, hackers are the people having the high paid jobs at large computer firms or doing very important work in the opensource community and devoting there lives to it.

Naming someone a hacker is parsing someone as a master in the art of using a computer and the person you name like this will most likely be pleased that you think of him as a hacker. However if you would like to describe a person conducting criminal acts on computer networks please consider if this person is a hacker or not, most likely he is not and he is only using scripts that are developed by hackers. In this case we do not speak of hacker but we speak of a ‘script-kiddy’ .

Now if I ever refer again to doing a root dance after a couple of hours straight code hacking I hope all of you will understand the correct meaning of it directly.

Finally a new laptop.

Finally received my new company laptop this afternoon. Finally,… I can still not understand that this can take such a long time in a company the size I work for or maybe that is the problem. Bureaucracy is maybe the root cause that those things go slow in a company like this. However bureaucracy was only on delivery time concerning the laptop, during a conversation I mentioned that I was in need of a new laptop and the papers where to request one where filled in minutes. My request to keep my old computer was not a problem and the requests to completely install and configure my new laptop were granted without any problem.

I came with a standard windows 2000 installation with MS office, MS Visio and MS projects and that was it, just as I requested. As many of you in tech know a workstation is somewhat personal, it will be your main tool even do you might be working directly on servers your workstation will be your starting point containing all the tools you have acquired during time and all scripts you have developed. It will take time and tact to install it all in a way that it can be used without any problem.

Especially as you are using a local development environment you like to setup this yourself. So I have spend most of the afternoon installing and configuring all sorts of developer suites and tools and shifting script libraries onto my new laptop. I will keep my old workstation as a backup for a couple of days but the planning is to change this into my second Linux workstation. I already run one Debian Linux distribution a second will be added in a couple of days… Finally!!

Lego and Microsoft

We all know Lego, most of us have played with Lego in there younger years and spend most likely hours and hours constructing new idea's. As a matter of fact most of us, that will say people in tech, have never overgrown this age. Now we are playing with software blocks and putting them together to construct programs. However, not all of us tech people have left Lego behind… Some of us are still using it on a daily basis especially when Lego developed the robotic kit giving us the bricks and pieces and the software environment to develop robots quickly and easily.

Now Lego is taking the robotic kit to a next level with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT. We already knew this is becoming a big hit in robot land not in the last place due to the way the new kit is put together. With the help of a group of 'top' enthusiasts, a good article about it was printed in wired magazine, 'Geeks in Toyland'.

Now Microsoft is stepping into the ride of robotics as Microsoft recently announced the launch of their new Microsoft Robotics Group and the first product release, a software program to help robotics developers. Using the new Microsoft Robotics Studio you will be able to develop intelligent robots.

"Microsoft, together with the upcoming LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT, will help further amplify the impact of robotics," said Søren Lund, director of LEGO MINDSTORMS at the LEGO Group. "The MINDSTORMS robotics toolset has enjoyed a strong community of users since 1998, and the launch of our next-generation platform includes many built-in features that further the community's ability to take MINDSTORMS programming out of the box. In combination with Microsoft Robotics Studio, PC users will have a sophisticated tool that will further extend the powerful NXT hardware and software to an even wider range of developers who wish to create advanced applications for their LEGO robots."

speed records

A couple of news articles popped up during the past couple of days about new processors and speed records. It looks like faster times are ahead of us.

Riken() has developed a supercomputer that it says achieves maximum theoretical performance of 1 petaflops (1,000 teraflops). Though the special-purpose machine does not run Linpack, the benchmark software used for the Top 500 supercomputer ranking, its theoretical performance is nearly three times that of the top-ranked BlueGene/L installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Intel K.K. (Intel Corp.'s Japanese unit) and NEC subsidiary SGI Japan Ltd. collaborated with Riken on development of the system, which was designed as a dedicated machine for molecular dynamics simulation. The supercomputer is installed at Riken's Yokohama Institute, and Riken plans to show it off at an open house scheduled for Saturday (June 24).

IBM Corp. and the Georgia Institute of Technology Tuesday claimed they have broken the silicon speed record, thanks in part to a "frozen chip."

IBM and Georgia Tech claimed that they have demonstrated the first silicon-based chip capable of operating at frequencies above 500 GHz by cryogenically "freezing" the circuit to minus 451 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 Kelvins).

By comparison, 500 GHz is more than 250 times faster than today's cell phones, which typically operate at approximately 2 GHz, according to the organizations.

A nice day.

I have to face it and I have to admit it..... I am a computer person. I am addicted to my computer,.... most of the times I come home and my girlfriend is not there the first thing I do is booting my private laptop. I open the door and walk directly into the ‘home office’ I share with my girlfriend. The server is always up and running so I only have to boot my laptop. Take of my jacket and start working, playing, surfing or what ever. In the previous posting I mentioned that at this moment it is beautiful weather, I spend some hours outside walking the scenery of the city we moved to a couple of months back, the city of Amersfoort a nice old city close to the bigger city Utrecht. We did not hade the time to discover it very well so I thought I spend some time walking the scenery. Walking here the only thing I could think of was that I should take some pictures to update the weblog. And so I did.

I like to show you some of the pictures so you can get an impression of where I live and from where this weblog is updated. You have to remember these pictures have been taken in the city center and we live just outside the city center, a five minute walk the most but the area we live in contains mostly buildings build last year so we do not own one of the old residences.

As you can see the weblog is updated directly, the weather is till perfect so I took my laptop outside and wrote this update from the garden using my WiFi network to stay connected to the internet. This is the first time I use the WiFi network outside the house and I have to say this is something that will be repeated the future.

Cipher tests

The strange strings of numbers that can be found when you dialed a number posted on Craigslist still remains a mystery to the entire 'geek' community. The suggestion that is could be a Blinkenlights project turned out to be incorrect, or at least not very promising to be correct so we stopped trying to apply this on the Blinkenlights project.

Currently the weather is so nice I do not want to spend to much time on updating this weblog so I want to post something I already posted on the homelandstupidity website.

I have tested and checked a couple of different ciphers to see how a key would look like. I encrypted the same text with every cipher. The clear text read: ‘This is a normal text encrypted with the secom cipher to show the people on the website what can be done using this cipher’ I have to thank Dirk Rijmenant for the valubale information and tools on his website

Please see the findings below:

————————————————————–
ADFGVX cipher:
“The ADFGVX cipher was the most important German Field cipher, used during World War I. It combines the fractioning of a Polybius Square with a single Columnar Transposition. Although this combination provided a powerfull encryption, Georges Painvin, a brilliant Frensh codebreaker, succeeded in breaking the German cipher. The letters ADFGVX were chosen because they were well distinguist in morse code.”

Square Key: IneversawsunlightBur
Columnar Key: ruBthgilnuswasrevenI

Encrypted message:
DFDXD XGDAF FDXFF FFDXA FGAXG ADFFG AFXFA GAADA AADGG GGGFD
AFXAA AFFAD DFFDD XADAG AFGAV AXGXD XXDAD GFGFA AAAFA DFDAD
GFADX FAFFV DFXFA AGFAA AVFFD AAADX GGXXA GDXFX VADDA FAGGF
VGGGX VAAXX AXDXF GVGAG GGXGV XXAXA FGXAA GFDDG VFAAG FDD
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
Caesar Shift cipher:
The Caesar Shift cipher, also called ROT cipher, is a simple substitution cipher. It was used by Julius Caesar the encrypt messages to his commanders in the field.

Shift key: I

Encrypted message:
BPQAQ AIVWZ UITBM FBMVK ZGXBM LEQBP BPMAM KWUKQ XPMZB WAPWE
BPMXM WXTMW VBPME MJAQB MEPIB KIVJM LWVMC AQVOB PQAKQ XPMZ
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
columnar transposition cipher:
To perform a single columnar transposition we write out the key as column header. The key is numbered in alphabetical order. If two letters of the key are the same, the first in the key gets the lowest number.

Columnar Key: IneversawsunlightBur

Encrypted message:
NIHSN EMLNE IPEHN IETWU EEETI XCOCP TRPND TSPAC LEEHS HYHTO
AHHWI SDOES CIOEA WSBIR HWTTT OPAHM TTEHN CEBRS TREEO TOIG
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
Double Columnar Transposition:
A variant of the Single Columnar Transposition is the Double Columnar Transposition, where two columnar transpositions with two different keys is performed on the plain text. The Double Columnar Transposition was one of the strongest field ciphers, commonly used in Worl War II. If the key was used only for a limited number of messages, it provided a very high security.

1st Columnar Key: IneversawsunlightBur
2nd Columnar Key: ruBthgilnuswasrevenI

Encrypted message:
EPHTE HEEOE ITSOT TPOAI EXHWC NISAN MCYSE UCSML OHBBN CTIRW
AEHGN ELCTN DITOI TAHTH NWTES THEHI EEITE PORSE SDPOP RHWR
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
Playfair:
Playfair is a digraph cipher, invented in 1854 by Sir Charles Wheatstone. We encrypt the text in groups of two letters.

Playfare key: IneversawsunlightBur

Encrypted message:
BTSGS GHAZL FUWCW EKWRH VZXGI KSEBT BTIWR TDOGR QGVIC KAGKL
BTIXR KZSRK EHTNT WGUEG WTFHB GHATV FDEVL ANEHB GNLGS ITNEZ
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
Straddling CheckerBoard:
The Straddling CheckerBoard is a fractionating cipher. It breaks the letters into seperate parts by an X and Y value. This priciple is also used on the Bifid and Trifid cipher. The advantage of the Straddling Checkerboard is the way of distributing the parts. The commonly used letters have only one value, the other letters two value. This improves the resistance to letter frequency analyse. This cipher is often combined with a transposition cipher to make it stronger.

CheckerBoard Key: IneversawsunlightBur

Encrypted message:
52601 78017 84783 98284 20785 67657 86325 87774 56227 87305
26785 26678 16259 28782 50742 66878 59781 26973 78526 67874
69742 06789 37852 66787 36241 05678 73264 57825 43782 46782
29367 87210 32378 52601 78250 74266 8
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
straddling checkerboard with double columnar:
The most powerfull pencil-and-paper ciphers are those who combine fractionation and transposition. In this example we encrypt with a straddling checkerboard, followed by a double columnar transposition. To decrypt the message we reverse the encryption sequence. A variant of this methode is the famouse VIC-cipher from the Russian Spy Reino Hayhanen. It resisted all cryptanalysis attemps and remained unbroken until the defection of Hayhanen in ‘57.

CheckerBoard Key: IneversawsunlightBur
1st Columnar Key: IneversawsunlightBur
2nd Columnar Key: ruBthgilnuswasrevenI

Encrypted message:
82856 89213 74328 67688 27851 78251 53677 87792 60682 92086
25486 38890 28572 62876 88712 49472 86562 65754 65589 86770
26337 77207 25307 28079 66242 38817 76487 57778 02670 62242
68612 76534 57423 57708 77615 64837 7
————————————————————–

————————————————————–
Vigenère cipher:
The Vigenère cipher, invented by Giovanni Batista Belaso, is a poly- alphabetic substitution cipher. It remained unbroken for twohundred years, until Charles Babbage in 1854 found a way to retrieving the key lenght and performed multilple letter-frequency analysis on the code text. Even today, many novice crypto programmers write, without knowing, variations on the Vigenére cipher, not realizing they can all be broken with cryptanalysis, based on Babbage’s methode.

Vigenère key: IneversawsunlightBur

Encrypted message:
BUMNM JSNKJ GNWBK EMFHT ZLTOI UOIPZ NUPAK JHNWZ XUIMX FKHKO
NUPXK VIMYF VGLZA VTSEL YJSIZ JTOVV LBRZY JANCL BVDKO WAFL
————————————————————–

Looking at the results let me believe that non of the ciphers will be able to decode the pure message. It could however be that when we alter the original message with some algorithm that one of the ciphers might be able to decode the message.

If it is not changed in characters we might have a shot with the secom cipher, straddling checkerboard with double columnar chipher or Straddling CheckerBoard cipher. However we do not know if we possibly have to change the numbers into characters. I do however have the feeling that this might be the case and that they have to be translated using a book cipher of some sort as we can see a pattern which possibly indicates we can translate it to 3 number groups instead of 5 number groups.

VIC cipher?

Still interested in the spy number mystery. A third message appeared and again there was a phone number mentioned and a new number message could be heard. However this message was somewhat different from the rest:


> Mein Fraulein,
> I hear the weather in the South is good this time of year. Won’t you call me?
> ///678///248///2352///



The tone in this message is somewhat different, as also mentioned by Emmanuel Goldstein during the ‘Off The Hook’ show. It could be this is a message not made by the original creator of the messages surfaced earlier but on thing gives me the idea this is done by the same person(s). The group Numbers:

Group 415 (4 + 1 = 5)
Group 617 (6 + 1 = 7)
--------------------------
Group 134 (1 + 3 = 4)

Group 134 is following this patron. It could be that if the message is not created by the original creator this is just (A) a coincidence or (B) the second person also noticed this and created a group number that was following the patron of the previous group numbers. Speculations speculations…..

A letter send by one of the listeners of the ‘Off The Hook’ show mentioned it reminded him of the VIC cipher; the VIC cipher is a straddling bipartite monoalphabetic substitution superenciphered by modified double transposition cipher. At least that is what the CIA named in the trial of Colonel Rudolf Abel in 1957.

The VIC cipher was a pencil and paper cipher used by the Soviet spy Reino Hayhanen, codenamed "VICTOR".

It was arguably the most complex hand-operated cipher ever seen. Although certainly not as complex or secure as modern computer operated stream ciphers or block ciphers, in practice messages protected by it resisted all attempts at cryptanalysis by at least NSA (and perhaps other organizations such as GCHQ) from its discovery in 1953 until Hayhanen's defection in 1957.

The VIC cipher has several components, including mod 10 chain addition (a recursive formula used to generate a sequence of pseudorandom digits), a straddling checkerboard, and a disrupted double transposition. Until the discovery of VIC, it was generally thought that a double transposition alone was the most complex cipher an agent, as a practical matter, could use as a field cipher.

What is on the band?

I am still fascinated by the strange ‘spy numbers’ I reported about in this weblog. I just went to the homelandstupidity.us website which is running separate articles about the numbers, there is on for the 212-796-0735 number and an other one for the 415-704-0402 number. Still a lot of people are trying to break the code/cipher/key and there is still not a single clue pointing in the right direction. Well actually this not completely accurate, there might be some postings there that are on the right track but as long as we do not have the final conclusion we do not have the faintest idea if someone is tying to solve this mystery in the right way.

As you can see the frequency of postings to those pages is getting down which makes me think people are loosing interest about this as it becomes clear that breaking codes is not as easily as they might have thought. In a previous posting I mentioned that it might be wise to send a e-mail to Bruce Schneier to get his opinion about this. Well it is still my intention and I will send him a mail later this day. To get more people to focus on this I also will send a mail to the people of 'bits of silicon hell' one of my personal favorite podcasts. They are always happy to spend some broadcasting time about strange subjects so it might be that they find this interesting enough to give it some thought and attract some more people to spend some time to this subject.

The 'off the hook' radio show also spend again some air-time to this subject and it was discussed based on a letter from a listener claiming he figured out that this was all a hoax setup by 2600 to promote there hope number six conference . This could be, even do it was denied during the show. Some of the things mentioned in the letter send to ‘off the hook’ where indeed convincing and pointed out to this conclusion. If this would be the case we will find out very soon as hope is starting at 21 July. However I do still have the feeling this has nothing to do with ‘hope number six’.

While on the subject of strange and long number (and letter) strings we can not avoid digging some more into the subject of number stations on the shortwave band. For most of the internet community the phone number mystery is there first encounter with this phenomenon. For shortwave fanatic’s number stations are already common for years and years. Starting during the cold war number stations start to popup and broadcasted strange messages. Even do in most cases denied by the governments some of the stations are identified.

Although it is time-consuming and may require expensive travel to pinpoint the source of a radio transmission in the shortwave band, errors at the transmission site, radio direction-finding, and a knowledge of shortwave radio propagation have provided clues to some number station locations.

For example, the "Atención" station was originally presumed to be from Cuba, as a supposed error allowed Radio Habana Cuba to be carried on the frequency. Whether the frequency of Radio Habana Cuba and the frequency of the "Atención" station merely interfered with each other or whether the operator of the station was listening to the radio and it accidentally ended up on the air is unclear. (Circa 2000-2001, Atención was officially identified as Cuban by the USA.)

Also, a radio magazine article published during the 1980-'90s, described hobbyists using portable radio direction-finding equipment to locate a numbers station in From the outside, they spotted the station's antenna inside a military facility. The station hunter speculated that the antenna's transmitter at the facility was connected by a telephone wire pair to a source of spoken numbers in the Washington, DC area. The author said the Federal Communications Commission would not comment on public inquiries about USA territory numbers stations.

The Lincolnshire Poacher station was identified to be broadcasting from the RAF air force base Akrotiri on Cyprus by Cypriot radio amateurs, and reporter George Georgiou. Some pictures are available online.

When wondering around on the shortwave band a lot of strange stations can popup not number station fanatics not only track number stations but also for example UZB76, a 4625 kHz AM mode radio station in the Moscow area transmitting a buzzing sound around the clock except for minute 59 when it is broadcasting a repeating high-low tone. On a very rare occasion it is transmitting voices transmitting:

"Ya UZB76. Ya UZB76. I am UZB76 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14 Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Leonid 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4"

The meaning of this station is still unknown, some shortwave fanatics think it could be time synchronization system to keep Russian launch facilities synchronized, others think it is to keep open the frequency that can be used for emergencies like a upcoming nuclear conflict to communicate with other states if all means of other communication have failed. Some suggest is nothing more than a benchmark radio beacon to benchmark reception for other communication systems.

As you can see the entire band is filled with strange and unknown broadcastings and it is all out there available to grab for every person in possession of the right equipment that you can acquire in every specialized radio equipment store.

Are the Dutch listening?

And we are still on the topic of the strange spy number, still the Internet community, or at least a part of the Internet community is still interested in those 2 messages that appeared online and where referring to phone numbers which 'broadcasted' strings of strange numbers. Still people are trying to find a way to decipher those messages.

The messages appeared both on Craigslist and were both for 'Mein Fraulein'. As we are still hitting a wall and are unable to decipher the text I am thinking about sending a mail to Bruce Schneier to ask him if his is interested in checking some things on this subject.

Meanwhile it starts to remind me of the days I was more into these kinds of things. A couple of years ago I was starting to get interested in ways of communication used by intelligence agencies around the world and technology used to intercept those communications. Anyone interested in those subjects will end-up reading about the Echelon, carnivore and alike systems. Recalling those days and the information I gathered back in these reminded me on the things done in the Netherlands.

We where still under the impression that systems like that where only used by larger countries and that the Netherlands where not involved in these kind of practices until some newspaper articles started to appear. A journalist of the technical weekly newspaper "Technisch Weekblad" was hassled and threatened by military police when taking photos in one of the provinces in the north of the Netherlands.

To find out if this was really true and to catch a glimpse of these satellite dishes run by the Dutch military intelligence agency I went up north during a weekend a couple of weeks after the news article appeared. We took the pictures and found out that indeed you could get some trouble. We where followed by a van of the security force of the base and finally pulled over by the local police and the driver was forced to give his name and address. Most likely only to scare as we never heard anything about it again.

However, reminding this I did a little google search about the military installation called Zoutkamp we visited and I found out that this is no longer the biggest installation. At this moment the Netherlands is trying to become a big player in the signal intelligence world. Originally it was planned to expand the location in Zoutkamp but the Dutch court decided against it, now a new installation will be build in Burum which is ‘conveniently’ on the same location as the satellite dishes of Xantic .

For mein fraulein

On or around May 8 someone posted a message to the ad site Craigslist, the message is by now removed. The message contained the following:

> For mein fraulein
>
> Mein Fraulein, I haven't heard from you in a while. Won't you
> call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735

The phone number indicates this is a number in New-York. If someone calls (called) the number an intro music followed by strings of numbers in groups of five, each group repeated once. I heard from it first in the 'off the hook' radio show, episode May 24, done by Emmanuel Goldstein. Here it was said it was most likely a new variant of a short-wave radio number station now done by phone numbers.

The message reads:

Group 415
01305 60510 12079 04606 50100
93000 08203 90130 94069 01207
81080 17028 01706 90220 73038
01401 70150 15073 00402 00680
12013 12510 00540 04091 01401
30150 86022 09608 10660 02082
05507 00020 00000 02208 30290
08022 01200 40710 13065 02709
40190 29014 02200 80020 11083
07300 30260 19000 00700 00000
86

Number stations where commonly used on short wave radio and it is assumed that they where used to broadcast 'encrypted' information to agents in the field who where working for secret services. It is known a lot of countries where using those kind of 'number stations' Online you can find recordings recorded by radio amateurs along the years. After the cold war the number of messages broadcasted and the number of stations was rapidly decreasing. This could be the cause of the number of agents was decreasing or, as we think of it at this moment, there was a new technique used.

You can find a lot of the old recordings of those number stations online at the archive website

Meanwhile a second posting is done on Craigslist with a new phone number; also this will give the person who dials it a intro music and new numbers. It could be a new version of a number station, it could be a recruiting add from Google, it could be a recruiting add from the NSA or a agency like it, it could be a love letter from one cryptanalyst to another, it could be something very sinister. At this nobody has a clue on what this could be. As for a fact a lot of people are trying in a lot of ways to decrypt this message even as they are unsure if this can be decrypted.

Anyhow it is a very interesting subject, not only this case but the entire story about number stations and strange signals send over short-wave. I will try to collect some more data about this and post it in a way I will not create some new hoax and give conspiracy theorists enough to talk to for the upcoming years.

iPod nano

Because of the fact that Krista, my girlfriend, was celebrating a lot of things in a single week I was almost entitled to give here more than a single gift. I a single week she was celebrating here birthday, she became a doctor of medicine, applied for a job and got it and the planning was she should pick-up here new car. All those things made me think that I should buy here some nice gifts and so I did.

As one of things she wanted was a Apple iPod I got here a brand new iPod nano, the side effect of this gift was I got here finally interested in the MP3 collection I have on our home network and caused here to finally digitalize here CD collection into a MP3 collection. However now the problem occurs that she is thinking about a way to play those MP3 files stashed on the network in the living room, making us think about a player with a option to connect a iPod.

The moment you start looking and buying things from Apple you are virtually lost, all the things Apple is selling are just beautiful in design. The iPod nano itself is a beauty and all the speaker sets you can buy are equally designed. Currently we are looking into a Eclipse Lulét 307PASV Stereo Speakers with Amplifier, A true beauty, at least that is the opinion I have.... If this will be what will make the apartment more swinging is still the question as Krista is still browsing the Apple website and is now checking the Monitor Audio i-deck.

Finally started my weblog again completely new and revised as it should become a part of my new website. The website terminalcult.org will become my new website on which I am at this moment still working. I still have problems with some parts of the coding but those will be solved in a matter of days. As the website will become a sort of home to all the projects and the information released by the terminalcult group there will not be a lot of room for a personal part. This is the reason for the creation of this weblog.

There will however be a part of the terminalcult website be devoted to the members of terminalcult and on my private section I will for sure make RSS-parser section where I will parse the blogger RSS feed of this weblog into the website. At this moment I am also investigation the possibilities to integrate the entire blogger weblog into the terminalcult website using iFrame.

All the talking about integrating is however something that is for a later moment, first I have to get this weblog up and running and add some content to it. In the past couple of days the idea of getting my one weblog again was causing me to write some small notes down and already creating some articles to be posted those I will try to integrate in some of the postings I am planning to post in the upcoming days.