This should have been a home run. Decent cast. And an interesting foundation of an idea.
A young couple looking to buy a new home become trapped, alone in community of identical homes. After repeated attempts to escape, always, inexplicably circling back to building #9, a box appears with a newborn baby inside: raise the child, and be released, print on the box promises.
For a while there it felt like a compelling, bizarre supernatural mystery in the best tradition of Twilight Zone's creepiest.
And then... just as it gives you a taste of where this might finally be going... nothing.
It yanks the rug out, and practically waves a scolding finger in your face for wanting more from the film. It punishes you for it with a an eye-roll of an ending that's nowhere near as clever as it probably thinks it is.
There's some creepy atmosphere, decent acting, but it literally goes nowhere at all. Just enjoy the trailer and imagine your own, more interesting film.
2/5
(Vivariam is currently included with Prime Now.)
(This is a mirror from swtpc.org [archive.org], which itself is a mirror from BYTE Magazine. Minor formatting changes have been introduced.)
BYTE's Audio Cassette Standards Symposium
Written by Manfred and Virgina Peschke
BYTE, Feb 1976, Pages 72 and 73
BYTE Magazine sponsored a symposium on November 7 and 8, 1975 in Kansas City MO regarding the interchange of data on inexpensive consumer quality audio cassette drives.
These drives may be used as one of the mass storage devices in the first generation of personal computers, and will retain importance for some time to come as a means of interchange of software between computer enthusiasts who purchase products of the small systems industry.
In order to promote the growth of the industry, BYTE sought to achieve an industry standard on audio cassette data interchange through a working conference.
We extend our greatest appreciation to the 18 people who worked very hard until late Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss the multitude of problems and solutions associated with digital recording on auto cassettes. The names of the participants are listed in Table 1.
In spite of the short time available, the participants were able to draft a set of provisional standards which seems to promise great reliability and is rather inexpensive to implement; implementations may be entirely in hardware, or may require a mix of software and some minimal hardware.
Considerations were given to the problems of speed variation among recorders and playback equipment, start and stop delays, recording density (or speed) versus reliability, and recording frequencies to avoid interference with the telephone network in case some users plan to transmit the tones of the cassette over the phone lines.
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Felsenstein and Mr. Mauch volunteered to write up the consensus among the participants as to a provisional standard which has been reproduced below.
Provisional Audio Cassette Data Interchange Standard
The consensus among the participants of the audio cassette standards symposium at Kansas City MO sponsored by BYTE Magazine is as follows:
Table 1: Participants at Audio Cassette Symposium.
Ray Borrill | 1218 Prairie Dr, Bloomington IN |
Hal Chamberlin | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5985, Raleigh NC 27607 |
Tom Durston | MITS, 6328 Linn NE, Albuquerque NM |
Lee Felsenstein | LGC Engineering, 1807 Delaware St, Berkeley CA 94703 |
Joe Frappier | Mikra-D, 32 Maple St, Bellingham MA |
Bill Gates | MITS |
Gary Kay | Southwest Technical Products Corp, 219 W Rhapsody, San Antonio TX 78216 |
Bob Marsh | Processor Technology, 2465 Fourth St, Berkeley CA 94710 |
Harold A Mauch | Pronetics, 4021 Windsor, Garland TX 75042 |
Bob Nelson | PCM, San Ramon CA |
George Perrine | HAL Communications Corp, Box 365, Urbana IL 61801 |
Ed Roberts | MITS |
Richard Smith | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5882, Raleigh NC 27607 |
Les Solomon | Popular Electronics, 1 Park Av, New York NY 10016 |
Michael Stolowitz | Godbout Electronics, Box 2355, Oakland Airport CA 94614 |
Paul Tucker | HAL Communications Corp |
Mike Wise | Sphere, 791 S 500 W, Bountiful UT 84010 |
Bob Zaller | MITS |
I was doing a bit of OSINT-ish poking around on this character, Mellissa Carone.
She's a supposed voter fraud "whistleblower" for Rudy Giuliani. His star witness claims to have essentially seen all the voter fraud ever in her seemingly-drunken, insane testimony at a hearing in Michigan. You really have to see it to believe it. She made a complete ass out of herself trying to bullshit everyone in the room. Even Rudy, at one point, had to be like "whoa, down girl".
Ordinarily I wouldn't be dwelling on a private individual in a blog post, but Mellissa chose to step into the public arena.
So I figured I'd see what I could dig up on the web, in relation to a couple of her claims. Just practicing some OSINT on a public figure.
Anyway, in her testimony she claimed to be an IT contractor hired by the current conspiracy scapegoat "Dominion". Now she says she can't get work anymore because "the Democrats destroyed her life", and so on.
As far as jobs go, her LinkedIn says she's been an intern at a place called Ciber Global but with the title "Cyber Security Analyst". She mentions Ford Motor in a subheading on this one.
Next one down, same timeframe as the Ciber job, again, "Cyber Security Analyst" for Ford Motor Company. Maybe lent out as a temp?
Further back, an internship as an IT Technician at a local painting company.
And even further back, an IT Specialist/Help Deak [sic] person for Millennium Servica [sic]. This might be a Remodelling and Repair Contractor, or this unknown, defunct company.
Whichever. Doesn't matter.
Along side all this, she's also listed as being a graduate of ITT Technical Instutute and the University of Michigan, working on an associates degree in Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management.
UPDATE: Apparently she's been up to some other stuff, too. Whoops...
In addition to her work experience, her profile features a set of certificates and awards:
Nothing really of interest. I can't even verify her Ciber employment, never mind this certificate. But that's fine. I don't really care. Any discrepancies are probably easily explained with a little more detail. (Benefit of the doubt, and all that.)
But then I scroll over to the third cert; the "Cyber Awareness Challenge" completion certificate:
What's that logo? Department of... hmm. I can guess, but let's ZOOM AND ENHANCE:
The Department of Defense?!
Woo! Impressive, right?
So I looked around for that, and found... THE 2021 CYBER AWARENESS CHALLENGE!
You too -- yes, YOU -- can take the unclassified training course, just like she did, and get your very own DoD Certificate of Completion for you to type "FART BUTT" on and save to a PDF and put on your own profile.
And best of all, it's in COLOR and updated for 2021!
But in all seriousness, I encourage you to take a look at this small, free course they're offering.
It's actually well put together and rather creative for a multiple-choice quiz that marks you correct even when you're wrong. You can't lose!
The real meat of it, though, are the details it provides. There's a lot of "duh" basic security things (don't bring in external devices, don't hold security doors open for anyone, etc), but it actually gives some interesting insights into how they handle working with classified security information, among other things.
Quite a bit of video, too. Here's my favorite:
First name: Michael. Surname: Burnham.
When I rock the mic, you KNOW that I'll burn 'em.It's a hell of a shock: I'm the sista of Spock;
Now that's a pedigree that yer pointy ears can’t block.I’m from a distant time; I’m told that’s a crime;
Thousand-year start; yet you can’t hold these rhymes.Now this trio of elves wants to challenge me?
Their Kal-toh's collapsed, while my Chess game's six-D!Yap yap, your logic lacks validity;
More like Infinite Stupidity in Infinite Vapidity.Now run along and go slap your gong;
When you return, you’ll admit you’re wrong.I was lost before, but now I’m in my Prime;
Don’t look now, but it’s "Amok Time"!Your blood is green, but I’m the reason queen;
Now shut the fuck up and and give up SB-19!
I was supposed to be working on the Terebikko research over Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, but instead we got treated to a pair of wonderful episodes of The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Discovery.
The latter of which featured Burnham forcing the Vulcan/Romulan leadership to respond by challenging them in a formal logic debate. And, well, I joked on Reddit that it was a "logic rap battle"... and many hours later... well... that happened.
It's something pretty far out of my wheelhouse, but I actually put effort into it and did some research and stuff. And I've always enjoyed Epic Rap Battles of History, so maybe it's been brewing in the back of my mind for a while. 😉