The Raven

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Shootersville

Here's a feel-good story from Delray Beach, Florida. At least, you'll feel good because you don't live next door to Shootersville Billiards. For the past few years, blues guitarist John Yurt has been making a good living producing "Hip-Hop Nights," because he likes to put on a good time, and on a typical night he can pack in over 300 fun-loving folks who "fill the bar to play pool, drink, dance and listen to music." The problems usually start around 2 a.m., like last Monday, when according to the Delray PD, there was gunfire outside the eponymously named club:

Clubgoers ducked under cars and began scattering. Then a brawl involving about a dozen people swinging broken pool cues, PVC pipe and other weapons erupted in the parking lot.

Yurt downplays the incident, saying it's "no different than what happens at other drinking establishments." Maybe so, but how many others need to employ 13 bouncers?

"It's not our fault. Fights happen all the time at malls and movie theaters," said Yurt.

Since last May, there have been at least 5 major fights at Shootersville, one "distubance," and a patron was shot in the leg. Just like your average mall or movie theater. But then the there's the race card: Whereas Yurt says the police are focusing on him "because he caters to a black crowd," Rosalind Murray, a manager for the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, has this to say:

"He's a historical white figure who capitalizes on black trends. He doesn't support this community, and the funds he makes are his."

Perish the thought.

Hippocrates Wouldn't Approve

In Marietta, Georgia, police have put out a warrent for Dr. James Ray Pattillo, who has been conducting home drug-testing services for the Department of Family and Children Services. Seems that when he visited a home in Alpharetta earlier this month to administer a test to a young ward of the court, the 15-year-old boy wanted to cut a deal. In exchange for a "clean" test report, he would let Dr. Pattillo bang his girlfriend. The 56-year-old Pattillo bit on the offer and now he's wanted for "statutory rape, aggravated child molestation and enticing a minor for indecent purposes," while the kid is up for "one count of pimping and one count of pandering." I've never quite understood the whole "pimp/pander" dichotomy, myself. Could you merely pander and not pimp? The juvenile's father is facing related charges.

3:33:27 PM

The Speed of Light

Yesterday afternoon I was reading some stories over at metafilter when the story broke about the Virginia police arresting a couple of guys in a white van. Suddenly, posts in the "comment section" of the article I'm reading begin flooding in, with people all over the country reporting what they're hearing on the radio, on TV, and they're posting links to every news site covering the event.

This has happened before, but usually occurs on ICQ or IRC chat. This is the first time I've witnessed journalism in a Web page comment area, and I'd say it's a varient on j-blogging, but even faster. Clicking the refresh button and watching the comments come in was better than messing around with TV. Here's a hundred people all scanning and retrieving simultaneously—and it's like sitting in your own private newsroom. The feeling of being "plugged in" is palpable, and this indicates something about where we might be going.

Coming to a Monitor Near You

We definitely don't want to be going here. If an informative Net that functions like having the Library of Alexandria on crack right in your home is our concept of the Good, then the embodiment of the Bad comes from archfiend Zoltan Kovacs's DirectAdvertiser.com. These are the vermin that develop the mass-spamming software that floods your mailbox with garbage as fast as you can hit delete. But now they've gone further. Most current Windows operating systems have a built-in messaging function so that a techwork tech, f'rintance, can shoot everybody a pop-up screen to announce something important, like an impending system shut-down. The half-decomposed ghouls at DirectAdvertiser have figured out how to exploit that so that if you're hooked up to the Net, they can blast you with an ad even if your browser isn't running.

Gary Flynn, a security engineer at James Madison University, where several messages were received, calls the technique worse than e-mail spam. "It's almost like somebody barging in your office and interrupting you."

This is bad news, unless you're Zoltan, of course. He says he "condemns spamming," but admits that "some customers buy it for that." He's sold over 200 copies at $700 a pop, so you know there's a big market for this. His Website offers all sorts of great reasons to have this technology:

There are no email lists to worry about. Bulk email is regulated by different laws in different states, instant messages are not.
Bulk email is sent to an email address which sometimes is not even checked. Messages delivered by this program are delivered straight to the screen of your client.
These messages are completely anonymous and virtually untraceable. Bulk email will cause you trouble with your ISP if you are not using special software to hide your IP address. With this program your IP address never shows up anywhere.

Doesn't sound like the kind of thing someone who hates spam would say. But he adds the clincher:

Notice: Please do not use this software for spamming. If you do so, you will take full responsibility for your actions. This software is made to send advertising or system messages to your own network.

Where's the Legion of Doom and Masters of Destruction when we need them? C'mon hackers...

1:13:32 PM