How to know if she is faking orgasm?

I’d be willing to bet that you’ve been at least curious as to whether she was for real or not. She screams, she moans, she thrashes, she pulls your hair and yells “I’m cumming!” She’s so loud that the neighbors are close to calling the cops. But still, you have your doubts. Truth is, if you find yourself wondering, she’s probably faking it. But before you jump to conclusions, make sure you ask yourself a few follow up questions like “Am I giving her a reason to fake it?” or “Would you even know a real female orgasm if you saw one?” I’m going to do my best to educate you on the subject.

Its easy to understand your confusion. In contrast, the mechanics of the male orgasm are pretty easy to “get”: Dick gets hard > Dick gets stroked/sucked/fucked > Dick cums. There’s no real mystery there. Don’t you wish girls were that simple? Sorry to tell you boys, but we’re just not made that way. Our sexual organs and arousal process are way more internal. So unless she’s a squirter, a woman has no giant-red-flag-indicator that she’s having an orgasm. However, there are signs you can look for that will let you know she’s getting ready to cum, is cumming, or she’s already been there and back.

First is arousal, if she’s really turned on, her pupils may be dilated, her skin may be flushed red or pink on her face, neck and tits. Her breathing may be rapid and may become irregular. In general, her moaning and panting will not just get louder, but speed up as she approaches climax. She won’t be able to control it.

Next, the actual orgasm. Adding to the confusion here is that women can have both small “mini orgasms” and the awesome-earth-shaking, toe curling orgasms. While technically they both count as O’s, your girl may or may not count the small ones. In either case though, a woman’s PC muscles will contract. This means that if you’re inside her, you’ll feel it start to “squeeze” slowly while she’s cumming. It may be quick, or it could even be minute-long dick-gripping contractions. Some women go completely stiff when they cum, some go totally limp. Some yell louder than ever, some are totally quiet. No matter what her heart rate will increase. And if you’re a real stud, she may have some involuntary movements, such as shivering.

Finally, afterwards. She’ll have a dazed, dreamy look and be kind of glassy eyed. She’ll need to catch her breath and her breathing and heart rate will slowly return to normal. Her flustered red skin will gradually return to normal.

As a bonus tip, here are some tell-tale signs that she is faking.

1.) If she’s coming EVERY time. Only a very small percentage of girls can cum everytime. Also, each and every real orgasm is different. If your girl has the exact same reaction to every orgasm, it may just be for show.

2.) Obvious Overacting. This one can be a tough call, since some women will moan and talk dirty to turn you on and to turn themselves on, but if she’s just moaning mechanically, her groaning is too regular, or too loud, and she sounds like she’s totally imitating a porn star, she’s probably faking and she probably sucks at it.

3.) Out Of Synch. If her moaning and responses don’t match what you’re really doing to her, something’s wrong. For example, if you stop, and she keeps moaning with the same rhythm and intensity, she may be faking.

4.) No Downtime. There are exceptions, but if usually if she “cums” and then immediatly jumps out of bed to brush her teeth, she probably faked. It should take her at least a couple of minutes or so to calm down after having an orgasm.

In the end, you may never know for sure that she was faking it or why, unless she breaks down and confesses, or throws it in your face in the midst of an argument. But if you suspect she is pulling an act in bed, use it as a challenge and an opportunity to experiment. Switch up your sexual moves and see if you can give her a genuine toe-curler.

102 Weird Facts You Never Knew About Dogs

1. It is a myth that dogs are color blind. They can actually see in color, just not as vividly as humans. It is akin to our vision at dusk.
2. Dogs DO have better low-light vision than humans because of a special light-reflecting layer behind their retinas
3. A German Shepherd guide dog led her blind companion the entire 2100 mile Applachian Trail
4. If never spayed or neutered, a female dog, her mate, and their puppies could product over 66,000 dogs in 6 years!
5. Dogs' only sweat glands are between their paw pads
6. Like human babies, Chihuahuas are born with a soft spot in their skull which closes with age
7. The breed Lundehune has 6 toes and can close its ears
8. Teddy Roosevelt's dog, Pete, ripped a French ambassador's pants off at the White House
9. President Lyndon Johnson had two beagles named Him and Her
10. Franklin Roosevelt spent $15,000 for a destroyer to pick up his Scottie in the Aleutian Islands
11. In Roman times, mastiffs donned light armor and were sent after mounted knights
12. The Russians trained dogs during WWII to run suicide missions with mines strapped to their backs
13. A dog's mouth exerts 150-200 pounds of pressure per square inch
14. ... with some dogs exerting up to 450 pounds per squre inch.
15. A one year old dog is as mature, physically, as a 15 year old human
16. The U.S. has the highest dog population in the world
17. France has the 2nd highest
18. The average city dog lives 3 years longer than a country dog
19. 87% of dog owners say their dog curls up beside them or at their feet while they watch T.V.
20. Dogs can be trained to detect epileptic seizures
21. 15 people die in the U.S. every year from dog bites
22. In 2002 alone, more people in the U.S. were killed by dogs than by sharks in the past 100 years
23. Gidget is the name of the Taco Bell dog
24. Newfoundlands are great swimmers because of their webbed feet
25. Basset Hounds cannot swim
26. Greyhounds are the fastest dogs on earth, with speeds of up to 45 miles per hour
27. Bingo is the name of the dog on the side of the Cracker Jack box
28. The bible mentions dogs 14 times
29. Three dogs survived the sinking of the Titanic - a Newfoundland, a Pomeranian, and a Pekingese
30. The Labrador Retriever is the #1 favorite breed in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
31. Obesity is the #1 health problem among dogs
32. An estimated 1,000,000 dogs in the U.S. have been named as the primary beneficiaries in their owner's will
33. An American Animal Hospital Assoc. poll found that 33% of dog owners admit to talking to their dogs on the phone and leaving answering machine messages for them while away
34. Dog's nose prints are as unique as a human's finger prints and can be used to accurately identify them
35. At the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life", a high-pitched dog whistle was recorded by Paul McCartney for his sheepdog
36. 70% of people sign their pet's name on greeting and holiday cards
37. 58% put pets in family and holiday portraits
38. There are only 350 Cisky Terriers in the world - perhaps the rarest breed
39. The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th century England when it is believed that many cats and dogs drowned during heavy periods of rain.
40. Dogs have no sense of "time"
41. Humans have kept dogs as pets for over 12,000 years
42. The largest breed of dog is the Irish Wolfhound
43. The world's smallest dog breed is the Chihuahua
44. The St. Bernard is the heaviest
45. Only dogs and humans have prostates
46. But dogs do not have an appendix
47. Every dog on earth likely descended from a species knows as the Tomarctus - a creature that roamed the earth over 15 million years ago
48. The oldest known breed is likely the Saluki - originally trained by Egyptians to help them track game.
49. In 1957, Laika became the first living being in space via an earth satellite
50. ... while JFK's terrir, Charlie, father 4 puppies with Laika's daughter
51. An African wolf dog known as the basenji is the only dog in the world that cannot bark
52. There are 703 breeds of purebred dogs
53. Dachshunds were originally bred for fighting badgers
54. The world's smartest dogs are thought to be (1) the border collie, (2) the poodle, and (3) the golden retriever
55. ... while the dumbest dog is believed to be the Afghan hound
56. A dog's smell is more than 100,000 times stronger than that of a human's
57. ... which they need because their eyesight is not as keen as a human's.
58. Dogs judge objects first by their movement, then by their brightness, and lastly by their shape
59. Chocolate contains a substance known as theobromine (similar to caffeine) which can kill dogs or at the very least make them violently ill
60. George Washington had thirty six dogs - all foxhounds - with one named Sweetlips
61. All dogs are identical in anatomy - 321 bones and 42 permanent teeth
62. Smaller breeds mature faster than larger breeds
63. Female dogs are only ready to mate - "in heat" - twice a year for a total of roughly 20 days
64. Puppies sleep ninety percent of the day for their first few weeks
65. Rin Tin Tin was the first Hollywood dog star
66. ... and he really signed his movie contracts - all 22 of them - with a pawprint
67. The Wizard of Oz's Toto was played by a female Cairn Terrier named Terry
68. Up until the late 1800's, Collies were known as Scottish Sheepdogs
69. Dogs have two times as many muscles to move their ears as people
70. The longer a dog's nose, the more effective it's internal cooling system
71. An elderly woman was saved by her 12 pound Yorkshire Terrier who fought off an 80 pound Akita and survived with only 9 stitches
72. U.S. Customs dogs "Rocky" and "Barco" were so good at patrolling the border that Mexican drug lords put a $300,000 bounty on their heads
73. Dogs are all direct descendants of wolves
74. Wolves and dogs can mate to produce fertal offspring
75. Female wolves have been known to travel great distances to regurgitate full meals for their hungry pups
76. Cerberus was the tri-headed dog that guarded the underworld in Greek mythology
77. Female dogs bear their young for 60 days before they're born
78. Dogs' sense of hearing is more than ten times more acute than a human's
79. Humans can detect sounds at 20,000 times per second, while dogs can sense frequencies of 30,000 times per second.
80. The earliest dog fossil dates back to nearly 10,000 B.C.
81. Bloodhounds are prized their ability to single out and identify a number of scents simultaneously
82. Dalmatian puppies are born completely white.
83. The Ancient Chinese carried Pekingese puppies in the sleeves of their robes
84. Boxers are so named because of their manner of playing with their front paws
85. All breeds of dog have been found to attack livestock - from 3 month old puppies, all the way up to thirteen year old poodles
86. A dog's heart beats up to 120 times per minute, or 50% faster than the average human heartbeat of 80 times per minute
87. The oldest dog on record - a Queensland "Heeler" named Bluey - was 29 years, 5 months old
88. Davy Crockett had a dog named Sport
89. Dogs were first domesticated by cavemen
90. Dogs live 15 years on average
91. Many foot disorders inn dogs are simply an issue of long toenails
92. More than 5,000,000 puppies are born in the U.S. every year
93. More than 1 in 3 American families own a dog
94. Average body temperature for a dog is 101.2 degrees
95. The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts both offer merit badges in dog care
96. Dogs are natural pack animals
97. They are naturally submissive to any creature with higher pack status - human or canine
98. Dogs instinctively require the pack leader's approval
99. Dogs with little human contact in the first three months typically don't make good pets
100. The Chihuahua was named after the state in Mexico where they were discovered
101. After birth, puppies' eyes do not fully open until they're about 12 days old
102. Their vision is not fully developed until after the 1st month

The Top 5 Ways to spend time in college

I know you could always use your free time to drink, get stoned, or gamble, but odds are you probably won’t make it to Junior year. So here are the Top 5 Ways to Pass Time in College without Booze, Pot, Online Gambling, or any other somewhat accepted vice (aka hunting for you southerners).

5. The Crave Case Race – A Crave Case is a briefcase of 30 “sliders” (mini-burgers) supplied to you by our healthconscious fast food friends atWhite Castle. If your friends were the same as mine, they were always bragging about how much they could eat, and always ready to call somebody a pussy who didn’t eat a the regulated “cool college guy” amount. My friends often got caught up in bragging about how many “sliders” or Taco Bell tacos they had eaten in one sitting. The amount was always an absurd lie that you could subtract at least 4 from.

So we decided to invent a game called the Crave Case Race to put an end to the folklore we had passed around about eating 87 “sliders” in one sitting. The game is simple: Break into teams of two or three (if you want to be a pussy about it), and give each team their own Crave Case. First team to finish their briefcase-full of future diarrhea and cholesterol problems wins the Race. If you “pull the trigger” (aka throw-up) you are disqualified.

A Grande Meal from Taco Bell is another great alternative.

This game was invented while drunk, so there might have to be an asterisk next to this game. (Actually, if they aren’t going to put one next to Barry Bonds’s records than we won’t put one next to this game.) We invented this game at a Sorority Formal. Nothing quite turns your dates on like jamming mini-burgers down your throats, and calling each other "pussies."

4. Wall Ball: The College Edition – Every boy that grew up and wasn’t in the Drama Club played Wall Ball. The official court for Wall Ball was a Tennis Wall, but any hard wall with concrete or cement in front of it would do. You could use a Tennis Ball, Racquetball/Handball, or any other rubber bouncy ball. You had to throw the ball above a certain line (usually as high as the painted-on tennis net), and you couldn't let the ball bounce twice or throw it hard enough to leave the “playing area” on the fly. If you screwedup, you got one point against you.

The rules for the College Edition are the same, with one new stipulation. It is a lot like the drinking games you play in college, which are merely modifications of the things we used to do before needing booze to have a good time (beer-pong/bozo buckets, playing cards, putting a keg on second base for softball or kickball game, etc.).

The modification for this game is not boozing (because that would be cheating the rules of this Top 5). Instead, every time someone loses a point they have to stand facing The Wall, and allow the others to take turns throwing the ball at the failure from the baseline of the court. It is amazing how much the little blue bouncy racquet ball can hurt, and it is even more amazing how equally hard you laugh each time somebody gets drilled in the back-sack successfully.

This game can also be played with a soccer ball. You juggle the ball, and the person who botches the juggle has to take turns letting the other players kick the ball as hard as they can at their back (a beach-friendly game). When playing the same way but with a Hacky Sack, you get to throw it at the loser instead of kicking it. The Racquetball/ Wall-Ball version is the best because it is way easier to hit somebody with a throw than a kick, and you don’t have to look like a hippie.

3. IP-Relay – I am sure by now that most of you have used this great service. IP-Relay is a wonderful service that allows deaf people to make phone calls via an online instant messaging service (www.ip-relay.com). You simply go to the website, punch the phone number in that you want to call, and an operator calls the person of your choice and relays to them what you are typing. Whatever you type, they say over the phone to the person you're calling. During my freshman dorm experience we used this almost as much as video games to pass the time.

Is there a better way to keep in-touch with your high school friends than by having some random operator calling them at 3pm on Tuesday afternoon asking, “Mr. (fill in the made up name of your choice) wants to know how he can get the puppy and prostitute to stop crying in unison from his locked closet?”

The operator typing your shocked friend’s response back to you is priceless: (fill in friend’s real name): Um [ten second pause] what? I think you have the wrong number…

That is when you write back something personal that only somebody close to him would know. “Mr. (fill in the made up name of your choice) wants to know why you went rollerblading with your high school girlfriend that weekend you thought all your friends were out of town. Were you wearing the recommended wrist guards for this?”

It is also fun if you and your prank calling partner both know about IP-Relay because you can join forces, and really start scaring/weirding-out the IP-Relay operator. There is nothing like the operator typing, “rubbing alcohol and a ball-gag” in response to your puppy and prostitute crying question to keep your time passing entertainingly .

2. Hot Sauce – No, I don’t mean in that homoerotic frat boy ritual of pouring it down your ass crack during hell week. It is actually a game that I made up my sophomore year of college.

One afternoon, as we were sitting in our “how did we convince our parents to let a bunch of immature and unsupervised 19-year-olds kids get a house” house, we realized how pathetic and un-athletic we had let the high school versions of ourselves get. We decided that we would go out front and toss around the football to get some exercise. After each of us ran three routes, and could hardly breathe, we decided to move it inside to the couch.

Still feeling pathetic about our far fall from athleticism we decided to play catch while sitting on our couches. As we were tossing the ball around and watching ESPN (I think we thought watching sports would make this more of a sport) I noticed our economy sized bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce sitting on the coffee table (you know the coffee table that you get from your grandparents' house after they die). As I looked at the hot sauce I had an epiphany, this ingenius idea popped in my head like I was Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code.

I turned to my friends and said, “How about we each sit on separate pieces of furniture (we had a pretty big living room), we start throwing the ball harder at each other, and incorporate no-look-passes. And every time you drop a pass or make a crap throw you have to take a cap sized shot of hot sauce?”

The game Hot Sauce instantly became a bigger hit than Meth in a West Coast trailer park. We played all the time, and laughed hysterically each time someone had to take a shot of hot sauce which was usually followed by a sprint to the bathroom to possibly throw-up.

It was always fun to play with your friend who only wrestled or played offensive line growing up. His hands were more like paws, and it didn't look like he had opposable thumbs when he tried to catch the ball.

1. The NyQuil Race – This game is simple, very unsafe, and really dumb (exactly like college itself). You buy a bottle of liquid NyQuil, which comes ins both reddish-black and greenish-black magical versions. After your purchase you round up a few of your friends who have nothing to do on a Tuesday. Then follow these steps:

1. Get 4 or more people who are participating in the game to all sit in the same room on couches, and in an upright position.
2. Equally pour at least double the medically suggested amount out to each participant.
3. Before drinking the NyQuil, each participant must take out a $20 bill and place it on the center table.
4. At the same time, every participant drinks their NyQuil in full.
5. The person who can stay awake the longest wins The NyQuil Race and the money, and is forever a leader amongst retards.

When playing this game it is important that there is at least one person observing the game that is not a participant. You can call this person “smart” or “referee,” but you are in college so you will probably just call him a “pussy.” When my friends played, they made the mistake of not designating a “referee,” and nobody could recall who won. It will be easy to find a “referee” for this because it is very funny to watch, and will only take fifteen minutes of his or her time.

2007 Women's Driver Awards

2007 Women's Driver Awards

Crash compilation

The Top 10 ugliest, most embarrassing fashion trends of the past 25 years

I'm not exactly known for my fashion sense. About 90% of the time I'm wearing shorts and a plain, solid-color t-shirt. Still, I don't need to be Joan Rivers to see some of the travesties of the past twenty-five years and be utterly stupefied.

Sometimes I wonder what aliens would think, if they came down to Earth to observe us. What would they say to their overlords?

"We can take these guys no problem. They're not even smart enough to take the tags off their hats after they buy them."

Here is a list of the top ten most embarrassing fashion trends of the past 25 years. These are all clothing and accessory-related, so you won't find any mullets, or "The Rachels," or rat tails, or Flock of Seagulls, or tramp stamps listed here because I could do a whole list about those. And no 70's clothes, either, 'cause my computer would crash. The 80's were more than enough.

If I missed anything, let me know.

10) Shoulder Pads

I don't know whose idea it was that women who look like linebackers are more attractive. The shoulder pad, like the padded bra or elevator shoes, were designed to change the way a woman looked, as opposed to accentuating what they already had. I guess sloping shoulders were considered unattractive, but being shaped like Spongebob Squarepants was wicked sexy.

Thankfully as the 80's waned, these little triangles were being ripped out in droves. I remember going into the laundry room one day and finding a knee-high pile of them on the floor.

9) Hats that don't fit/bandanna under the hat

Some trends I won't see as obnoxious or ugly when they first come out, and it isn't until a few years later will I realize exactly how stupid they were.

This is not one of those.

Like a random bandaid on the face, the whole hat thing probably became popular because a rap artist was too drunk to notice he hadn't properly dressed. The next thing you know Ludacris is going to piss himself on stage, and we'll have legions of kids walking around with a wet stain between their legs. Abercrombie & Fitch will begin to sell pre-urinated-on jeans for $220, and Wal-Mart will eliminate bathroom breaks for their Chinese factory workers and just store the jeans under their chairs.

I foresee a great demand for chiropractors in the near future, with everyone walking around with their necks wrenched back because they can't see otherwise.

8) Leg Warmers

So I saw Footloose the other day. Yup. Lots o' leg warmers.


Legwarmers were a part of that whole "I got farted on by a rainbow" 80's trend. I've never worn them, so I don't know how effective they were at actually warming the leg, but I'm pretty certain they were worn more as a fashion statement than with purpose.

7) Shirts with stupid sayings on them



It's like somebody let Spencer's Gifts out of the mall and out into the public, and now that it's free, it's not going away.

I've talked about these before, and I am guilty of exploiting this trend from time to time. While there's nothing really wrong with slogan shirts, especially when you're just lounging around, there's this invisible line that goes from innocuous to annoying to really, mind-crunchingly stupid. And this whole semi-recent crop of sayings shirts are all in that third category.

Imagine walking around telling the same people the same joke over and over again. And what's worse, the joke is terrible. Now look at your shirt.

6) Zubaz

You know how they say when something is so traumatic, you can forget about it? You know what I mean. Repressed memories and all that jazz. Well, I forgot about these, and I was happier because of it.

Then I saw Rex (Diedrich Bader) in the movie Napoleon Dynamite sporting an American Flag version of these, and it all came rushing back.


don't know what it was, and maybe it was just me, but every guy I knew who wore these was either a jerk or a meathead. Maybe the Zubaz company secretly injected you with a jolt of testosterone when you slid them on or wearing them somehow made you feel like The Boz. I don't know. But the author of Napoleon Dynamite saw it.

5) Half Shirts / half sweaters / half jackets

I'm combining these even though they could each be their own category. Anyway, I'm not sure if this has been scientifically proven or not, but I'm pretty certain if a straight guy wore a half shirt (crop top/bellyshirt/whatever) out in public sometime during his lifetime, he is haunted by nightmares where he is turned magically into Prince. This can only be cured by therapy. And if it's not dealt with, it really happens.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And as far as half sweaters and half jackets are concerned... I guess what irks me the most is the transparency of the outfits. People wear jackets and sweaters because they're cold. But in the case of the cropped sweater/jacket, they're wearing it to be fashionable, and that's it.

4) Parachute Pants

I was in grade school when these were the rage. The coolest thing ever was to wear parachute pants along with one of those red and black Michael Jackson jackets and try to moonwalk in the gravel during recess.

I still remember the sound of nylon scraping against nylon when one walked in these things. At the height of the parachute pant craze, the recess bell would ring and the air would be filled with swish-swishing of the nylon-clad running for the door.

I'm still not sure what the purpose of all those pockets were, though I had a friend who always had something in every single pocket, including that impossibly small one by the ankle. He always grimaced when he sat down.

3) Spandex bodysuits

I don't think I need to explain too much here.

Almost every metal band from the 80's decked themselves out from head to toe in full-body spandex. And because of it, they had legions of screaming women clawing over each other just so they could reach up toward their package and squeal like pigs on fire.

This is one of those things where it seemed so normal back then, but I look at now and just start laughing. Especially when I think about those guys at the concerts who weren't in the band, but wore the spandex anyway.

2) Baggy Pants/clothes that are falling off

Twenty years from now, a lot of people are going to be showing pictures of themselves to their children, and their kids are going to say, "Daddy, why were your pants falling down? Why are you showing your underwear?"

"Well, son," they'll say, patting junior on the head. "It was the fashion back then."

And the child will sit there for a moment, scratch his head and say, "It was the fashion to look like an assclown?"

1) Grills


If you don't think this is the stupidest fashion trend of the past twenty-five years, and maybe of all times, you're wrong.

In case you don't know what Grills are, read this. Basically it's cosmetic teeth so you look like that Jaws guy from the James Bond movies.

Dentists around the world simultaneously slapped themselves in the forehead when this first became popular. They are obviously horrible for your teeth. Which of course makes them so much more popular.

But even more bothersome is how people seem to ignore how much of an idiot you look like when you wear these. Of all the stupid, weird, and idiotic fashions of the years, it's kind of troublesome that the stupidest ones are the most recent.

Honorable mention: Gaucho Pants, giant belts, fat shoelaces, anything with fringe.

So that's it. Why is it we can look back at certain things and be utterly embarrassed by them, but still think it's the coolest thing ever at the time? What changes in our brain?

The Worst Movies by the Best Directors

In the world of filmmaking, truly visionary directors are tough to find. Seemingly visionary directors may turn out to be one-hit wonders, and a director’s visual style can become antiquated faster than you can say “we don’t use zooms anymore.” When a truly great director is found, you’ve got to hold onto him, and appreciate him, and, most of all, ignore the occasional shitty movie from him.

It’s with a sense of profound admiration, then, that we chronicle the worst films by the best directors: films that, despite the fantastic qualifications of the men who helmed them, totally failed to be anything less than total disappointments.

Keep in mind that many of these films are quite good, in their own rights: they just suck when compared to some of the better work by their respective director.

Steven Spielberg - War of the Worlds

Imagine Independence Day, but take away all the good actors and any sort of climax and you’ve basically got War of the Worlds. Having never read the book or watched the 1950’s version I can’t speak on its accuracy (though I know the ends are the same in all three versions), but I’m willing to bet that the other versions weren’t as self-defeating as Spielberg’s remake.

The film has moments of timely brilliance, like when Tom Cruise and his family get yanked out of their car by an angry mob who then begin to shoot one another, or when a totally unprovoked Tom Cruise decides to murder the shit out of Tim Robbins just because he thinks Robbins might give away their position. Dark scenes like this would have made the movie great, were it not for the fact that they’re sandwiched between scenes of either total mediocrity (“this is your safe area”), ridiculously misplaced patriotism (as when a random and unnamed US soldier leads an effort to pull Tom Cruise from the belly of an alien tripod), or outright ridiculousness (Tom’s son not only surviving a massive explosion, but somehow managing to get to his mom’s house before Tom).

Spielberg has a great track record for ending dark and meaningful films with pointlessly tacked-on happy endings, and War of the Worlds may be the best example of that.

Brian DePalma - The Black Dahlia

If there are two things in this world that almost never disappoint, they are (A) film noir and (B) Scarlett Johansson. There must be a mathematical formula somewhere that explains how combining these things somehow ends in heartbreak, but director Brian DePalma obviously never saw it.

The Black Dahlia should have truly been a match made in heaven: an adaptation of a James Ellroy book, based on a true event, directed by Brian DePalma, and starring Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, and Josh Hartnett (3 out of 4 ain’t bad). It’s endlessly tragic, then, that the entire film was an exercise in schizophrenia and uncertainty. The film should be about how the unsolved murder of an aspiring actress drives two cops to the brink of desperation (as the trailer led us to believe), but it instead focuses on no less than four different subplots, including:

-A boxing match between Josh and Aaron

-An about-to-be-paroled criminal who raped and cut up Scarlett

-Scarlett and Josh having an affair

-A lesbian nightclub

-and others.

The film can’t decide what the hell it’s actually about, and as a result it’s impossible to care about anything: the ending, in particular, comes out of nowhere and includes at least an hour’s worth of unseen (and occasionally irrelevant) information thrown at the audience in totally random order.

Some may call Bonfire of the Vanities DePalma’s biggest misstep: to those people, I say that you should probably watch The Black Dahlia a few more times.

Akira Kurosawa - The Hidden Fortress

Choosing the worst Kurosawa film is sort of like trying to pick the ugliest Victoria’s Secret model: technically, you could do it, but why? Still, though, The Hidden Fortress does fall short of Kurosawa’s other works. Many film students flock to it after hearing that George Lucas borrowed heavily from it (which turns out to be a disappointment in itself, because Lucas really only steals the droid characters and some plot devices), only to be underwhelmed.

The story of a soldier escorting a princess across enemy lines sounds pretty interesting, but turns out to be almost astonishingly dull: Toshiro Mifune is way more interesting when playing flawed antiheroes (e.g., Yojimbo), the princess is irritating and whiny, and the servants/droids aren’t really that funny. It’s an entertaining movie, of course, but it’s also short on the mix of excitement, drama, and meaning that Kurosawa did so well.

Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather III

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Godfather Part III wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first two. It’s not bad, by any means, but it’s definitely inferior to its predecessors and undoubtedly Coppola’s worst hour.

But why? Well, start with the fact that Coppola only did it because he needed money, add the fact that Robert Duvall refused to take part unless he was paid as much as Pacino, take away the possible casting of Winona Ryder as Mary Corleone and replace her with a less-than-stellar Sofia Coppola, add Al Pacino’s sudden decision to overact, and you’ve got yourself a qualified disappointment. Somehow, neither Pacino nor Francis Ford Coppola realized how far Pacino had fallen since Godfather II; where the majority of his performance used to be situated in knowing glances and eerie silences, his version of Michael in Godfather III is loud and over-the-top (“I have DONE what I had to DO to PROTECT my FAMILY”).

In a way, it’d be easier if the film was flat-out bad – we could all just ignore it and move on. Unfortunately, the film has some relatively good scenes (the last shot, in particular), but their presence is lessened when placed next to a scene where a fucking helicopter shoots into a board room and kill everyone in it except Michael. Christ, that scene was in the first Lethal Weapon movie, and it didn’t even work then.

Stanley Kubrick - Eyes Wide Shut

I’d argue Barry Lyndon is actually Kubrick’s worst, but Eyes Wide Shut is definitely his most universally reviled. Shame to have your last movie end up as your most detested, but them’s the breaks.

Films about “sexual reawakening” are usually either gussied-up pornography, or intensely boring. Eyes Wide Shut manages to be a bit of both. As Tom Cruise walks around New York and gets sexually propositioned by almost every single fucking person he meets, it’s pretty hard for anybody to care amidst the leaden pacing and typically Cruise-esque acting.

According to R. Lee Ermey (whom I would never dare call a liar, for fear he’d track me down and kick the shit out of me), even Kubrick knew the film was going to be a piece of shit because Cruise and Kidman had essentially taken it from him and used it for their own purposes.

Well, at least his memory lived in the movie A.I., right? Right? Guys?

Martin Scorsese - Cape Fear

The original Cape Fear was fantastic: it somehow managed to combine two of the biggest badasses of the day (Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck) into one film without either one overshadowing the other. It was creepy, subtle, and quietly terrifying.

Martin Scorcese’s remake has none of these things going for it. De Niro plays Max Cady as a ridiculous-sounding redneck (De Niro should, by law, be prohibited from ever attempting a Southern accent again), Nick Nolte plays Sam Bowden as a slightly less-drugged-up-than-usual version of himself (not to mention that Sam Bowden is revealed to have fabricated evidence to put Cady away, thereby making Cady more sympathetic and thereby defeating the entire purpose of the fucking movie), and there’s a pedophilia subplot that worked much better in the first film when it was simply hinted at, instead of fully explored.

Not to mention the fact that the entire climax seems like something out of Looney Tunes, as Cady dresses up like a woman, strangles Joe Don Baker, and dies screaming, tied to a sinking boat during a rainstorm.

Do yourself a favor and rent the original Peck/Mitchum flick. It’s a hell of a lot better.

Terry Gilliam - The Brothers Grimm

say this having never seen Tideland – if that flick is worse, feel free to send us an email.

Despite good turns from Heath Ledger and Matt Damon (one of the more entertaining aspects of the film is that the casting should have assumedly been reversed – Heath as the smooth-talker, and Matt as the quiet one), The Brothers Grimm is really nothing more than a very pretty Scooby Doo episode. The set design is good (but not as good as the posters would have led us to believe) and Gilliam’s direction is, as always, very meticulous, but the plot is stale, the characters boring, and the jokes unfunny.

While nobody could ever accuse Gilliam of selling out, it remains his most studio-friendly work to date: no real theme, no real message, just a few hours of two extremely attractive protagonists getting into computer-generated hijinx. It’s unfortunate that Gilliam eschewed the miniatures and practical special effects that made Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen so great – as nice as CG is, the special effects in Grimm have none of the personality of those in Gilliam’s earlier works.

Alfred Hitchcock - To Catch a Thief

Considering it was directed by a master of suspense and starred one of the most charming actors of its time, it’s almost amazing that To Catch a Thief manages to be so utterly unsuspenseful and charmless.

With no intrigue or murder to work on, this Hitchcock “thriller” basically revolves around Cary Grant and Grace Kelly almost having sex for about an hour and a half. The “real” plot involves Grace attempting to capture Cary Grant in the act of cat burgling (his criminal alias is “The Cat,” which may be the most uncool criminal alias of all time), but what little entertainment exists in the film comes from the quasi-chemistry between Grant and Kelly.

If anything, the film’s one great scene occurs when Grace Kelly opens a door, kisses Grant for absolutely no reason, and then closes the door. If that scene sounds a bit boring to be the best scene in the film, then you’re absolutely right: Cary Grant seems absolutely bored, and Grace Kelly (though painfully gorgeous) is even colder than usual.

Ridley Scott - Matchstick Men

Ah, the conman film. How wonderfully dependable you are. From The Sting to Matchstick Men, every conman film ever made consists of three clearly recognizable acts: in the first, we learn some clever and interesting small cons that the protagonist uses on a daily basis. In the second, the protagonist builds up to one big con. In the third, the big con goes down but twists and turns in a way the audience would have never imagined. This works for The Sting, but when Matchstick Men does it, the movie essentially destroys its one purpose for being.

Ostensibly, Matchstick Men was supposed to stand out from the pack of con artist flicks because while it dealt with the life of a professional liar (an OCD-plagued Nicholas Cage), it was also about him learning to love his newfound daughter. The film is actually somewhat entertaining throughout, even if the jokes fall flat and there’s not much chemistry between Cage and Alison “simultaneously looks twelve and thirty years old” Lohman.

The real problem comes with the ending: while The Sting’s twist-within-a-twist of an ending worked as light entertainment, Matchstick Men essentially makes the entire relationship between Nick Cage and his estranged daughter – you know, the basis of the entire film – irrelevant. We find out that the girl isn’t really his daughter, and she’s just been conning him. All of the themes about redemption and forgiveness are more or less lost once the twist ending comes around, in favor of a cheap surprise and a too-long denouement.

Sam Peckinpah - The Ballad of Cable Hogue

You wouldn’t think that the same guy who directed The Wild Bunch would also helm a comedy-western-musical. You might think that said comedy-western-musical might suck pretty hard, and you’d be right.

Sam Peckinpah was a gruff, serious kind of guy. This may come as a surprise, but gruff, serious guys don’t usually do comedy very well. Even though Jason Robards will always be a badass, even he can’t save Ballad from its plethora of childish sight gags (OH NOES, CABLE’S WIFE IS NAKED AND THEY HAVE GUESTS HOWEVER WILL HE COVER HER UP) and out-of-place musical numbers.

Not to mention that at the very end, Peckinpah suddenly decides that he wants to get serious. Unfortunately, Peckinpah’s version of “serious” equates with a forced and misplaced bit of story symbolism, wherein the first automobile of its type drives up to Cable’s watering hole. It begins to drift down a hill, and – for no discernible reason whatsoever – Cable tries to physically stop the car, is run over, and dies, killed by the piece of new technology.

Gee, I wonder what that could possibly mean? It’s not like that scene wasn’t done immeasurably better in any one of Peckinpah’s other films.

Quentin Tarantino - Death Proof

First things first: if you’re one of those people who’s going to defend Death Proof by saying “you just didn’t get it, you’re a mongoloid who needs to be entertained by explosions every three seconds, you can’t appreciate simple dialogue,” then shut up. I love Tarantino dialogue, I don’t mind slow films, and I’m okay with plots that go nowhere (I own and enjoy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, for Christ’s sake).

The real problem with Death Proof is that it has its priorities seriously confused. For a grindhouse-style film, it’s remarkably modern: while I’m not the connoisseur of sleaze cinema that Tarantino fancies himself, I do know that grindhouse films never spent the majority of their running time filled with pointless, superficial dialogue that served only to stroke the director’s ego. If there’s one thing a grindhouse film should never, ever do, it’s bore the audience. And Death Proof does exactly that.

And yeah, I get what the point of the dialogue was. By hearing the girls talk about regular, everyday bullshit, we’ll connect with them emotionally and it’ll be a much bigger deal when Stuntman Mike wrecks their shit. Just one problem, though: the girls have almost totally interchangeable personalities, and are more or less impossible to care for. Yeah, Zoe Bell and the Angry Black Chick stand out from the other characters, but they only stand out in that they’re really fucking annoying. Could Zoe possibly squint more in order to accentuate her bad girl dialogue, or could Angry Black Chick be any more stereotypically Angry or Black?

Not to mention that the single coolest and most interesting character in the entire film, Stuntman Mike, is only in about a fourth of the entire movie. Stuntman Mike is so cool that it’s really hard not to root for him, thus making all the bullshit dialogue with the women totally pointless. Mike’s too awesome: just let him kill these bitches and we’ll be on our way.

While the car scenes are probably the best ever put on film, you have to wonder: why on Earth didn’t Angry Black Chick just slow down when Stuntman Mike started chasing them? Or at the moment when the car actually comes to an almost-complete stop, why the hell didn’t Zoe just get off the hood and run into the car? I’m willing to suspend my disbelief pretty far in a movie called Grindhouse, but not enough to believe that an assumedly intelligent woman didn’t have the common sense to get off the hood of a friggin’ moving car when she had the chance.

I wish I could have enjoyed Death Proof more than I did, but considering it was preceded by the hilariously action-packed Planet Terror, there was no way for Death Proof to seem anything other than ploddingly slow and, overall, disappointing. The films could have probably been switched in order and Grindhouse would have worked better as a whole – not to mention that chronologically, the events of Death Proof take place before Planet Terror.

PS: Mary Elizabeth Winstead was the single hottest girl in either movie, and she did absolutely nothing. Unfortunate.

Hopping into the record book

Six hundred people on spacehoppers have taken part in the world's largest simultaneous hop.

They hopped together for a minute on London's Millennium Bridge - famous for its initial wobbles.

Guinness World Records confirmed they beat the previous record, set by 551 spacehoppers in Bath in 2003.

"The bridge was pretty bouncy under all those people," said an event spokesman. "I think we thoroughly tested it."

An adjudicator from Guinness World Records was on hand to certify the new world record.

The previous record had been held by pupils and parents at St Stephen's School in Bath.

Play a guitar like a piano

The 10 Dumbest George W. Bush Quotes

1. "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." (Bush speaking to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005)

2. "Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?... I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.... For the viewers, there’s no sun." (Bush ribbing partially blind reporter Peter Wallsten, June 14, 2006)

3. "I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound largemouth bass in my lake." (Bush describing the highlight of his time in office to a German interviewer, May 7, 2006)

4. "The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006)

5. "I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure." (Bush in Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004)

6. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." (Bush in Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004)

7. "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004)

8. "Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (Bush in Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004)

9. "I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world." (Bush in Islamabad, Pakistan, which is not known for being part of the Arab world, on March 3, 2006)

10. "You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006)

Chinese woman has insanely long hair

Xia Aifeng, 36, combs her super long hair standing on a bench at home in Shangrao, east China's Jiangxi Province, April 11, 2007. The 1.6-metre-tall woman is keeping the long hair measuring 2.42 metres.

The Top 20 Best Pornstar names

The only thing more amusing than a porn flick is the name of some of the porn stars (otherwise known as actresses). My number one name is Flick Shagwell, Sindee Coxx, B.B. Gunns and Cherry Poppens are also very clever as well. I am sure there were many left out, but below is my top twenty and at the very bottom is a list of some honorable mentions.

1. Flick Shagwell
2. Cherry Poppens
3. B.B. Gunns
4. Mia Banggs
5. Wendy Whoopers
6. Sindee Coxx
7. Kayla Kleevage
8. Summer Cummings
9. Gail Force
10. Nadia Nice
11. Jewel De’Nyle
12. April Flowers
13. Jordan McKnight
14. Candy Barr
15. Maxi Mounds
16. Renee Pornero
17. Cherry Rain
18. Kikki Daire
19. Anais Alexander
20. Christy Canyon

Here is a look at some other great names of Porn Stars

Sunrise Adams, Anais Alexander, Eva Angelina, Charlene Aspen, Ebony Ayes, Mia Banggs, Lanny Barbie, Candy Barr, Belladonna, Dru Berrymore, Brooke Biggs, Alektra Blue, Jezebelle Bond, Veronica Brazil, Christy Canyon, Mary Carey, Charlie, Chelsea Charms, Chanel Chavez, Allysin Chaynes, Cherie, Nena Cherry, Anastasia Christ, Carol Cox, Sindee Coxx, Cindy Crawford, Summer Cummings, Courtney Cummz, Deja Daire, Kikki Daire, Stormy Daniels, Misty Dawn, Monique Demoan, Jewel De’Nyle, Angela Devi, Nikki Dial, Debi Diamond, Teri Driver, Deena Duos, Lacey Duvalle, Envy, Kim Eternity, Angella Faith, Jeanna Fine, Jada Fire, Flame, Penny Flame, April Flowers, Gail Force, Shyla Foxxx, Gauge, B.B. Gunns, Haven, Autumn Haze, Jenna Jameson, Ginger Jolie, Jessica Jaymes, Jordan McKnight, Kayla Kleevage, Nikki Knights, Ice La Fox, Sunny Lane, Jacklyn Lick, Lisa Lipps, Lola Lane, Traci Lords, Shy Love, Bunny Luv, Candy Manson, Constance Money, Chessie Moore, Maxi Mounds, Kristi Mist, Kitten Natividad, Alexandra Nice, Nadia Nyce, Olivia O’Lovely, Tera Patcrick, Pebbles, Joselyn Pink, Cherry Poppens, Renee Pornero, Moana Pozzi, Cherry Rain, Harmony Rose, Silvia Saint, Flick Shagwell, Nicole Sheridan, Lisa Sparxxx, Aspen Stevens, Aimee Sweet, Wendy Whoppers, Honey Wilder, Kim Wylde

Top 7 hackers ever

Kimble

In the late 90s Schmitz has gained publicity through his several high profile break-in claims. He was part of the German BBS scene and had his own BBS called "House of Coolness". On March 23 1998, Schmitz was sentenced to two years on probation for computer fraud: He hacked into a large number of X.25-connected corporate computer systems and abused international telephone services. By that time, he had already founded a computer security company called "data protect", a contributing factor to the court's decision not to send him back to jail where he had already suffered two months of detention. His arrogant style of dealing with the computer scene and his publication of technical details on phone phreaking earned him top spots the "Most Hated Person" charts in the Worldcharts diskmag for years ahead. (As of the last issue, released in 2002, he was #6.)

He sold data protect in 2000 to "TÜV Rheinland". In 2001 TÜV Data Protect was renamed to TÜV SecureIT. Today Schmitz is on probation for attendance in insider trading: He had harvested huge profits from buying $375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company "LetsBuyIt.com" and subsequently announcing his intention of investing EUR 50 Million, creating the biggest single-day rise of a share price in the history of the German stock market. He quickly sold his shares and walked away. To date, he remains the only person to ever have been convicted for insider trading in Germany.

On CeBIT 1999 in Hannover, he displayed a Mercedes S-Class equipped with a GSM channel bank for in-car Internet access and video conferencing. The prohibitive cost of 16 parallel connections turned the project into a huge commercial failure.

Since 2001, Schmitz has had media coverage as a founder of a Hong Kong based investing company called Trendax. The company claimed to use AI for best investment options' selection, but never went public.

Aside from his flamboyant corporate activities, Schmitz got attention for several PR stunts. In 1999 he was driving around on the Munich airport for hours taking photos of himself in the cockpits of parked airplanes. In 2001 he offered a reward of USD 10 million for capture of Osama Bin Laden. His newly founded hacker group "YIHAT" (Young intelligent hackers against terrorism) didn't succeed in any of their anti-terrorism goals.

Schmitz is active in the streetracing scene. He took part in the Gumball 3000 rally several times and was the first to finish in 2001. He ran a website that claimed he is organising a street race called "Ultimate Rally". The event was originally announced for August 2006, but was postponed to 2007 after collecting money from potential participants. In late 2006, the concept was sold to an unknown investor, and entrants received a refund.

In January 2002 he announced his own suicide on his personal homepage. In fact his announcement was just part of a marketing campaign for his new project "Kimpire". The Kimpire website was a central point with linked to all of his projects and companies.

Schmitz is currently reported living between Germany, Hong Kong and Australia. As of late 2006, a number of his websites (including www.kimble.org) are blank. He has abandoned his extravagant lifestyle and is now acting as an advisor to Internet startup companies such as Friendster, iFilm, Gizmodo and Megaupload.

John Draper

John T. Draper (born 1944), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap'n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is a former phone phreak.

Draper was the son of a US Air Force engineer; he described his father as distant in an interview published on the front page of the Jan 13-14, 2007, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Draper himself entered the Air Force in 1964, and while stationed in Alaska helped his fellow servicemen make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1968, and did military-related work for several employers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He adopted the counterculture of the times and operated a pirate radio station out of a Volkswagen van.

A blind friend of John Draper's named Joe Engressia (now known as Joybubbles) informed him that a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could be easily modified to emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call. This would effectively disconnect one end of the trunk, allowing the still connected side to enter an operator mode. Experimenting with this whistle inspired Draper to build blue boxes: electronic devices capable of reproducing other tones used by the phone company.

“I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if I do it, I do it for one reason and one reason only. I'm learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore a system. Computers, systems, that's my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer.” — From Secrets of the Little Blue Box by Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire Magazine (October 1971)

The class of vulnerabilities Draper and others discovered was limited to call routing switches that employed in-band signaling, whereas newer equipment relies almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling, the use of separate circuits to transmit voice and signals. Though they could no longer serve practical use, the Cap'n Crunch whistles did become valued collector's items. Some hackers sometimes go by the handle “Captain Crunch” even today; as a result of this incident 2600 The Hacker Quarterly is named after this whistle frequency. The expense of sustaining the unbilled phone calls, the redesign of the line protocols and the accelerated equipment replacement due to the blue box is difficult to calculate, or even to separate from something as complex and dynamic as the telephone long-distance network, but it is generally acknowledged to be a huge sum.

The 1971 Esquire Magazine article which told the world about phone phreaking got Draper in hot water. Draper was arrested on toll fraud charges in 1972 and sentenced to five years' probation. The article also brought him to the attention of Steve Wozniak. In the mid 1970s he taught his phone phreaking skills to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who later founded Apple Computer. He was briefly employed at Apple, and created a telephone interface board for the Apple II personal computer. Wozniak has said that the reason that the board was never marketed was that he was the only one in the company who liked him and partially due to Draper's arrest and conviction for wire fraud in 1977. Draper wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple II, in 1979. According to the Wall Street Journal, he hand-wrote the code while serving nights in the Alameda County Jail, then entered the code later into a computer. However, another account had him writing the code as he served his four-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, California.

Draper later ported EasyWriter to the IBM PC, beating Bill Gates on the bid for the IBM contract. Draper's company, Capn' Software, posted less than $1 million revenue over six years, and he subsequently sued his software's distributor, Bill Baker, over an unauthorized version of EasyWriter that Baker released. In the 1980s, Draper worked for AutoDesk, but was laid off. His eccentric behavior sometimes led to difficulties with potential clients. Currently he writes computer security software, is senior developer of KanTalk! VoIP software for teen singer/software model Kandice Melonakos, and he hosts an Internet TV show, Crunch TV.

One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to "phreak" his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through tens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. This is just one example of his career in phreaking exploits. Draper was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. Draper also claimed, in the interview with the Wall Street Journal, that he once managed to place a direct call to the White House and spoken directly with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper told him about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles.

Emmanuel Goldstein

Eric Gordon Corley, also frequently referred to by his pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein, is a figure in the hacker community. He and his non-profit organization 2600 Enterprises, Inc., together publish a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which Corley founded in 1984.

Corley's pseudonym, Emmanuel Goldstein, is taken from the book 1984. In the book, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mysterious, and questionably existant leader of the opposition to Big Brother and the totalitarian state.

In 1999 Corley was named as a defendant in Universal v. Reimerdes, the movie industry's attempt to squelch DeCSS. DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). 2600.com had provided links to websites which contained the DeCSS code. Corley was the only defendant who chose to fight the industry in court. United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against Corley.

In 1999, Corley released the full length documentary Freedom Downtime (which he wrote, directed and produced), which was about convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin movement, among other things. He is currently in the process of filming his latest documentary, Speakers' World. Furthermore, he was creative advisor to the movie Hackers.

He was arrested on August 31, 2004 in New York City, while trying to videotape a demonstration against the Republican National Convention, in which Corley asserts he was not a participant. After being detained for more than 30 hours, he was charged with disorderly conduct. At a hearing on November 29, 2004, the city dropped all charges against Corley.

Eric Corley currently lives in Middle Island, in Long Island's Suffolk County.

Corley hosts a radio show Off The Hook on WBAI, and is concerned with legal matters related to social engineering and other issues affecting the hacker world.

Corley also hosts a show on WUSB 90.1 FM called Off the Wall, a semi call-in show that discusses current world topics, and usually whatever is on his mind. He has done other radio shows there, including The Voice of Long Island, and Brain Damage.

Corley is an alumnus of Ward Melville High School and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is host to WUSB (FM). He attended from 1977 to 1982, graduating with a degree in English.

DVD Jon

Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD-Jon, is a Norwegian (his father is Norwegian and mother is Polish) who is famous for his work on reverse engineering data formats. He is most famous for his involvement in the release of the DeCSS software, which decodes the content-scrambling system used for DVD licensing enforcement. Jon is a self-trained software engineer, who quit high school at the first year to spend more time with the DeCSS case. He moved to the United States and worked as a software engineer in October 2005 until November 2006, and has now moved back to Norway for unknown reasons.
Johansen is featured in the documentary film info wars.
The DeCSS prosecution

After Johansen released DeCSS, he was prosecuted in Norway for computer hacking in 2002.

The prosecution was conducted by Økokrim, a Norwegian crime unit investigating and prosecuting economic crime, after a complaint by the US DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Johansen has denied writing the decryption code in DeCSS, saying that this part of the project originated from someone in Germany. His defense was assisted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The trial opened in the Oslo district court (Oslo tingrett) on December 9, 2002 with Johansen pleading not guilty to charges that had a maximum penalty of two years in prison or large fines. The defense argued that no illegal access was obtained to anyone else's information, since Johansen owned the DVDs himself. They also argued that it is legal under Norwegian law to make copies of such data for personal use. The verdict was announced on January 7, 2003, acquitting Johansen of all charges.

This being the verdict of the district court, two further levels of appeals were available to the prosecutors, to the appeals court and then to the Supreme Court. Økokrim filed an appeal on January 20, 2003 and it was reported on February 28 that the appeals court (Borgarting lagmannsrett) had agreed to hear the case.

Johansen's second DeCSS trial began in Oslo on December 2, 2003, and resulted in an acquittal on December 22, 2003. Økokrim announced on January 5, 2004 that it would not appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Other projects

2001

In 2001, Johansen released OpenJaz, a reverse-engineered set of drivers for Linux, BeOS and Windows 2000 that allow operation of the JazPiper MP3 player without its proprietary drivers.

2003

In November 2003, Johansen released QTFairUse, an open source program which dumps the raw output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which could bypass the digital rights management (DRM) software used to encrypt content of music from media such as those distributed by the iTunes Music Store, Apple Computer's online music store. Although these resulting raw AAC files were unplayable by most media players at the time of release, they represent the first attempt at circumventing Apple's encryption.

2004

Johansen had by now become a VideoLAN developer, and had reverse engineered FairPlay and written VLC's FairPlay support. [2] It has been available in VideoLAN CVS since January 2004, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2, 2004).

On April 25, 2004 Johansen released yet another program: DeDRMS. Written in C#, this 230 line program is also said to remove copy prevention.

On July 7, 2004 he released FairKeys, a program that can be used to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS from the iTunes Music Store servers itself.

On August 12, 2004 Johansen announced on his website that he defeated Apple's AirPort Express's encryption which lets users stream Apple Lossless files to their AirPort Expresses.

On November 25, 2004 he released a proof of concept program that allows Linux users (via VLC) to play video encoded with Microsoft's proprietary WMV9 codec, by porting the reference version of the software. This is a significant development as Microsoft has been lobbying to have their codec used with the next DVD standard.

2005

On March 18, 2005, Travis Watkins and Cody Brocious, along with Johansen, wrote PyMusique, a Python based program which allows the download of purchased files from the iTunes Music Store without DRM encryption. This was possible because Apple Computer's iTunes software adds the DRM to the music file after the music file is downloaded. On March 22, Apple released a patch for the iTunes Music Store blocking the use of his PyMusique program. The same day, an update to PyMusique was released, circumventing the new patch.

On June 26, 2005, Johansen created a modification of Google's new in-browser video player (which was based on the open source VLC media player) in less than 24 hours after its release, to allow the user to play videos that are not hosted on Google’s servers. The significance of the modification was exaggerated by the online media.

In late summer, Håkon Wium Lie, the Norwegian co-creator of Cascading Style Sheets and long-time supporter of open source, named Jon Lech Johansen a "hero" in a net meeting arranged by one of Norway's biggest newspapers.

2 September 2005, The Register published news that DVD Jon had defeated encryption in Microsoft's Windows Media Player by reverse engineering a proprietary algorithm that was ostensibly used to protect Media Player NSC files from engineers sniffing for the files' source IP address, port or stream format. Johansen had also made a decoder available.

September, 2005, Johansen announced the release of SharpMusique 1.0, an alternative to the default iTunes program. The program allows Linux and Windows users to buy songs from the iTunes music store without copy protection.

In 2005, Johansen worked for MP3tunes in San Diego as a software engineer. His first project was a new digital music product, code-named Oboe.

In November 2005 a Slashdot story notes that Sony-BMGs XCP DRM software includes code and comments (such as "copyright (c) Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved." illegally copied from an iTunes DRM circumvention program by Jon Lech Johansen. A popular claim was that, using the criteria that RIAA uses in its copyright lawsuits, Johansen could sue for billions of dollars in damages.

2006
his intent to defeat the encryption of Next-Generation DVD encryption, AACS. It appears that Johansen is aiming for a winter 2006/2007 release of a circumvention application.

On June 7, 2006, Johansen announced that he had moved to San Francisco and was joining DoubleTwist Ventures.

In October 2006, Johansen and DoubleTwist Ventures announced they had reverse engineered Apple Computer's DRM for iTunes, called FairPlay. Rather than allow people to strip the DRM, DoubleTwist would license the ability to apply FairPlay to media companies who wanted their music and videos to play on the iPod, without having to sign a distribution contract with Apple.

Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo (born 1981) is an infamous former grey hat hacker and journalist, principally known for breaking into a series of high-security computer networks, and his subsequent arrest. Best known among these were his intrusions into The New York Times and Microsoft. He is also known for attempting to identify security flaws in computer networks of Fortune 500 companies and then notifying them of any found; while still illegal in many places without permission, this can be seen as a form of unsolicited penetration testing.

Personal

Lamo was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Mario Lamo and Mary Lamo-Atwood. Dubbed the "homeless hacker" for his transient lifestyle, Lamo spent most of his travels couch-surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings and travelling to Internet cafes, libraries and universities to investigate networks, and sometimes exploit security holes. Despite performing authorized and unauthorized vulnerability assessment for several large, high-profile entities, Lamo refused to accept payment for his services. In the past, his lifestyle allowed him to travel up and down the coasts of the United States, often by coach, carrying all necessary possessions in a backpack.

Professional

Since Lamo's sentencing, he has entered the early stages of a career as an award-winning journalist, studying at American River College, with writing, photography, and editorial work / collaboration appearing in Network World, Mobile Magazine, 2600 Magazine, The American River Current, XY Magazine, and others. Lamo has interviewed personalities ranging from John Ashcroft, to Oliver Stone to alleged members of the Earth Liberation Front. Lamo also has a history of public speaking - he was a keynote speaker at a government security conference in 2005 alongside Bruce Schneier, and a panelist at the Information Security In the Age of Terrorism conference.

Lamo has shown signs of increased cooperation with media since his release from federal custody, including a podcast interview with Patrick Gray in Australia, and a recent segment on 88.1 WMBR out of Cambridge.

Activities and techniques

Adrian Lamo is perhaps best known for breaking into The New York Times internal computer network in February 2002, adding his name to confidential databases of expert sources, and using the paper's LexisNexis account to conduct research on high-profile subjects, although his first published activities involved operating AOL watchdog site Inside-AOL.com. The Times filed a complaint and a warrant for Lamo's arrest was issued in August 2003 following a 15 month investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. At 10:15 AM on September 9, after spending a few days in hiding, he surrendered to the US Marshals in Sacramento, California. He re-surrendered to the FBI in New York City on September 11, and pleaded guilty to one count of computer crimes against Microsoft, Lexis-Nexis and The New York Times on 8 January, 2004.

Later in 2004, Lamo was sentenced to six months' detention at his parents' home plus two years probation, and was ordered to pay roughly $65,000 in restitution. He was convicted of compromising security at The New York Times and Microsoft, and is alleged to have admitted to exploiting security weaknesses at Excite@Home, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MCI WorldCom, Ameritech, Cingular and has allegedly violated network security at AOL Time Warner, Bank of America, Citigroup, McDonald's and Sun Microsystems. Companies sometimes use proxies to allow their employees access to the internet, without giving the internet access to their internal network. However, when these proxies are improperly configured, they can allow access to the company's internal network. Lamo often exploited this, sometimes using a tool called ProxyHunter.

Critics have repeatedly labelled Lamo as a publicity seeker or common criminal, claims that he has refused to publicly refute. When challenged for a response to allegations that he was glamorizing crime for the sake of publicity, his response was "Anything I could say about my person or my actions would only cheapen what they have to say for themselves." When approached for comment during his criminal case, Lamo would frequently frustrate reporters with non sequiturs such as "Faith manages" and "It was a beautiful day."

At his sentencing, Lamo expressed remorse for harm he had caused through his intrusions, with the court record quoting him as adding "I want to answer for what I have done and do better with my life."

As of 16 January 2007, Lamo's probation was terminated, ending a three-year period during which the American government stripped him of certain opportunities, including the ability to employ any privacy protection software, travel outside certain established boundaries, socialize with security researchers, and other activities enjoyed by the public.

DNA controversy
On May 9, 2006, while 18 months into a two year probation sentence, Adrian Lamo refused to give the United States government a blood sample they demand so as to record his DNA in their CODIS system. According to his attorney, Adrian Lamo has a religious objection to giving blood, but is willing to give his DNA in another form. "He went in there with fingernail clippings and hair, and they refused to accept it, because they will only accept blood" said federal public defender Mary French. A 26 March 2007 extended evidentiary hearing is scheduled to address a motion to dismiss filed by Lamo's counsel.

On June 15, lawyers for Lamo filed another motion citing the Book of Genesis as one basis for Lamo's religious opposition to the frivolous spilling of blood: "The Book of Genesis leaves unambiguous this matter. Therein, those who would spill the blood of man are rebuked as follows: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." Genesis 9:6 (New International Version)."

Lamo continued: "Under this admonition, not only would I be blinding myself to the direct instructions of scripture by shedding blood, but I would similarly be casting whomever facilitated this act into sin, multiplying my culpability," setting the basis for defense counsel Mary French to urge US District Court Judge Frank Damrell to exempt Lamo from the sampling entirely, or to order his probation officer to accept some other biological product in lieu of blood, as previously offered by Lamo.

Can You Hack It?

Can You Hack It?, a documentary covering Lamo's life and times, is slated for release under the care of Trigger Street Productions. Directed by Sam Bozzo, it features Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, TechTV personality Leo Laporte, and narration by actor Kevin Spacey. The film explores the practical and ethical themes of modern computer hacking, intertwining Lamo's story with those of controversial figures throughout history.

Solo

Gary McKinnon, also known as Solo, (born in Glasgow in 1966) is a British hacker accused by the United States of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time." Following legal hearings in the UK it was decided in July 2006 that he should be extradited to the United States. In February 2007 his lawyers argued against this ruling in an appeal to the High Court in London [1], which was turned down on April 3 [2]. He still has the possibility of appealing to the House of Lords, and his lawyer has stated that he will do this[3] within 14 days using the argument that because the alleged offences were committed in the UK this is where he should be tried.

Background

The computer systems administrator is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense and the US Air Force. The US estimates claim the costs of tracking and correcting the problems he allegedly caused were around $700,000.

McKinnon was originally tracked down and arrested under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in 2002 who informed him that he would face community service. The Crown Prosecution Service refused to charge him. Later that year he was indicted by the United States government. McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (after the UK had implemented a new extradition treaty with the US [which the US congress has not ratified]) when he became subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening, and to remain at his home address at night. In addition he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings.

If he is extradited to the U.S. and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail and has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay. He has said that he will contest the extradition proceedings and believes that he should face trial in the UK, principally as he argues that his "crimes" were committed there and not in the United States.

In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme, he claimed that he was able to get into the military's networks simply by using a Perl script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default passwords active.

Statements to the media

During the length of time between his indictment and beginning of extradition proceedings, with a growing media interest in his case, Gary McKinnon has had a number of opportunities to address the media.

At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference in London on April 27, 2006, McKinnon appeared on the Hackers' Panel. When asked how his exploits were first discovered, McKinnon answered that he had miscalculated the timezone — he was using remote-control software to operate a Windows computer while its user was sitting in front of it.

McKinnon has admitted in many public statements to unauthorised access of computer systems in the United States including those mentioned in the United States indictment. He claims his motivation, drawn from a statement made before the Washington Press Club on May 9, 2001 by a group of high level ex-military and civilian sources known as "The Disclosure Project", was to find evidence of UFOs, antigravity technology, and the government suppression of "Free Energy", all of which he claims to have proven through his actions.

In his interview with the BBC he also claimed that "The Disclosure Project" says there is "extra-terrestrial and origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He also claimed to have downloaded a low-resolution image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere. He said that unfortunately he did not manage to get a screenshot or recording of the image because he was "bedazzled" to see the image, could not remember the capture function in the software RemotelyAnywhere, and that he was "cut off" from his connection.

The charge that he perpetrated "the biggest military hack of all time" is disputed by McKinnon who characterises himself as a "bumbling computer nerd". He refers to previous documented incidents of hacking including May 2001 when as acknowledged by U.S. government contractor Exigent International one or more hackers broke into a U.S government server storing satellite software and stole code. Evidence led investigators to an e-mail service in Sweden but the culprits were never apprehended. In 1997, two California teenagers and a trio of Israeli hackers were arrested for hacking into Pentagon servers. Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum, then 18 years old, and his two teenage accomplices were not extradited, but were prosecuted by local authorities. McKinnon has also claimed that on many occasions he noticed other hackers unlawfully entering the same systems and suggests that his activities were not unique. The U.S. Pentagon has for example in the past cited as many as 250,000 attacks in a single year.

Legal Developments
Gary McKinnon's extradition hearing was determined by the provisions of the UK Extradition Act 2003.

Under this Act there is no requirement for an extradition request from the United States to contain prima facie evidence of the charges. Following earlier adjournments a final court hearing was held on 10 May 2006 at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. The court recommended that he be extradited.

The adjourning of earlier hearings was occasioned by a request from the defence to obtain the following assurances: that Gary McKinnon would not be tried by a military tribunal, will be eligible for parole and will not have to serve his sentence at Guantanamo Bay. At a hearing on 12 April 2006 the prosecution produced an unsigned note from the US Embassy, claimed to be a guarantee that McKinnon would not be tried under U.S. Military Order 1 (November 13, 2001 - 66 Fed. Reg. 57,833 "Military Order"), which allows suspected terrorists to be tried under military law. However, the defence argued that the note was not binding as it was unsigned. The defence called as a witness Clive Stafford-Smith, a US-based lawyer who has defended inmates of Guantanamo Bay. Stafford-Smith argued that the note would not prevent McKinnon from being treated as a terrorist.

However in the final hearing on 10 May 2006 District Judge Nicholas Evans, ruling in the case, said he had received assurances that Mr McKinnon would be tried in a federal court in Virginia. He added that "any real - as opposed to fanciful - risk" of Mr McKinnon being sent to Guantanamo had receded. The case has been taken up again in the High Court in February 2007. His lawyers have stated they will again ask the Home Secretary to refuse extradition on the grounds that his human rights (under European Union law) have been violated .

The final decision in cases of extradition rests with the UK Home Secretary. On July 6, 2006 Home Secretary John Reid decided to allow the extradition "for charges connected with computer hacking". According to a Home Office spokesman: "Mr McKinnon had exercised his right to submit representations against return but the secretary of state did not consider the issues raised availed Mr McKinnon." In respect of U.S. Military Order 1 it has been noted that recently such military tribunals have been ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court, and may conceivably have been an influence in the Home Secretary's decision.

McKinnon's appeal against the extradition order was quashed by a High Court judge on April 3, 2007

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is a computer security consultant and convicted computer hacker. Mitnick served five years in prison (four and a half years of it of it pre-trial), 8 months of that in solitary confinement, and was released on January 21, 2000. During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was initially restricted from using any communications technology other than a landline telephone. After fighting this decision in court, the judge ruled in favor of Mitnick, and when Mitnicks supervised part of his release ended this allowed him to access the Internet.

Kevin Mitnick began social engineering or perhaps discovered his first engineerible situation the age of 12. He realized could bypass the punchcard system used for the Los Angeles bus system, by buying himself his own punch, get free bus rides anywhere in the greater LA area. Social engineering became his primary method of obtaining information, whether it be usernames, passwords, modem phone numbers, anything that would have been useful in whatever mark he was working on.

Mitnick broke into his first computer network in 1979, when a friend gave him the phone number for the Ark, the computer system at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. He broke into DEC's systems and stole DEC's software, for which he was later convicted. This was the first of a series of run-ins with the law.

Downfall
Kevin Mitnick would change his identity by exploiting how the identification system worked in the United States. He would obtain the birth certificates of recently deceased newborns and very young children (around the ages of 1 to 3 years old), as the government had no distinct record of their death since they never worked nor were involved in society. Furthermore, the certificates would have to be from someone who was, for example, born in Washington and died in California, as it was more difficult to trace back to the original source. He changed his identity about three or four times, any time he changed jobs. He claimed to have learned most of this information through a book by the title of Paper Trail, written by Barbara Snow Gilbert. Mitnick was arrested after the FBI obtained a search warrant, searched his house, and found his wallet with numerous fake ID's. Although he was caught in an accident, by having the fake identification still in his possession, once out of jail, he was able to evade the FBI and police for a relatively large amount of time.

Controversy

Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial.

The core of the controversy came from two books that presented views that were at odds with one another: John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura's Takedown, and Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game. In particular, Littman made allegations of journalistic impropriety against Markoff, of overzealous prosecution of Mitnick by the government, of mainstream media over-hyping of Mitnick's actual crimes, and of the legality of Shimomura's involvement in the matter. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book without permission.

The case against Mitnick tested then-nascent laws that had been enacted for dealing with computer crime, and it raised public awareness of security issues involving networked computers. The controversy remains, however, as Mitnick is often used today as an example of the quintessential computer criminal although his exploits are less notable than his notoriety suggests.

Furthermore, supporters of Mitnick assert that many of the charges against him were fraudulent and not based on actual losses. A lot of the hype surrounding Mitnick's exploits were media sensationalism; For example, many believe that Mitnick was once in the FBI's most wanted list. This is actually a myth. Federal prosecuter Kent Walker said in an interview to the New York Times: "He (Mitnick) was arguably the most wanted computer hacker in the world, he allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars. He was a very big threat". The headline of the resultant article, "A Most-Wanted Cyberthief Is Caught in His Own Web," was later picked up by Associated Press, Time Magazine and Reuters, thus perpetuating the myth. Mitnick has alleged that at one time he was held in solitary confinement for 8 months because his girlfriend Suzy Thunder told authorities Mitnick could cause a nuclear attack by whistling into a phone. He was refused access to a phone because of this.

While Mitnick's actual actions may not have justified the level of official concern they did, the fact that his activities were criminal is not disputed. Mitnick's first adult criminal sentence was considerably shorter than is the norm today. His second adult criminal sentence was typical for a second offense committed while on probation.

The film Freedom Downtime, a documentary that centers on the topics of Kevin Mitnick's incarceration in a maximum security prision, Miramax's film's screen adaptation of Takedown, and the "FREE KEVIN" movement, was made in 2001 by Emmanuel Goldstein and produced by 2600 Films in 2006.

Attacks on Mitnick's sites
On August 20, 2006, Kevin Mitnick's site was defaced by Pakistani hackers with offensive messages against him. The domain names defensivethinking.com, mitsec.com, kevinmitnick.com and mitnicksecurity.com displayed the vandalism for hours before the affected files were replaced.

Mitnick commented:

The Web hosting provider that hosts my sites was hacked, fortunately, I don't keep any confidential data on my Web site, so it wasn't that serious. Of course it is embarrassing to be defaced—nobody likes it.

As a notorious figure, Mitnick has been targeted by hackers who wish to bolster their status and for people seeking to prove their abilities.[4] Also, sites supporting Mitnick have been targeted as well.[citation needed]

Zone-H reports that in one occasion, there was a struggle between different black hat and white hat hackers when some defacers put their nicks on Mitnick's site and fans who were replacing the vandalized copy with an original unmodified one. This went on for a full day.

Recent activity

* Mitnick offers security consulting services through his company Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC and has co-authored two books on computer security. The books are The Art of Deception (2002), which focuses on social engineering, and The Art of Intrusion (2005), focusing on real stories of security exploits.
* He has also co-authored (with Alexis Kasperavicius) a social engineering prevention training course and certification: CSEPS.
* On Aug 20, 2006, A Syrian editor, Nidal Maalouf, accused Mitnick of stealing his domain name (Syria-news.com), He falsely claimed that Mitnick is the FBI's No.1 wanted person for illegal acts against a number of internet sites. Maalouf was interviewed by the local newspaper "Bourses & Markets", and the interview was quoted by Al-Ayham Saleh on his personal website.
* Mitnick usually makes semiannual appearances on the popular late night radio show Coast to Coast AM. Mitnick has also hosted the show with interviews including Steve Wozniak (on April 30, 2006).
* Kevin Mitnick has been invited to be a speaker at many events. He was the keynote speaker at the IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) Privacy Academy in Las Vegas, October, 2005, Kevin Mitnick was also a speaker at the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology in San Jose, CA, in the summer of 2004 as well as a keynote speaker at The Fifth H.O.P.E. in New York, NY, July, 2004. One of his first appearances was at ITESM Monterery Tec, on February 2003 where he was also the keynote speaker, and spoke to a sellout at the campu's auditorium, Auditorio Luis Elizondo. He was scheduled to speak at the sixth H.O.P.E. in 2006, but was unable to attend after becoming ill while vacationing in Colombia.
* Kevin Mitnick was a "surprise guest" in the 40th TWiT podcast when, while in Las Vegas for a conference, he ran into Steve Wozniak at a table outside a Starbucks coffee store. Wozniak was on the line with fellow TWiT hosts via Skype on his notebook computer, and Mitnick remained with Wozniak for much of the remainder of the show.
* Kevin Mitnick appeared on "Thebroken", an online videozine marketing itself as 'borderline legal.' He appeared on the third episode of the show, but was given mention in the first.
* Mitnick guest starred in a first season episode of Alias. The casting was an in-joke, since Mitnick played a CIA hacker. Due to the conditions of his parole, however, the computer he used in the scene was a prop.
* Kevin Mitnick has recently appeared on the South African actuality programme "Carte Blanche".
* On 2 March 2007, the WELL declined his application for admission, refunding his membership fee.
* Kevin Mitnick now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In popular culture
* Mitnick is referenced by a fictional radio caller in the video game Grand Theft Auto III. The crazy caller rants and raves about the National Security Agency's ECHELON system and government conspiracies. At the end, he is asked if he wants to say anything else and answers "yes", and then shouts "FREE KEVIN!", but is immediately cut off. "Free Kevin" is a reference to the controversy over Mitnick's trial and incarceration.
* Kevin Mitnick is mentioned in episode 18 of the anime "Black Lagoon".
* The video game "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines" features a Nosferatu hacker named Mitnick.
* Mitnick is played by actor Skeet Ulrich in the movie Takedown.
* Mitnick's voice can be heard in the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". During WCTR's "Area 53" conspiracy theory show, an unnamed caller talks about being kept in solitary confinement for 8 months because 'I can launch nuclear missiles by just whistling into a phone!'. The caller is none other than Kevin Mitnick himself. The host of the show, Marvin Trill, asks if the caller can blow up all the other radio stations in town, to which Mitnick replies 'Hey, I don't do that anymore. I only use my powers for good.'.