October 1, 2001– Newsletter #150

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Well, if my Goodies “IN” box is any indication, Nimda is
alive and cooking. I’m getting 250 emails every time I
log in. The vast majority are just carriers for the virus. If
you’re getting the same and would like a bit of a laugh, a
newsletter reader suggested I spell Nimda backwards.
It’s not a big laugh, but at least you’ll get a hint as to
where the name came from.

Did you hear…

The U.S. government is going to start, maybe as early as
this week, airing public service announcements asking
so-called Patriot Hackers to stop using their powers for
evil. The ads will suggest that the hackers are hurting the
government’s case and approach to dealing with the
terrorists. The thinking is that well-meaning hackers
might release a worm that attacks vital systems rather
than, or in addition to, attacking an intended target.

A new virus is floating around that is using the terrorist
attack as part of its Social Engineering. The email is
titled “Vote.” Basically, you’re asked to vote on a few
items using the attached file. Click it and your data is
gone, gone, gone. Be careful.

The “.info” domain has been attached to over 52,000
names and is now beginning to show up around the Web.
ICANN states that another quarter million are in the
pipeline. It has been suggested that over 60% of the
world’s top brands have bought the extension.

Seventeen-year-old Eliza Gauger, a student from
Bellingham, Washington, may very well have created the
most popular piece of amateur propaganda from the
September 11th attack, maybe ever. The piece is titled
“Mommy Liberty” and shows a sketch of Lady Liberty
holding a gun in one hand and a child wrapped in a flag
in the other. If you’d like to see the piece, it can be found
at this address.

Now on to today’s topic…

Back in 1992, the New York Post ran a basically
unfounded story about a supposed anti-Semitic message
found within Microsoft’s graphical font, Wingdings.

The story goes that a person was installing software on a
computer running Windows 3.1. I don’t know that the
fact that the operating system was 3.1 is so important, it
just happened to be in every version of the story I found,
so I am including it here.

The installation went along just fine until the person
doing the work opened the computer’s new word
processor and typed in the letters “NYC.” He (one story
had the installer as a “he”) proceeded to alter the text font
to Wingdings. There was the hidden message.

The screen displayed a skull-and-crossbones, then a Star
of David, and then a thumbs-up. You can try it yourself
if you’d like. Just make sure the three letters are
uppercase.

This was taken to mean, “Death to Jews in New York
was a good thing.”

I want to know why it specifically has to mean that. The
Star of David is actually called “Magen David,” or
“Shield of David.” Why couldn’t the images represent
that death is shielded and it’s a good thing? Why
couldn’t the images mean that a guy named David makes
good pesticides? It could also mean that the Jolly Roger
was successful in following the north star.

Is it really an embedded message or is that just simply the
way someone interpreted it?

To further muddy the waters, another major U.S. city
that’s known only by letters, DC, produces an upturned
and down-turned thumb. Really. Try it. Does that mean
voting? Does that mean the city is both good and bad?
We could go to town on that one.

Let me throw another one into the mix. Write the word,
“JEW” and turn it into Wingdings. Again, follow the
capitalization pattern. You get a smiling face, a finger
pointing at it, and then a cross. How do you take that?

Try typing in “JESUS” and see what you come up with.
That one seems far more contrived then NYC.

What do you think of the symbols that appear when you
type in, “ALLAH”?

How about, “GOD”? Can you get anything out of that?

If you’re looking for something bad, you’ll surely find it.

Accusations flew and Microsoft investigated the incident
along with the Anti-Defamation League. The results of
the investigation were that Microsoft did not intentionally
place the characters so that such a statement would
appear. Furthermore, Microsoft didn’t even create the
Wingdings font. A company named Bigelow and Holmes
built the coding. That further added fuel to the fire.
This was all a metaphysical synchronicity known as a
coincidence.

If you’re wondering, as I was, why Microsoft did not
choose to change the Wingdings font characters, it was
because they believed that changing three characters
could have effects upon text already displaying the font.
The actual Microsoft statement regarding the Wingdings
debacle can be found here.

Now, you may be wondering why I am dredging up a
story from ten years ago. The reason is that after the
terrorist attack, the story regarding the “NYC” Wingdings
concern is beginning to come up again, along with a few
other interesting conspiracy theories.

You may want to be aware of these before you begin
getting the overly concerned emails that are sure to start
flying around very soon.

With the advent of Internet Explorer 4, Microsoft
introduced a new graphical font called, “Webdings.” To
quote Microsoft, “Our team of iconographers traveled the
world asking site designers and users which symbols,
icons and pictograms they thought would be most
appropriate for a font of this kind. From thousands of
suggestions we had to pick just two hundred and thirty
for inclusion in Webdings.”

No one asked me.

OK, that’s fine. Why have one set of strange characters,
when you can have two, I guess. The problem is that with
the knowledge of the Wingdings NYC problems, those
who created Webdings seized a moment.

Type “NYC” into WORD and change the font to
Webdings if you have it. It shows a human eye, a heart,
and a series of skyscrapers.

“Ah Ha!” you say! I love New York!

This is the point at which conspiracy theorists will start
proclaiming that if Webdings had a blatantly inserted
message, then the original Wingdings font message must
also be true.

It’s really a leap of logic, but that’s what is being thrown
around the Web. I have to admit that it was really dumb
to intentionally embed a response to the first Wingdings,
but I wasn’t in charge back then.

You may also want to keep an eye out for this little ditty,
“Q33NY.” Please note that the letters are uppercase.
That matters.

Take that Q33NY, type it into your word processor and
change it to Wingdings. You should see an airplane
pointed at two pieces of paper followed by the skull and
Star of David. With a little imagination, one can see that
as an airplay running into the towers proclaiming the
death of Jews.

The problem with this one is that the code, Q33NY, is
completely manufactured. It has no relevance to the
incident at all except the “NY” stuck on the end. Now,
you’ll hear that this was a flight number or a tracking
number of one of the airliners. It wasn’t.

I find it a real concern that at a moment such as this,
someone would take the time to look so deeply into such
a completely unrelated area such as Wingdings in order to
find fault at one level or another.

Why look so deeply when the real problems are so large
and so visible right in front of your eyes?

Actually, maybe that is the reason.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading. I appreciate it.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And remember: When you make your way down here to
New Orleans, maybe you’ll find it interesting, as I did,
that instead of catsup being on the restaurant table, it’s
hot pepper sauce. I like it, but those who grew up here
just put it on everything. The hotter the better. What
makes a pepper “hot” is the amount of capsaicin it
contains. In 1912, a fellow named Wilber Scoville
devised a scale that ranked peppers in terms of hotness.
The scale was measured in Scoville units for obvious
reasons.

A pepper is sweet if it ranks between 0 and 100 Scovilles.
A Jalapeno has between 2500 and 5000 Scovilles. The
hottest pepper is the Habanero, which ranks over 100,000
Scovilles. Some have gone as high as 350,000 Scovilles.

Ouch.