Re: Ah, Gus. So On Topic. Why is it that we don't see flying carpets, unicorns, genies, trolls, elves and faeries any more?
These magic carpet stories are on-topic indeed --it's just a matter of reading between the lines of these centuries-old Central Asian fairytales. See by yourself:
Excerpted from my post #9041:
Another important motif in Azerbaijani legends is that carpets can "talk": not in human speech, but through their patterns. In one story a king was saved by his own skill at carpet weaving. Kidnapped, he wove a carpet which merchants carried from country to country until his wife chanced to see it, deciphered the message in the symbols, and arranged for his rescue.
And here's how it translates into our modern world:
Friday September 21 05:01 PM EDT
Experts say Osama's men used encrypted messages on the Internet to communicate
By Sam Handlin, Court TV
For members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, a picture could really tell a thousand words —but ordinary people and law enforcement personnel might not know it.
Authorities trying to follow the cyber-trail of terrorists linked to recent attacks face a daunting task. While some e-mails between operatives in America have been recovered, bin Laden's organization also uses a full array of encryption tactics, experts say, including concealing hidden messages within the source codes of images, in order to communicate covertly over the Internet.
During a meeting in with the Senate Intelligence Committee last February, security officials reportedly said that bin Laden's associates were hiding messages in image files and chat rooms on the Internet, perhaps even within online pornography — a bizarre choice for the devout Muslims.
"They put encrypted messages within all sorts of files. Bin Laden's up on the latest technologies. The guy can do anything that any other techno-junkie is capable of," says Harvey Kushner, criminal justice professor and author of "Terrorism in America and The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium."
Image files just consist of source code, and concealing text within that code isn't that difficult, according to Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor and expert on cyber-terrorism.
"It's very simple, I'm afraid," she says. "There are simple and easily available software tools for this. You select an image file. You type your covert message in another file, then combine and encrypt them with the software program. It will ask you for a password, which is the encryption key. Then somebody else with the password can uncover the message, but it won't be apparent to anybody else."
[snip]
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