Universal Gossamer

You really have to love the interaction possible with the Internet and in this example, specifically YouTube. I was watching a good interview with Michael Scheuer about his latest book, Marching Toward Hell, and I see the commentary and interpretation of the interview from a guy who claims to be a former UAE Undersecretary, of what exactly, it is not clear on his biography page. What we have here is an original production, then analyzed and elaborated upon in a subsequent format, and which then can be commented on and posted as I am doing here. It is like an endless gossamer of spinning, commenting, analyzing, and reacting.

Have We Learned Anything About Warfare in Iraq?

DARPA's Urban Mapping technology seems to provide proper support for the complexities of modern warfare and current challenges for the street level fighter in Iraq. The new technology--called the Tactical Ground Reporting System, or TIGR--is a map-centric application that junior officers can study before going on patrol and add to upon returning. This reminds me of a Google Maps mash-up on steroids and allows a soldiers to get up close and personal to their environment. By clicking on icons and lists, officers can see the locations of key buildings, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, and retrieve information such as location data on past attacks, geotagged photos of houses and other buildings (taken with cameras equipped with Global Positioning System technology), and photos of suspected insurgents and neighborhood leaders. They can even listen to civilian interviews and watch videos of past maneuvers.

Et Tu, NetBrute Scanner?

The NetBrute Scanner is a handy tool because it surveys your network for a vulnerable point of entry: shared folders or open ports. There are three simple security tools that will put your network through a basic security check, looking for shared resources and open ports. In addition, you can also use it to test the security of any Web servers on your network.

The tools can be checked on any individual PC on the network by using its network name or IP address. There is also the ability to scan an entire range of IP addresses. I find the latter more difficult to apply and use successfully.

The program lists all shared resources and lets you connect to those resources and browse them from the program as well. The program also scans the PCs on the network for open TCP ports, so you'll be able to find out what Web servers, FTP servers, Telnet resources and the like are installed. For security, it will identify your port vulnerabilities.

The third utility in the suite checks the Web servers on your network and sees whether it can break into them using a "dictionary attack" by trying combinations of user names and passwords to gain access to the webmaster's account. The feigned access replicates a brute force attack.

Support for Wikileaks Grows

I find it ironic, and frightening, that in the same week the Pakistani government censors YouTube is the same time that an American Court disabled Wikilieaks.org, a whistle-blower site.

Fortunately, a number of privacy and civil rights advocates are calling on a federal court to reconsider its decision.

A motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, and a Wikileaks user asked the court for permission to intervene in the case.

The groups asked the court to dissolve its permanent injunction disabling the Wikileaks.org Web site. They claimed that the court's action violated their First Amendment right to access the contents of the Wikileaks Web site.

Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society's Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) is also sympathetic towards Wikileaks and the center filed a brief opposing the court's injunctions against Wikileaks and its domain registrar Dynadot LLC. The brief that they filed also cited First Amendment concerns.

The new found support for Wikileaks comes in the wake of two injunctions issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White on February 15. The injunctions were in response to a lawsuit filed by the Julius Baer Group, a Swiss bank that, according to documents on Wikileaks, was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.

The rulings elicited vociferous criticism from privacy and civil rights groups that saw it as an unprecedented violation of First Amendment rights.

An additional hearing takes place tomorrow.

Predicting the Next Big One

Want to predict terrorist behavior?

The prediction of terrorist behavior is the goal of a new initiative at the University of Maryland. The University launched a data mining portal for counter-terrorism research.

The researchers consider that the unpredictable groups are useful for policy analysts and counter-terrorism groups who can use past behavior to forecast terrorist behavior.

The University of Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), specifically, the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP), uses publicly available data on more than 110 terror groups from around the world. In addition, it uses a real-time data extraction tool called T-REX to scour and extract data from more than 128,000 articles a day on an average of 180 news sites in 93 countries. The data is then organized into columns by year, variables associated with the group, such as an attack it might have carried out, or any counter-measures taken against it by a government. As a result, each variable then gets a numeric code representing its relative importance.

SOMA, or Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents, then creates rules about the various terrorist groups, thus predicting their behavior, in its database.

The conclusions are worth considering. Hezbollah is demonstrated then to show that when it was involved in electoral politics, the chances it will attack civilians outside of Lebanon was in the 69% to 87% range. On the other hand, those chances dropped sharply when Hezbollah is not involved in electoral politics. The conclusion seems to be counterintuitive. Hezbollah is more violent as it is involved in democratic politics.

SOMA proved to be accurate in predicting an outcome about 90% of the time. This accuracy rate would be invaluable if consistent. The researchers had inputted ten years of data on each group and as a result turned out an accuracy rate over 90%. While the tool could not predict any specific target or time line the data could be invaluable for increasing security.

Nonetheless, the tool is a promising beginning for generally baffling human phenomenon.

Obama's Fashion Statement

Graphic source: BBC.

I'm not completely sure what to make of Obama's fashion statement but it is most helpful to hear from an expert. Although we may not know now who released the image, a photo of Obama wearing Somali clothing is causing a fire storm after it was released on the Drudge Report website.

I'd let an expert address the clothing.

Yusuf Garaad Omar, head of the BBC's Somali Service, explains the meaning of the robes.

These are the normal clothes that nomadic people wear.

The head turban is especially used by elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning whatsoever in Somalia culture.

If you see someone dressed like that in Somalia, you think it is a nomadic person - that is all.

There is no religious significance to it whatsoever. It is mainly the nomadic people who use it. Some of them are religious, some are not.

It is simply a tradition of the place where they are from.

In this particular place, Wajir in north-east Kenya, the community is majority ethnic Somali.

They have a council for Peace and Development, and when they get delegates they dress them as a nomadic person.

Given that the expert, Mr. Omar, has weighed in, the costume does not appear particularly significant, but it has allowed the Clinton campaign some room to deny that they were behind the picture's release.

Blackboard Prevails Against Desire2Learn in Patent Disupute

Blackboard won its elearning patent dispute against Desire2Learn which surprised me. I didn't think Blackboard's case was as strong as the federal jury in Lufkin, TX apparently did.

Cf. Dian Schaffhauser, "Blackboard Wins Lawsuit Against Desire2Learn," Campus Technology, 2/22/2008, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=58797.

Atomic Learning Workshop on Blogger Blogging: Everything You Need to Know About Blogging

Atomic Learning has done a real service in creating a terrific workshop on blogging. The tutorials break down all the details on how to have a successful experience on Blogger.

Note on Islamofascism and Paul Berman

Since I've recently been asked about my use of the term, Islamofascism, I dug into the historical roots of the term.

Comparisons have been made between fascism and Islam, as far back as 1937, when the German Catholic emigré Edgar Alexander compared Nazism with "Mohammedanism," likewise, in 1939 psychologist Carl Jung said about Adolf Hitler, "he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic, warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god."

Nonetheless, the real impetus for my use of the term comes from Terror and Liberalism,, written by New York University journalism Professor Paul Berman who carefully unpacked the intellectual origins of Islamic fundamentalism, looking primarily at Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual godfather of al-Qaeda. It was not hard to find the links: Qutb was explicitly and openly influenced by European fascism. The parallel has some odd coincidences. In Taliban Afghanistan conditions seem grotesquely familiar to historians of fascism, with its fanatical Jew-hatred, homophobia, misogyny, the banning of all dissent, and the suppression of all liberal freedoms.

Pakistani Muslims Ban Internet

Graphic source: Global Voices Advocacy.

In what could be an excellent dry run for an Internet ban the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered the country's ISPs to block users' access to YouTube on Friday because of what was considered an inflammatory anti-Islamic video on the site. The video in question is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3s8jtrrg00 at IPs: 208.65.153.238, 208.65.153.253, and 208.65.153.251. The authorities did not allow many users around the world to access YouTube Inc.'s site for about two hours on Sunday. The way they were able to shut down YouTube was with erroneous routing information. YouTube responded by investigating how the problem can be avoided to prevent it from happening again.

In the glorious state of Pakistan access to YouTube is still blocked while ISPs work with the Pakistani authority to narrow its order to block a single URL pointing to the video.

The Pakistani authorities have struck a blow against free speech as they have consistently opposed expressions and art depicting Mohammad.

Wars That Can Be Won, Candidates Should Lose

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rally in Baghdad, the day before he extended his militia's cease-fire six months.

Graphic source: Wathiq Khuzaie--Getty Images Photo.

The Washington Post ran a story from Anthony H. Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who recently returned from the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cordesman's perspective is not the one discussed in the major political campaigns, nor are the ones I hear at the water cooler, however, he is correct. If you follow the military accounts carefully, the U.S. military is doing an admirable job. As he perceptively continues though, the will to follow-up the remarkable military effort with a corresponding application of American interest is lacking. In this, I fault the average American who not only lapsed in the citizen's duty to be engaged by the debate to enter the war, but also now the rhetoric on how to win successfully is submerged in the political detritus that we call Campaign 2008.

To provide just one example, in the terms of the change agents--you pick your poison, Obama or Hillary--both of whom seem to want a vaguely termed `change' but who advocate greater use of diplomacy and involvement by allies. In the case of Afghanistan, Cordesman observes that the war there is winnable, premised on international interest and NATO support. Yet, neither candidate, both Senators who serve the country in the capacity of "advise and consent" to the President, have engaged international opinion and support. They are both playing politics instead. This is dishonest and disrespectable towards our armed forces.

The best guess in order to develop the necessary infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan is 2012 - 2020. The military is soundly and roundly chasing al-Qaeda out of every province and it is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. In addition, the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months is another positive factor to consider. In spite of these positive developments, Americans continue their hand-ringing and lamenting of a situation that they do not understand or follow very closely.

Cordesman echoes my feeling that Americans are not really paying attention nor realizing that the struggle is longer and harder than they would like to know about. The candidates too are doing a major disservice to the Presidential debates by not being upfront and honest with the American people. War takes a long time and this needs to stated clearly and upfront, so that it becomes a part of the Presidential debates.

Cordesman states:

If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.

The wars are for the long haul.

Cordesman concludes:

Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.

Propaganda Stunt by Islamofascist Terrorists

Here is the tactic that Israel has to deal with currently but I believe will soon be exported elsewhere, that is, close to home. The terrorists, in a decentralized hub-like network lob missiles at Israel, then, women protesters flood the streets. Where have women ever taken to the public streets and are politically active in any Arab nation? They have not. The only reason they are there is to elicit sympathy as innocent victims of Israeli aggression. The crowd has armed men who fire into Israeli lines but if the army defends itself the women will be hit. The world sees only one limited aspect of the demonstration and the propaganda line then is to label the Israelis as butchers.

The network-centric warfare of a group like Hamas is a genuine challenge to constitutional frameworks. As all fascists have learned for decades, the Islamofascists will exploit the system and run candidates for office, campaign in democratic elections in order to undermine the system, and simultaneously engage in covert, terroristic operations in order to bring the system down. Mussolini and Hitler did much the same thing in their successful pursuit of bringing democracy down.

Note on Harris' Note

A quick and easy read, this is Harris' follow-up to his more substantial The End of Faith. I didn't find the work totally a rehash of anti-religious sentiments but there is a fairly complete repetition of traditional arguments. Atheists are often pronouncing moral judgments and locating their values in a personal or individual place but this is not an issue with me. Non-violence is advocated by Harris but I've found it interesting that one critic of Harris notes that non-violence would not have gotten us anywhere during evolution. I take it violence is an unqualified good, and not in need of defense.

Note on Michael Grant, The Climax of Rome

The summary of early Christian art is worthwhile and there is a sound, brief summary of the collapse of Rome. Grant corrects the view that 161-337 C.E. was a degeneration of Rome. He correctly locates the period as troubled but he demonstrates the vitality and the political and military adaptability of leading Roman figures in a rapidly changing environment.

Dead Cow Springs to Scan

Graphic source: cDc.

The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker group released the open-source tool Goolag Scanner designed to enable IT workers to quickly scan their Web sites for security vulnerabilities and at-risk sensitive data. The tool uses a selection of specially crafted Google search terms. The group, also called, cDc, acknowledged that the tool can be employed for nefarious uses as well.

Not Uncle Same But Uncle Sam for Today

Uncle Sam and his image should be updated and I think there is now at least one sound revision.

Note on Scheuer's New Book

Michael Scheuer's latest book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq, has six points to make that are relevant for the upcoming election.

The six points are: our unqualified support for Israel; our presence on the Arabian peninsula, which is land Muslims deem holy; our military presence in other Islamic countries; our support of foreign states that oppress Muslims, especially Russia, China and India; our long-term policy of keeping oil prices artificially low to the benefit of Western consumers but to continuing detriment of the Arab peoples; and our support for Arab tyrannies who will repress Arabs and do just that.

These are the six points that the two major candidates are not discussing.

Fallujah's Double-Edge Sword

Graphic source: Wikileaks.org

The primary leak in the Fallujah media case is that the military lost in the information war. However, the public revelation of the loss is a two-edged sword. The fact that Al-Jazeera or other Arab sources were present, and the Western press did not report or gain access to the battle field is embarrassing but not only to the government. The liberties of the free press are hindered by news agencies who have let the American people down and failed us as citizens because we were not informed as we should have been. I view this leak not only as a breach of government information but it also points out how critical a free press really is. The fact that the Western press did not accurately report in Fallujah further increased the risk to our troops. The fighting capabilities of U.S. troops were hampered because our combat troops had to engage in battle sensitive to how Fallujah would be playing out before shoddy Arab journalistic standards. Americans need to wake up to the reality of war. War is brutal but we need to unleash American dogs of war so that they can create stability after the conflict and without regard to European elites or biased journalistic accounts. Not only is the government hiding behind a smokescreen but so too are our journalists.

Judge Bans Helpful Documents

Graphic source: Wikileaks.

I am simply one of the many rights advocates expressing dismay over a pair of decisions made by California District Court Judge Jeffrey White last week to shut down Wikileaks.org, a controversial Web site that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post corporate and government documents online. At a time when insurgents are housing their bilge on American ISPs, I find it ironic that whistle-blowers, who may be able to help people, are banned. What is the judiciary thinking here?

The court's orders resulted in the wikileaks.org URL being promptly scrubbed from the Internet but I wanted to follow what happened to the site. Thereafter, the site remained accessible by typing in its IP numbers (88.80.13.160). As advertised, Wikileaks, which touts itself as an "uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis," was also available via numerous mirror sites in several countries.

Microsoft Offers Students Free DreamSpark Tools

Microsoft has offered its development and design tools to students for free and in a move announced yesterday the company will open these tools to as many as many as 1 billion high school and college students.

The Microsoft tools, in the DreamSpark program, is available to 35 million college students in the U.S., China, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.

The tools are ones that young people can build a career around or they can just build fun software for themselves. The basics of good software architecture and the data structures have been consistent for the last 30 years and therefore the skills of design and recognizing good code, is a valuable skill to have for the 21st Century.

DreamSpark is available to students of technology, design, math science and engineering, and students can access Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, and XNA Game Studio 2.0. As a part of the package students are also eligible for a free 12-month academic membership to the XNA Creators Club.

The program will also include Microsoft's Expression Studio design tools, including Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media. Students also can access SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server Standard Edition for free.

The timetable for roll-out of the program is six months when Microsoft plans to expand DreamSpark to college students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, and more countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. The program will be extended to high school students by the third quarter of 2008.

Microsoft works with academic institutions, governments, and student organizations, such as the International Student Identity Card Association, to ensure the necessary local student identity-verification technology infrastructure exists to provide access to DreamSpark.

Islamofascists Snooker Archbishop

If the Islamofascists have their way, they would eliminate those who disagree with them. Although saner heads will prevail, the call of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, for Islamic law to be recognized in Britain is ludicrous. Despite the evidence to the contrary, sharia contravenes Western legal precepts and is an egregious assault of Western notions of liberty. With all the shortcomings and short sightedness of Western political leaders, sharia has more in common with frontier justice, the Ku Klux Klan, and liminal Western examples.

Islamofascists Deny the Danish Their Liberties

During Kristallnacht, the Nazis sought to disabuse people of their liberty, today in Europe, the Islamofascists seek to do the same and deny Westeners their liberties. Liberties that are precious in the Western legal tradition are the right to discuss, provoke, debate, and to engage in any activity such as satire or expressions intended to foster thought. Europe is on the road to find its liberties disabused by those who seek to end such freedoms.

Peaches and Cream, Less Than a: DreamSys Server Monitor

I don't know where my servers are all the time or I mean when they are up and running or not but with DreamSys Server Monitor I can. If they are down, there are a number of actions that will remedy the situation. At a scheduled time, it will check the servers to see if they're still running and you can manually check the servers at any time.

The range of actions in response to a problem server include sending an e-mail as a notification, rebooting the machine, starting a service, or playing a sound or running a command.

The GUI is a bit problematic but with a bit of patience it can be overcome if this looks like a useful tool.

Library Thing

Library Thing is a really useful site because it allows me to easily catalog my library. I would never have the time to add my books in without some of the simple click-in features and recommendations which allow you to find and easily click on books to add to your library.

Cute Insurgent

Another youngster prepares to meet Americans.

Look Out, ANT!

Advanced Net Tools (ANT) is a really versatile set of network utilities. There are port scans, DNS lookups, pings, scanning for network shares, and checking on routing tables among other things.

The security modules are quick-and-dirty, that is, easy network scans. There's a network port scanner that can scan all computers on your network and discover any open ports, and a share scanner that reports on all the shared drives on your network.

With the information modules you can examine your routing table and add and delete entries in it. You can also find out what IP addresses are available to be assigned on your network. Other modules do advanced DNS lookups, let you view all the network adapters connected to computers on the network and add and remove their IP addresses.

As I've been reviewing the free tools, I'll have to go back and rate them, one by one.

Latest in the Series of Free Utilities: Advanced IP Scanner

I use What's Running a great deal so I can know what is going on within my box but here is a small free utility which is a handy way to get a quick list of all the devices connected to your network. They are listed by IP address, along with information about each device. It quickly scans all IP addresses in a range that you specify, then specifies whether a device is present at each address. For each device, it lists the status, the machine name, NetBIOS information, ping information, and MAC address. I usually have difficulty keeping track so this can be useful.

Moreover, the program not only scans your network but it also gives you a set of tools that lets you shut down PCs remotely, use the "Wake on LAN" feature for any PC whose network card supports that capability, and connect to remote PCs via Radmin, if it's installed. I have used another remote site so this would allow an opportunity to combine functions in one use. You can also apply some operations, such as shutting down remote PCs, to a group of computers, not just individual ones.

This tool could be effectively used and handy.

Virtualization Trend

One of the biggest developments of the year will be in virtualization so I'll be reviewing topics along these lines.

Al Qaeda on the Run

Graphic source: Fred W. Baker

The combination of military operations and local population support in northern Iraq has forced quite a few al Qaeda fighters out of urban areas in order to flee to the desert, or even out of the country.

The northern division is about the size of Pennsylvania and includes Diyala, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Tamim provinces.

Some insurgents are hiding out in abandoned mud huts, canals or caves in the desert.

The desert hideaways are targets under six-week-long Operation Iron Harvest, part of the countrywide Operation Phantom Phoenix.

The insurgents are most likely thinking that the military if after them: a sound thought, because they are.

Note on Red River

Graphic source: http://www.filmsite.org/index.html.

I didn't know Red River was shot on location near Elgin, in Arizona and Mexico, but having Netflixed it recently I was curious about its background. The film realistically portrays the code and harshness of the West, and the journey, as in The Odyssey or in the Old Testament Exodus, is an epic yarn related to the audience with the vehicle of the Old West. John Wayne actually acted in this movie, thus Howard Hawks, the producer quipped, "the old lug can act." Wayne plays the hard bitten surrogate father to Montgomery Clift, in his first film, and hard-driving trail boss. The film appears over as the younger Clift mutinies, as in Mutiny On the Bounty, but he then successfully takes the herd to Topeka, of course, all is not well and he must still face the wrath of the soon-to-arrive, Wayne.

Chaotic State of Iraqi Executive Branch

The fragmented state of the Iraqi Executive branch is contrasted in this graphic with the U.S. We have a long, long way to go if democracy is ever to survive in Iraq.

Chinese Spies

The Chinese are at it again, or at least four more are allegedly spying. The U.S. Department of Justice announced two separate espionage cases for allegedly passing information to the Chinese government.

One case involves a former Boeing Company employee who was charged with economic espionage and other crimes, and the other includes three individuals who are charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information.

In the Boeing incidnet, the DOJ claimed that Dongfan Chung, a 72-year-old, stole trade secrets related to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport plane and the Delta IV rocket while working at Rockwell International Corporation, and then again once Boeing bought Rockwell's defense and space unit.

The alleged espionage stretched back for years and he also allegedly used Chi Mak to transmit information. Mak and four of his family members were convicted last year on charges of passing defense information to the Chinese government.

In the other case the DOJ arrested a U.S. Department of Defense employee and two New Orleans residents for an alleged espionage scheme.

Tai Shen Kuo, 58, and Yu Xin Kang, 33, both of New Orleans, were indicted for conspiring to disclose national defense information to a foreign government, while Gregg William Bergersen, a 51-year-old resident of Alexandria, Va., who works as a weapons systems policy analyst at the DOD's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, was charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it.

Kuo and Kang both face life in prison if convicted. Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Chinese connection seems to proliferate as China seeks to re-engineer American products.

Scrappy Chinese Entrepreneur

One fascinating story in the rise of Chinese entrepreneurship is that of Zhang Yin, owner of the Nine Dragon Paper Company. In the 1990s, she cashed in on China’s paper shortage by collecting scrap and shipping it to mainland China for recycling. She astutely saw a bigger opportunity in the empty container ships that returned to the U.S. and Europe after unloading their full loads of goods in China. She filled those empty ships with wastepaper collected in the U.S. and Europe to recycle the contents in China into cardboard boxes to be used for shipping Chinese goods back to the American and European markets. The shipping continues so she has a steady stream to recycle. In seemingly no time at all, according to the Hurun Report’s 2006 China Rich List, Zhang has become the wealthiest person in China and one of the richest female entrepreneurs in the world. Her wealth is not unconnected with simply taking a sound, simple, but profitable idea and creating wealth: from scrap of all things.

Network Notepad Diagrams Live

My network site actually allowing me access to my network has limitations so Network Notepad may ease in the designing of a network. I don't really have an adequate tool so this tool will be easy for creating a network diagram.

Not only can I design my network and draw schematics but they are live and include links so that I can Telnet or employ other networking tasks to access any device on the network simply by clicking on a button on the diagram.

The palette is equipped with icons for routers, servers, printers, boxes, hubs, modems, and other network devices. The way to do this is by simply dragging and dropping them onto a diagram, and then connect the devices using a set of drawing tools. You add names and IP addresses. You can also import a host file, and Network Notepad will automatically populate the devices with the right IP addresses.

This method seems quite handy because the diagram becomes a live, interactive drawing.

Spiceworks IT Desktop, Better than Network Magic

Another free tool that may be helpful to a small network or business is the Spiceworks IT Desktop. It is a bit difficult to navigate for just a home network so be forewarned although it does includes a significant number of features for a free tool: it does perform as an all-in-one network inventory and management tool.

Spiceworks IT Desktop provides a substantial bit of information about each PC connected to your network. The program will inventory a network and provide information about each device on it and I found it deeper than Network Magic. The types of information it provides about each PC and device, is free and used disk space, anti-virus software being used, and problems on the device (such as server connection errors). It will even provide an inventory of the software installed on each PC, in quite a bit of detail.

There are other features as well, such as, easy access to ping and traceroute functions. And it attempts to be a help desk application as well. You can create help tickets with it, assign the ticket to others or yourself, and include due dates, priorities and so on. For someone like me with simple home network needs it is sufficient.

How a DNS Works (And What a DNS Is)

Graphic source: OpenDNS

A DNS stands for Domain Name Service which is how a browser can navigate the Web. The URLs (Uniform Resource Location) that are typed in a browser are translated into a computer readable format which lead you to a specific Internet page.

Bush Requests Greater Security Spending

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell warned Congress that terrorists are showing an increasing desire to use cyber attacks against the U.S. By the same token, the Bush administration is proposing a federal budget that calls for the government to spend one out of every 10 IT dollars on information security. The budget proposal earmarks $7.3 billion for information security, a 9.8% increase over what was budgeted for the current fiscal year. If approved as is, security spending would account for 10.3% of the entire federal IT budget. Bush's proposal continues a trend in which security spending has been increasing at a rate that's greater than the growth of the overall IT budget.

Al-Qaeda Training Children as Terrorists

Al-Qaeda is training children from 6-14 according to a news story released today.

Network Magic, Simple, Free Management

While always on the lookout for simple, free, and in this case, all-in-one network management tools for a small peer-to-peer network, Computerworld, as is their usual, noted some handy tools. Network Magic looks like one of the best. It handles all the basic network chores, including adding new devices to the network, fixing broken network connections, setting up wireless encryption and protection, sharing printers and folders, and for me, one of the most important features, reporting on the state of the security of each PC on the network. I have several geographically dispersed machines so Network Magic will come in handy.

I appreciate the visual network map which displays every connected device, shows whether it's online or off line, and displays details about each, including the computer name, IP address, MAC address, operating system being used, shared folders, and system information such as its processor and RAM. It is hard to believe you can get that much network information out of a free tool. I also like the fact that it displays alerts about each device, such as if it isn't protected properly. It displays overall information about your network, such as whether there are any problems with overall security or with an individual PC. It also lets you troubleshoot connections, shows whether there are any intruders on the network, and displays information about wireless protection. The tool can create reports about Internet and network use of each PC connected to the network. For example, the software can monitor the use of any individual PC on the network for the Web sites it visits, the times the computer is online and which programs are being used, and then mail a daily report about it to an e-mail address. I have not seen Windows Vista's Network Map offer a comparable level of detail.

There is a paid version of the software as well. The paid version, which costs from $24 to $40 (depending on how many PCs are on your network), delivers daily reports of Internet activity and supports remote access to your network's files.

You Should "X" Active-X: How To

The U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has advised in no uncertain terms: "US-CERT encourages users to disable ActiveX controls as described in the Securing Your Web Browser document." Too many vulnerabilities have arisen from the feature, it is not worth having. CERT released a "how-to" so users can disable the feature easily.

Obstinate NATO Allies

The obstinacy of Germany, along with France, Turkey, and Italy, knows few bounds. As the U.S. and its coalition partners bear the brunt of fighting in Afghanistan, the NATO partners refuse to seriously commit themselves to initiatives in Afghanistan. These four countries will not send significant number of troops to the southern front lines. Troops from Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States are committed and seek support from their reluctant NATO cohorts. These nations criticize the U.S. for going it alone but they certainly have their opportunity to become more greatly involved in the fighting. They are not helping though. The U.S. shares a heavy load in the resurgence of Taliban violence with support from Denmark, Romania, Estonia, and non-NATO nation Australia.

New and Improved Al-Qaeda Encryption Tool

I had commented before on a new al-Qaeda encryption tool but now security researchers have had more time to analyze the piece, they have troublesome news.

The updated encryption tool improves on a first version, is well-written, and is an easily portable piece of code.

The messages that are encrypted using the tool, Mujahideen Secrets 2, should be relatively easy to spot and track, according to Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing Corporation.

I disagree that this should be handled by law enforcement, though most counter-terrorism is, but it is better than no tracing at all.

The files can be identified because it puts a unique fingerprint on them. "You may not be able to read the messages, but you will be able to figure out where it was sent from and to whom," Henry stated.

Mujahideen Secrets 2 was released last month via an Arabic-language Web site set up by an Islamic forum called al-Ekhlaas. The two servers it was available on, from a Web hosting firm in Tampa, Fla., and previously on a system owned by another company in Rochester, Minnesota, both have ceased working.

The al-Ekhlaas site had been moved to a server based in Phoenix but the link to the site on that server also is broken.

Mujahideen Secrets 2 is sophisticated software, from an encryption perspective, in that the new tool is easy to use and provides 2,048-bit encryption, an improvement over the 256-bit AES encryption supported in the original version. Moreover, even more interesting is the ability to encrypt Yahoo and MSN chat messages in addition to e-mails.

Not surprisingly, I have noted my dismay with the ability to house terrorist sites, and use sites, all based in the U.S.

The tool also employs a more obscure manner of communication. The tool can take a binary file and encrypt it in such a way that the file can be posted in a pure ASCII or text-only format. What this means is that terrorists could use Mujahideen Secrets 2 to encrypt files and post them on sites that aren't on the Internet, for example, on a telephone-accessed bulletin board.

The portability of the tool is also impressive. The software can be loaded on a USB memory stick, then a person could employ an Internet cafe, plug in the USB device and run Mujahideen Secrets 2 to encrypt any communications from that cafe.

This would make it virtually impossible to track such an individual because the communication can be done so covertly and quickly.

The ease of use is improved in the new version, it has an improved GUI (Graphical User Interface) and the software appears to be easy to use by relatively low-level operators according to Henry. The tool and transmission of information allows relative novices to easily and surreptitiously access encrypted messages.

Note on Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

In Benjamin Barber's book, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, he presents an interesting interpretation of Jihad. He does not mean the typical Islamist struggle but he portrays, rather like Thomas Friedman's, The World is Flat, Jihad as a divisive impulse, as in Friedman's other work, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Most people across the world need to decide which they favor, Jihad and the Olive Tree, or a Flat World with a Lexus. The choice is rather stark so Barber illustrates how American life is impoverished given as it is to rampant consumerism. Democracy and community and neighborhood involvement is at an all-time low so he points out how neighborhood and local initiatives must become engaged for democracy to work.

Women Urged to Jihad and Suicide Operations

Not only are mentally challenged women employed as suicide bombers but a host of women's forums on Islamist Websites are preparing women to carry out Jihad and suicide operations. Several of the Islamist websites include special forums for women which reveals that these forums encourage women to carry out suicide operations. Islamic history and the present is invoked to urge that women take an active part in jihad. They also promote jihad indoctrination from an early age and publicize the most radical sheikhs' fatwas on jihad and martyrdom.

The most active sites are sites: al-hesbah, shmo5alislam; and, al-faloja.

A typical example is: "How I Hoped to Turn My Body into Slivers to Tear the Sons of Zion to Pieces, and to Knock with Their Skulls on the Gates of Paradise."

Another typical Al-Hesbah subscriber entitled a message: "Secure Yourself a Chandelier under the Throne [in Paradise]," in which she encouraged Muslim women to carry out suicide bombings.

Cf. Memri.

Mentally Disabled Contribute to Iraq

I know there must be some sort of limit on the atrocities of the insane but news out of Iraq states that two mentally disabled women were strapped with explosives.

The women were sent into crowded Baghdad markets where they were blown up by remote control.

The bombs killed at least 98 people and wounded more than 200 during the holiest day of the week for Muslims.

The threat is real, the insurgents will use anything, and anyone to achieve their goal of de-stabalizing Iraq.