Biden's Support of MRAPVs

Senator Joe Biden's press conference in Charleston, S.C. from July 23. Two local companies displayed Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPVs). The Biden Amendment funding supplemental included funding for accelerated procurement and deployment of these vehicles. The vehicles are four to five times safer against IED attacks and account for 70% of our casualties in Iraq.

Previously, I've reviewed MRAPVs and how they are deployed effectively.

One of Ten Top Ten Cool Tools

Graphic source: Computerworld.

Computerworld reported on the top ten cool cutting-edge technologies. The Eleksen Group's wearable gadgetry is an idea whose time came some time back. One reason I detest laptops is that they are not handy enough, they are bulky, and they take so long to boot up.

The idea behind the Eleksen Group PLC Sideshow Wearable Display Module though makes it more handy, not bulky since you are actually wearing the display, and you don't really boot up.

The ElekTex is a fabric-based, pressure-sensitive control interface that can be integrated into jackets, bags and other textile products. The ElekTex fabric controls come with an LCD display to interact with Windows Vista’s Sideshow feature. The ElekTex exports information from a Vista laptop to a secondary display. Thereafter, mini-applications, or “gadgets,” written for Sideshow can then wirelessly deliver e-mail, alerts or other updates to the remote screen even if the laptop remains in its case and turned off. That is handy.

One reason I enjoy my HP Jornada is that it boots up quickly, is so much smaller, and as a mini-PC it is not bulky at all. The ElekTex combines these features in one.

Out of the Mouths of Babes?

Children the world over learn what they are taught.

Food for Thought

I caught one of these videos before and this new one is just as thoughtful.

Disappointing Dennett

Ordinarily, Daniel C. Dennett is worthwhile reading but in Breaking he has written a disappointing book.

The "Roots of Religion" section is truly weak and does not make reference to leading thinkers on the origins of religion. No one can ask another to write the book they would like, but even with Dennett's caveats and how he notes his limitations, he fails to grasp important work in the roots of religion.

Dennett has a section entitled "Should Science Study Religion?" F. Max Mueller thought so: in the 1860s he began calling for a "science of religion" (William E. Paden, Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion, p. 67). Independent of confessional agendas, Mueller called for objective, scientific studies of religion just as inquiries into natural things such as geology were conducted.

How could someone discuss the origins of religion and yet have no reference to such leading lights as F. Max Mueller, Edward Burnett Tylor, or Andrew Lang? Dennett does not even mention the leading lights in the origins of religion, who worked deliberately in the nineteenth century as a result of Darwin's insights, and in contradiction to Dennett's assertion that his Darwinian approach to natural religion is something new.

Dennett implies that students of religion have worked in a vacuum and without reference to Darwin. This is not true.

He notes that there have been natural histories of religion but that these efforts have been marred by either deference or hostility to religion(pp. 31-32). Dennett's dismissal of natural historians is a gross overstatement.

By the 1880s Mueller knew that Darwinism was too powerful of a force to ignore. Religion, due to Darwin, was viewed as a natural organism. At the turn of the 20th century, the Oxford anthropologist R. R. Marett was to declare that "anthropology is the child of Darwin" (Eric Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, p. 48). Andrew Lang's study of folklore was motivated with the understanding that folklore preserved anthropological data and is therefore worthy of study. Tylor, since he was a Quaker, well neither ill-disposed towards religion, nor did he have a penchent for Christian orthodoxy.

Dennett blithefully dismisses truly important historians of religion who viewed religion worth of study as a natural, organic, phenomenon.

Dennett seems to equate ordinary religious practitioners with the most serious scholar of religion which is a serious gaffe.

Two reviewers made trenchent remarks:

The most striking gap in Breaking the Spell is its lack of humanistic commentary from anthropology, aesthetics, and confessional literature. (...) Breaking the Spell is an insidious book; not because it breaks taboos by asking uncomfortable questions of religion, nor because its author is an ardent atheist, but because it is written by a brilliant philosopher who betrays his academic standards by proceeding from emotive, ill-informed prejudice.

- John Cornwell, Sunday Times

Breaking the Spell , however, not only differs in tone from Dennett's earlier work in being amicable and almost meek, but is also largely bereft of critical analysis. (...) In the end, its 400-page analysis yields little more than platitudes.

- Jerry A. Coyne, Times Literary Supplement

Sobering NYC Intelligence on Radicalization

Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat by Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, Senior Intelligence Analysts at the NYPD Intelligence Division, provides sobering reading.


The authors state: "There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course begin as `unremarkable' from various walks of life."


A radical is not born with horns on their head but the authors conclude, based on foreign and U.S. examples that a process of radicalization takes place for the eventual jihadists. Although Europe has been hit, and homegrown U.S. radicals have largetly been thwarted, the danger remains. They state:

Despite the economic opportunities in the United States, the powerful gravitational pull of individuals’ religious roots and identity sometimes supersedes ghe assimilating nature of American society which includes pursuit of a professional career, financial stability and material comforts.

The implications for homegrown radicalization make the efforts of law enforcement extremely difficult.


They conclude:

The global jihadi-Salafi movement poses a significant challenge to law enforcement and intelligence since the radicalization phenomenon that drives it is spontaneous, indiscriminate, and its indicators are subtle. Identifying whether an individual is being radicalized is hard to detect, especially in the early stages.

How is law enforcement to determine when and if simply radical talk is just that, talk? But this stage is when an individual may be stopped before they actually commit any violence.

•The individuals are not on the law enforcement radar. Most have never been arrested or involved in any kind of legal trouble. Other than some commonalities in age and religion, individuals undergoing radicalization appear as `ordinary' citizens, who look, act, talk, and walk like everyone around them. In fact, in the United Kingdom, it is precisely those `ordinary' middle class university students who are sought after by local extremists because they are `clean skins'.

None of these types of people would attract any attention. They look like any other pod.


The authors continue:

•In the early stages of their radicalization, these individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mindset, intention, and commitment to conduct jihad.

As evidenced by all eleven case studies these groups, or clusters of extremists:


"Act autonomously, can radicalize quickly, and often are made up of individuals, who on the surface, appear to be well-integrated into society."


They may be spontaneous which makes detection difficult. Silber and Bhatt state that the jihadists:

Are not “name brand” terrorists or part of any known terrorist group. For the most part, they have little or no links to known militant groups or actors. Rather they are like-minded individuals who spend time together in clusters organized, originally, by previously established social network links.

They are not engaged in activities which would get them noticed because they "Are not crime syndicates and therefore, applying organized crime strategies will fail."


Finally, the authors conclude:

The challenge to intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the West in general, and the United States in particular, is how to identify, pre-empt and thus prevent homegrown terrorist attacks given the non-criminal element of its indicators, the high growth rate of the process that underpins it and the increasing numbers of its citizens that are exposed to it.

These are sobering words. Americans have to be vigilant but respectful of privacy and American liberties. This is a difficult path to follow when the threat is real, it is here, and it is covert.


As the Middle East has gone, so has Europe, as Europe has gone, so has New York City, as NYC goes, so goes the U.S. The threat is real; the threat is here.

Wave of the Future?

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen and former gang member, convicted. He was a star Al-Qaida recruit. Padilla sought to kill, and sought to obtain material support for terrorism. However, I see this as a more to come scenario with additional cells coming to light over time.

Egypt, Kuwait, and Asia to Profit In Iraq

Despite the title in this post I don't imagine many will object to Egypt, Kuwait, or some in Asia profiting from Iraq. Many would object and sloganeer phrases such as "No Blood for Oil" but as some countries profit from Iraq no one bats an eye.

Yesterday Iraq begain auctioning off $300 million as the minimum bid price for mobile licenses in that country. An Egyptian, Kuwaiti, or an Asian company are the leading bidders. The next highest bidders come from Turkey.

Apparently war is good for business.

The $300 million starting price is for three 15-year mobile licenses moderated by Communications Minister Mohammed Allawi.

These lucrative 15-year licenses replace three short-term contracts awarded soon after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The leading bidders are Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Holdings, Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co. MTC, and AsiaCell, said Siyamend Othman, head of the National Communications and Media Commission.

Linux Still Not Working Like a Lion

A solid review which identified the major problem many of us still have with Linux, although I for one am ready to get on board ASAP, is the problem of "dealing with text in varied forms" as Sharon Machlisas notes in Computerworld. Her review of nine Linux text editors reveals that no single editor does the job. Like her, I need an application that handles plain ASCII text and rudimentary HTML. We also share an enthusiasm, not for me the Windows environment, but in an inexpensive and useful tool like NoteTab Pro. Neither is available on Linux. NoteTab has no plans to migrate to Linux.

Alas, Machlisas found no single killer text editor workable. I know some have the leisure of using several applications but this seems terribly inefficient to me.

She does report that an UltraEdit version for Linux is on the way and perhaps I would try again at that point, till then, I'm married to Windows unfortunately.

Truth and Honesty on Wikipedia

A beginning graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, Virgil Griffith, invented Wikipedia Scanner, a tool that exposes the anonymous edits in Wikipedia. The tool can trace the IP address of those who make edits which does not exactly specify who did the edits but it obviously reveals the person at least had access to the respective IP addresses: close enough most of us would say to reveal who is responsible for the shenanigans.

While there are meticulous records of changes on Wikipedia, a person can make changes without identifying themselves, but the changes often create digital fingerprints that provide information about the user, such as the location of the computer used to make the edit.

Many of the changes are innocuous, but the scanner also traced entries to people at several large companies who appear to have altered potentially damaging content for concerns such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Diebold Inc. Someone at the BBC poked fun at George Bush, Al-Jazeera's edits were fairly extensive, and someone at the CIA changed some wording as has the Vatican in one instance.

The Mormons changed a couple things, the Episcopals didn't like some of the word on them, and numerous Christian groups and colleges revised as they saw fit as well.

Wired collected an extensive list of the edits which is handy to see who wants what changed and we can figure out the embarrassing whys in most instances.

As an example, someone at the Vatican edited the Wikipedia entry on Gerry Adams.

Source: Wikipedia

Gerry Adams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Revision as of 12:54, 17 October 2006 (edit)
217.59.51.67 (Talk)
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← Older edit Revision as of 12:55, 17 October 2006 (edit) (undo)
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==Fresh murder question raised== ==Fresh murder question raised==

- In October 2006, it was alleged that Adams's finger- and hand-prints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-2383263,00.html Paisley, Brady in historic meeting] by Christopher Morgan and Liam Clarke, ''The Times'', 1 October 2006[http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1698223&issue_id=14715 Adams Prints Murder Link] by Alan Murray, ''The Sunday Independent'', 1 October 2006 However, no link between Adams and the killings has been shown. + In October 2006, it was alleged that Adams's finger- and hand-prints were found on

==References== ==References==

NSA Scrutinized

The post-911 National Security Agency (NSA) spying program has been argued at a U.S. appeals court hearing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) questioned AT&T's no-warrant monitoring of citizens' communications. The court agreed on Wednesday to weigh a government motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the NSA monitored phone lines and e-mails without a warrant. The EFF filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T Inc. claiming the company violated the privacy rights of its customers when it cooperated with an NSA program of monitoring AT&T customer phone calls and e-mail traffic without warrants.

Liberal Says War Can Be Won

"A War We Just Might Win"

That is what liberal commentators Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution stated in the New York Times following their recent visit to Iraq.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.***
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

Open source Alternative to Project

Graphic source: Projity Inc.

Projity Inc. released its OpenProj software as an Open source project. This alternative to Microsoft may take market share away from their Project product. OpenProj is compatible with Microsoft Project though and seems to have most of the same features. OpenProj plays with Linux (in fact it is bundled with various Linux distributions) and Macs as well as Windows. The final version will be released in Q4.

Too Much Face (book)

The popular social networking site Facebook showed a bit too much face recently. The source code that drives the site was leaked to the Internet due to a misconfigured Web server. I guess there is such a thing as too much face.

Positive Middle East Trend

A report on Defensenews.com related how India seeks Israeli assistance to fill their need for an unmanned combat helicopter. The story outlined how the Indian Navy is exploring collaboration between local and Israeli defense companies. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, chief of the Indian Navy, and Vice Admiral David Ben Bashat discussed the possible joint development and other defense programs Bashat’s visit to India, the first official visit to India by an Israel Navy chief.

The Indian Navy projects 30 to 50 unmanned combat helicopters reflecting a greater cooperation between India and Israel since 1999. Israel is working on a the co-production of nuclear-capable cruise missiles, air defense systems and anti-ballistic missile systems. The country is the largest supplier of UAVs for the Indian Defence Forces.

In terms of great Middle Eastern security this is a positive development in that Israel is not isolated in the region by reaching across the Middle East to India, India is stepping up its greater regional role which as the world's largest democracy it should be doing. Two democratic regional powers flanking the Middle East is a good thing.

Life Almost as Real as the Gaming World

Screenshot Source: Morteza Nikoubazl, Reuters.

A screen shot from the Iranian-made computer game shows an Iranian commander (unseen) killing a U.S. soldier.

Designed by the Union of Islamic Students a game released in July, Rescue the Nuke Scientist, is sure to be jihadically correct. Once an American game company released Kuma\War's Assault on Iran, the students responded with a game of their own. Rescue's basic premise is that U.S. troops capture a husband-and-wife team of nuclear engineers during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a holy site for Shiite Muslims, in central Iraq. Game players take on the role of Iranian security forces carrying out a mission code-named "The Special Operation," which involves penetrating fortified locations to free the nuclear scientists, who are moved from Iraq to Israel. In this way both the U.S. and Israel can be attacked by Iranians.

All this from a country whose president has already denied the reality of the Holocaust.

College Hijinks?

Campus Technology today ran a story about Professors building an Open-Source educational gaming engine. Washington State University Vancouver professor Scott Wallace and University of Puget Sound computer science professor Andrew Nierman were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to build a gaming engine designed to make learning computer science more absorbing for students. If only this were available across the board to make all education more involving.

Turkish Trio Hacks UN

Photo source: Giorgio Maone screenshot from his blog.

Hackers formerly associated with Turkey defaced a UN site with anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli messages. The attack was chronicled by an Italian software developer Giorgio Maone on his blog and later reported by the BBC. The hacker trio, "Kerem125," "m0sted" and "gsy," claimed responsibility for the defacement which forced the UN site down and the site was still unavailable by Sunday evening. According to Maone the incident is a SQL injection exploit, which let the attackers add their own HTML code to the site. SQL injection attacks are a common tactic by defacers. Maone expressed surprise because "this is a very well known kind of vulnerability, fairly easy to avoid and very surprising to find in such a high-profile site."

In the past, "Kerem125," "m0sted" and "gsy," are names that have been used by would-be hackers claiming to be from Turkey,

Secure Flight Not all that Safe

Today's IDG News Service ran a story about the Department of Homeland Security air passenger screening program which is changing procedures.

The DHS announced plans for an overhaul of its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff stated. The Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will check domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines.

I appreciate an advance on privacy issues, but in contrast to Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), I don't think the DHS is correct in its focus on matching passenger names to terrorist watch lists instead of trying to predict behavior.

The terror in terrorism is that it is unpredictable. by focusing on previously drawn up lists, the terrorist in the making will slip through.

Rotenberg states: "Instead of open-ended profiling ... the revamped Secure Flight focuses on the problem at hand," which is precisely the problem. The problem of today surely will not catch the innovative would-be terrorist. Another effective screening process is needed, profile based I would imagine.

As difficult as the task is, I believe we precisely need to develop tools that predict behavior.

Notwithstanding the Secure Flight program suspension in February 2006 due to two government reports that outlined security and privacy problems the revised program does not address the security concerns of behavior profiling.

It's All Greek to Me

The new translation tools are being implemented with some sucess in business applications although I have previously expressed my skepticism with the effort. A Computerworld story online today illustrates how the new efforts are going. Most results to the present have been sketchy requiring human translators.

Ford Motor Co. has used “machine translation” software since 1998 and has translated 5 million automobile assembly instructions.

Ford uses Enterprise Global Server from Systran Software Inc. but this is just the beginning. English instructions are written by engineers and then parsed by a homegrown AI program into unambiguous detailed directions, such as, “Attach bracket No. 423 using six half-inch bolts.” Each instruction is then stored as a record in a translation database.

Systran’s tool uses a reliable translation technique called rules-based translation. Such systems use bilingual dictionaries combined with electronic style guides containing usage and grammar rules. The commercial translators are then supplemented with assembly line application-specific glossaries from Ford.

The glossaries are cumulative in that they are combined with “translation memories,” databases of previously translated text in the form of source and target sentence pairs. These memories are usually compiled over time by users. If the translation system (or a human) finds an exact match for the sentence it’s trying to translate, it just retrieves the corresponding sentence in the target language from the database. Near matches or “fuzzy,” matches are flagged for review by a human translator.

Statistical machine translation is a newer technique. It uses collections of documents and their translations to “train” software. Over time, these data-driven systems “learn” what makes a good translation and what doesn’t and then use probability and statistics to decide which of several possible translations of a given word or phrase is most likely correct based on context.

The systems as a result develop their own rules and fine-tune them over time.

Google Inc. uses Systran’s rules-based software but is also developing its own statistical-based systems to translate to and from the more difficult and non-Western Romance languages due to their significant differences from Western languages.

Sites may include a link to Google’s system at Google translation for free.

Other large companies are in need of translations and use them such as Microsoft Corp. which incorporates a rules-based natural-language parser in its Word software.

FedEx Corp. rolled out Trados GXT, a product of Maidenhead, England-based SDL International. It consists of translation memories integrated with an enterprise translation workflow system but has not obviated the need for human-based translation services.

A new development and increasingly sophisticated translation systems combine multiple methods. A statistical machine translation product from Language Weaver Inc. in Marina del Rey, Calif., can now be used with translation management software called WorldServer from Idiom Technologies Inc. Customers can tap into WorldServer to retrieve previously translated content in a translation memory or generate new translations — through Language Weaver’s algorithms — when no matches are found.

At SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. researchers are working with the U.S. Department of Defense to automate the translation of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese — structured and unstructured text as well as real-time speech — into English.

It's all Greek to me; but, actually I do know Greek so if I can learn perhaps machines can as well.