Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
Not that this election really means all that much but Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf was elected for a third term as president according to unofficial ballot results.
He still faces legal challenges because Pakistan's Supreme Court may rule Musharraf is ineligible to hold office as president. The second runner-up will take office instead, as the constitution stipulates.
Musharraf is facing a great deal of opposition. They demand that Musharraf abandon his position as Pakistan's military chief before seeking another presidential term.
90% of the overall votes are cast for Musharraf but there will be few people who can see it as a credible, normal election when a large number of his political opponents have said they do not want anything to do with it.
As on many points, Pakistan's national security depends on an Islamist, Pashtun-dominated régime according to Michael Scheuer's analysis (Imperial Hubris pp. 54-56) and I believe he is correct.
A touch of Viagra served with jurisprudence never hurt anyone I suppose. In a recent hack, the madera.courts.ca.gov site was hit with Viagra ads before it was taken down according to the Sunbeltblog.
There were no reports if the judges tarried before the site was changed back to its legitimate data.
The University of California, Berkeley began to offer free course lectures on YouTube and this seems like a helpful addition to free course programs offered by places like MIT.
There are more than 300 hours of videotaped courses.
Berkeley has used open-source video since 2001, when its Educational Technology Services division launched webcast.berkeley.edu, a local site that now provides course and event content via podcasts and streaming video.
The number of courses available by podcast has increased from 15 to 86.
A DHS email gaffe revealed information, including classified data, on thousands of security pros. A story makes you fell just a little less secure.
A Reply All to a daily news roundup emailed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was sent to around 7,500 people which overwhelmed government and business mail servers with over 2 million messages today.
Marcus Sachs, the director of the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC), discovered that the DHS was not using a mail list manager, or listserv, such as the open-source Mailman or the free Majordomo, but instead was transmitting the daily report from an e-mail address on a Lotus Domino Release 7.0.2FP1 server hosted by a government contractor.
You can't imagine who would like to have access to American confidential information.
The disclosure issue is illustrated painfully when email recipients received this message: "Subject: Is this being a joke? why are so many messages today? Amir Ferdosi Sazeman-e Sana'et-e Defa' Qom Iran" In a follow-up message, Ferdosi identified himself as a researcher with Iran's Ministry of Defense.
The DHS snafu revealed sensitive contact data to `undesirables.'
Now all that needs to be done is for some nefarious ne'er do well to send a zero-day PDF or Word attachment to the names now available and blast gullible security professionals.
Hackers, phishers and other cybercriminals could not have done any better than revealing the kind of information that was disclosed by the DHS list.
By mashing YouTube and a text source, Terrorist Death Watch, a quite reliable account of at least this one incident is documented.
The text account states:
An al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) effort to reestablish a position in the southern Baghdad province town of Hawr Rajab was repulsed when concerned local citizens engaged the terrorists with small-arms fire and called in U.S. forces for assistance, Oct. 2.
While two concerned citizens were wounded in fighting and treated at a nearby hospital, four enemy fighters were killed, an additional two wounded, and multiple insurgent weapons destroyed. U.S. forces detained one of the enemy wounded, and transported the other for medical treatment at Camp Cropper.
Events began mid-afternoon, when concerned citizens contacted Multi-National Division Center Soldiers after spotting suspected AQI vehicles in the vicinity of Hawr Rajab. A quick reaction force comprised of Paratroopers from 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry. Division responded to the call for assistance.
The U.S. Soldiers moved into town to find the concerned citizens already engaged in small-arms fire with AQI terrorists hiding in a boys’ school. After the brief engagement, the terrorists were observed fleeing the scene in a blue truck.
An air weapons team was called in to pursue the vehicle and later destroyed the truck and killed four terrorists. The engagement also destroyed two AK-47s and a 23 mm anti-aircraft machine gun in the back of the van.
Numerous calls to tips line by Iraqis in the wake of the incident confirmed the identity of the men as AQI.
The second of two men were held by Austrian authorities in a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.
The pair are Bosnian suspects.
This possible accomplice of Asim C., a 42-year-old unemployed Bosnian, was arrested after he tried to enter the embassy with a backpack containing grenades, plastic explosives and bits of metal.
Next, the police nabbed Mehmed D., 34, and took him into custody.
Both men were citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina who knew each other. Their identities are not fully released, the suspects' last names, because of Austrian privacy laws.
Asim C. was carrying a book which appeared to be a Muslim prayer manual.
I am confused by the position of Doris Edelbacher, chief spokeswoman for Austria's federal counterterrorism office, who played down speculation that the suspects were motivated by radical Islamic ideology.
What else?
Guenther Ahmed Rusznak, a spokesman for Vienna's Islamic community, issued a statement late Monday condemning the incident and rejecting radical Islam.
Mr. Rusznak seems to be taking the reasonable conclusion here.
Last month, three suspected al-Qaida operatives — all Austrian citizens of Arab origin in their 20s — were arrested in connection with a video posted online in March that had threatened Austria and Germany with attacks if they did not withdraw their military personnel from Afghanistan.
One of the suspects was released several days later for lack of evidence. Authorities in Canada, meanwhile, arrested another suspect believed to be linked to the Internet threat.
Microsoft is updating Vista's speed and stability, or so they say, and the company has posted more fixes for the OS, even as SP1 enters beta testing for developers.
Microsoft has slowly been revealing the next move or two and it looks like for Vista SP1 beta the most important modification is the search option. Microsoft has not widely publicized the move, no doubt because it is in response to an anti-trust decision, but the updated search allows a user to specify which search, such as Google, they would like.
Silicon Valley is of course the number one tech oriented area in the U.S. but more of a surprise is considering who is number two.
A good guess would be Boston or Seattle but the U.S. Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey (ACS) reveals a metropolitan area's "TQ" (technology quotient). In fact the honor of the second highest concentration of IT professionals is the Washington metro area.
The annual average salary for computer and information systems managers in Silicon Valley as of May 2006 was $139,460, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the D.C. metro area, that figure was $122,950.
A positive move in organizations is the micro-finance work of Muhammad Yunus at the Grameen Bank. This is a site which chronicles how more than 7 million people have received small loans, which they've used to build small businesses.
Also, many people can benefit financially via the Net, e.g., through kiva or prosper.com, which provide loans for people with little or no collateral.
Finally, the oversight that Internet-based tools allow are requiring governments to be more accountable. For example, the Sunlight Foundation documents the flows of money and contracts within the U.S. government.
The really amazing thing about the 183-pound aluminum sphere called Sputnik, Russian for "traveling companion" is the enlightened response and collaboration between the government, President Eisenhower specifically, the military, and private researchers. Fifty years ago on 4 October 1957, radio-transmitted beeps from the first man-made object to ever orbit the Earth propelled the U.S. into the Space Age once the "October surprise" woke the country up.
America was a distant second. On 6 December 1957 an American Vanguard rocket that was to be the first U.S. satellite exploded on the launch pad. Dubbed the "Kaputnik," the U.S. lagged behind.
Hence the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a rambunctious Pentagon office quickly created by President Eisenhower on 7 February 1958. The mission was to "prevent technological surprises," and although dominated by concerns of space, the office also stimulated computer research.
As a boomer, my young life was dominated by nightmares of Soviet domination, a heavy-handed curriculum push towards math and science. Not surprisingly, I studied history instead.
I can hardly imagine a worst grade-school preparation in this regard, and today such an enlightened and unified governmental response would be unthinkable.
Bush announced that Social Security is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall and that delaying reforms is not fair to younger workers.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department is on record in stating that some combination of benefit cuts and tax increases will need to be considered to permanently fix the funding shortfall.
Bush would like to privatize Social Security for younger workers while cutting some benefits and he has remained opposed to a tax hike to make up for the shortfall.
Privatization is not popular with Bush's opponents but I believe there is little choice. Young people are not planning their finances any better than previous generations.
Should Americans really be upset now that the Iranian Parliament declared the U.S. Army and the CIA as terrorist organizations?
Hardly, the Parliament can now join American academics and commentators who noted that the Iranian President did not receive a warm welcome while in New York.
I guess that is what happens when you deny obvious and horrific events in history such as the Holocaust and continue to send state-sponsored terrorists to neighboring countries.
A disturbing story ran on CNN this week. A simulated attack points to just how vulnerable the U.S. power infrastructure really is.
Only a software vulnerability in a control system could be used to physically destroy power grid equipment.
A CNN segment demonstrated how a turbine was reduced to a smoking, shuddering, metal spewing mess as the result of malicious code execution on the computer controlling the system.
The Idaho National Laboratory prepared the demonstration for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The simulated attack re-visited an old issue, now rectified--in a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.
The vulnerability points out how easily a well-executed digital attack could hit our critical infrastructure.
Since they run on proprietary systems, SCADA systems are less vulnerable than Internet accessible networks but they are not immune to the kinds of cyberattacks that can plague corporate information systems.
The present danger lies in an attacker who gains administrative access.
As utilities transition to connect with the Internet what has not happened is that the systems are secured and upgraded over time. The cost is prohibitive.
The move to Ethernet, TCP/IP and Web technologies will provide hackers and virus writers a number of backdoors and pathways to core control systems at utility companies, according to Eric Byres, CEO of Byres Security Inc., a consultancy that focuses on SCADA security.
The DHS and the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) have worked to address cybersecurity issues. NERC adopted eight new cybersecurity standards around asset identification, security management controls, personnel and training, perimeter security, systems security, incident reporting and response planning.
Although there are some helpful developments, I know locally that PECO Energy has enough difficulty supplying power when faced only with storms and trees. I'd hate to think how they could handle a malicious and determined attack.
China does not seem capable of keeping their hands out of the cookie jar as reports indicate that two who were charged with espionage sought funding in China.
A federal grand jury indicted the two men of conspiring to steal high-tech trade secrets and develop them with Chinese venture capital funding.
The two, Lan Lee, 42, of Palo Alto and Yuefei Ge, 34, of San Jose, are accused of trying to steal trade secrets from their employer, chip maker NetLogics Microsystems Inc. They allegedly sought funding from China's General Arms Department and the 863 program, which is a government-led project aimed at boosting technology research in China.
Lee is an American, while Ge is a Chinese national.
However, the original indictment makes no mention of possible involvement by the government of China.
I attended a conference of educators and you really have to consider how slow education changes in comparison with other fields. The media formerly was a thing to consume but now the direction is on reader feedback. Web 2.0 hit with Digg and StumbleUpon in a big way but this similar phenomenon has yet to really impact education. What if people have an opportunity to provide immediate feedback and a reciprocal conversation ensues? Education want responses and this would accomplish that end. The days of not knowing how people are responding to your message are over. In former days an academic could toil in isolation not knowing how their research was received but now they can have instantaneous feedback. This would liven up the educational process tremendously. I recall the demands of publishing online eLearning research in the pre-bubble phase of the Internet and it was exciting. The demand for high quality ideas were there but the demand of time were so much greater. Publish or perish, sabbaticals are optional.
Al-Maliki is asking that the flow of arms must stop pouring into Iraq and he is correct on this point.
Regions such as Anbar province are quieter but he did claim that there has been a drop in sectarian killings which is difficult to believe. There has been a wave of bombings and shootings which swept Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least 50 people.
The success in Anbar is a result of a coalition of Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military.
I thought it proper, in order to fully understand the discussion, to provide the full text--according to CNN--of President Bollinger's comments about President Ahmadinejad. Thus, I reproduce the CNN story here. I'd like to see this text studied and commented about since there are very few American academics who seem to take Middle Eastern spokespersons to task, or to school as the case may be. Ahmadinjad claims to be an academic, and appeals to audiences as such, thus, he should be able to interact with the world community, and fellow academics, as one.
==NEW YORK (CNN) -- Columbia University president Lee Bollinger took Iran's president to task Monday, bluntly criticizing his record and saying he exhibits "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Columbia University president, Lee Bollinger, excoriated Iran's leader Monday.
Bollinger's assessment came as he introduced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to an audience of students and faculty.
As he read a long list of documented actions and remarks by the firebrand Iranian leader and his government, the crowd of 600 applauded.
Ahmadinejad was at the university to give a speech and take part in a question-and-answer session.
During the introduction, Bollinger cited the Iranian government's "brutal crackdown" on dissidents, public executions, executions of minors and other actions.
He assailed Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust as "ridiculous."
"For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda," he said. He called the Iranian leader "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."
"The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history," he said.
"Will you cease this outrage?" he demanded.
Bollinger said he doubted Ahmadinejad would show the intellectual courage to answer questions posed to him.
Ahmadinejad opened his remarks by saying Bollinger's introduction was discourteous, intellectually dishonest and inaccurate.
He said academic freedom should prohibit the "vaccination" of the audience with negative comments about a guest speaker and his ideas.
"I think the text read by the dear gentleman here, more than addressing me, was an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here, present here," Ahmadinejad said through a translator. Don't Miss
* Candidates question university's invitation to Iranian leader * Iran: 'We are not building A-bomb' * Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' into war with Iran * Iran: Missing American's family can visit * Ahmadinejad eager to teach Americans
"In a university environment we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all," he said.
During his introductory remarks, Bollinger said Columbia would offer a faculty position to Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American social scientist who was released last week after having been held in Iran since May.
Tajbakhsh, a Columbia graduate, will be offered a position as visiting professor of urban planning as soon as Iran lets him leave the country, he said.
Bollinger asked Ahmadinejad to allow Tajbakhsh to lead a university delegation to address collegiate audiences in Iran on the subject of freedom of speech.
During a question-and-answer period after his remarks, Ahmadinejad invited Columbia students to visit Iran and promised to provide a list of universities for them. The audience applauded. advertisement
"I am only a professor who is also a university president, and today I feel the weight of all the civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad. "I only wish I could do better."
After the session, Bollinger said Ahmadinejad left without properly answering many of the questions that were posed to him.
IT systems integrator Unisys Corp. failed to detect the hacking of U.S. Department of Homeland Security computers; thereafter, data was sent to a Chinese-language Web site.
DHS had 844 "cybersecurity incidents" during the government's 2005 and 2006 fiscal years, and it described that number as "high and unacceptable."
The data breach adds to countries such as France, Germany and the U.K. that hackers in China have attacked them for sensitive information on government computer systems.
In 2002, Unisys won a $1 billion contract to manage U.S. government computer systems created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to shore up the nation's defense. Unisys received a $750 million contract in early 2006 to continue the work.
Three months passed before clues emerged that malicious software capable of copying and transferring files had been installed on 150 DHS computers. In 1997-1998 I monitored a network that featured the same type of shenanigans. In the DHS case, the software led to the transfer of unclassified data late at night or early in the morning to a Chinese-language Web site. This is Security 101.
Of course we want an ingrate such as Ahmadinejad to question 9/11 and the Holocaust so that the reams of academics who enjoy free inquiry in the U.S. can refute him. I heartily recommend providing a forum for the disturbed for this has been the only way to crowd out error and expose falsehood.
But that would have involved thinking in the U.S. and it is not to be expected everywhere.
At the Columbia University appearance, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the widely accepted view of the 9/11 attacks and defended the right to dispute the reality of the Holocaust.
Thankfully, there were edgy moments due to a sharp individual at Columbia University. Columbia President Lee Bollinger challenged Ahmadinejad by stating: "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Finally, one American academic who does not willingly swallow the swill of every Islamist who appears to the West and claims to be misunderstood. "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad, according to news reports, smiled at first but appeared increasingly agitated, decrying the "insults" and "unfriendly treatment." Welcome to free speech Ahmadinejad.
Audience members took Ahmadinejad to school over Iran's human-rights record and foreign policy, as well as Ahmadinejad's statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.
"When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," Bollinger said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."
Ahmadinejad rose, also to applause, and after a religious invocation, said Bollinger's opening was "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here." I don't think hiding behind religion will work in the West.
During a question and answer session, Ahmadinejad appeared tense and unsmiling, in contrast to more relaxed interviews and appearances earlier in the day.
Ahmadinejad reiterated his desire to visit the 9/11 ground zero but he is on record questioning whether al-Qaida was responsible.
This might be his Holocaust II.
Asked about executions of homosexuals in Iran, Ahmadinejad said the judiciary executed violent criminals and high-level drug dealers by comparing them to microbes eliminated through medical treatment. He said: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
The audience roared derisively.
President Bush said Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia "speaks volumes about really the greatness of America."
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Tech Net: The Microsoft Journal for IT Professionals;
Tech Partner: Gain a Competitive Edge Through Solutions Providers;
Technology & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders;
Tenet, George, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA During America's Time of Crisis;
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair;
Thompson, Derrick & William Martin, Have Guitars ... Will Travel: A Journey Through the Beat Music Scene in Northampton 1957-66;
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina;
Trento, Joseph J., The Secret History of the CIA;
Twain, Mark, The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today;
Ungar, Craig, House of Bush House of Saud;
Unterberger, Richie, The Unreleased Beatles Music & Film;
VAR Business: Strategic Insight for Technology Integrators:
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virtualization Review: Powering the New IT Generation;
Visual Studio: Enterprise Solutions for .Net Development;
VON Magazine: Voice, Video & Vision;
Wall Street Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Wallace, Robert, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda;
Wang, Wallace, Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won’t Tell You About the Internet;
Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization;
Warren, Robert Penn, All the King's Men;
Wasik, John F., Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream;
Weber, Karl, Editor, Lincoln: A President for the Ages;
Website Magazine: The Magazine for Website Success;
Weiner, Tim, Enemies: A History of the FBI;
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA;
West, Bing, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq;
Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence;
Wilcox, Peter, Rome's Enemies (1) Germanics and Dacians;
Wise, Terence, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265 - 146 BC;
Wissner-Gross, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You To Know) 272 Secrets For Getting Your Kid Into the Top Schools;
Wissner-Gross, What High Schools Don't Tell You;
Wolf, Naomi, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries;
Wolf, Naomi, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot;
Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack;
Woodward, Bob, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House;
Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11;
Wright-Porto, Heather, Beginning Google Blogger;
Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus;
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power;
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.
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