Monday, January 24, 2005

Harvard's Insecure Pharmacare Web Application



Click here for AmazonLast Friday, the Harvard Crimson did yeoman's work in its exposé of an insecure web application that would reveal the pharmaceutical purchases of anyone with prescription coverage under Harvard's plan. The insurer's web site required only a Harvard ID number and a birthday to list the person's drug history.

What makes this especially grievous is that any organization dealing with sensitive, medical information knows that it must work within the constraints of HIPAA. Even the most rudimentary vulnerability assessment (VA) would have noted the lack of adequate authentication on the part of the web app designer.

...A list of all three prescription drugs purchased by one student at University Health Services (UHS) Pharmacy was accessed by The Crimson by typing his ID number and birthday into another website, run by Harvard drug insurer PharmaCare. Birthdates of undergraduates are published to fellow students, and are in many cases more widely available on sites such as anybirthday.com...


One security person quoted in the article blamed the problems on the proliferation of university ID numbers.

After the iCommons Poll Tool was shut down last night, University Technology Security Officer Scott Bradner said that “there’s no condition under which [the ID number] should have been shared…It was not a design feature.”


But that, of course, misses the point. The ID number can certainly be used, but only as a single component of an authentication step used to provide access to this sort of application. It's not rocket science: a pre-established PIN, password or use of a pre-established email address (e.g., "@harvard.edu") to confirm identity -- or other means of reasonable authentication -- is required.

Of course, the primary motivation for businesses to clean up their information security act is simple: the bottom line.

...Jerome B. Tichner Jr., an attorney practicing healthcare law at Boston-based Brown and Rudnick, said... “If an entity [covered by HIPAA] does not have adequate security systems, and it’s very easy for any third party to walk in or log in and obtain pharmaceutical information or other…healthcare information, that may pose liability concerns,” he said...


Until information security is considered an integral part of the application development lifecycle, expect more public -- and costly -- gaffes along these lines.

Harvard Crimson: Drug Records, Confidential Data Vulnerable

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Iraq, Democracy and U.S. Options



Click here for AmazonFar from the quagmire that leftists and terrorists worldwide enjoy dubbing it, Victor Davis Hansen posits that Iraq is already poised to be a major, strategic success. America's powerful, unexpected response to Islamic terrorism has given it new options in the Middle East and, indeed, worldwide.

...The American persistence in Iraq under difficult circumstances might also explain why potential enemies farther afield, from Teheran to Pyongyang, have so far decided not to seize the moment to press their luck with the United States. Meanwhile, the world at large appears more, rather than less, disposed to stand up to Islamic fascism and the terror it wages. Even less ambiguously, Pakistan, though often playing a duplicitous role in the past, has remained a neutral in the war on terror if not at times an ally, while its nuclear guru, A.P. Khan, is for the moment in retirement. On the issue of the dangers posed by Islamic extremism, nearly 3 billion people in India, China, Japan, and the former Soviet Union are more likely to favor than to oppose American counterterrorism efforts. Libya is suddenly coming clean about its own nefarious schemes and even opening its borders to African aid workers. Murmurs of democratic change are rumbling throughout the autocratic Gulf. Terrorists are not so welcome as they once were in Jordan, Yemen, or much of North Africa...

...If Americans have learned anything from the careers of Qaddafi, the Saudi royal family, Saddam Hussein, and the Iranian clergy, it is that huge petroleum profits accruing among illegitimate autocrats are a recipe for global terrorism and regional havoc. One way to end the present pathology is for the United States, accepting that concerns for our national survival can sometimes trump the logic of finding the cheapest energy source, to develop a policy that helps drive down world petroleum prices. Another option is far more aggressively to promote democratic reforms among the petrol sheikdoms themselves. A third is to do both. Given the entry of India and China into the world petroleum market, fostering tighter global demand while potentially circumscribing our own clout, the hour is more urgent than ever; but the Middle East is also, and once again thanks to the ongoing reform of Iraq and Afghanistan, more fluid and perhaps more promising than ever....


Aligned with these intentions, President Bush's inaugural address painted the stark rationale for our continued actions: that spreading Democracy is directly linked to our national security. In no uncertain terms, a failure to address despots and tyrants is a recipe for increased terror, conflict and risk.

Interesting, Musab al Zarqawi -- reknowned international terrorist -- agrees:

...We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology. Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it...


As Hindrocket notes, "Battle lines have been drawn. It's too bad so many liberals can't figure out which side of the line they're on."

Hindrocket also links to the blog of a US soldier serving in Iraq. Kerry Manthey recently posted this missive:

I read in the news today that Zarqawi is “declaring war on Iraqis who vote in the upcoming elections”. Here’s my prediction: The Iraqis are going to declare war on Zarqawi by voting in the upcoming elections. Zarqawi is also going to be captured by American forces. Zarqawi will beg the Americans not to turn him over to the Iraqis.

Zarqawi and Al Qaeda’s declaration of war on the Iraqi people is similar to Al Qaeda's declaration of war on America. If you didn’t think we were already at war in Iraq with Al Qaeda, you obviously missed what Al Qaeda did to us on September 11, 2001.

America didn't cower in fear from terrorism, neither will the Iraqis.


It is stunning to me how frequently today's left finds itself on the side of suicidal extremist terror and Middle East anarchy. One thing is certain: it is a recipe for continued failure at the polls.

Hugh Hewitt back in the LA Times



Click here for AmazonHugh Hewitt is back in the LA Times, at the behest of editors who are, to their credit, offering its critics brickbats and hoping for honest, pointed guidance. Hewitt sensibly partitions the problematic Times coverage into a single, highest-priority concern: covering the GWOT as a war against a bright, motivated, and determined enemy, rather than as disparate, unrelated actions by disorganized groups of nutjobs.

In short, the Times has been as guilty as (or more guilty than) other MSM outlets in failing to paint a comprehensive picture of the threat: the linkages between the Madrid bombings and 9/11, the web of far-flung and clever AQ-affiliated organizations, the lifecycle of violence borne in the madrassas and terminating with catastrophic suicide attacks...

The rest of the MSM needs to follow the example of the Times. Clear the decks and balance coverage with respected, eloquent critics from the right side of the aisle. Britt Hume's show is the template for this sort of forum, but there is no reason that other MSM outlets can't capture the spirit of his show.

Read the whole thing, but here are some highlights of his recommendations:

• Do more to identify and inform the readers on the organization, leadership and capabilities of the Islamist terrorist network, paying more attention to experts who support the war in Iraq and believe... that the battles there will ultimately slow the spread of terrorism elsewhere.

• Start a daily — a daily — feature on the Global War on Terrorism and call it that. Explain the money trail and detail the leadership and do so with the repetition that assures that readers are not overwhelmed with one giant aircraft carrier of a piece. Give them the digestible segments that make for understanding. Where does the support come from and who manages the accounts? Are there names behind the cash that funds the madrasas that churn out the jihadists? What has been done to stop the funding? ...

In short, The Times needs to reorganize to actually cover the war as a war. The last global war was not covered as though the Pacific Theater was independent of the battles in North Africa, or the Russian front disconnected from the D-day invasion. As with that global struggle, so with this one. As it is, unfortunately, readers know less of the terrorist enemy than 1942 readers knew of the geography of North Africa...


Hugh Hewitt in the LA Times: Cover the Terror War as a War

Iran's Political and Military Leadership Call for Martyrdom



Click here for AmazonThe amplified rhetoric of the Mullahs regarding suicide attacks (read: martyrdom operations) continues unabated. MEMRI -- Middle Eastern Media Research Institute -- provides us with the following translations. Note that Khamenei and Shabani have so far suppressed any instincts to martyr themselves, instead exhorting Iranian cannon fodder young people to sacrifice themselves while their senior leaders enjoy all the perquisites of royalty.

In a recent statement to the 8th Congress on Martyred Students, Iran's Leader Ali Khamenei praised the culture of shahada (committing martyrdom operations), and called upon students to follow the path of martyrs.

Speaking at a memorial service at the University of Qom, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards general, Shabani, called for the training and education of students as martyrs. In his address, which dealt with means of resisting the enemy, Shabani also said that Iran is the third largest power in the region in ballistic missile production.


Khamenei urged students to continue to promote the culture of Jihad and martyrdom among themselves as "a source of national strength and a characteristic of pure worship… When we encounter the name of a student who committed martyrdom we are confident that the acceptance of martyrdom and of the Jihad that led to this martyrdom stemmed from [the martyr's] self-awareness and clear desire, and this intensifies the value of the act..."

"General Shabani said: 'Iran is the third [largest] power in the region in the field of ballistic missile production, following China and Russia.' [He also] praised the exalted status of the Islamic revolution's martyrs, saying: 'As the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said, 'The martyrs are the quintessence of our strength.' Therefore, we must educate and train forces ready to commit martyrdom attacks in order to counter the enemy.

"'In the event of a war with the U.S. we must fight them asymmetrically. As of now, we have manufactured weapons systems and we have attained nuclear capabilities...'


MEMRI: Iran's Political and Military Leadership Call for Martyrdom (Shahada)

Exit Strategy



Click here for AmazonFrom RBShirley at SwiftVets: "The Barbara Boxer Rebellion questioned the exit strategy from Iraq and Afganistan, here is one pundit's tongue-in-cheek description of a potential exit from both."

Friday, January 21, 2005

The Associated (Palestinian) Press



Click here for AmazonIf you're looking for cold, hard proof that the MSM is -- and has been -- aiding and abetting the enemy, look no further than this reportage from the Jerusalem Post:

AFP and AP employ reporters who also receive paychecks from the Palestinian Authority:

Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Associated Press (AP) ― have employed journalists with inappropriately close ties to the Palestinian Authority. Majida al-Batsh was a Palestinian affairs correspondent for AFP for many years, while simultaneously being on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority as a reporter for the PA's official organ, Al-Ayyam.

If this is not evidence enough of impropriety at AFP, last year Batsh announced she would actually run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority...


Click here for AmazonThis is the sort of outrageous conflict-of-interest that results in the worldwide distribution of photos like that depicting the tragedy leading this paragraph. What the MSM doesn't bother to tell you is that the death of Mohammed al-Dura was, in all likelihood, a direct result of sniper fire by Palestinians.

Click here for AmazonThe same is the case with the Tuvia Grossman incident. The accompanying photo, broadcast and distributed in print throughout the world, depicts an Israeli soldier brutalizing an innocent Palestinian. At least that's what the MSM, including the New York Times, said. The facts behind the picture? The man beaten within an inch of his life is Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish American, who was pulled out of his vehicle by a Palestinian mob and viciously assaulted.

So the next time you see an article by the Associated Press, factor in the Palestinian Authority compensation factor, and read accordingly.

You know...



Click here for Amazoni've just got to note that the first major news magazine to make a serious attempt at balanced coverage is going to make a flat-out financial killing. An example of the kind of coverage I'm thinking of is here, straight out of Time Magazine online: Donkeys in Denial.

Fisking Thomas Friedman



Click here for AmazonBring the video-camera and gather the whole family together as New Sisyphus fisks the New York Times' Thomas Friedman in brutal fashion, using everything but brass knuckles and two-by-fours.

Tommy, you need to put any ice on that?

And, to reiterate an earlier post, the New Sisyphus blog, written by a member of the State Department, is not to be missed.

Shameless Semantics



Click here for AmazonThe eloquent David Limbaugh points out the stunning hypocrisy of the left on yet another front: social security. We all remember the day -- actually only a few years ago -- that Bill Clinton and Al Gore pointed to its problematic financial footing. Gore, as recently as 2000, lectured George W. Bush on the dangers represented by its fading strength.

Therefore, if we were dealing in intellectual honesty and not partisan chicanery, Bush would receive credit from both sides for his willingness to tackle the "third rail" problem. For, as Limbaugh points out, he could easily have avoided the problem for another four years without any risk whatsoever.

Now the left is denying that social security is even in trouble. The troubling facts, however, remain: in less than 15 years, demographic shifts will ensure that there are less workers than needed to support the number of retirees.

Beginning in 2018, absent major reform, the federal government will have to tap general revenues to subsidize its Social Security benefit payments, eventually in staggering amounts approaching $10 trillion. A compounding factor is that the Social Trustees report estimates that we will lose $600 billion for every year we ignore the problem. Yet this isn't a serious enough issue to demand our immediate attention?

How many times have we heard Democrats -- latter-day deficit hawks that they are -- rail against President Bush's deficit spending? How many times have they feigned apoplexy over the spiraling national debt?

Well, folks, they must not mean what they say, because this looming Social Security problem is purely and simply about an inevitable explosion of the national debt. It's only avoidable if we reduce benefits, reduce other federal spending and/or raise taxes -- which at some point will be counterproductive on the revenue side.

Whether you call it a problem or a crisis, it is getting worse, and it's nothing short of immoral to put off working on solutions. The only conceivable reasons Democrats are in denial about it is that they either don't want to allow reform under a Republican president or don't want to fix it at all because they might lose one of the main weapons in their fear-mongering arsenal.


David Limbaugh: Shameless semantics

Thursday, January 20, 2005

This is the Enemy



Click here for AmazonInteresting to look back at this collection of World War II posters. And here are a couple of WWII originals, customized for the times we live in today:


Top Ten Most Wanted Design Bugs



Click here for AmazonAskTog has an excellent summary of the most egregious software design bugs. From his list, my two "favorites" (meaning the ones I also hate the most) are:

  • Mysteriously grayed menus and buttons - how many times have you finally found the right dialog box (layered underneath four levels of tabbed property sheets and "Advanced..." button settings), only to discover that the critical selection is grayed? There's generally no information to tell you why it has been disabled... so you have to go spelunking around the help system and the Internet, compromising your already fragile schedule and generally causing unacceptably high levels of stress.


  • Focus stealing - it happens all the time... you surf to a bank site or similar important URL and start typing in your user-name and password. Midway through the password, inevitably, focus switches to a Google search box and you find yourself splatting your password -- in the clear -- into the edit window. One day, far far in the future, advanced research design scientists will figure out how to defer the focus switch... waiting until you've finished your stream of input before hot-swapping the window underneath you. I know, I know, no human could possibly come up with such an algorithm. Windows has already been around 15 years, so it must be impossible.


  • One Tog didn't mention, but that I find really bothersome is restricted to Windows:

  • Multiple clipboards - the "advanced" versions of Windows support this generally useless and cumbersome feature. Copy something to the clipboard a couple of times, and Windows helpfully interrupts your train of thought by presenting you with the "multiple clipboard" display. Hmmm. Helpful... not. Just get out of the way and let me cut and paste, dammit!


  • One of Tog's top design bugs that I don't agree with is the "Ooooh, shiny!" bug:

    "Bug Name: My app is more special than the others"

    Bug: Programmers part from the OS interface standard...


    In effect, this bug consists of developers inventing their own UI gadgets and controls. I completely disagree with this. Why? Simply look at WinAmp, arguably the ultimate custom application user-interface for Windows. Its main claim to fame was the skinnable, highly custom UI that, oh by the way, looked a hell of a lot cooler than a normal Windows application. And Justin Frankel only pulled down about $200 million for the effort...

    Ten Most Wanted Design Bugs

    Suppressing Comment Spam



    Click here for AmazonGoogle has added support for suppressing comment spam. Comment spam consists of URL's and keywords tossed into blog comments for the sole purpose of gaming search engine rankings. Increasingly, comment spammers are using bots to splat out these sorts of "comments".

    Google's spider now supports a "nofollow" attribute value to separate blog postings from comments. It tells the spider to ignore hyperlinks appearing within comments, trackbacks and referrer lists. Interestingly, the "nofollow" attribute value was already part of the HTML DTD, but this represents a new use.

    Google, in a recent blog post, said its spider has already begun recognizing the tag. Consider the old tag:

    Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/">fake Rolex</a> site

    That comment would be transformed to

    Visit my <a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">fake Rolex</a> site

    Search Engines, Bloggers Team to Fight Spam

    Hey, France!



    Click here for AmazonProtest Warrior is offering a great selection of T-shirts (hat tip: MarkA). This one is my hands-down favorite. Check 'em all out.

    Tuesday, January 18, 2005

    The Stunning Victory of the Welfare Reformers



    Click here for AmazonThe New Sisyphus blog is an outstanding new journal authored by an anonymous member of the State Department. His initial post recaps the pitched battle that preceded the enactment of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and its underpublicized results.

    At that time, legislators on the left acted as "Welfare Advocates", who for decades espoused an unyielding viewpoint that the war on poverty has failed solely because of underfunding, even though benefits, eligibility, programs and spending increased dramatically over the years.

    Conversely, legislators on the right could be termed "Welfare Reformers", who believed that the central tenets of welfare expansion were fundamentally flawed: that they created a "culture of dependence" that increased poverty and illegitimacy.

    ...It was this key point—the creation of a dependence culture... that formed the centerpiece of the debate. Rather than lift people’s lives by lifting their income, the fact of welfare worked against the values so central to middle class success in the United States. This fact of dependence created a social class with interests and values set against the mainstream, thus dooming generation after generation to poverty.

    The 1996 Act and its Aftermath

    In the end, the Welfare Reformers won the debate, not least because their views were very much more in line with the mainstream of American opinion...

    ...[the Act meant] the days of sitting around waiting for one’s welfare check from the government were over... While members of Congress like Charlie Rangel were loudly telling anyone who would listen (and the MSM being the MSM that meant everyone) that the Republicans had just doomed thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of children to lives of poverty, the hard work of implementing the 1996 Act’s mandates slowing got off the ground.

    The result of welfare reform has been nothing less than astounding, if not awe inspiring.

    ...Heather Mac Donald’s 2002 City Journal piece, Don’t Mess With Welfare Reform’s Success, best summarized the Act’s historic accomplishments:

    “Congress’s [1996 Act] wager paid off handsomely. Asked to look for work in exchange for their welfare checks, hundreds of thousands of women found jobs. From 1996 to 1999, employment among the nation’s never-married mothers rose 40 percent. In 1992, only 38 percent of young single mothers worked; by March 2000, 60 percent of that group were employed. Another large portion of the caseload, faced with new participation requirements, simply decided that welfare was not worth the hassle. The result: a 52 percent drop in the caseload since August 1996, when TANF passed, to June 2001. Nearly 2.3 million families have left the rolls.

    Sealing the reformers’ triumph, poverty has plummeted in tandem with welfare use. As Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institute reports, by 1999 child poverty among female-headed households had fallen to its lowest rate ever. Most notably, black children are now better off economically than at any time on record. So much for the myth that welfare is essential to keeping people from want.”

    The fact that the Act spurred the largest reduction in black child poverty ever on record in the US and that literally millions of poor families have entered the middle class is one of Conservatism’s greatest victories since the rise of Ronald Reagan, which probably goes a long way to explaining why it mysteriously has disappeared from the pages of the MSM. In the end, though, one thing is clear: it was the fact of dependence by itself which bred pathologies and irresponsible behavior. When the fact of dependency ended, most welfare recipients were faced with the sort of real-life difficult questions that are every day issues for the bulk of the middle class. And when faced with those decisions, most people adapted their circumstances in such a way as to succeed within the new milieu...


    What are the ramifications of welfare reform for U.S./E.U. relations? Read the whole thing: Welfare Reform, Dependence Theory and U.S.-E.U Relations

    Terrorism as an Excuse



    Click here for AmazonJohn Lott calls our attention to yet another disinformation campaign on the part of the laughingstock discredited "news" weekly 60 Minutes. Lott reports that the day before the Memogate report, the crack CBS staff was busy demonizing 50-caliber rifles.

    Let's ignore the fact that these rifles are large, expensive collector's items and they have been used for exactly one deadly crime ever (and even that incident is under debate). Let's also ignore the fact that the same hysterical tactics have repeatedly failed (e.g., the Brady Bill, the Assault Weapons Ban, the ban on "plastic" pistols).

    History shows us that the demonization of weapons for cosmetic reasons has proven to be an utter failure at crime control - by every measure.

    Sooner or later, perhaps the MSM will get this one simple fact right.

    Who could oppose laws preventing terrorists from getting guns? Obviously no one. But it would be nice if laws accomplished something more than simply making it more difficult for Americans to own guns...

    Last year it was the semi-automatic assault-weapons ban before it expired. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) claimed the ban was "the most effective measures against terrorism that we have." Of course, nothing happened when the law expired last year. There was nothing unique about the guns that are banned under the law. Though the phrase "assault weapon" conjures up images of the rapid-fire machine guns used by the military, in fact the weapons covered by the ban function the same as any semiautomatic hunting rifle; they fire the exact same bullets with the exact same rapidity and produce the exact same damage as hunting rifles.

    Back in the mid-1980s it was the hysteria over "plastic guns" when the Austrian company Glock began exporting pistols to the United States. Labeled as "terrorist specials" by the press, fear spread that their plastic frame and grip would make them invisible to metal detectors. Glocks are now common and there are good reasons they are one of the favorite pistols of American police officers. The "plastic gun" ban did not ban anything since it is not possible to actually build a working plastic gun.

    Now it is the 50-caliber rifles' turn, especially with California outlawing the sale of these guns since the beginning of the year. For years gun-control groups have tried to ban 50-caliber rifles because of fears that criminals could use them. Such bans have not been passed these guns were simply not suited for crime. Fifty-caliber rifles are big, heavy guns, weighing at least 30 pounds and using a 29-inch barrel. They are also relatively expensive. Models that hold one bullet at a time run nearly $3,000. Semi-automatic versions cost around $7,000. Wealthy target shooters and big-game hunters, not criminals, purchase them. The bottom line is that only one person in the U.S. has been killed with such a gun, and even that one alleged case is debated.

    The link to terrorism supposedly provides a new possible reason to ban 50-caliber rifles. But the decision to demonize these particular guns and not say .475-caliber hunting rifles is completely arbitrary. The difference in width of these bullets is a trivial .025 inches. What's next? Banning .45-caliber pistols? Indeed the whole strategy is to gradually reduce the type of guns that people can own...

    Fighting terrorism is a noble cause, but the laws we pass must have some real link to solving the problem. Absent that, many will think that 60 Minutes and gun-control groups are simply using terrorism as an excuse to promote rules that he previously pushed. Making it difficult for law-abiding Americans to own guns should not be the only accomplishment of new laws.


    Another CBS Disinformation Campaign

    Monday, January 17, 2005

    The news from Iraq you won't see in the MSM



    Click here for AmazonIt is stunning to contrast reports on Iraq coming from folks on the ground there as opposed to the non-stop negativity emanating from the mainstream media (MSM). There hasn't been this big of a disconnect since Flava Flav hooked up with Brigitte Nielsen (don't call ICM just yet, my sister informs me there already is such a show on television).

    Lt. Col. Tim Ryan goes so far as to label the MSM's one-side coverage, "Aiding and abetting the enemy" and explains the situation much more fully -- and more competently -- than literally any of the mainstream correspondents. Here's an excerpt, but read it all:

    ...The number of attacks in the greater Al Anbar Province is down by at least 70-80% from late October -- before Operation Al Fajar began. The enemy in this area is completely defeated, but not completely gone. Final eradication of the pockets of insurgents will take some time, as it always does, but the fact remains that the central geographic stronghold of the insurgents is now under friendly control. That sounds a lot like success to me. Given all of this, why don't the papers lead with "Coalition Crushes Remaining Pockets of Insurgents" or "Enemy Forces Resort to Suicide Bombings of Civilians"? This would paint a far more accurate picture of the enemy's predicament over here. Instead, headlines focus almost exclusively on our hardships...


    Further, Arthur Chrenkoff has done yeoman's work documenting what the biggies should -- but never seem to do -- regarding the unrelenting push towards democracy.

    ...On the streets of Baghdad, democracy makes more converts:

    "Just months ago, Fattahlah Ghazi al-Esmaili was penning articles in support of Iraq's Shi'ite uprising as editor for Ishriqat, a newspaper for rebel cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi's Army militia.

    "Now the 38-year-old has abandoned his Arab head scarf for a neat beige suit and is out pumping the flesh in his run for parliament at the head of a 180-candidate list representing the impoverished Shi'ites of Sadr City.

    " 'Before, we were men of the Mahdi's Army. Now we are men of politics,' says the journalist, who goes by the pen name Fattah al-Sheikh. 'Yesterday, we were out on the streets. Today, we are here campaigning, and hopefully tomorrow, we'll be in the presidential palace'."


    It has been a stunning transformation: "Brig. Gen. Jeffery Hammond of the 1st Cavalry Division, says Sadr City is the safest place in or around Baghdad. About 18,000 people have reconstruction jobs, he says, earning about $6 a day. 'Sadr City is what the future of Iraq can look like,' he says. Those who were once taking up arms are now talking democracy. 'Before, the men were buying black cloth for their (martyrs') banners. Now for the election, we are buying white cloths' for posters, says candidate Fatah al-Sheikh." Even the Iraqi Islamic Party is now cracking: "Iraq's principal Sunni Muslim political party conceded... that its effort to delay Iraq's parliamentary election had failed and that it was preparing a strategy to influence the elected government following the vote on Jan. 30." ...


    Good new from Iraq, part 19 and Aiding and abetting the enemy: the Media in Iraq.

    Journalists Recall Tsunami Disaster



    Click here for AmazonThe silence from Banda Aceh and a big swath along the western coast of Sumatra gave me the chills. I was alone in The Associated Press office in Jakarta trying to find out details about the earthquake that had shaken Aceh province, calling number after number with no luck. All the lines were dead.

    An editor on AP's regional desk in Bangkok, Thailand, reported they felt their building sway. What kind of a quake has an epicenter off Sumatra and is felt in Bangkok, 700 miles away? What kind of quake could silence so many people?

    AP photographer Achmad Ibrahim, Associated Press Television News cameraman Andi Djatmiko and I rushed to the airport and flew to Medan, in the province adjoining Aceh. We got there at 9 a.m. only to spend over an hour haggling with drivers. Nobody wanted to go the 250 miles to Banda Aceh, because they feared aftershocks and reports were starting to come in that huge waves had smashed ashore.

    Finally, we convinced one. We drove for 12 hours to arrive bleary-eyed in Banda Aceh, stunned at nature's carnage.

    The provincial capital was a wasteland of rubble and mud. Watermarks up to 25 feet high stained the sides of buildings, marking the tsunami's path as it rampaged through the city. Hundreds of bodies lay in the streets

    Scenes of chaos are imprinted in my mind: Motorized rickshaw drivers hauling bodies wrapped in straw mats, people on foot struggling to carry bloated corpses, unclaimed bodies partially covered by plastic or cardboard.

    "A parent should never have to bury their own children. I spent all night burying 11 of mine," said the first village man I spoke to, his hands bloody from digging. "I don't have any energy left. But I have to search for two more -- my daughters."

    People tugged on my arm, wanting to tell me their stories.

    I called AP's Jakarta bureau by satellite phone with one of the first eyewitness accounts from Aceh.

    There I remained for 14 days. One of my most touching experiences was interviewing the local APTN cameraman's 10-year-old son, who survived the tsunami up in a coconut tree.

    I froze a few times as Ardiansyah recounted seeing his mother and little sister swept away to their deaths. I was terrified the interview would cause him psychological damage. But his father, Ferry Effendi, knew his son well. He let me know when to pause and when to go on...


    Editor & Publisher: Journalists Recall Tsunami Disaster

    Sunday, January 16, 2005

    Delicious Monster



    Click here for AmazonDelicious Monster is the Mac software company behind the hit Delicious Library, a program for cataloging collections of books, movies and games. The software is selling like hot cakes and has garnered rave reviews and awards, yet the company's headquarters is a Seattle coffee house.

    Co-founded by graphic designer Mike Matas and programmer Wil Shipley, the company's first title, Delicious Library, was launched in November 2004. It generated $250,000 worth of sales in its first month, and the company has a crowded, popular booth here at Macworld.

    Mike Matas co-founded Delicious Monster, the company behind popular Delicious Library software that is used to catalog media files. The application has garnered rave reviews and awards, yet the company works out of a Seattle coffee shop.Wil Shipman, co-founder of Delicious Monster, is hard at work in the company's offices at Seattle's popular Zoka coffee shop. The Zoka coffee shop in Seattle's university district is the central office for employees of Delicious Monster. They pay the coffee shop 'rent' by buying cup after cup of coffee. The tab runs to several hundred dollars a month...

    ...Delicious Library catalogs collections of books, movies and games. A video camera can be used to read the product's bar code, and the software downloads its details from the web.

    ...Delicious Library won an "innovators award" from O'Reilly & Associates. One of the software's niftiest features is its ability to use a video camera to read a product's bar code, which is used to fetch product details from the net.

    Matas said the first week's sales of Delicious Library generated enough revenue to pay salary for the previous seven months.

    ...But from the start, the software was planned to be social, allowing friends, neighbors and colleagues to see what's in each others' media libraries, and turn collections into personal lending libraries.

    ...Version two, due later this year, will allow users to browse each other's libraries. It will be location-aware, letting users know who has what in their neighborhood or city.

    It will also work on local networks (using Apple Computer's Rendezvous), so people can browse their colleagues' or fellow students' collections, just as Apple's iTunes exposes other users' playlists.

    The current version already has a checkout manager for keeping track of loans.

    As well as running personal lending libraries, the software can set up social connections: What better barometer of someone's personality than their taste in books and film?

    "If you look at my movie collection, you can learn a ton about me," said Matas. "It's like a personal profile on Friendster listing interests and hobbies, but it’s much more natural. It's not done consciously. It's a natural profile of yourself."

    The software also includes a recommendation engine built on Amazon.com's recommendation system.

    Matas said the company talked to Amazon about a partnership, but the retailer didn’t like the lending feature. Why would people buy when they could borrow?

    Matas said he convinced Amazon that people buy movies expressly to lend them out. They watch a movie two or three times, but want to own it so they can lend it to family or friends...


    Monster Fueled by Caffeine

    Time: Threat of Limo Bombs during Inauguration



    Click here for AmazonAs Washington gears up for the first Inaugural of the post-9/11 era, one potential security threat has emerged as a particular focus of concern: vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDS, possibly disguised as limousines. The fears were prompted in part, say U.S. intelligence sources, by a 39-page document seized from al-Qaeda last year, titled "Rough Presentation for Gas Limo Project." It lays out a scenario for using limousines to deliver bombs equipped with cylinders of a flammable gas. Though the Inauguration is not specifically mentioned, parts of the document began circulating among senior U.S. intelligence authorities on Jan. 5. In response, barriers have been set up to block any vehicle bent on destruction.

    The document is believed to have been written by Issa al-Hindi, an al-Qaeda operative captured in Britain last year. It recommends concealing bombs in limos because the vehicles "blend in" and "can transport larger payloads than sedans ... and do not require special driving skills." The limos can "access underground parking structures that do not accommodate trucks" and "have tinted windows that can hide an improvised explosive device from outside." The document calls for the deployment of three limos, each carrying 12 or more compressed-gas cylinders to create a "full fuel-air explosion by venting flammable gas into a confined space and then igniting it." It suggests painting the cylinders yellow to falsely "signify toxic gases to spread terror and chaos when emergency and haz-mat teams arrive." ...


    Fears of automotive mayhem as the Presidential inauguration nears

    Prager on Self-Hatred



    Click here for AmazonDid you ever notice that there are no Germans going around the world saying, or making movies about, how awful Germany is or has been? Given that Germany unleashed two world wars and invented industrialized genocide, why has there been no German Michael Moore?

    Are there any Japanese making films about the absence of Japanese soul-searching or expressions of sorrow over their country's enslavement, torture and murder of Asians in World War II? Has anyone ever encountered any Japanese self-hate?

    ...The answer, of course, is no. In fact, among all the world's peoples, only two produce large numbers of individuals who have greater sympathy for those who hate their country or national/ethnic group than for those who love it...

    Many on the American Left loathe America (they love the Constitution and their vision of what America could be) and have contempt for the average American. That is why most of the Left has such admiration for Michael Moore, who has said, among so much more, the following:

    * Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug p----s" (London Daily Mirror).
    * "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" (open letter to the German People in Die Zeit).

    Elsewhere, he speaks of America as bringing immeasurable misery and sadness to the world and as essentially deserving attacks on it...


    Prager on Self-Hatred