Monday, June 13, 2005

Moving men and material into space


(Picture credit http://www.thespacereview.com)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsInteresting article on the challenges of transporting people and material into near-Earth orbit. Say, logistic support for a Mars colony or an interstellar mission, for instance:

"What you need is a launch system that stays on the ground"... One option is laser propulsion. Researchers at [RPI] have shown that they can propel an object weighing 5 ounces 300 feet into the air with a laser. A real-life version that could launch people in a vehicle "about the size of a Volkswagen" would require a 1,000-megawatt laser located on top of a mountain, he said...

...Another option is the Slingotron. "It is a huge slingshot affair that accelerates your payload on a spiral track and then, zoom--off to outer space," he said. It would kill humans but could be used for cargo.

A third option is the space elevator, a large structure made of customized molecules that could spring people into outer space, according to proponents...


Project Orion (The Space Site)
Dyson himself worked on Orion, a project to land people on Mars, in the 1950s and 1960s. Orion, which would have been built by a submarine company in Connecticut, would have literally been a spaceship.

"We were going to walk on Mars with our notebooks and draw pictures of everything. It would have been true 19th century exploring," he laughed.

To propel it out of orbit, however, would have required exploding 3,000 atomic bombs, one every two seconds. The bombs would have been tossed out of a hole in the plate in the ship, delivered by "essentially what was a glorified coke machine," he said.

Engineering prototypes and simulations showed that the project would work, and it would have cost far less than Apollo. The original plan was to get to Mars by 1965 and the moons of Saturn by 1970.

"The fatal flaw of this scenario, of course, was radioactive fallout," he said, the ill-effects of which were being discovered at the time. "Technically, it worked very well, but it was political death."


Let's colonize space for fun
 

Fineman on Imus


(Picture credit http://en.wikipedia.org)
Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsLast week, Newsweek's Howard Fineman visited the Don Imus program and had some interesting commentary regarding Watergate and the Felt affair.

Fineman noted that upon his entrance to the Columbia School of Journalism (where else?), his hero was Pulitzer Prize-winner Theodore White, who had authored the best-selling Making of the President  book series.

Upon leaving Columbia, Fineman's new heroes were Woodward and Bernstein, two journalists who transformed the art of beltway reporting. Everything that the pair stood far was not positive, according to Fineman. The key negative point?

Journalism became a de facto opposition party.

Over a period of time, this consistent anti-administration bias gave rise to the likes of Fox News chieftan Roger Ailes. Ailes and Fox News became "the opposition to the opposition party".

In this same vein, the Cassandra Report has its own take on journalism as the opposition party: MSM/DNC - a singular noun.
 

Sunday, June 12, 2005

A Hike up Sandia Mountain



Picture credit: http://www.newmexicoliving.com
Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueBrooke has a good write up -- with plenty of pictures -- on his hike up Sandia Mountain. The peak is 10,678 feet above sea level. Challenging under normal circumstances, the trek can be especially taxing for low-landers operating under a self-imposed time constraint.

Hike up Sandia
 

Bizarre, yet useful, Search Sites



I'd like to point out a couple of search sites that I found courtesy of a James Fallows article in the New York Times.

Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe first is a search portal called Mr. Sapo. Mr. Sapo provides instant comparative access to all major search engines using a simple button metaphor. Enter a search term, then click any of the buttons to see the results for the specified engine. Bizarre name? Check. Odd interface? Checkety check. Pretty darn useful? Check and mate, beenizzle*.

Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe Mr. Sapo site pointed me to a new search engine with which I was unfamiliar: Exalead. It is very, very interesting. Search on a term and you get a plethora of sidebar windows along with the traditional results. The sidebar windows provide drill-down capabilities over a variety of categories:

  • Related terms

  • Related categories

  • Geographic location of web site

  • Document type

  • Screen captures of each resulting site

  • In other words, support for down-selecting the search results using several useful criteria. Check it out.

    *I am licensed to use teen/hip-hop lingo, given two teens in my current household.
     

    Saturday, June 11, 2005

    So you want to be a phisher


    Picture credit: http://tecfa.unige.ch
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueLike most Internet users, I've been awash in a deluge of phishing attempts of late. Unlike most users, though, I enjoy tracking down the source of the spam mails, the location of the false storefronts, and their owners. I think I've nailed down the typical modus operandi . Here's the lifecycle of a typical phishing scam, at least so far as I can tell.

  • Phisher uses IRC or similar means to surreptitiously meet with other blackhats and trade, purchase or otherwise acquire stolen credit-card data

  • Phisher uses stolen credit-card to purchase domain name (optional)

  • Phisher uses stolen credit-card to open a shared web hosting account

  • Phisher creates false storefront on new site

  • Phisher uses IRC or similar means to acquire list of open mail-servers or spamming accounts that can be used to send phishing emails

  • Phisher uses mass-mailing software to dispatch thousands or millions of phishing emails to direct victims to the bogus site

  • Phisher waits for the dough to roll in

  • After enough complaints arrive, the web hosting provider will inevitably determine that the bogus site needs to be shut down. At this point the phishing scam -- at least temporarily -- comes to a screeching halt.

    Can we learn anything from this lifecycle?

    I think we can. Hosting providers need to implement a little bit of technology: call it an anti-phishing package (APP). The package would be a process running on each shared server. Using the server's log files, APP would perform the following tasks:

  • Detect any new site (i.e., less than 90 days old) that receives a sudden burst of traffic

  • Examine the traffic for form submissions (GETs or POSTs)

  • Examine the traffic for pages named login, auth, etc.

  • In the event that any or all of these criteria are met, APP sends an automatic email to system administrators. They can then examine the suspect site and shut it down if necessary.

    I would hope that the major shared hosting providers are already running a process like APP.
     

    Thursday, June 09, 2005

    Do you know where your teens are and where they’ve been?



    Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsIf you worry about where your teens are going, or where they've been, this gadget's for you.

    "I'm staying overnight at Sara's house," your daughter tells you. Now there's a way to verify that everything's on the up-and-up. Hey, we all trust our kids. But, as Ronald Reagan used to say: trust... but verify.

    SkyTel's new SkyGuard provides real-time location data, trip information, and location reports for up to 45 days. All of this is available through a web application.

    You can even set up allowed and denied zones, areas where a family member shouldn't leave or a region they shouldn't enter. Real-time alerts can be sent to your pager, email account or a mobile phone. SMS text messaging is also supported.

    If you're the paranoid type, this sort of technology can help set your mind at ease.

    SkyTel: SkyGuard Features
     

    The Littlest Big Man



    Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsThe senior hoops writer at SportsLine, Gregg Doyel, tells us what's happening at the NBA draft camps. Will Bynum, a 5'10" guard from Georgia Tech, is wreaking havoc on the mock draft: dunking on players and even getting called for defensive goaltending...

    Will Bynum isn't supposed to be here, much less be the most impressive player after one game of the 2005 NBA pre-draft camp. But that was Bynum out there Wednesday, dunking on bigger players, blocking shots and getting to the rim whenever he wanted...

    ...Matched against Marquette's Travis Diener or Utah Valley State's Ronnie Price at the Moody Bible Institute, Bynum did as he pleased offensively and showed his ridiculous hops by getting called for defensive goaltending.

    The only thing Bynum didn't show was a jump shot, and the way he was getting to the rim, why bother? On one fast break, he broke down Price so severely, using a behind-the-back dribble, that a European scout broke into applause...


    Doyel: 5-10 Bynum works on elevating draft status at camp
     

    Protecting Consumer Data


    Picture credit: http://www.perspectivemr.co.uk
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe hits just keep on coming at Citigroup:

    In February last year, a magnetic tape with information on about 120,000 Japanese customers of its Citibank division disappeared while being shipped by truck from a data management center in Singapore. The tape held names, addresses, account numbers and balances. It has never turned up.

    And this week the company revealed that it had happened again--this time the loss of an entire box of tapes in the care of the United Parcel Service, with personal information on nearly 4 million American customers.


    Here are some random thoughts on what every company should strive for when handling consumer data:

    Catalog - catalog all sensitive data flowing through your systems, SSNs, dates-of-birth, credit-card and account numbers, etc. Know the fields that you hold and categorize any privacy fields as 'sensitive'.

    Encrypt - sensitive data 'at rest' (meaning, on disk) should always be encrypted. Always. If a truck driver loses a backup tape, at least force any blackhat into a massive brute-force attack against it. Shipping around sensitive data in the clear makes about as much sense as handing the keys to a bulldozer and a six-pack to a 16-year old boy.

    Key management - when applications or subsystems need access to sensitive data, force them to retrieve keys from another subsystem managed by another department or team. After decryption, force them to purge the keys (i.e., keys are never stored on disk). Log all key access attempts. This division of labor provides checks and balances in terms of access to sensitive data.

    Log analysis - analyze the log files. Who has been requesting keys? How often? Do their usage patterns make sense given their roles - or are their statistical anomalies when compared to similar types of users? These are the types of questions that, say, a ChoicePoint should be asking. Oops, I forgot, those issues aren't ChoicePoint CISO Rich Baich's problem.

    Processes - are documented processes in place for verifying the categorization of sensitive data, ensuring data at rest is encrypted, managing keys, and analyzing logs? If not, ensure that processes are put in place and that they are followed on a regular basis to ensure the safety of sensitive data.

    Audit - is the audit team reviewing the process documents to ensure that the processes are being followed on predetermined schedules?

    In short, we're not talking rocket science here. We're describing a relatively simple set of processes and the functional discipline to follow them. Given the financial risks of disclosing consumer data (i.e., check the graph of ChoicePoint's market capitalization), the time has never been better. Or you could simply risk having your organization highlighted on the front page of USA Today - in a non-flattering story.

    The scramble to protect personal data
     

    Wednesday, June 08, 2005

    Book Review: Ken Follett's Hammer of Eden



    The Hammer of EdenI just submitted this review to Amazon.

    Plot holes big enough to drive a seismic vibrator through

    The idea, at first blush, is bold and captivating. A fringe, cult-like group is determined to protect their Northern California commune from developers. To do so, they need a credible means to force the state government to cease their incessant land-grabs. With the help of a geologist who's joined the commune, the cult leader (Priest) determines there may be a way to trigger earthquakes using a sonic mapping device known as a seismic vibrator. Priest intends to blackmail the state using the threat of earthquakes.

    Follett's talent is prodigious. He's almost capable of making us believe that this preposterous scenario is remotely plausible. But even his immense talent isn't enough to make up for the succession of plot holes big enough to drive a seismic vibrator through.

    Example: At one point, Michael seems to be the only one in the state who hasn't seen Priest's picture on television. Because Michael encountered Priest early on in the story, he should have recognized him on TV and the entire FBI dragnet should have ended a lot sooner.

    The puzzle pieces are all there, in formulaic fashion: The cute, female FBI agent. The cute, divorced male geologist Michael. The Manson-like cult leader Priest who, though illiterate, is able to evade the FBI repeatedly while driving a giant seismic vibrator that tops out at about 40 mph. I'm sure you can guess what happens.

    If you're stuck inside on a rainy day and you happen to have this laying around (and nothing else to do), certainly go ahead and read it. Otherwise, learn macrame or origami. You'll drive yourself crazy second-guessing the characters and the author in this all-too-predictable bore-fest. Mr. Follett is far too talented to be producing works of this caliber.
     

    The Pledge Class


    Picture credit: Boston Globe
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueIn conjunction with the Boston Globe's release of John Kerry's college records, the following transcript was recently discovered. It records the conversations that took place at the fraternity house in which various pledge candidates were discussed.

    Okay, the kid is a zero. It's true. But think back to when you were freshmen. Boone, you had a face like a pizza with anchovies, right? Everyone thought Stork here was brain-damaged... I myself was so obnoxious the seniors used to beat me up at least once a week. So this kid... is a total loser. Well, let me tell you the story of another loser...


    At which point the place erupts into derisory moans, boos and flying glasses.

    Photo
    Who dumped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode...


    Boston Globe: Yale grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student
     

    Least Loved Bedtime Stories



    AmazonIn the spirit of James Taranto at Best of the Web (Least-Loved Bedtime Stories - "Harry Potter and 'Deep Throat' " -- headline, CNN.com, June 7), herein the reader may find a list of bedtime stories that they should not read to their kids:

  • The Grinch That Got Tasered While Shoplifting at K-Mart

  • Why Timmy's Parents Stopped Loving Him

  • A Child's First Book of Assault Rifles

  • Puff, the Crack-Addled Dragon

  • One Elvis Two Elvis Skinny Elvis Fat Elvis

  • There's a Rocket in my Pocket!

  • Oh, the Places You'll Go (after a Felony Conviction)

  • How the Littlest Bear Found Out He Was a Mistake

  • Horton Hears a Ho

  • The Cat in the Hat Gets Capped

  •  

    Tuesday, June 07, 2005

    Firefox Flaw


    Picture credit: http://www.detstar.com
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThough the odds of an exploit appear low, this vulnerability in the Mozilla and Firefox browsers just resurfaced after a seven-year hiatus:

    ...For a spoofing attempt to work, a surfer would need to have both the attacker's Web site and a trusted Web site open in different windows. A click on a link on the malicious site would then display the attacker's content in a frame on the trusted Web site, Secunia said. The company advised people not to visit trusted and untrusted Web sites at the same time...


    Here's one way a phisher could exploit this weakness:

  • User visits a malicious site, via emailed hyperlink or equivalent means

  • Cross-site scripting (XSS) could used to expose one or more financial sites that victim has visited

  • Malicious site opens financial website, perhaps as a background window

  • Malicious site feeds bogus sign-in form into financial website

  • User visits financial site window (perhaps later on) and authenticates

  • Authentication data sent to phisher


  • Nefarious, but feasible.

    News.com: Spoofing flaw resurfaces in Mozilla browsers
     

    Guantanamo is no Gulag


    Picture credit: http://www.rotten.com
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueCourtesy of OpinionJournal, some remarks on Amnesty International's fraudulent comparisons of Guantanamo Bay with the mass-murdering Soviet Gulags:

    It's good to see that Amnesty International has had to backtrack from its comparison of Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet "gulag." Less than two weeks after making that analogy, Amnesty's U.S. boss issued what amounted to a full retraction on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend.

    "Clearly, this is not an exact or a literal analogy," said William Schulz. "In size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag. . . . People are not being starved in those facilities. They're not being subjected to forced labor." Thanks for clearing that up...

    ...Natan Sharanksy--a man who actually spent time as a Soviet political prisoner--described Amnesty's gulag analogy as "typical, unfortunately," for a group that refuses to distinguish "between democracies where there are sometimes serious violations of human rights and dictatorships where no human rights exist at all."


    OpinionJournal: Amnesty and al Qaeda - The instructive case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir
     

    Monday, June 06, 2005

    DomainKeys



    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe DomainKeys initiative is designed to dramatically reduce spam. In March, Yahoo! submitted a DomainKeys memo to the IETF in order to spur discussion. Yahoo! has been signing its emails with DomainKeys headers since 2004.

    The goal? To dramatically reduce spoofing of sender email addresses. How many bogus phishing emails from "PayPal" are sent out each day? How many from Bank of America? There's little question that something needs to about the proliferation of spoofed spam messages.

    Just how does DomainKeys work? It relies upon a combination of PKI and DNS. First, a hash is created of the email message contents (using SHA-1 by default). The hash is encrypted using a private-key unique to the sending domain (e.g., "yahoo.com"). The encrypted hash is then converted to ASCII printable characters using base-64. This value is then tacked on to the message headers (under the new SMTP header "DomainKey-Signature").

    The receiving server uses the claimed sending domain to perform a DNS lookup. The returned data now would include the domain's public key. The recipient server may now decrypt the hash value and compare it to its own generated hash of the message content to validate the message. This ensures two things: the message truly was sent by the domain that claimed to have sent it; and the message has not been tampered with en route.

    DomainKeys is covered by a U.S. patent owned by Yahoo! However, the company has released it under a royalty-free patent license designed to be interoperable with a variety of software implementations including freeware and open-source.

    At present, DomainKeys is many things - but one thing it isn't is cheap. BusinessWeek reports:

    ...an e-mail security system with DomainKeys for a mass e-mailer costs $500,000, on average, says IronPort. For a big company, that's not much to stymie forged e-mails that can damage reputations and clog up millions of e-mail accounts...


    The costs are sure to diminish as mailers swarm to this open-source-friendly approach.

    Yahoo! DomainKeys
     

    Inspiration


    Picture credit: http://academic.scranton.edu
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe greatest inspirational speech since Knute Rockne's 'Win one for the Gipper':

    D-Day: War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
    Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
    Otter: Germans?
    Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
    Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
    [thinks hard]
    Bluto: the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
    [runs out, alone; then returns]
    Bluto: What the f**k happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...
    Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
    Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
    D-Day: Let's do it.
    Bluto: LET'S DO IT!


    Animal House
     

    Sunday, June 05, 2005

    BlueTooth Troubles


    Picture credit: http://www.tomsnetworking.com
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueIsraeli researchers have found a major flaw in many common BlueTooth implementations. Bruce Schneier notes:

    I can't be sure, but I believe it would allow an attacker to take control of someone's Bluetooth devices. Certainly it allows an attacker to eavesdrop on someone's Bluetooth network.


    That's certainly how it appears. At its heart, the vulnerability appears to have two primary causes: (a) device manufacturers' use of a four-digit PIN instead of eight digits; and (b) a quirk in the protocol that allows one device to tell the other that it "forgot" the link key. The combination of these two weaknesses? Some serious security deficiencies.

    Photo
    Treo 650 (News.com)

    Where's BlueTooth deployed these days? Lots of places. For instance, Acura automobiles use BlueTooth to provide handsfree integration with certain mobile phones (e.g., Treo phones/PDAs). And the protocol is used in a wide variety of other devices with many, many applications.

    For instance, the HP DeskJet 650 is positioned in the market as a "mobile printer" that can be moved around a SOHO environment. It uses BlueTooth to establish a link with various computers in the home or office.

    BlueTooth is also used in Toshiba's home appliances: microwaves, refrigerators, and washer-dryers. And in medical devices such as the Avant 4000 Digital Pulse Oximetry System. This device relays pulse and oxygen data from a wrist-worn sensor to a central monitor.

    All, told BlueTooth is used in a host of office, home, medical, consumer, and related applications that require close-proximity device connectivity.

    Now consider advanced hacking tools like the BlueSniper Rifle, pictured above. The rifle, a device that can be assembled from a couple of hundred dollars worth of parts, can scan and attack BlueTooth devices from distances exceeding a mile. In fact, when the crew at Flexilis used BlueSniper, they came to some interesting conclusions:

    ...John pointed the BlueSniper at the AON building, which was 0.6 miles (just about 1 km) from our position (this distance was verified by GPS after the shoot).

    It didn't take long for the MAC address of Bluetooth devices to appear on the laptop's screen. After a few seconds, John pointed the gun at the Library Tower / US Bank Building, which is the tallest building in Los Angeles. The building was .75 miles (a little over 1 km) from our position.

    As more Bluetooth devices started appearing, John said, "This building is full of Bluetooth! Look we got some Blackberries!" He also explained that, with multiple guns, it would be possible to track a single Bluetooth device as the person walked around. In less than a few minutes, twenty devices were detected—all at distances over a half mile away!


    When we combine this newly discovered vulnerability, the popularity of BT-enabled devices, and powerful hacking tools like BlueSniper... well, you get the picture. At best, bad guys can wreak havoc -- remotely -- with home, automobile, office, and medical devices. At worst, who yet knows?

    The key question: have device manufacturers considered the necessity of patching their implementations of BlueTooth to address ongoing security issues? My guess, in most cases, is no. I hope I'm surprised to find that they have considered these possibilities.

    Schneier: Attack on BlueTooth
     

    Saturday, June 04, 2005

    The Modern Slave Trade


    Picture credit: http://www.ishr.org
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueIf you strip away Microsoft Word-generated Air National Guard memos, the bogus comparisons of Gitmo to mass-murdering Gulags, the fake but accurate Quran-flushing reports... if you strip away almost all of what passes for news these days, what are we left with?

    The real stories. The important stories. The stories that CBS, Newsweek, and the Gray Lady should be covering. But don't.

    No, it's left up to the Bush State Department, vilified for lo these many years, to expose the vast scope of the modern slave trade. Perhaps the mainstream media hasn't had enough time to research this "real news". After all, this is only the fifth annual Trafficking In Persons Report.

    Look, only about 800,000 people are bought and sold each year, so I suppose Abu Graib, Halliburton, and the occasional, TV-friendly car bomb detonation should have top priority. Surely you don't expect the likes of Maureen Dowd to hoist themselves off their derrieres, do some real investigation, and write about true evil and injustice?

    And, look, it only involves sexual slavery, child beggars, forced domestication, starvation, unreported rapes, beatings, and deaths, so I suppose these miserable souls (who number well under a million) don't deserve any investigative reporting. Leave it up to the State Department! The mainstream media has fake but accurate stories to cover!

    Do me a favor. Click on any of the following search links for 'modern slave trade' at the LA Times, the New York Times, CBS News, or ABC News, just as a little test.

    You see, the modern slave trade really isn't worth covering as news.

    Because investigating this scourge on humanity would require scape-goating parties other than the Bush Administration and the U.S. Military. It would require delving into the true nature of evil. And, goodness knows, the mainstream media doesn't have any time for that.

    Fox: The Modern Slave Trade and the State Department's 2005 Trafficking In Persons Report
     

    Hate Mail


    Picture credit: http://www.tsn.com
    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueFrom Gregg Doyel, a senior writer at CBS SportsLine, comes this sparkling repartee:

    Q: I was at Kansas during the period you talk about. I believe that you are incorrect! Larry Brown did not leave KU with probation issues. He made us mad by saying he was going to UCLA and later leaving to go to the NBA (Spurs pay a lot better than KU), but I do not believe we were ever under investigation or probation for anything Larry did. I think you are a KU hater just making up stuff about Larry. Prove it to me!

    A: Trying to show restraint, trying to show restraining, failing, failing miserably. ... Patrick, if you were at Kansas at the time of Larry Brown, you'd be close to 40 now. How a man of your intelligence survived 40 years is a mystery. Try Google, Patrick. Insert the words "Larry Brown" and "Kansas" and, I don't know, "probation." The results will shock you and your parents, who sure would like you to move out.


    CBS SportsLine: Hate Mail
     

    Friday, June 03, 2005

    Dan Rather on Larry King Live - a Retrospective



    Excel web sharing - spreadsheet collaboration over the Internet made easy with BadBlueThe revelation that Mark Felt was "Deep Throat" has been a highly entertaining experience. Most notably, it's brought about the nostalgic triumphalism of the mainstream media, wounded of late by the Rather, Jordan, Blair, et. al. affairs.

    In 'celebration' of the Felt disclosure, Dan Rather reemerged from a self-imposed exile by visiting the Larry King Live show. Contrary to conventional wisdom, King didn't just throw softballs at the GIF-impaired journalist. He came to play (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt).

    My smart-aleck remarks are interspersed throughout.

    KING: Do you think the Republicans, the right-wing Republicans were after you?

    RATHER: No. Again, I'm not a victim of anything. I don't say, no, they weren't. I don't know.

    Ed: Uhmmm, wha....?

    KING: ...what went wrong in your [story] on the Air National Guard story?

    RATHER: Without agreeing with the premise of whether it snapped or not...

    Ed: Oh, Dan... it snapped. It snapped you right out of your anchor chair... and right out of a job. Yes, I'd say it snapped.

    KING: Well, I don't know another word. You might still believe the story, by the way.

    RATHER: Well, without getting into that because the panel, this panel that was chosen by CBS to look into it, they issued their report... I absorbed it...

    The situation that we had and still have is the last line of this has not been written.

    Ed: Oh, for the love of... He still believes that the memos were real. Next, maybe he'll break a story on Elvis' evil twin, who was cloned by Colonel Parker.

    RATHER: ...we don't know whether the documents were fraudulent or not.

    Photo
    The Smoking Memos (LGF)



    KING: Are you saying the story might be correct?

    RATHER: Well, I'm saying a prudent person might take that view.

    Ed: Given that definition, a 'prudent person' might also believe himself capable of hitting a home-run in Yankee Stadium with a breadstick from Olive Garden.

    RATHER: ...This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science.

    Ed: (breaking down in conniption fits of laughter)

    KING: You have been holding a piece of paper in front of you for half an hour, and you better tell me what it is.

    RATHER: Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Larry. That CBS News played a role in this Watergate story -- nothing to compare with "The Washington Post" role...

    ...the whole power of the executive branch was to isolate "The Post," say it's just "The Post." You know, not have it break out to be a national story, and they did not want it on national network television.

    And they almost succeeded in keeping it off. But Dick Salant, who was former president of CBS News, he was president at that time, that he wrote something, and if you had time, it's not a bad way to close the hour...

    "I strongly believe that responsible journalism cannot have as its central objective giving people what they want, or avoiding displeasing them. The objective must not be merely to interest and titillate to grab an audience, but to provide the information they need. And, so, if journalism is to perform the function which a democratic society has a right to expect, there will inevitably be some, usually the most vocal, who will be displeased."

    Ed: Here's another one, Dan. Pay close attention.

    The primary duty of journalists and news organizations is to seek the truth and report it as fully as possible...

    The second guiding principle is Independence. If we are to succeed in our pursuit of truth, we must not be deterred by outside forces that could undermine our professionalism or erode the quality and integrity of our finished product. We must vigorously guard our credibility and insure that we are not unduly influenced by those who might use their power or position to keep us from serving the public.


    Sounds like you get a big, fat, red F on both counts, Daniel.


    CNN: CNN LARRY KING LIVE - Interview With Dan Rather
     

    End of an Era or End of the line for Java?


    (Picture credit http://www.starwars.jediknights.co.uk)
    Excel-web sharing of spreadsheetsHave you ever wondered why IBM and Oracle have so dramatically thrown their hats in the PHP ring? And why PHP will be such a crucial element in their product roadmaps over the next few years? Or Why Java has fallen from favor so far and so fast among the behemoths of the web application market?

    To get a good sense for why these announcements are coming, fast and furious, you only need review this article from Sun's weblogs, entitled "Easy JBoss Connection Pooling with NetBeans IDE 4.1 and XDoclet".

    Here's an excerpt from the thirteen-step "quick-start guide":

    5) Start JBoss from the IDE. Modify the jboss.home property in servers-build.properties and run the jboss-start target. Run it from inside the IDE (you can create a menu item, toolbar button, or shortcut key for it, as described in earlier blog entries). JBoss starts up and the Output window displays output received from JBoss. You'll see a lot of output and it might take a while. Somewhere near the end you should see something similar to the following (truncated here for easier reading)...

    6) Build the project to the JBoss autodeploy directory. Right-click the project in the Projects window to build it. (You can also build it in the Files window -- choose File > Set Main Project, set the current project as the main project, and click F11 whenever you want to build.) Modify the jboss-deploy target in servers-build.xml so that war.name is used instead of jar.name. Now run the jboss-deploy target. (If you haven't built the project, you'll get errors because the WAR file that the target tries to copy to the JBoss deployment directory hasn't been built yet.) This copies the application's WAR file to the JBoss autodeploy directory. In the Output window you should see something similar to the following...


    Well, you get the picture. The elaborate process is hardly what I would term 'easy' nor, for that matter, intuitive. It makes neurosurgery almost mundane by comparison.

    Information Week comments:

    ...With increasing support among big vendors, it's clear that Java's future is bounded by the scripting languages PHP, Perl, Python and Tcl. These languages are both easier to learn and use than Java 2 Enterprise Edition or C++ or C#. A lot of creativity resides in the hands of these scripting language users. They are less concerned with Java's discipline, which is very good for high-value business functions, such as transaction processing, and more concerned with mixing up what's available in response to individual users on a site.

    Some PHP advocates say there's no reason enterprise applications won't be built with PHP. Indeed, they already are. The Lufthansa E-ticket site runs on PHP programming. Why not your company's E-commerce?

    IBM and Oracle are following, not leading, this movement...


    Well, it's certainly not the 'end of the line' for Java. But this truly marks the 'end of the beginning' for PHP.

    Information Week: End of an Era or End of the line for Java?