Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Exposing Earmarks: Sunlight Foundation


The image is easy to conjure: fat-cat politicians of every stripe using leaf-blowers to dispense our money in the form of "earmarks."

Finally, the Sunlight Foundation is leveraging the power of the Internet and a motivated community to bring light into the darkest corners of Federal spending bills. It has created a new platform where citizens can investigate, expose, and publicize earmarks.

And just what is an earmark?

...An earmark is a line-item that is inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review. Members of Congress—both in the House and the Senate — use earmarks to direct funds to projects of their choice. Typically earmarks fund projects in the district of the House member or the state of the Senator who inserted it; the beneficiary of the funds can be a state or local agency or a private entity; often, the ultimate beneficiary is a political supporter of the legislator...

Why is this needed? Because most earmarks are authored anonymously! Under the current rules of Congress, no demand is made that an earmark's author is identified.

And there are over 1,800 earmarks in the proposed spending bill. And you can help!

Sunlight Foundation provides spreadsheets, interactive maps, politican pop-ups for your web pages and plenty of research help.

Ready to do your part to expose the waste in Washington?

Go ye therefore hence, and sip the sweet nectar of wisdom: Sunlight Foundation: Exposing Earmarks.

Romney seizes control of 'Big Dig'


Question: what was estimated to cost $2.6 billion, ended up costing $14.6 billion, and isn't done yet?

Answer: that would be Boston's Big Dig project, the estimation process for which failed to account for little factors like, oh I don't know, inflation.

Today, Gov. Mitt Romney officially seizes control of the Dig, with a hand-picked new Mass Pike Chairman and revocation of perqs for Big Dig managers (like their free FastLane electronic passes).

Last month's tragic accident, which killed a 39-year old Boston driver when 12 tons of panels fell from the roof of a Big Dig tunnel, was only the latest incident in the long-running construction debacle. Leaks, cost overruns, and a series of bizarre management gaffes have been constants over the course of the project. I could use a cheap-shot here (specifically, which party dominates Massachusetts politics and has a long history of questionable behavior?), but I won't.

Suffice it to say, I'd rather eat a fire-ant sandwich than have this cast of characters manage anything more complicated than a sandbox.

Boston Globe: Romney officially seizes control of Turnpike board and Big Dig

George Soros: at the helm of the Terror-crats


As a veritable fountainhead of currency for the Democratic Party, George Soros talks softly and carries a big wallet. His purse is sufficiently large to warrant an op-ed piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The piece, entitled "A Self-Defeating War," is the predictable stew of Bush-hatred and anti-Americanism wrapped into a logical conundrum worthy of Ernő Rubik or Wayne "Soduku" Gould.

I've annotated Soros' key points for sheer entertainment value. Believe me, expending the energy to scroll down the page is worth the price of admission.

The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia...

...What makes the war on terror self-defeating?

• First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their wereabouts hidden... [the death of innocents] in turn serves to build support for terrorists...

As opposed to simply executing hundreds of school-children in cold blood at Beslan. Or gassing thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Halabja, Iraq. Or intentionally killing scores of innocent office workers in downtown Manhattan. Or the thousands of other related attacks, most intentionally directed at civilians.

As opposed to that.

Soros' "fighting _________ causes more _________" meme didn't work for any scourge throughout the annals of history, whether we use the Khmer Rouge, Communism, Nazism, the Mongol Hordes, or anything in between to fill in the blanks. And, in fact, the key takeaway in each case is that more civilians died -- millions of them -- because good people failed to respond in time.

• Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrenction and the Mahdi army... are very different forces...

But they all have something in common. Trying to put my finger on it... trying... trying... I suppose I'll have to do a little research.

Perhaps extremist terrorism is an "abstraction." But it's sufficiently focused and dangerous enough to have intentionally targeted millions of innocent civilians for death and succeeded in killing plenty already... throughout the world. Saddam Hussein and other terrorists have killed a hundred times more Muslims than Allied forces (not to mention the millions of Muslim lives saved in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq).

• Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions... Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large, we need to focus on finding them...

Interesting. Within a few paragraphs, Mr. Soros has succeeded in wrapping himself around the axle. His first bullet points out that weeding out terrorists who hide among innocents causes more terrorism. This, his third bullet, states the opposite: that we need to find terrorist leaders hiding among innocents, which will certainly require deadly force and result in civilian deaths. So... which is it? #1 or #3? And how far down the terrorist leadership hierarchy are we permitted to go?

As for "political solutions", Israel has tried to live peacefully on its tiny sliver of land for nearly sixty years. For decades it has begged the world community for a diplomatic solution. Surrounded by hundreds of times its population and land-mass, it has been unable to achieve any semblance of a "political solution." Why would Soros claim that extremists, who have launched murderous attacks throughout the world, would listen to any sort of reason when there is absolutely no evidence it would make a difference?

We can only come to one of two conclusions, both of which are outlined below.

• Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process...

At last, Soros pulls out the tired and intellectually bankrupt "moral equivalence" card.

The United States and its allies have nuclear weapons and are loathe to use them. The extremists, on the other hand, have promised -- up to the point of issuing religious edicts ("fatwas") to use any and all weaponry including nuclear arms ("We have the right to kill four million Americans - 2 million of them children..."). There is no need to treat that promise with anything less than utter seriousness.

It will only take one nuclear weapon in the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or any other extremist group to usher in a new era of violence on this planet.

Moral equivalence in the face of this disparity is not naivete. It is either base ignorance or high treason. Which is it in your case, Mr. Soros?

Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won...

Soros, at last, comes clean and plainly states the key platform of the Terror-crats: surrender.

Because the extremists have plainly stated that their endgame is to detonate nuclear devices in multiple Western cities -- whether to bring about Armageddon or simply to eradicate vast numbers of "Crusaders" from the face of the earth -- surrender to these murderous zealots means the annihilation of modern civilization.

If we don't vigorously and aggressively defend the West from this catastrophic endgame, our children and grandchildren will pay the price.

How many Americans have to die before the terror-crats join in the fight against terrorism? A hundred thousand? A million? Ten million? When will survival of the West take precedence over raw partisanship? I'd just like to know that number.

Recommended Reading: Hugh Hewitt's If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Open Source Metasploit Improves Evasion


H.D. Moore, author of the Metasploit Framework, spoke at BlackHat last week in his characteristically frank and humorous manner. The framework, one of several projects branded under the aegis of Metasploit, is a tool that assists in the development and execution of exploit code against remote machines.

...Few tools are freely available to security researchers that are as powerful for developing and testing exploit code as the open source Metasploit Framework...

The new version is a complete rewrite all done in the Ruby language and includes many new features designed to expedite exploitation, as well as infuriate Intrusion Detection System (IDS) vendors...

The charismatic Moore explained to the assembled faithful that the current Metasploit 2.6 Framework has a number of problems, among which is it's written in Perl. According to Moore, there is no stable release of Perl 6 in sight.

"Perl 6 should be written by the time hell freezes over," Moore told the audience...

...Metasploit 3 is written in Ruby, a language that allowed Moore and his cohorts to compress the code by 40 percent... [new] Multitasking via Ruby threads allows Metasploit 3 users to conduct concurrent exploits and sessions. Exploit delivery is enhanced with new payload-closed and auxiliary modules, which can be integrated without security tools for target enumeration.

Metasploit 3 also takes aim at evading detection by IDS with strong evasion techniques that Moore claims will defeat most solutions.

"We really want to scare the IDS guys, and it's time to put our foot down," Moore said. "I'm not sure how they get past QA [quality assurance]; I'm not even sure they do QA..."

Ya gotta love this guy! He's the Chad Johnson of open-source developers*!

Enterprise IT: Open Source Metasploit Improves Evasion

* Johnson is the NFL receiver famous (or infamous) for his trash-talking. Some of my favorite Johnson quotes:

[On Packers cornerback Al Harris] "There are two things for Brother Harris this week... the bad thing is, he has to cover me. The good is, he can save 15 percent by switching his insurance to Geico"

"Last night, I felt like I wished I wasn't Chad Johnson. Last night, I felt like I wished I wasn't good. I had to keep from crying on the sideline because I wished I wasn't that good because I wouldn't be getting the attention I'm getting."

"On the highway, I hit a deer... I kept him. He's at home in the garage. I'm going to use him for the celebration this weekend. He's a prop. They might suspend me for the last game, but I think this one is worth it."

Microsoft: Open source is too complex


Interesting tidbit from ZDNet Asia:

...Although open-source software can be customized to meet a company's specific needs, its inherent complexity could dent the profitability of independent software vendors (ISVs), says Microsoft.

"One of the beauties of the open-source model is that you get a lot of flexibility and componentization. The big downside is complexity," Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's director of platform strategy, said on the sidelines of the company's worldwide partner conference in Boston last month...

Microsoft has a point for all-purpose ISVs, but certainly strong partners of RedHat and Novell don't seem to be suffering. Just like MSFT's various partners, ISVs for RHAT and NOVL -- who specialize in the RHEL and SUSE distros, respectively -- don't have to worry about that sort of complexity. They specialize, just like MSFT's dedicated partners.

I'd call Gavin's remark a straw-man argument, but I don't think it's quite that sturdy.

ZDNet Asia: Microsoft: Open source is too complex

Star Trek 2.0 Videos



Funny, funny takeoffs on the original Star Trek series using action-figures, toys, and boomin' sound tracks. It's just a pity they're so short.

Monday, August 14, 2006

The plot: 9 plans, 29 terrorists, 2700 would-be victims


Brendan Loy has assembled the details of the latest terrorist plot into a cohesive whole:

A total of 24 individuals were arrested in Britain overnight... five still remain at large. Their plan was to smuggle the peroxide-based liquid explosive TATP and detonators onto nine different planes from four carriers — British Airways, Continental, United and American — that fly direct routes between the U.K and the U.S. and blow them up mid-air. Intelligence officials estimate that about 2,700 people would have perished...

...Worries another U.S. official: "Plan A has been stopped, but the concern: Is there a Plan B?"...

...One official said: "We were very lucky to have acquired the intelligence about the modus operandi of the attacks. If we hadn’t got the intelligence, they probably would have succeeded and there would have been little or no forensic evidence showing how they had done it. The modus operandi could have made waves of attacks feasible..."

...The suicide bombers allegedly intended to carry out three "phased" attacks on nine or 10 jets over a period of several months. The plan, it is understood, was to blow up the aircraft over the sea so that investigators would be unable to discover how the explosive - possibly a peroxide-based liquid explosive - was taken through the airport security without being detected.

...Imagine the terror if three airliners went down over the Atlantic — followed by three more airliners a few weeks later. Followed by three more airliners a few weeks later...

Brendan Loy: The plot: 9 plans, 29 terrorists, 2700 would-be victims

"None of this would be happening if Bush had not invaded Iraq"


The Anchoress methodically answers the revisionists who claim that the Administration's policies in Iraq have resulted in more terrorism. Ignore, for a moment, their unstated claim that things would be better with Saddam Hussein in power (he of the Salman Pak terrorist training camp, $25K checks to suicide bombers, and a hotel for world-class terrorists). Also ignore the fact that the "fighting [blank] causes more [blank]" concept doesn't work for any scourge throughout history, whether we're discussing Nazism, Communism, Pol Pot, the Mongol Hordes, etc.

Instead, consider what I call the cold metrics of reality:

Because before we went into Iraq, there were no terrorist attacks anywhere...

World Trade Center 1993

Khobar Towers 1996

Nairobi 1998

East Timor 1999

USS COLE 2000

Gee whiz…looks to me like in the 1990’s we were seeing an attack (on specifically American holdings, interests or vessels) almost every 18 months, or so! Then…

New York City 9/11/01

New York City 9/11/01

Washington, DC 9/11/01

Bali 2002

But - Let’s not forget the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, during which Abu Abbas murdered wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer - before taking refuge in Iraq.

Let’s not forget the 1983 Bombing of American troops, in their barracks, in Beirut.

Let’s not forget the taking of American hostages, in 1979, held for 444 days.

Let’s not forget the Munich Massacre of 1972.

Let’s not forget The Bojinka Operation of 1995.

Did President Bush’s "moronic policies" do all of that stuff? Oh, wait... we’re not seeing attacks every 18 months, anymore - are we? In fact... it looks like President Bush’s terrible policies helped foil this latest attempt, despite the best efforts by the NY Times and others to cripple necessary programs.

The [latest] plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

In short, Democrats who claim to want "focus" on the war on terror have wanted it fought without the intelligence, interrogation and detention tools necessary to win it. And if they cite "cooperation" with our allies as some kind of magical answer, they should be reminded that the British and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever contemplated...

I keep remembering Harry Reid crowing, "we killed the Patriot Act..."

The Anchoress: "None of this would be happening if Bush had not invaded Iraq"

Sunday, August 13, 2006

The incredible saga of Maurice Clarett


Tom Friend, writing in ESPN The Magazine, has a stunning description of the events leading up to Maurice Clarett's latest brush with the law. If you happened to miss it, Clarett -- perhaps looking to sign on as a free-agent with Hezbollah -- was arrested this week.

Already facing trial for armed robbery, his bail was raised to $1.1 million after a traffic stop. Clarett was allegedly transporting a loaded AK-47, three other firearms, and an open bottle of vodka. The 6-foot, 245-pound ex-running back reportedly refused to get out of his SUV after a chase. Arresting officers attempted to tase him, but his bulletproof vest presumably rendered that tactic less than effective. Multiple officers were needed to handcuff him; the Sun-Times reports that he kicked the doors of the transport vehicle on the way to the police station.

Anyhow, that's the background of his most recent brush with disaster. Friend reports that Clarett called him the night of the arrest. I would recommend reading the entire article, but the highlights are fascinating in a sort of holy-crap-is-that-tragic sort of way:

* On July 17, his girlfriend Ashley had given birth to a baby girl
* Several months ago, Jim Tressel had called Clarett, offering his help despite the latter's accusations that OSU offered cars-and-grades-for-football
* After he was kicked out of OSU, he moved to LA and hooked up with management types in the rap community
* The managers arranged for a trainer to start working Clarett out; Maurice weighed 256 pounds and wanted the entire gym shut down while he worked out so he could focus - he ended up quitting when the trainer started pushing him too hard
* He switched to David Boston's trainer (Charles Poliquin), who denies supplying Clarett with illegal substances -- Boston, though, has been suspended for testing positive for steroids -- and moved to Phoenix
* His sponsors, though, were in LA, and Clarett wanted to be closer to them, so he quit Poliquin's regimen
* Denver coach Mike Shanahan, who believes that his system makes the running back rather than the other way around, took the troubled player in the third round of the draft, but things turned sour fast
* With Denver, he carried the same water bottle around until the team became suspicious it was Grey Goose vodka
* He got into a shouting match with the Broncos' 11-year strength coach Rich Tuten; he then demanded the team replace Tuten
* Clarett rejected the Broncos' offer of a $416,000 signing bonus, against the recommendations of his former agents
* After 18 days on the sidelines with a groin injury, he was cut, having never even carried the ball in a preseason game
* Friend reports that his associates in the rap industry had financed him in LA and Phoenix, figuring he'd repay them with NFL and endorsement wages (does that explain the weaponry and Kevlar?)

Friend paints a portrait of an incredibly insecure athlete who has made an uncanny series of bad choices. One hopes he gets the help he needs.

ESPN: Clarett's call came two hours before arrest

WAMP Stack bridges the chasm on the way to LAMP


Ever since the eWeek bakeoff of application-serving stacks -- demonstrating intriguing performance stats for the WAMP stack (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python) -- there's been increased coverage of enterprise WAMP usage. eWeek's key conclusion:

...most surprising was the solid performance that came from the stacks that contained a mix of a Windows server and open-source components. Traditionally, these kinds of WAMP setups have been considered suitable only for development and testing purposes, not for production systems. But, based on the performance we saw in our tests, businesses should seriously consider the combo for their enterprise applications...

CIO India ("Users Mix Open-Source, Windows for Server Apps") reports that there is increasing willingness to mix-and-match OSS technologies with Windows infrastructure:

...The need to interoperate and cut costs led Sherwin Lu of Le Petite Academy Inc. to install the JBoss software on top of Windows Server 2003 last year. Lu, director of application infrastructure at the Chicago-based preschool chain, said moving from a Visual Basic 6 development environment to J2EE "felt a little risky."

But the cost of training his staff on J2EE was about the same as it would have been if he had upgraded to a .Net infrastructure. Moreover, by adopting JBoss rather than proprietary application servers, Lu figured that he saved about US$1 million in license fees alone. And he said that by staying on Windows, he avoided the pain and cost of hiring an all-new systems administration and support team...

Even Microsoft is talking WAMP:

...Faced with the allure of open-source applications among its customer base, Microsoft has toned down its .Net-only rhetoric. "It's a myth that open-source and Windows can't work together," said Ryan Gavin, a director of platform strategy at Microsoft. "Customers just aren't religious about these things..."

From LinuxWorld, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that Linux on enterprise server infrastructure is the status quo. But the real news relates to the forthcoming sea-change in enterprise desktops:

...The good news here, is that Linux has become so accepted that CFOs are more than willing to give Linux a try. The bad news for bad-boy Linux fans, is that Linux is no longer a revolution -- it's the establishment.

The only place where Microsoft is really still the IT establishment is on the desktop. But that's changing, too... It's not just that Microsoft is fumbling Vista more than a third-string halfback against the Chicago Bears' defense. This summer, we've seen not just good Linux desktops arrive, but great Linux desktops... Novell's SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 is a no-holds-barred business replacement for XP...

WAMP stacks appear to be a credible, mainstream bridging technology on the road to LAMP.

Related:
SandHill's Guy Smith has an even more aggressive take in, "Is Enterprise Software Doomed?"

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Today's Rant: Party of Weakness vs. the Nihilistic Cabal


Thursday's news highlights the simple arithmetic that seems to baffle many on the Left. We are at war with extremists who seek mass-murder and, ultimately, the utter destruction of the West.

Thursday saw the exposure of a plot to kill thousands of civilians traveling on US airliners. The same day, Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets hammered apartment buildings in Israel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised a response to the UN's demands that Iran cease uranium enrichment on August 22, a date with religious significance for devout Shiites. India's intelligence services reports that Al Qaeda is active in Kashmir and may have been responsible for the attacks last month in Mumbai. Also in July, North Korea's bizarre leadership launched ballistic missiles near Japan.

...When the jets were in midair over American cities, they planned to combine the explosives and detonate them using an electric charge from an iPod, the security services believe. [British Airways] flights were among the targets. US officials said the bombers had been seeking to hit New York, Washington, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. Other airlines targeted were thought to be United, American and Continental...

In this dangerous world, the Democrats have skirted responsibility for national defense. Beyond Iraq, they have pilloried warrantless wiretaps, the SWIFT international funds-tracking program, data-mining of inter-country phone records, interrogation at Guantanamo, rendition programs... in other words, every tool used by the British to reverse-engineer a plot to kill children and other innocents over the Atlantic.

We can look at Joe Lieberman for the direction of today's Democratic party. Michael Moore, the ostensible voice of the hard Left, placed his threats to fellow Democrats directly on his website:

...Kerry and Edwards who have now changed their position and are strongly anti-war... while I'm glad they've seen the light -- their massive error in judgment is, sadly, proof that they are not fit for the job. They sided with Bush, and for that, they may never enter the promised land...

To Hillary, our first best hope for a woman to become president, I cannot for the life of me figure out why you continue to support Bush and his war... I'm here to tell you that you will never make it through the Democratic primaries unless you start now by strongly opposing the war...

JFK, FDR, and Harry Truman would have been excommunicated by today's George Soros-funded Democrats. JFK cut taxes, raised defense spending, and invaded Vietnam. Truman ended war in the Pacific theater by nuking Japan. And FDR battled the isolationists to launch a multi-front worldwide war on fascism.

Running as the antiwar party in a world torn asunder by suicidal extremists will be anathema to the vast majority of US citizens. Today, we face a threat more challenging than the Third Reich: Iran's mullahs are Hitler with nukes. Worse, they represent only the leadership of a worldwide, nihilistic cabal of extremists bent on destruction.

Apparently, the attacks in Manhattan, Washington, Bali, Beslan, Madrid, London, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Israel, Mumbai, Kashmir, Thailand, Darfur, Somalia, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines are of no concern to the Left. Either that, or they haven't sufficient intellect to connect the dots.

Instead of facing up to the threat, today's Democrats have abdicated that responsibility and sacrificed country for partisan advantage. In today's environment, when the question is one of national security, the answer can never be a Democrat.

At least not until the day they decide to take this war seriously. Until that day, the Left will continue to lead the Democratic Party in the direction it knows best, which is to lose elections. My prediction is that the GOP will maintain control of the House and Senate. The Party of Weakness will never win favor with most Americans. That is, until the the Democratic party becomes suitable for the likes of FDR, Truman, and JFK once again.

While cutting-and-running from Iraq may bring a brief respite, history repeatedly demonstrates that appeasement of terrorists, dictators, and extremists only defers the inevitable. How many decades did US troops maintain a presence in Japan after World War II? How many decades in Germany? Did the presence of the US Military bring stability and, ultimately, incredible economic gentrification to those regions?

The US War on Terror should be a bipartisan effort. That is what Joe Lieberman represented. And that effort is no more. The Democrats are opposed to every tool and every tactic used to defeat terror. Each and every Republican running for office this cycle will point this fact out and ask his opponent to describe how this war can be won. There will be no answers forthcoming from the Party of Weakness and Appeasement, now that its strings are pulled by Kos, Moore, and Soros.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

UK Airline Terror Plot: More Details Emerge


ABC News provides additional clarity around the UK Airline Terror Plot:

...The suspected terror plotters arrested in Britain had planned to conceal their liquid or gel explosives inside a modified sports beverage drink container and trigger the device with the flash from a disposable camera.

ABC News has learned exclusively that the plotters planned to leave the top of the bottle sealed and filled with the original beverage but add a false bottom, filled with a liquid or gel explosive. The terrorists planned to dye the explosive mixture red to match the sports drink sealed in the top half of the container.

This, they thought, would ensure that they would be able to pass through security -- even if they were asked to unseal and drink the beverage.

The flash in a disposable camera has enough electrical power, they apparently believed, to set off the homemade explosive.

There are any number of homemade or modified commercial liquids that would have made effective explosives, with enough energy to damage or destroy a plane.

Wade Miller's Branded Woman

Book Review:

Tough, jaded, and smart, Cay Morgan is like any other jewel smugger except for one thing: she's a female. And a remarkably attractive female at that. In fact, her only physical flaw is a brand on her forehead, which left a permanent scar in the shape of the letter T. A brand inflicted as a permanent warning by "The Trader," a criminal kingpin standing at the top of the smuggling pyramid.

Five years later, Morgan is determined to exact vengeance for the painful imprint. She is in Mazatlan, shadowing a man called Valdes, a known associate of the Trader. A private detective has accompanied her, ostensibly to watch her back and perform some legwork while she hunts for her nemesis. Things go bad, though, when Valdes turns up dead, cutting off her last link to the Trader. And then things go from bad to worse when she stumbles across the body of her private detective.

Stunning plot twists and an utterly unpredictable conclusion are hallmarks of Branded Woman. Further, Morgan is fleshed out as a full-fledged person, not a cardboard cutout the way that many female protagonists are portrayed. All in all, while it's not the finest in the Hard Case Series ("Touch of Death" and "Bust" are two I consider superior), it's certainly high quality work that's helping to resurrect the Pulp genre.

UK threat level increased to critical


Pplease note the following message from the Home Secretary:

Overnight the police, with the full knowledge of Ministers, have carried out a major counter-terrorism operation to disrupt what we believe to be a major threat to the UK and international partners.

The police, acting with the Security Service MI5, are investigating an alleged plot to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life.

The police believe the alleged plot was a very significant one indeed.

At 2am this morning the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the UK threat state to its highest level – "Critical"

This is now being publicly announced, as I promised to Parliament last month.

This is a precautionary measure. We are doing everything possible to disrupt any further terrorist activity.

This will mean major disruption at all UK airports from today.

But as far as is possible we want people to go about their business as normal.

The police will provide an update on the operation later this morning and Ministers will keep the public regularly informed.'

Advice to travellers - increased security measures


Editor's note: emphasis mine.

10 August 2006

Due to the increased security measures currently in place at UK airports, the following advice to anyone travelling today has been issued by the Department of Transport.

With immediate effect, the following arrangements apply to all passengers starting their journey at a UK airport and to those transferring between flights at a UK airport. 

Flying today

  • contact the airline you're flying with to check your flight is still going ahead

  • arrive as early as possible for your flight to ensure that, other than the few permitted items listed below, all your belongings are placed in your hold baggage and checked in

  • expect long delays

Hand luggage

All cabin baggage must be processed as hold baggage and carried in the hold of passenger aircraft departing UK airports. 

The only items that may be taken through airport security search points and in to the cabin, in a single (ideally transparent) plastic carrier bag, are the following: 

  • pocket-size wallets and pocket-size purses plus contents (for example money, credit cards, identity cards, etc - handbags are not allowed.
  • travel documents essential for the journey (eg, passports and travel tickets)
  • prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (eg, diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic
  • spectacles and sunglasses, without cases
  • contact lens holders, without bottles of solution
  • for those travelling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger) and sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (nappies, wipes, creams and nappy disposal bags)
  • female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed (eg, tampons, pads, towels and wipes)
  • tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs
  • keys (but not with electrical key fobs)

Nothing may be carried in pockets.

Searches and x-ray screening

All passengers must be hand searched, and their footwear and all the items they are carrying must be x-ray screened.

Pushchairs and walking aids must be x-ray screened, and only airport-provided wheelchairs may pass through the screening point.

Flying to the USA

The US has raised its threat level to 'red' for flights coming in from the UK. This means passengers are likely to encounter additional security measures once they land at an American airport.

In addition to the  security measures listed above, all passengers boarding flights to the US and all the items they are carrying, including those acquired after the central screening point, must be subjected to secondary search at the boarding gate.  Any liquids discovered will be removed from the passenger. 

There are no changes to current hold baggage security measures.  

Delays are inevitable

Regrettably, these additional security measures will mean significant delays at airports are inevitable. 

The measures will make travel more difficult for passengers, particularly at such a busy time of the year. But they are necessary and will continue to keep flights from UK airports properly secure.  We hope that these measures, which are being kept under review by the government, will need to be in place for a limited period only. 

In light of the threat to aviation and the need to respond to it, we are asking the traveling public to be patient and understanding and to cooperate fully with airport security staff and the police. 

If passengers have any questions on their travel arrangements or security in place at airports they should contact their airline or carrier.

Heathrow closed to incoming flights

Due to increased security measures that have caused considerable congestion at Heathrow Airport - London's main airport and the busiest airport in Europe - it has been closed to all incoming flights that are not already in the air.

Advice from Heathrow's operator BAA is that passengers should not come to Heathrow Airport today unless there journey is absolutely necessary.

If passengers must come to the airport today, BAA advise:

  • travel to the airport by public transport
  • arrive as early as possible for your flight
  • expect very long delays

Heathrow - BA short-haul flights cancelled

All incoming and outgoing British Airways short-haul flights, scheduled for departure until 2.00pm have now been cancelled. 

Stansted - Ryanair flights cancelled

Ryanair flights leaving London Stansted airport between 9.35am and 12.05pm have been cancelled.

Disruption to flights into Britain

Some flights into Britain have also been cancelled:

  • Brussels to London airports
  • Lufthansa to all UK airports
  • Olympic airlines to UK airports
  • Air France, Paris to London

The four types of Reuters Fraudtography


Zombie posts an exceptional overview of the four types of fraudtography engaged in by Reuters. Better still, an analysis of why Reuters has continued to participate in a such scandalous, wide-ranging behavior is in order. Zombie is more than happy to oblige.

Sometimes I think it's the gryoscopic energy of Paul Julius Reuter spinning in his grave that keeps the Earth aligned on its axis.

Mike gets a new office


Geek Invasion features a pretty good prank on Mike. My favorite decorating style: Early American Cardboard.

In addition, the YouTube video of the Microsoft Quarter-Mode Office Project (reducing a fellow worker's office to one-quarter its normal size one evening) is also entertaining.

But both pale in comparison to the final HVAC escapade I described here.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I'm not dead yet, I'm feeling much better


In 2002, a much-publicized funeral in Jenin -- a Palestinian town -- featured the following bit of unintentional comedy. The video of the event, staged for the press to highlight civilian deaths ostensibly caused by Israeli aggression, included an odd incident (hat tip: Taranto):

...IDF field intelligence chief, Colonel Miri Eisen, told reporters that the film shows someone who is supposedly dead--and on the way to burial -- falling off his stretcher and then running away...

Fast-forward to 2006. Adnan Hajj, Reuters' infamous and discredited fraudtographer, was fortunate to have his work featured on the Saturday New York Times' front-page.

The Times could not spare any column-inches to clue readers in to the fact that Hajj had been utterly humiliated over the weekend. That is, until Tuesday the 8th, in an article entitled, "Bloggers drive inquiry into altered images."

In what may be the understatement of the year, the Times noted:

...many bloggers see an anti-Israel bias in Hajj's manipulations, which made the damage from Israeli strikes into Beirut appear worse than the original pictures had. One intensified and replicated plumes of smoke from smoldering debris. In another, he changed an image of an Israeli plane to make it look as if it had dropped three flares instead of one...

In keeping with their history of Pravda-esque censorship, the Times fails to note The Jawa Report's more relevant observation:

...Hajj is also an editor at as Safir... [which] is an openly anti-Israel Arabic news outlet in Lebanon...

More detail on Safir can be found here (warning: highly disturbing and graphic photos). Suffice it to say that Safir appears geared towards one goal: inciting hatred of Israel.

Thus, not only does Hajj make up the news, he also gets to edit it for a virulent propaganda rag!

And if you think Hajj has been busy, you haven't seen anything yet. Hajj repeatedly uses the same human props, including "the unluckiest home-owner in Beirut."

But Hajj isn't done yet! Adnan seems to have an alter-ego named Issam Kobeisi. The photos by Kobeisi and Hajj seem oddly familiar, almost... dare I say it... identical. In fact, it almost appears that Hajj has created an alternative identity to double-dip on his paychecks. A profitable venture to be sure, but not one that would endear him to his employers.

Of course, the Times doesn't mention any of this, but does include some choice quotes about how hard it is to police photographers in the digital age:

...Mick Cochran, the director of photography for USA Today, said the paper screens about 4,000 photos every day, looking for more than digital manipulation, especially in war zones where many American outlets hire local photographers because they can travel more easily than Americans...

I shudder to think what would have happened had Hajj actually been proficient at using Photoshop's stamping tool. The Times would still be featuring his egregious forgeries to drive their bizarre, Pravda-esque agenda.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Net Neutrality: McCurry hits bottom, digs new sub-basement


As if Mike McCurry isn't already going to hell for his egregious Clinton-era dealings, he's definitely ensured himself a belly-full of wasps, hornets and live coals at Lucifer's drive-in restaurant with his latest excretions. Okay, that last sentence was a joke aimed at my progressive friends, who think the entire Republican Party is controlled by the Christian Coalition. Only partially, Gary. Only partially.

Anyhow, McCurry -- whose resume includes a role as press secretary for both Abscam-disgraced former Senator Harrison Williams and our beloved Lincoln-bedroom-landlord, Account-exec-to-the-Chinese-Military, and Chief-Oval-Office-Philanderer -- has really told a whopper this time.

Try this one on for size: McCurry is claiming that Google advocates net neutrality so that it can get bandwidth for free! Yep... here's the statement from his egregious Baltimore Sun op-ed, which strangely omits to mention who his financial backers are (uhm, it starts with A, ends with a T, and has a T in the middle).

...The "neutral" proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use...

BWHHHAHHUUUUUAHAHHAHAHHHHHAUUAUAHAHHAHHUUUUAHHHHAUAUAUAUAUUHAH * sputter *

Whhooooooooooeee. Whoa. Ouch. Hold on a sec and let me catch my breath.

This outrageous fabrication so incensed blogger Mike over at TechDirt that he issued a challenge to McCurry (emphasis mine):

That's a flat out lie. Google pays tremendously large bandwidth bills, and the more they use the more they pay. However, if McCurry is going to pretend Google "never [has] to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use," let's see him put up or shut up. If McCurry really believes that, will he agree to pay Google's bandwidth bills for the rest of this year?

I think we'll see Bed, Bath & Beyond selling firearms before McCurry antes up on this one. Although, with the telcos' lobbying budgets, I guess one never knows.

It is crystal clear that a more liberal reading of the leash laws would keep dogs like McCurry's piece out of the press. But I guess, given examples like Reuters and CBS, quality-control issues at the major media outlets are rampant.

The carriers point to Christopher Yoo


A little background is in order. The carriers and their apologists point to Christopher Yoo's paper, held up as academia's answer to Tim Berners-Lee, Bob Kahn, Lawrence Lessig, Vint Cerf, et. al., all of whom favor net neutrality. Yoo's paper, a howler all on its lonesome, points to cable television (and pay-per-view specifically) as an aspirational example. Hmmm. Pay-per-View. Don King. Mike Tyson. Innovation?

A few (very, very few) parties -- most consisting of the carriers' lobbyists, an astroturf-funded Flash programmer, and a handful of misguided engineers -- have been battling incessantly for QoS, which on its face does sound good. Unfortunately, tiering traffic didn't work for Internet2 and there's no agreement as how to make it work on the public Internet. As NetworkWorld reports:

...Andy Malis, chairman of the MFA Forum, which is defining specifications to resolve the MPLS interconnect issue between carriers. "And at this point, the interconnections that are happening are basically for best effort [service] only..."

In other words, there's no general agreement yet how on even how to implement QoS hand-offs between carriers. And, without it, the whole structure is suspect (for reasons of prioritization tarriffs, taxation, and a whole boatload of other real-world financial concerns). Without handoffs, imagine NetFlix trying to run fiber from its data-center to each and every cable company and telco directly. Because, without handoffs, that's exactly what they'll need to do to guarantee QoS all the way to the consumer.

Sounds practical to me!

Furthermore, as many others have pointed out, a duopoly is hardly enough to ensure competition at the last-mile. And that's what the carriers have spent nine-figures-and-counting on lobbying for. And that's nine-figures-and-counting they haven't spent innovating. Truth be told, they're frightened by innovation. They've never had to survive in the real world. They've lived in a tiny, regulatory bubble insulated from fiscal concerns and protected from marketplace interdiction by lobbyists.

QoS is fine. Provided there's real competition at the last mile. And an FCC capable of enforcing it.

Go ye therefore hence, and suckle at the teat of wisdom. Take action. Today. Nothing less than America's technological leadership position hangs in the balance.

Monday, August 07, 2006

BlackHat: In Defense of Net Neutrality


BlackHat, the popular security conference hosted in Vegas, saw the debut of a tool that can be used to defend net neutrality. The concept behind net neutrality is that telcos and cable companies -- the duopoly that controls roughly 98% of all consumer broadband connections -- should not be able to speed up or slow down content providers based upon kickbacks.

That's the way things operate today, as mandated by the FCC. But the carriers have watched with ill-disguised envy as content-providers such as Google, Digg and Skype have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. And they ask themselves, "Why can't that be us?" But, rather than competing at layers 5 through 7 by creating new applications, they have instead spent tens of millions of dollars to lobby Congress to change the ground rules.

I'd call the carriers' scheme hare-brained, but that would be an unforgivable insult to hares. Anyhow, BlackHat saw the introduction of a tool to help ensure the carriers are following the rules by treating all packets neutrally:

...Dan Kaminsky will share details of this technique, which will eventually be rolled into a free software tool, on Wednesday at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas. The software can tell if computers are treating some types of TCP/IP traffic better than others -- dropping data that is being used in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, for example, or treating encrypted data as second class.

Congress is presently debating whether to enact "Net neutrality" laws that would prevent this from happening... Advocates of these laws say they are essential to preserving the openness that has made the Internet a success. Broadband providers say that such laws could prevent them from developing a new generation of services. Kaminsky calls his technique "TCP-based Active Probing for Faults." He says that the software he's developing will be similar to the Traceroute Internet utility that is used to track what path Internet traffic takes as it hops between two machines on different ends of the network. But unlike Traceroute, Kaminsky's software will be able to make traffic appear as if it is coming from a particular carrier, or being used for a certain type of application, like VoIP...

...He talked about how Comcast is already non-neutral, selling a premium service to allow customers to pass video or encrypted traffic without interference, and how the state of Washington had to move thousands of its employees off of Comcast because of their interference with the state's VPN. He also talked about various ways non-neutral networks could be detected, and ways to route traffic around them...

Read ComputerWorld's "Black Hat net neutrality test" - and if you're ready to take action, visit Save the Internet to find out what you can do to help preserve net neutrality. Nothing less than the future of America's technological leadership position hangs in the balance.

Reuters Fraud-tographer Wanted


Amusing comment at Digg regarding fired Reuters fraud-tographer Adnan "Leni Riefenstahl" Hajj:

I just saw this on a Hezbollah site:

Wanted: Artist with REAL experience in photoshop including at least two years experience in the stamping tool and blending layers.