August 2002 Archives

"Foreign diplomats say Powell represents what many people in the world think America should be -- open and generous with the world, and with an ear to other points of view. The secretary looks all the better, they add, because the United States under Mr. Bush appears determined to hew its own path in the world, whether it's about greenhouse gases, the International Criminal Court, or now Iraq.

"Powell is the international community's great white hope," says a Pakistani diplomat, grinning at his own irony."

Powell is my only hope in the mess that is this administration.  I can only hope Bush starts listening to him soon.

A memetics experiment — pass it along.

Life in the Aggregator. An Experiment: Life in the Aggregator. How far can it travel?  Please play by passing it along, including all source links... [jenett.radio]

I'm willing to play [McGee's Musings]

There we go. [via Seb's Open Research]

(via both2and) [Radio Free Blogistan]

Yeah

It can connect to Macs, PCs and Unix machines, as well as all kinds of networks, from wireless WiFi networks to the new, always-on GPRS cell-phone nets.

It streams MP3s off the Net and can read headlines aloud that have been automatically fetched from online news sites.

What is this amazing machine? The latest sleek Clié from Sony, or a skunkworks Pocket PC yet to hit the market?

I still have my Newton.  Even managed to get it up and running again a few months back.  I did a bit of poking around for more recent software and such, but as I had an older model (the MessagePad 110), I couldn't find much.  This article has some good pointers, so maybe I'll play with it a bit more.

"US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared the White House's policy of seeking the removal of the Iraqi leader with Winston Churchill's warnings about Adolf Hitler before the Second World War."

Hmmm....something tells me the situation is a little different.

"Welcome to America with a "wanton boy" president, the kind of person who thinks he can get away with anything. Well, George, don't "misunderestimate" the character and strength of the American people. Don't pee on our leg and try to tell us it's raining. It won't work because Studs Terkel is right. There is a silent majority and millions proudly belong!"

Sign me up!

"I was dubious at first. But now I think Dick Cheney has it right.

Making the case for going to war in the Middle East to veterans on Monday, the vice president said that "our goal would be . . . a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected."

O.K., I'm on board. Let's declare war on Saudi Arabia! Let's do "regime change" in a kingdom that gives medieval a bad name."

How is it that we can justify attacking Iraq, but not Saudi?

"Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, said today that hard-line clerics had made it all but impossible for him to do his job and that he would propose legislation to adjust the balance of power so that he could pursue reforms."

This is an encouraging sign.  I had given up on Khatami after his initial attempts at reform petered out.  Maybe this is a message to the US?

"Secondly, politics can be integrated into other community activities. Although I am a jew, I have a mixed marriage, and my wife and I have brought up our kids as jewish at home, and in the local Unitarian church in our community. I like our neighborhood church very much, because within the 200 to 300 families who are part of that community, there is solid support for activism. For example, one of the main focus areas of the national UU church this year is defending civil liberties. This means that my participation in the church is supportive, not outside of, political activism."

And this why UU's rule.  My parents, both raised Baptist chose to raise my sister and I in this slightly more progressive church.  I'm very grateful to them for this.  However, I am a bit disturbed (or more accurately, confused) over the church's reaction to 9/11.   I suppose it is difficult to find "The inherent worth and dignity of every person" in a world this messed up, but I guess thats the challenge.  I like to think of it as a thinking person's religion.  And if it weren't for UUism, who knows, we might not have had a Web to browse.

Yes, I picked up more CD's today.  Working near music stores is turning out to be very expensive.  On today's menu:

• From Left to Right - Bill Evans
  • I love Bill Evans, and here's an album featuring his Rhodes skills, one of my favorite instruments.
• The Bridge - Karl Denson's Tiny Universe
  • I've been a big fan of Karl in the past, especially his work with the Greyboy Allstars, one of my favorite bands of all time.  His new album features guest spots by musicians like: Chris Wood, Fred Wesley, Michale Franti, Saul Willams, Skerik, Roy Hargrove, Fareed Haque, Robert Walter, and others.  Its hard to lose with a lineup like that.
• All is One - Live in New York City - Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
  • JFJO is one of my favorite bands of the moment, and quickly approaching all-time status.  A quote from Downbeat says it best: "...this band of 20-somethings was born out of a messianic devotion to the idea that jazz means improvisation. They thrive on risk, often creating spontaneous compositions on stage."  I've been following them fairly religiously since discovering them on Russ Gershon's label (which I've mentioned before in this space, and highly recommend), and they just get better and better as they evolve.  The cd store I bought all these at actually didn't have this CD a few weeks back when it first came out, and I suggested they should stock it.  Imagine my happiness when I found it today while browsing the stacks.  If you haven't heard the Fred yet, hurry up and join us!

It has become synonymous with the terrorist attacks of September 11 - but what is the origin of the name al-Qaida? Giles Foden on how Bin Laden may have been inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation

Weird...

I noticed tonight that Monk is airing on ABC.  I'm a big fan of Tony Shalhoub, ever since his not so glorious days on 'Wings' and the prematurely-cancelled 'Stark Raving Mad'.  ABC originally passed on this detective story about an obsessive-compulsive germaphobe with a gift for noticing the details.  USA Network, which co-produced the show with Touchstone Television (owned by Disney), picked up the show, where I caught the premiere and the next few episodes.  I really enjoyed it, but since I'm seldom up on the part of the dial where USA makes its home, I forgot about it for a month.  Tonight, I just happened to catch an ad for it on ABC, and got caught up. 

Now, apparently, in a very interesting turn of events, ABC is airing re-runs from USA Network.  Putting this together with ABC's recent deal to have HBO produce original content for the network makes me wonder if the power is shifting in the television world, or if this is just a sign of ABC's slow and steady demise under the guidence of Der Mouse.

Incidently, in relation to world-affairs, Tony Shalhoub is just one of a large batch of Arab-American celebrities.  I'm, of course, not surprised by this, but its something I hadn't thought of until recently.  Now, I knew Tony was Lebanese, but some of the names on this list surprised me, not because they're of Arab descent, but because I had no idea they were of Arab descent.

For those that don't like to follow links, here's the most surprising of the bunch for me:

• Helen Thomas - LONG time White House correspondent
• Doug Flutie - the quarterback
• G.E. Smith - the SNL band leader
• Marlo Thomas - the actress
• Christa McAuliffe - the Challenger astronaut
• George Mitchell - the Senator
• Frank Zappa - yeah him
• Tiffany - yeah her

"Zinni made a direct reference to the secretary of state, along with retired generals Schwarzkopf and Scowcroft, and derided the armchair hawks who are promoting "pre-emptive" military action: "It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another way." If I were Dick Cheney or Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz, I might have to take that personally. "

When your Special Envoy to the Middle East is telling you its a bad idea, you'd think someone would listen.

"Lawyers for President Bush have concluded he can launch an attack on Iraq without new approval from Congress, in part because they say that permission remains in force from the 1991 resolution giving Bush's father authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf, according to administration officials."

Phew!  Thank god George the II has George the I to back him up!  The People don't know whats best for them anyhow.

"The Pentagon is now debating whether Saudi Arabia is our enemy. Yes and no. There is a secularized, U.S.-educated, pro-American elite and middle class in Saudi Arabia, who are not America's enemies. They are good people, and you can't visit Saudi Arabia without meeting them. We should never forget that.

But the Saudi ruling family stays in power not by a democratic vote from these progressives. It stays in power through a bargain with the conservative Wahhabi Muslim religious establishment. The Wahhabi clerics bless the regime and give it legitimacy -- in the absence of any democratic elections. In return, the regime gives the Wahhabis oil money, which they use to propagate a puritanical version of Islam that is hostile to the West, to women, to modernity and to all non-Muslim faiths."

A good op-ed in the NY Times by Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite authors, about the power of oil vs freedom.

On Dateline NBC tonight John Hockenberry interviewed Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud about the topics mentioned in my earlier posting on Saudi financing of al-Queda.  Predictably, he denies it.  The report also delves into the US's blindness when it comes to Saudi Arabia.  American intelligence organizations collect no intelligence on Saudi, to avoid "annoying the royal family".  Hopefully this indicates more of the mainstream media will be turning their eye to our relationship with Saudi, and how it may have led to the 9/11 attacks.

"Turki knew Bin Laden well, not just through family connections but because in the early 1980s he had hand-picked the young Saudi to organise Arab volunteers fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.

According to the documents, the agreement stated Bin Laden would not use his forces in Afghanistan to subvert the Saudi government. In return, the Saudis agreed to ensure that requests for the extradition of Al-Qaeda members and demands to close Afghan training camps by third countries were not carried out.

To reinforce the deal, the Saudis agreed to provide oil and financial assistance to both the Taliban and to Pakistan. The documents detail donations totalling several hundred millions of dollars. "

Oops.  So now what?  Now that there's all sorts of evidence supporting the fact that the House of Saud was one of the principle financiers behind al-Queda, and basically none showing Iraq is responsible, do we invade Saudi Arabia?

"Making the "Just War" argument for Iraq (Op-Ed) By wrinkledshirt Fri Aug 23rd, 2002 at 05:38:52 AM EST

The "Just War" argument is a special branch of military philosophy and ethics geared towards determining whether or not it is justifiable for one nation to declare war upon another. There are five criteria that need to be fulfilled, and this article will explore each of these five criteria in an attempt to see how they apply to the impending war against Iraq. "

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Microsoft Corp.'s commitment to security, specifically its Trustworthy Computing initiative, is being questioned after its inaction regarding two new reports of security vulnerabilities in its products, security experts say.

Another article on the topics I mentioned yesterday.  If Microsoft is so committed to security, why the silent treatment?

Bought some new CD's today.  One of these days I really will get around to doing real reviews.  Really!

• I.A.O. - John Zorn
• Zorn...you love him or hate him.  I love him, and this album is no exception.
• Explorations: the Columbia Recordings - Lonnie Liston Smith
• An interesting compilation of 4 albums.  Not sure if I like it or not.  Some of you who are familiar with the following 2 cd's might have some idea of why I bought this CD (hint, it wasn't on purpose)
• The Worm - Jimmy McGriff
• I'm a sucker for good jazz organ, r&b or blues.  As such, I'm a sucker for Jimmy McGriff.  Haven't listened yet, but I've heard good things.
• Jimmy Smith's Finest Hour - Jimmy Smith
• As with Jimmy McGriff, I'm a sucker for Jimmy Smith.  I own just about every one of his original albums, so when I saw this compliation in the store, I had to pick it up.  In a 'small world' moment, I discovered on opening it up that it was compiled by Michael Ullman: my Dad's college roomate, a former professor of mine, and a Salon music reviewer from day's gone by.

What's galling here is not the pace so much as the denial. As our readers know, a purloined private key and a bit of ARP spoofing will permit any junior hacker to grab a third party's SSL session. Yet MS refuses to warn its customers, but instead lulls them into a false sense of security.

I really don't understand how this has slipped under the mainstream media's radar.  SSL has been completely comprimised for anyone using IE on Windows, and Microsoft is trying to get off by saying man-in-the-middle attacks are too hard to actually perform.  Well...they're wrong.  On a cable modem network, for example, its extremely simple.  

The reason for their stalling and for not providing an immediate patch is that the problem is in the OS, and not the browser, which presumably means either it takes a lot more work to fix it, or it takes a lot more work to find it.   Oh well, SSL always provided a false sense of security anyhow.

 Ahhh, Trustworthy Computing

On Monday, Network Associates sold its Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption products to PGP Corp., a newly formed company.

There's hope for PGP yet.  Despite the best efforts of the Gnu Privacy Guard folks and their friends in the OpenPGP Alliance, the NAI products were the only real viable solution for windows desktop use.  Since NAI effectively abandoned them in the last few years, there's been serious concern over the future of PGP, and who would pick up the torch.   Enter PGP Corp, a collection of former Pretty Good Privacy, Inc and NAI executives and engineers.  Their Technical Advisory Board is star-studded and their CTO is one of the authors of the OpenPGP RFC. 

"At this writing, the American military response to 11 September has been confined to the war in Afghanistan. It may be too early to look at "lessons learned", but it is not too early for an assessment of whether or not we have been successful fighting Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) as operations unfold in Afghanistan against the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Further, it is not too early to adjust our tactics, techniques, and even the â01CAmerican Way of Warâ01D to combat an illusive, determined, and deadly enemy that operates outside the framework of the nation-state."

An interesting writeup on Fourth Generation Warfare and how our Second Generation war infrastructure is adapting.  The conclusion is that while Special Operations seems to have the right idea, the leadership, and the defense infrastructure as a whole is not ready for this type of war.  In addition, it briefly touches on the need to convince the enemy of the immorality of terrorism, and to right some of the perceived wrongs the enemy holds against us.  The article is a few months old, but I thought it presented some interesting points, particulary when measuring the current Isreali/Palestinian conflict.  The current mess in the Holy Land would seem to demonstrate the inevitable folly of trying to fight a Fourth Generation opponent with Second Generation tools and tactics.

Well, looks like CNN will have me tuned in all week.

Why so much venom against white hats, the hackers who ostensibly break software in order to help make the Internet safer? The el8 zines don't clearly spell out the group's motivations, but Project Mayhem appears to be a violent incarnation of the "anti-sec" movement, a campaign to persuade hackers not to publish information about the security bugs they uncover.

Look out white hats, the black hats are angry.  There's an interesting thread going on over on the Full Disclosure list (which was established after Bugtraq fell into corporate hands) taking some of the greyer hats of the security industry to task for getting pimped by the industry.  This backlash has been bubbling for a few years, but it looks like its full throttle now.  So far, the backlashers have hit Theo Deraadt, Ryan Russell, Dug Song, amongst others.  These happenings are very interesting coming on the heels of Gweed's H2K2 outburst.

The Federal Trade Commission Thursday issued a proposed consent order with Microsoft Corp. over complaints that the company falsely represented the security and privacy provisions in its Passport family of services. As part of the order, Microsoft must submit to a bi-annual review of its security program for Passport by an independent third party. The order also would prohibit the company from making any further misleading statements about its policies and procedures. It also requires Microsoft to implement and maintain a comprehensive security program for the Passport services. During a year-long investigation into the Passport service spurred by a complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the FTC found that Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., not only misrepresented the level of security afforded by its services, but that it also collected more consumer information than it said it would.

Hallelujah!  Thank god for EPIC.  This is HUGE.  The government is taking a software company, and not just any software company, to task for privacy violations, and crappy security.  This is a precedent that hopefully indicates the government is realizing the importance of privacy in the digital age.  No longer can a company claim to respect a customers privacy and tout its highly secure infrastructure without actually backing up those claims, at least not without the risk of getting an FTC smack down... or at least I hope thats what this says.

"Maybe sixth months ago, no more. It's simply not possible that it was eleven (going on twelve) months since 9/11."

This year has gone past rather quickly.  I'm a former New Yorker (actually lived there from 1994-1995, and grew up in CT, so I get to claim bridge and tunnel status at the very least), and was back in the city the week before the attacks for a friends wedding.  I took some friends of mine, who'd never been to New York, to the World Trade Center.  The 1993 bombing came up while we were sitting in the plaza between the towers, and one of my friends surmised "What were they thinking, you couldn't knock these things down.  Well, maybe with a plane or something".  Needless to say, a week later, back in Colorado, he called me right after everything happened and was a bit weirded out. 

Lucky for me, I get to fly back to NYC for a business meeting from 9/9-9/11.  I'll be flying home on the 12th.  I'm not sure how I feel about this, but, as a commentator on NPR pointed out today, I'm statistically more likely to be killed by a head kick from a donkey than a terrorist attack, so I'll just stay away from the Central Park Zoo.

On Monday the National Infrastructure Protection Center warned: "wide-scale hacker attacks against U.S. websites and Internet Service Providers (ISP) are being planned for later tonight, possibly emanating from Western Europe." 

Given the NIPC's past record of incompetence, no one paid the warning much mind:

"The NIPC and Richard Clarke do have an excellent track record of warning about cyberattacks and cyber-badness that is often only visible to them," Smith said."

The attacks never materialized, at least not in any manner that was noticed:

Perhaps there may have been a brief rise in Internet traffic early Tuesday morning -- but it was a mere blip on the screen if anything, security experts said. But the general consensus is that Monday's alert was a self-created crisis caused by an over-reactive, publicity-seeking government agency, sparked by the idle online conversations of a band of young and aspiring "hackers" who had threatened to attack U.S. sites in retaliation for the Aug. 1 arrest of 14 Italian hackers in Milan.

The NIPC seem to have based their warning on the some talk in Italian hacker chat rooms about hitting US web sites in retaliation for the arrest of 14 Italian hackers based on tips from the US government.

"There was some talk on Italian Internet chat channels about DOSing and defacing American websites last week in response to the Milano arrests," Augustine DelFalco, a security consultant based in Rome, said. "But to me it was apparent that the conversations were being conducted by young teenagers. It's odd that such nonsense should concern your government."

In fact, George Smith of vMyths, a frequent critic of the NIPC, theorizes that the warning may very well have precipitated the attacks:

"Knowing the average cyber-ankle-biter, people known to stay up at odd hours, it's not at all unreasonable to entertain the idea that the NIPC alert might have precipitated some nincompoops who had nothing better to do with their time except create a statistical blip in someone's Internet monitoring service," Smith said.

Why are we paying for this?  Couldn't the money be better spent on something else?

"RECOGNIZING THE ENEMY: One of my generally reliable moles reports that tomorrow's Washington Post will feature a piece by Tom Ricks on Saudi Arabia as the enemy. Ricks will report that a "top Pentagon advisory panel" has characterized Saudi Arabia as an enemy, and recommends that it be given an ultimatum: stop supporting terror or face seizure of the oil fields and of financial assets in the United States. The report isn't an official position, but reflects what Ricks characterizes as a view with growing currency in the Bush Administration. Sounds like someone's getting a clue."

This will get messy.

"What changed leisure footwear forever and created the wonderful, hideous behemoth of contemporary consumer culture? It's gotta be da shoes."

I remember my first pair of the original Air Jordans.  It took me 6 months after my parents bought me some 'counterfeit'  Jordan's, to convince them (along with some of my library page wage earnings) to get me a real pair.  They made me jump really high!

Like thousands of bachelors tired of the same old take-out and fast food, I've recently been starting to cook for myself. The cooking part I seem to have down pretty well (thanks in part to some of the other food/cooking articles on K5), but I - and some of my friends - are having real trouble keeping a significant amount of food from spoiling."

Some good ideas, and perhaps more to come.  Keeping the fridge stocked is hard when you're working all week, and don't feel like shopping after a full day.  This is especially bad when you're trying to lose weight, as I have been for the last year or so.

"Thoughts of an Industry Character who's been around since Year Minus One."

Only two entries so far, but his second is a tribute to Bob Bickford, a founding member of The Well, a community I haven't participated much in lately, but which I've enjoyed reading for 6 years now.  This was the first I'd heard of Bob's passing.  He was a bit prickly, but I enjoyed his writings and was very sorry to hear this news.

[added later]

For those with Well access, there is a thread regarding this in the news forum, #2794.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.. "In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes." [Quotes of the Day]

"If you haven't checked out Salon's spiffy new upgraded article directory, you're missing out. In its seven-year history Salon has published tens of thousands of articles on every subject under the sun. The directory helps you find your way through this. You'll also find a nifty "most popular topics" feature at the bottom of the directory's main page.

This is good news.  Trying to find old articles on Salon has always been a hit-or-miss affair.  Hopefully this will help.

On the other hand, apologies are in order for the state of our search engine, which actually indexes Salon well but does not handle multi-word searches well -- and that's the most common kind of search. We're still working on it; in the meantime, Google does a fantastic job of searching Salon, as it always has."

Seriously....fix the searching!

"Digital technology and the Internet can empower artists to reach a worldwide audience and to build upon each other's ideas and imagination with extremely low production and distribution costs. Many software developers, through both the open source software initiative and the free software movement, have long taken advantage of these facts to create a vibrant community of shared software that benefits creators and the public. "

Literal "Open Source Music".  Cool!

"Why should open source be limited to computer programs? The same logic could unleash a world of creative, personalized music."

Continuing the discussion on the idea of "Open Source Music", I found an old article from 1999 on Salon that discusses the concept along the same lines as the Bootleg Culture article from a few days ago.  Interesting read.

""Each of the projects involved in this initiative have committed to remaining independent and not-for-profit, this is a key requirement for participation as we want this to be a community supported effort, for the community by the community." - Steve Manzuik, founder and co-moderator of VulnWatch. "

With the recent aquisition of SecurityFocus by Symantec, there has been plenty of concern about potential corporate influence over what has been, up until recently, a well managed community resource.  The Internetworked Security Information Services initiative ties together several already existing security resources in an attempt to provide a community resource that is dedicated to serving the community, and not to making money.  I'm a fan of all the components of this initiative, so hopefully they'll mesh well together and make each component more useful.

"Back in 1970, Hilary and Kathy were 14 years old and best friends in Washington, DC. Then Kathy moved to Tehran. They wrote to each other pretty often. Last year, Kathy and Hilary got together and reread their letters. They found them mildy amusing and thought others might think so too."

I've been enjoying this a lot. 

(btw, I'm using Radio Express now to post most of my stuff, so the Title will link to the site in question.  Its a little saner that way)

HP backs down on DMCA warning. Public outcry among programmers, researchers and technologists prompts Hewlett-Packard to back down from its stark warning earlier in the week. [CNET News.com]

A good article today on Salon about Bootleg Culture.  I think its an interesting point of view on some facts of life that our friends at RIAA, and their stable of "rock stars" are going to have to get used to.  My favorite quote:

"...Many artists and their labels have become reluctant to allow any sampling of their work unless they are sure the new work will sell enough copies to generate large royalty checks.

What is surprising are the names of some of the artists who turned them down: the Beastie Boys, Beck, Missy Elliott, Chemical Brothers, and M/A/R/R/S -- artists whose own careers are based on sampling and who in some cases have been sued in the past for their own unauthorized sampling. For whatever reason these artists decided not to license their material, the net effect is that more entrenched, "legitimate" sampling artists are preventing lesser known, struggling sampling artists from doing what the legitimate artists probably wish they could have done years ago: sample without hindrance to create new works. "

In a digital world, the creator, the sampler, and the consumer blend into one.  There's very little use for entire industries built around middle-men.  The only hope for RIAA and friends is to get into the business of digitally distributing their music.  So far, they've spent more time trying to stop consumers from doing what they want, rather than facilitating it.