Ramblings & ephemera
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
Kissinger, then secretary of state, was certain he detected the odor of communism in the election of Salvador Allende Gossens to the presidency of Chile. …
Chile was one of the most stable countries in South America, with a high literacy rate, [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
At roughly the same time Secretary of State Dulles was destroying democracy in Iran, he was also busy destroying democracy in Central America, and once again it was on behalf of a renegade industry: United Fruit Co. …
“Few private companies have [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister. …
Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
[Stephen Kinzer's] Overthrow is an infuriating recitation of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years - a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments - in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
It seems to me axiomatic that most primary actors on the global stage are disturbed people, because an obsessive lust for power is itself a pathology, and in a competition among thousands or millions of power seekers, only the most pathological are likely to win. …
I think [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
Sam Cohen might have remained relatively unknown, troubled by ethical lapses in government and the military but unable to do anything about them, if he had not visited Seoul in 1951, during the Korean war. In the aftermath of bombing sorties he witnessed scenes of intolerable devastation. [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history, politics | Comments Off
From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
Game theory began with the logical proposition that in a strategic two-player game, either player may try to obtain an advantage by bluffing. If the stakes are low, perhaps you can take a chance on trusting your opponent when he makes a seemingly fair and decent offer; [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Tim Bray’s “On Search: Squirmy Words” (29 June 2003):
First of all, the words that have the most variation in meaning and the most collisions with other words are the common ones. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the three words with the longest entries (i.e. largest number of meanings) are “set,†“run,†and “get.â€Â
Related posts
Word [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history | Comments Off
From Tim Bray’s “On Search: Squirmy Words” (29 June 2003):
Of course, the way that words twist and turn around is highly language-dependent. English is what’s called an “inflected†language, which is to say words change their form depending on their grammatical role: verb conjugation, singular/plural, and so on. (Interestingly, “inflection†has a common variant spelling: [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature | Comments Off
From The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance’s “Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets” (13 March 2005):
After successful exploitation, a bot uses Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or CSend (an IRC extension to send files to other users, comparable to DCC) to transfer itself to the compromised host. The [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance’s “Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets” (13 March 2005):
… some of the more widespread and well-known bots.
Agobot/Phatbot/Forbot/XtremBot
… best known bot. … more than 500 known different versions of Agobot … written in C++ with cross-platform capabilities and the source code is put under the GPL. … structured in a [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance’s “Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets” (13 March 2005):
“A botnet is comparable to compulsory military service for windows boxes” - Stromberg
… Based on the data we captured, the possibilities to use botnets can be categorized as listed below. …
Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks
Most commonly implemented and also very often used are [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance’s “Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets” (13 March 2005):
An event that is not that unusual is that somebody steals a botnet from someone else. … bots are often “secured” by some sensitive information, e.g. channel name or server password. If one is able to obtain all this information, he [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From The Honeynet Project & Research Alliance’s “Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets” (13 March 2005):
A botnet is a network of compromised machines that can be remotely controlled by an attacker. … With the help of honeynets we can observe the people who run botnets … Due to the wealth of data logged, it is possible [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
Whatever the answer, it’s clear who pays for it. You do. You pay in the form of vastly higher drug prices and health-care insurance. Americans spent $179 billion on prescription drugs in 2003. That’s up from … wait for it … $12 billion in [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
The Supreme Court’s decision in 1980 to allow for the patenting of living organisms opened the spigots to individual claims of ownership over everything from genes and protein receptors to biochemical pathways and processes. Soon, research scientists were swooping into patent offices around the [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, law | Comments Off
From Clifton Leaf’s “The Law of Unintended Consequences” (Fortune: 19 September 2005):
For a century or more, the white-hot core of American innovation has been basic science. And the foundation of basic science has been the fluid exchange of ideas at the nation’s research universities. It has always been a surprisingly simple equation: Let scientists do [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
Serious reporting is based in verified fact passed through mature professional judgment. It has integrity. It engages readers – there’s that word again, readers – with compelling stories and it appeals to their human capacity for reason. [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, politics | Comments Off
From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
In late 1980s the late Neil Postman wrote an enduringly important book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. In it he says that Marshall McLuhan only came close to getting it right in his famous adage, that the [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, education | Comments Off
From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
And then there were [Walter] Annenberg’s political shenanigans – he shamelessly used his news columns [in The Philadelphia Inquirer] to embarrass candidates who dared to run against his favorites. One day in 1966 a Democrat named Milton [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, business, history, politics | Comments Off
Stayed up late finished Charlie Huston's vampire noir Half the Blood of Brooklyn. Highly recommended ... but not for the kiddies.
Yep - The Dark Knight is as good as everyone says it is. Easily the best comic book movie I've ever seen. And Ledger is Oscar material.
Drum solo. Hopefully he won't explode, a la Spinal Tap. Dave Grohl is funny, a good guitar player, & quite the rock 'n roll screamer.
Arrghh! Does anyone know if the Windows desktop client of Google Talk interops with any other IM networks? Besides Jabber? Tks!
Bookmarked 3 links
At a party where we really only know 2 people. Been doing crosswords on my iPhone. Time to go!
Bookmarked 3 links
I think I found the house I'm going to buy. 125 years old in downtown St. Louis, but very modern on the inside. Wish me luck!
Added 2 products to their wishlist:
