Ramblings & ephemera
From “Report: China’s botnet problems grows” (SecurityFocus: 21 April 2008):
Computers infected by Trojan horse programs and bot software are the greatest threat to China’s portion of the Internet, with compromises growing more than 20-fold in the past year, the nation’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CN-CERT) stated in its 2007 annual report released last week.
The response [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: law, security | No Comments »
From Charles Glass’ “The New Piracy: Charles Glass on the High Seas” (London Review of Books: 18 December 2003):
Ninety-five per cent of the world’s cargo travels by sea. Without the merchant marine, the free market would collapse and take Wall Street’s dream of a global economy with it. Yet no one, apart from ship owners, their [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, security | No Comments »
From George Pendle’s “New Foundlands” (Cabinet: Summer 2005):
Call them micro-nations, model countries, ephemeral states, or new country projects, the world is surprisingly full of entities that display all the trappings of established independent states, yet garner none of the respect. The Republic of Counani, Furstentum Castellania, Palmyra, the Hutt River Province, and the Empire of [...]
Posted on April 13th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, law, politics, weird | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 1):
With other vile and ignominious terms:
In confutation of which rude reproach
And in defence of my lord’s worthiness,
I crave the benefit of law of arms.
confutation: evidence that refutes conclusively
Related posts
1 Henry VI: repugn
1 Henry VI: Astraea
Talbot describes his son’s valiant death
1 Henry VI: Talbot’s deer metaphor
1 Henry VI: [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 1):
BASSET:
… When stubbornly he did repugn the truth
About a certain question in the law
Argued betwixt the Duke of York and him;
repugn: To oppose or contend against.
Related posts
1 Henry VI: confutation
1 Henry VI: Astraea
Talbot describes his son’s valiant death
1 Henry VI: Talbot’s deer metaphor
1 Henry VI: Talbot threatens [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (III: 4):
Scene: Paris - The Palace
BASSET:
Villain, thou know’st the law of arms is such
That whoso draws a sword, ’tis present death,
Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.
Blackstone in his Commentaries (IV. 124): “By the ancient law … fighting in the king’s palace … was punished with [...]
Posted on January 15th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, law | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (I: 6):
CHARLES:
Divinest creature, Astraea’s daughter,
How shall I honour thee for this success?
Astraea: in Greek religion and mythology, goddess of justice; daughter of Zeus and Themis. Because of the wickedness of man, she withdrew from the earth at the end of the Golden Age and was placed among the [...]
Posted on January 13th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
From Reuters’s “Chinese fugitive leaves cave after 8 years” (5 October 2006):
A Chinese man wanted by police on gun charges has given himself up after hiding in a cave constructed at the back of his house for eight years, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The 35-year-old man from the southeastern city of Fuzhou had tunneled [...]
Posted on October 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, law, weird | Comments Off
From Louis Menard’s “From the Ashes: A new history of Europe since 1945″ (The New Yorker [28 November 2005]: 168):
[Tony Judt, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945] notes that France, a country with a population of some forty million, was administered by fifteen hundred Nazis, plus six thousand Germen policemen. A skeleton [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Mica Rosenberg’s “Guatemala forces end 10-year prisoner rule at jail” (The Washington Post: 25 September 2006):
Guatemalan security forces took over a jail run for over 10 years by inmates who built their own town on prison grounds complete with restaurants, churches and hard-drug laboratories.
Seven prisoners died when 3,000 police and soldiers firing automatic weapons [...]
Posted on September 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, weird | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “MacDonald triad” (26 July 2006):
The MacDonald triad are three major personality traits in children that are said to be warning signs for the tendency to become a serial killer. They were first described by J. M. MacDonald in his article “The Threat to Kill” in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Firestarting, invariably just for [...]
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, law, science | Comments Off
From Seth David Schoen’s “Wiretapping vulnerabilities” (Vitanuova: 9 March 2006):
Traditional wiretap threat model: the risks are detection of the tap, and obfuscation of content of communication. …
POTS is basically the same as it was 100 years ago — with central offices and circuit-switching. A phone from 100 years ago will pretty much still work today. [...]
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, law | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “Mitigating Identity Theft” (Crypto-Gram: 15 April 2005):
The very term “identity theft” is an oxymoron. Identity is not a possession that can be acquired or lost; it’s not a thing at all. …
The real crime here is fraud; more specifically, impersonation leading to fraud. Impersonation is an ancient crime, but the rise [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, law, security | Comments Off
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
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Nate Anderson’s “Hacking Digital Rights Management” (Ars Technica: 18 July 2006):
The attacks on FairPlay have been enlightening because of what they illustrate about the current state of DRM. They show, for instance, that modern DRM schemes are difficult to bypass, ignore, or strip out with a few lines of code. In contrast to older [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, law, security | Comments Off
From Mark Sableman’s “Copyright reformers pose tough questions” (St. Louis Journalism Review: June 2005):
It goes by the name “digital rights management” - the effort, already very successful, to give content owners the right to lock down their works technologically. It is what Washington University law professor Charles McManis has characterized as attaching absolute “trade secret” [...]
Posted on July 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, law | Comments Off
From Dana Priest’s “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons” (The Washington Post: 2 November 2005):
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From Alex Bellos’s “Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats.” (Blender: June 2005):
In the slums of Rio De Janeiro, drug lords armed with submachine guns have joined forces with djs armed with massive sound systems and rude, raunchy singles. Welcome to the most excitingâ€â€and dangerousâ€â€underground club scene in the world. …
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is the glamorous city [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, law, politics | Comments Off
From Alan Wolfe’s “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” (The Washington Monthly: July/August 2006):
Political parties expend the time and grueling energy to control government for different reasons. Liberals, while enjoying the perquisites of office, also want to be in a position to use government to solve problems. But conservatives have different motives for wanting power. One [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Charles R. Smith’s “Big Brother on Board: OnStar Bugging Your Car“:
GM cars equipped with OnStar are supposed to be the leading edge of safety and technology. …
However, buried deep inside the OnStar system is a feature few suspected - the ability to eavesdrop on unsuspecting motorists.
The FBI found out about this passive listening feature [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, law, security | Comments Off
Headed off to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Since we're about to rock, please salute us.
Just had dinner at Maria's, an Italian restaurant. Not bad. Worked all day on the book. Now for a coffee shop & more work on that darn book!
NY Jets signed Bret Favre, so little bro Gus (Jets Equipment Director) has had one hell of a busy morning. Phone 1st rang at 5:45, poor guy.
Wonderful, huge Spanish dinner with Gus & 9 of his co-workers. Standing outside his hotel waiting for a cab on a gorgeous Cleveland night.
Just landed in Cleveland (which rocks, I hear) to visit my little brother Gus. He's here with the NY Jets for a game. I'm here to see him.
Bookmarked a link: Webvet.com - Pet News, Information, and Education
Alright, it's official - I'm gonna be the papa to a baby boy. Currently named Finn, but we'll see. :)
Added a product to their wishlist:
Bookmarked 5 links
Chapter 10 (Google Contacts) is hereby done. Now on (back!) to chapter 9. (Hey, sometimes jumping around helps keep things fresh!)