] "September 11th, 2001, taught a lesson I'll never
] forget," he said. "America must confront threats before
] they fully materialize."

This is a scary, scary statement. Preemptive action violates 250 years of US foreign policy. The question is, how many more civil liberties will we lose, how many more bridges with the internation community will will burn, confronting threats in this manner. The more important question is, how much longer can we afford this policy?

Bush : 'America must confront threats before they fully materialize.'

] The average collegian in the U.S. isn't graduating into a
] world of boundless opportunity, but rather is
] $20,000-plus in the hole thanks to student loans and
] credit cards. So begins the snowball effect: The most
] desirable entry-level jobs often pay wages too low for
] the indebted, who must fork over a large percentage of
] their salaries to Sallie Mae or Citibank.

This problem affects me and practically everyone I know. Very insightful article about the problems that trouble Generation X and Y.

Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young: The Ambition Tax

The response quoted Cheney as saying after the 1991 Gulf War that he had no regrets about leaving Saddam Hussein in power, because if coalition forces had gone on to Baghdad after driving Iraqi forces from Kuwait, "the U.S. would have been all alone."

Ouch! I know quotes can sound bad when taken out of context, but damn

Kerry to Cheney : Hi Pot, meet Kettle

The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Iraq on the Record

Tom's Hardware Rules

TH: "Your company has caused quite a stir, ah, on the Internet with the claims"

MG: "well we've, I know, we love it, Controversy creates ...other stuff too as well"

Yeah like Lawsuits

Michael's Computers - The Interview

] Operation Iron Promise

Its seems in the Texas Air Guard, they don't teach how Military Operations/Projects/Callsigns are supposed to be generic/non-specific names to refer to a plan without giving away information about said plan. They are not to be political statements in a poor attempt to slap legitimacy on your diplomatic foobars.

Turman wasn't such a dumbass he needed to rename Operation Overlord Operation French Freedom. He didn't need to sell his people on the idea. Hilter didn't rename Operation Barbarossa to Operation Kick-the-Russian's-ass or a more Bush-like Operation Free-the-Russians-from-a-evil-madman, though I frankly doubt Hitler cared about selling his war of aggression to his people the way Bush seems to.

Operation Mountain Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom.... [sigh]

Operation Bullshit

Political Military Operation names: STOP!

So I tend to like crazy authors that do strange things in their books, like insert crypto. The problem comes down to is it really crypto?

Example: In Preston and Child's ThunderHead (one of their best), they include a block cypher text, supposed a substitution cypher. After a fter hours of frequency analysis, I'm nowhere fast Based on how close the frequencies were, it could be random junk. I email the authors if there is anything in there to look for. They replied back originally they were going to have a contest hidden in the cypher text but didn't have time. Its just junk. Oh Well

But know, cut to Dan Brown's Digital Fortress.I really didn't like this book. While the story involving David tracking down the ring was interesting, the rest was too over the top or simply incorrect. The 8 story tall code cracker. The plush prvate offices. 64 bit keys means 64 characters. How the "Tracking" bug worked through an anonymous remailer. Character motivations, etc.

Regardless, the end of the book had a nifty code:
128-10-93-85-10-128-98-112-6-6-25-126-39-1-68-78

Immediately I resist the urge to type it into Google. I know I can solve this. First thing I did was count the number of characters. 16. 16 * 8 = 128 bits. Could this be used to access an HTTPS page on a website? Dan Brown could have a personal page, maybe the book publisher. I check the copyright date: 1996. I doubt he had a page back then. Next, Its not an ASCII string (too many control characters, and even by adding 64 to bring the smallest number up to Letter range, then 128+64 is in the line drawing characters of 8 bit ascii.) Nothing higher than 128. What if it is 7 bit ascii, alined on 8 bit boundries? Well 128 bits doesn't /7 evenly, so no. Maybe there are page numbers? Nope, I dimiss that because that would change from hardback to softback. Besides its a 400+ page book, and the code would use less than half of it. That 128 is bugging me. 10000000 ... hmmm ... Wait a sec, there are 128 chapters, not including epilogue and prologue... (I remember because I hate small chapter books). I immediately notice that there are two 128s, 6s and 10s. I look at the first letter of these chapters, and think I'm chasing nothing until I see Chaper 10 starts with E. That makes 2 E's and 2 A's. So we have at least 4 vowels over 16 letters. Sounds good.

So I write down all the first letters of each chapter and I get this:

W E C G E W H Y A A I O R T N U

Well 4 vowels in a row is wrong. I look at the code for several more minutes, and then remember how they used Caeser squares alot in the book. In fact 2 seperate times, including once in the last few pages. Furthermore caeser squares were the only simply form of crypto they talked about in the book. Well I have 16 letters...

W E C G
E W H Y
A A I O
R T N U

We Are Watching You. Not Kryptos, but certainly made my morning.

I just finished Utopia by Lincoln Child. If you don't know who he is, you are missing out. He along with Douglas Preston, has written some of the best Technologic Fiction I've ever read. Some include Relic, Thunderhead, Cabinet of Curiosities, and RipTide. Topics of their books include Incan civilizations, radical anthropology, pirate treasure with booby traps, high atomic number elemental astroids, awesome FBI agents and much more. If you haven't read any of their work, start with Relic and enjoy.

Utopia is about an amusement park for the future, with giant holograms, massive sets and robotic creatures that populate 4 total emersion "worlds" that people visit. It dabbles sucessfully in all kinds of things memestreams would love: hive intellegence, AI, Robotics, hacking, blowing stuff up, lasers, and more. The basis of the story isn't all that new (terrorist/criminals-take-over-something-cool-and-heros-try-to-stop -them) the book is extremely well written. Child gets the Tech more accurate the most writers (The worst I've seen was The Blue Nowhere) while crafting an interesting story. You can get it in paperback at most bookstores

Book Review: Lincoln Child's Utopia

] NEWS ALERT
] Al Sharpton says he will no longer campaign for
] Democratic presidential nomination but will continue to
] collect delegates. Details soon.

NEWS ALERT

The world stopped caring several months ago

CNN.com - News Alert Al Sharptopn will no longer campaign

] I'm not gonna be satisfied until the computer knows what i
] want to look at based on correlating its semantic map with
] whatever i'm working on. If I happen to be reading a document
] about global warming affecting coastal sea bird populations, i
] want the computer to know that and be looking for related
] information before i ask it, so when i do ask for more, it's
] right there, sorted by subtopics at multiple levels, coded for
] relevance and preferably with a prefetched version of the
] resources already stored locally. -k]

Timball talk about something like this with me once. Some Linux/Gnome project or something.

Basically each X app had its own kind of RSS feed, about what was currently being "done" on that app. A central program simply compiled this info, and would look for relevant info, be it on your computer (meta info is your friend!), or do a google query. Tim said this thing got demoed at some Linux conference (don't know which one) and that they ran into some fundamental barrier with the number of searches 1 IP can send to google in a certain time span.

Who knows how vaporware this thing is, but its sounded cool.

Jesse Ruderman: Experience Google's new look