JLang wrote:
] Perimeter defense is a lost battle.
]
] Like old generals, we're still fighting the last war, in which
] our network was a castle with impregnable walls, a
] well-defined entry point across the drawbridge (head-end
] router), portcullis (firewall) and guards (IDS).

Well, that was an entertaining article, but I'll offer the following:

1. People have been quoting statistics about attacks coming from the inside for years. I doubt its actually true, and it certainly hasn't slowed the sale of firewalls. If you count the amount of scans and probes that come in on a typical internet connection and compare that to internal threats I would be amazed to find that 70% of the threats are internal. I'm not saying internal threats aren't significant or important. I'm simply saying that this statistic is over quoted and under understood.

2. Yes, of course you should harden your internal servers and firewall your "DMZ" off from your internal network! If you're an IT security professional and this is news you ought to be fired. (This is the reason Checkpoint sells well. You can put 12 interfaces in the thing and it doesn't think twice about it.)

3. Rilling up a bunch of IT guys and telling them to implement a "zero tolerance" policy is stupid. The only thing worse then a beaurocrat is a beaurocrat on a mission. When you are responsible for a service that everyone in a company relies on, all of the employees are your customers, not just upper management. You have to find ways to protect critical assets while simultaneously allowing people to do their jobs. Rifling through people's hard drives in search of contraban propagates an atmosphere of distrust that is far more destructive to company objectives then some file sharing. Yes, you should know whats on your network and elminiate things that create risk. No, you should not be a nazi, even if you really enjoy it.

RE: Network Security: Submarine Warfare

I've been trying to find these all day. They are the pictures snapped by the ISS as it approached Isabel that were featured on the cover of the NYT. Very impressive. Start with page 24, and check out 25 and 26... (U: Also in the archive, views of Austin, SF, Rome, London, and a few other places from space... as well as massive forrest fires in Canada.)

More kick ass Isabel pics

Well, CNN changed their image, so I give you Nasa's Isabel pics. They don't have a high res copy of the image the AP wire is carrying, but they do have a lot of other nice high res shots and animations. Multiple resolutions from 2km to 250m... Check out the Sept 12th pics... Beautiful...

NASA - Hurricane Isabel - Sept. 15, 2003

Oh great. They are postponing the California election so they can get computerized voting machines installed in time. If they think the old technology is bad, wait until they see this...

Yahoo! News - Appeals Court Delays Calif. Recall Vote

Do some DNS queries that end with .net for some nonexistent domains.. They are all being responded to with an A record pointing to 64.94.110.11, which is a VeriSign search engine.

This is complete bullshit. This must not be allowed.

VeriSign Rerouting .net DNS queries

mandrake wrote:
] I would be interested in knowing how many people are "lifting"
] this material and how many people are quoting this material as
] sources and citing the source... because I know I've done
] this quite often, particularly when it comes to research
] papers that are available online, etc. I would assume that a
] considerable amount of people use similar tactics.

I don't think they are concerned about quotations. The internet is certainly a valuable research tool and I think schools try to reinforce that by training kids to use it. The thing is that its really easy to take something and just cut and paste it directly into your paper. People did this back in the old days with their library, but it wasn't as easy. You had to type everything in. Today its click, click, print... I've seen people do it.

Ultimately, having a lot of student papers online is a good thing, as long as you've got a way to filter the correct ones from the poor ones. Its an information resource, and as the papers are usually short it fits with the typical net attention span. Maybe we ought to turn the coin over here and consider that maybe paper writing is obsolete...

Paper writing is basically about teaching people to express themselves effectively. Maybe an email discussion board related to the topics of the course would be just as effective...

The reason that profs need papers to assess student knowledge on a subject is because they are still running everything on a very simple, old fashioned, mass lecture and assess system. Its been demonstrated that people learn much more effectively when they are personally engaged in the process. For example, instead of having all of the students write a paper on the same topic, why not have them go out and research a subject, assemble a coherent understanding, and report back to the rest of the class. Have discussion and debate. Force people to defend their positions in public. In such a case it doesn't really matter if they cut/pasted the paper. They still have to understand what it means to be able to talk about it intelligently... Furthermore, if they are forced to have an opinion, then they will be driven to understand that opinion well.

Ultimately, in this age, thinking is better then knowing. Information is easily available to you if you need it, so having it in your head for easy regurgitation isn't as important as being able to apply it in a meaningful way. Stop measuring what students know and start measuring how students think.

RE: Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers

] In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained
] fresh powers to help them track down and punish
] terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly
] turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells
] but on people charged with common crimes.

Didn't take long...

Yahoo! News - New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals

] "Lawsuits on 12-year-old kids for downloading music,
] duping a mother into paying a $2,000 settlement for her
] kid?" said rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy. "Those scare
] tactics are pure Gestapo."
]
] "File sharing is a reality, and it would seem that the
] labels would do well to learn how to incorporate it into
] their business models somehow," said genre-busting DJ
] Moby in a post on his Web site. "Record companies suing
] 12-year-old girls for file sharing is kind of like
] horse-and-buggy operators suing Henry Ford."

ajc.com | News | Artists blast record companies over lawsuits against downloaders

... In a nation that flaunts its capacities to produce and consume, much of the culture's heat now lies with the ability to cut, paste, clip, sample, quote, recycle, customize and recirculate.

Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers

] Think about it: If you wanted Hail to the Thief and the
] whole album could be downloaded for $5.99, what
] difference does it make that there%u2019s a free album
] from Hootie and the Blowfish somewhere else? If you want
] to download Donnie Darko, who cares if someone else is
] giving away Dances with Wolves? If you want old Firesign
] Theatre recordings, why would the existence of a free
] Henny Youngman collection influence your decision?
] Comparing these decisions to "Coke versus Pepsi"
] denigrates the creative process.

A worthy response to Shirky's recent micropayment article...

Misunderstanding Micropayments - Scott McCloud