... "There is no sector that illustrates creative destruction so effectively." ... [T]elecommunications is no stranger to turmoil after a meltdown at upstart carriers and established equipment makers resulted in the loss of more than 500,000 jobs worldwide in the last two years. ... With the spot price of bandwidth down 90 percent and bound to fall further, it made no economic sense for carriers to make long-term leasing arrangements. ... Global Crossing made it clear that its accounting had been accepted by Arthur Andersen. ... Global Crossing continues to deny that it has done anything wrong. [explanation of IRU sales] ... A spokesman for Flag [Telecom] declined to say whether his company had any dealings with Global Crossing. ... There will it all end? One clue may lie in the history of the nation's railroads ...

The Fiber Optic Fantasy Slips Away

Several chapters from this book are freely available in PDF. Here are the titles:

* Building a Multiuser Sequence Analysis Facility Using Freeware
* Flexible Sequence Similarity Searching with the FASTA3 Program Package
* Annonating Sequence Data Using Genotator
* Computer Resources for the Clinical and Molecular Geneticist
* Computing with DNA
* Design and Implementation of an Introductory Course for Computer Applications in Molecular Biology and Genetics

Bioinformatics Methods and Protocols | Humana Press

In this paper, we describe the architecture of MusArt ... metadata creation; theme extraction; dynamic time-warping search engine; stochastic search engine ...

The MusArt Music-Retrieval System: An Overview

"Modern societies face a cruel paradox: Fast-paced technological and economic innovations may deliver unrivalled prosperity, but they also render rich nations vulnerable to crippling, unanticipated attacks. By relying on intricate networks and concentrating vital assets in small geographic clusters, advanced Western nations only amplify the destructive power of terrorists"

... "We've realized, belatedly, that our societies are wide-open targets for terrorists. We're easy prey because of two key trends: First, the growing technological capacity of small groups and individuals to destroy things and people; and, second, the increasing vulnerability of our economic and technological systems to carefully aimed attacks. While commentators have devoted considerable ink and airtime to the first of these trends, they've paid far less attention to the second, and they've virtually ignored their combined effect. Together, these two trends facilitate a new and sinister kind of mass violence -- a "complex terrorism" that threatens modern, high-tech societies in the world's most developed nations."

The Rise of Complex Terrorism | Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2002

SHOCK: A Peer-to-Peer System for Harvesting Community Knowledge

This is a 43-slide presentation given by Eytan Adar of HP's Information Dynamics Lab as the closing keynote speech at the Internet2 P2P workshop on 30 Jan 2002. Here's the closing summary slide, reformatted:

"Shock lets you find members in a community that: have expertise, and match specific criteria. Create and find interesting discussions, all while providing privacy/anonymity for profiles and messages. It's integrated into work practice and offers automatic profile generation and update. With a simple client installation and configuration, it is flexible with a rich set of profile attributes. It lowers participation costs to increase participation and usage."

I recommend the PowerPoint version, but if you absolutely can't view that, see it in HTML at

http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/20020130-P2P-Adar.htm

Social Harvesting of Community Knowledge [PPT]

A good source of daily news and analysis on the top security issues. Today's stories include an NRC report on security at nuclear plants; Baghdad's conditional acceptance of weapons inspections; funding for protection against biowarfare; selection of the Yucca Mountain Site.

NTI was created by former Georgia Senator and Georgia Tech professor Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, founder of CNN and vice chairman of AOLTW.

Global Security Newswire | Nuclear Threat Initiative

I've had David Brin's _The Transparent Society_ on my bookshelf for years now. It's worth re-reading.

"... the trade-offs are false dichotomies ... [Safety and freedom] go together. All it takes is breaking the stupid notion of dichotomies and trade-offs."

... "The number of cameras in private hands is expanding vastly compared to the number owned by government. ... People are profoundly more empowered by technology than hindered by it." [Do I sense a Steve Mann influence here?]

... "The aggregate of people in a given community will catch the local thugs and power abusers through small acts of revelation and investigation. It's the aggregate that's wise."

... "Teens need a sense of being able to get away. Really away."

... "[C]ommon people understand a hierarchy of privacy needs."

Interview: David Brin's Naked Truth About Privacy

Talk about an Olympic scandal waiting to happen ... just wait until the judges' votes are submitted to the central ballot box over Wi-Fi LANs.

I think the state of Florida has some punch card machines they'd like to unload ... perhaps the IOC would be interested.

It appears the official word from IOC on Wi-Fi LANs is "they're not banned yet." Not yet? What exactly will it take?

Olympics committee to explore Wi-Fi LANs

Many of the major IT zines are running a story on this, but none I read linked directly to the paper. Here it is.

Abstract: The current IEEE 802.11 standard is known to lack any viable security mechanism. However, the IEEE has proposed a long term security architecture for 802.11 which they call the Robust Security Network (RSN). RSN utilizes the recent IEEE 802.1X standard as a basis for access control, authentication, and key management. In this paper, we present two security problems (session hijacking, and the establishment of a man-in-the-middle) we have identified and tested operationally. The existence of these flaws highlight several basic design flaws within 802.1X and its combination with 802.11. As a result, we conclude that the current combination of the IEEE 802.1X and 802.11 standards does not provide a sufficient level of security, nor will it ever without significant changes.

Available online in Acrobat PDF, 236 KB, 12 pages.

I can't help but think that the IEEE's "RSN" will soon be recast by its critics as "Real Soon Now."

An Initial Security Analysis of the IEEE 802.1X Standard [PDF]

The latest in an annual collection of essays from the UK's National Institute for Medical Research. Includes an essay on the role of science in society; an introduction to stem cells, their production, and their promise; and an essay about the dangers posed by overuse of antibiotics. You can also access the essays from years past, back to 1995. (1997 includes articles on xenotransplantation and the DNA of parisites.)

Mill Hill Essays 2001 | National Institute for Medical Research