The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences.

If you like this book, you might also be interested in Why to Not Not Start a Startup, a recent essay by the author of the book.

The big mystery to me is: why don't more people start startups? If nearly everyone who does it prefers it to a regular job, and a significant percentage get rich, why doesn't everyone want to do this?

There have been discussions about Y Combinator here in the (recent) past.

Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

I am not worried about the rise of the cultural conservatives. I am worried about the disappearance of an internationalist, pro-American business elite.

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement? Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Samantha Test, 27, is the proud owner of the Cadillac of area codes, San Francisco's 415. It has enormous cachet.

The data show that what matters on the happiness front is not how much money you have, but whether you have more (or less) at any given time than everyone else.

The mediocrity of American public schools ... breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids away from the things they're supposed to be learning.

Time abuse is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. It is therefore impossible to cure a person of time abuse by actually managing his time. Instead, you must understand your time abuser's need for control and fear of evaluations.

The most pervasive cultural characteristic influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete is the level of trust or cooperative behavior based upon shared norms.

Giant feral pigs have long been the stuff of rural legends. And now they are the stuff of faked photos and gullible journalism...

Those who piled on to this story last weekend may be interested. Others, not so much.

HOG WASHED!

“This may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society,” said Linton Wells II, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration at the Pentagon. “It has gotten the attention of a lot of people.”

Most of this article consists of explaining the concept of a botnet attack. So I went searching for more substantive material.

Arbor Networks offers a brief summary; some of the tidbits show up almost verbatim in the Markoff piece. A more formal analysis is apparently still in the works.

This one is for Tom:

[Estonia] has a nearly model economy, based in large part on the teachings of Milton Friedman who favored free markets unfettered by state control.

Kevin Poulsen thinks the press is overexcited:

Here's THREAT LEVEL's top-10 favorite phrases that have surfaced in the media so far (exclamation points added):

Cyberwarfare!
Online Combat!
Cyber 'Nuclear Winter'!
Massive Panic!
Online Terrorism!
A New Battle Tactic!
Unprecedented!
An Internet Riot!
Cyber-Terrorism!
Havoc!

Details may not be forthcoming just yet:

I do not want to disclose facts that could damage operations that the people on the ground are working on. Again, this is the sad fact working with incidents like this, you just can't correct misconceptions in real-time, no matter how much you would like.

In Estonia, War Fears Turn to Cyberspace

I think you'll enjoy this narrated slideshow from Clive Crook's recently completed "safari by air over Namibia’s haunting sands", coastline, and rugged mountains.

Can you imagine a more pitiable fate? Your ship reels broken in the storm. Implacable winds and currents run you aground, but by a miracle, you do not drown. You overcome and drag yourself exhausted onto the sand—and then realize that drowning is not the worst way to go. You cheated death, only to find yourself cast upon one of the harshest places on Earth. You can choose to stay where you are and die of exposure or thirst. Or else you can trek hopelessly into the endless desert, to perish there instead.

Above Namibia - A Slideshow by Clive Crook

This photojournal, by Michael Kamber of the New York Times, is well worth your time. A link to the accompanying article is provided at the end of the segment:

The ground exploded under an ashen sky at dawn. Dust, dirt, blood and military equipment filled the air, clearing after several seconds to reveal a frenzied scene of horror.

Where Sgt. Justin D. Wisniewski, 22, had just been standing there was now a crater five feet wide and three feet deep. His body lay nearby. The wounded were scattered around him.

The soldiers swore.

“It was Ski,” one said, using the sergeant’s nickname.

...

Sergeant Simonovich continued to kneel alone.

“I’m worried about my guy out front, Sergeant Wisniewski,” he said. His Ohio accent was thick enough to sound southern. Blood had splattered his face, which was bruised but intact. “I have a question,” he said, pointing to the left side of his head. “Is my ear still there?”

A Deadly Search for Missing Soldiers

This pointed rejection of Western Europe might even be seen as a poignant metaphor for contemporary Europe as a whole. The large, industrialized nations magnanimously invite their poorer but more numerous eastern cousins to join their party, and offer to pay the bill, only to discover themselves locked out in the garden while their new friends complain about the quality of the liquor and the arrogance of the hosts.

The Politics of Eurovision

While we're on the subject: Founders At Work has come up several times recently:

Ultimately, these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence.

Question of the Day

In many respects this is a story about carelessness and about how even the best of intentions can go perilously awry.

"I cannot tell you the selfish pleasure I get out of working with President Clinton," Mr. Bush said.

A survey of 1,500 British retirees found that 45 percent said they stayed at one job too long.
"To avoid similar grief, write out your current regrets and what you wish you had done instead."

"People said, ‘This goose has no owner.’ "

"Now we all just have to figure out what to do next."

American officials hope that Afghanistan’s drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia.

"There’s no sugar-coating this ... at the end of the day, it’s a high risk venture."

"What I would like is for people to look back in 10 years and say, ‘Yeah, these guys got it right.’ "

"One of the most rewarding things is when people say, ‘I really don’t like the outcome, but the process was fair.’ "

"It sounded nutty at first," Mr. Monroe recalled, "but the more and more you get into it, the more sense it makes."

... the ideas espoused by Mr. Falwell and Mr. Wolfowitz, though both were valued on the right, did not mesh; they were unconnected, spokes in the large conservative wheel ...

"Red flags should have been waving."

We have different words for art and idea because they are two different things.

Economists use the term "survivorship bias" to describe the recollection of past moments by what has survived into the present, filtering out whatever elements did not bear fruit.

"We’ve reached a tipping point. It’s ... [ Read More (1.9k in body) ]

After you've read Why I'm Banned in the USA and watched How Rudy Will Make GWB Look Good, complete the trilogy by listening to this show.

The original version of this episode won a Peabody award in 2006.

The right of habeas corpus has been a part of our country's legal tradition longer than we've actually been a country. It means that our government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the War on Terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that prisoners should not be covered by habeas—or even by the Geneva Conventions—because they're the most fearsome enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?

From the Peabody web site:

This report, about the denial of habeas corpus to terrorism suspects, focuses on the stories of two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and explains why the right is so fundamental in American law.

You can stream the new episode and download the original one.

Habeas Schmabeas 2007 | This American Life, Episode 331