SUMMER SOLSTICE....(SUMMER) JUN 21 2006 726 AM EST - 1226 UTC

It's a half-hour late, but happy Solstice everyone!

Earth's Seasons - Equinoxes and Solstices - 2005-2020

Integrating powerful open source software such as Nagios, RRDTool and MySQL with our own open source projects, GroundWork Monitor Professional is the first comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring and management solution to achieve the difficult balance between functionality and affordability.

Has anyone here had any experience deploying GroundWork in an enterprise environment, using either the Professional or Open Source versions? I'm doing some research on using it in combination with Mon to weave together a NMS strategy. If anyone has any feedback, I'd love to hear it..

GroundWork - Open Source IT Management

Funny movie about an Indian call center.

CALL CENTER MOVIE

Open Notepad and type in this phrase, without the quote marks and with no carriage return: "Bush hid the facts". Now save it and open it again.

Seriously, try this before you click through this link.

27B Stroke 6: Fun MS bug.

This bold new series takes the paranormal/crime-solving phenomenon one step further by following psychic profiler Carla Baron, medium John J. Oliver, and paranormal investigator Patrick Burns as they visit "haunted" crime scenes. Working together, can this unconventional team of experts find clues that will provide new insights into real-life cases that have gone cold?

Well, this isn't something I expected.. Patrick, who is the MemeStreams user Laughing Boy and a PhreakNIC regular attendee, has a television show premiering tonight on CourtTV, at 10:30pm. In the picture on the show's page, he is the one of the right.

I don't buy into this stuff... But I know what I'll be watching tonight. Way to go Laughing Boy! For those in Atlanta, on Patrick's website, information about a premier party can be found.

A number of us have known Patrick for several years now. He always showed up at PhreakNIC with his laser rig, which was damn impressive. I don't remember the specs, but it was strong enough to light a cigarette with. It blew up one year.

I'm glad to see things are going good for him. The New York Post gave the show a good review:

IF you're a fan of "Psychic Detectives" - and really, which loony among us isn't? - and also of the phenomenally successful "Cold Case," then do I have a show for you.

"Haunting Evidence" combines the best of both shows: Good-looking, blond, female detective among good-looking male detectives. The only difference is that instead of finding clues in carpet fibers, they see ghosts.

When all else fails, bring in the psychic-detective cold-case squad! Together they work the crime scene. (Don't look for swabs and tweezers here - it's more like eyes rolling back into the head and cold spots!)

Haunting Evidence on Court TV

The story about phone number stations posted to Craigslist has been mentioned here before. This is one of those interesting little mysteries. The hearsay only adds to it..

People have suggested that the messages are pranks, or are some sort of commercial gimmick. But at least one person, who is in the U.S. military, says he sent a copy of one of the messages up the chain of command and was promptly notified that it was classified and he wasn’t cleared to know anything further about it. I don’t know whether this is standard operating procedure for any encrypted message or whether it indicates that there’s something to be found.

Third phone numbers station: 678-248-2352 - Homeland Stupidity

The is one of those rare memes sure to send numerous MemeStreams users into a frenzied state. Javanco was the much loved computer and electronics store in Nashville. When we needed something, we all went there first. The entire staff was awesome. Javanco was one of the heavenly bodies the Nashville hacking scene rotated around. It had quite a history. At one point Sun attempted to sue them when some lawyer searching for trademark abuse saw "Javanco" as "Java n' co", even though it was a family name. At another point, radioactive nuclear waste was found in the basement, after accidently being sold to them with some electronic equipment. Many, many stories. Sadness was felt by all when they closed.

So, the grand news is this.. Jesica has reopened the business as The BotShop, this time selling robot supplies. I could not be more pleased to see this. ROBOTS!

First and foremost...we love robots! We've been selling the OOPic controller for years. And more than anything, we love to hear what our customers are creating with them. It's always something new and exciting, and that's what keeps it fun. Now, on to the company history.

When I went to work for my father in 1996, I began a journey I would have never imagined. The company was started in 1957 by my grandfather, T. Javan Keith, an exceptional company that stood the test of time. The company began as a surplus dealer for a vast array of electronic components and began trading computer products in the 60's.

My father, Javan Keith, opened the computer department in the mid 80's. The company began custom building systems back then. My father stuck to his beliefs that using upgradeable parts to extend the life of the system and avoiding an assembly line created a computer unsurpassed in quality. He also believed that having the most knowledgeable technicians possible kept our level of quality where it should be.

My father was an exceptional man, more concerned with taking care of others' needs than his own. This was reflected in the way he did business. He would never stock anything he wouldn't have himself. Anything sold by us was always something he'd feel comfortable selling to his own family.

In 1999, we sold our long time location at 12th Avenue South in Nashville and moved to Cannery Row. The company discontinued its electronic stock, upgrading itself to "strictly computer." Our in store and on site service departments flourished. We gained notoriety for our exceptional Audio and Video editing systems. We continued to be the place to go for technical expertise and great selection of high quality, low cost cables and adapters.

I became the General Manager and Vice President in January 2001. In September 2001, Dad passed away. I was in the process of doing what was necessary to keep the company in the family. Unfortunately, I was not able to do so. The company was sold in May of 2002. Out of my hands, the company closed shortly thereafter.

As the technology industry is all I know, it only made sense to stay. I'd also been selling robot parts, particularly OOPics for years and just couldn't let it go. Robot stuff is just too much fun.

We hope to provide the quality parts and great pricing for which Grandpa, Dad and the family business were known.

Thank you so much for your support.
Jesica Flowers

The BotShop | Robot Parts and Supplies

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.

I wonder what their MySpace account is. I wonder if they want to be my friend...

New Scientist Technology - Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

This just in from Acidus. There is an AJAX/XSS worm carving through Yahoo! Mail.

I just received an email with an html attachment, on a yahoo account.

When I opened the mail, yahoo automatically displayed the html, and executed
the code within. What the hell. =) It forwarded the message to my contacts
list, (or some other set of addresses, dunno,) and redirected my browser to
a website.

XSS-based worm spreading through Yahoo's web mail. Looking an an email message causes the XSS to run. The XSS uses AJAX to make an HTTP POST to the URL on YAhoo for sending mail. The worm does this to send email containing the worm to everyone in your address book and sends your address book to a 3rd party. Probably to sell your email address to spammers.

This is a great example of XSS+AJAX=BAD! Even if Yahoo mail doesn't use AJAX, the XSS can use AJAX to make requests for you using your credentials.

Acidus has given presentations outlining exactly this threat several times in the past year at conventions including Outerz0ne, Shmoocon, and Blackhat Federal. Were we the only ones paying attention to him?

This is downright innocent and harmless when compared to some of the uses for this type of XSS exploit that he was concerned with.

XSS worm spreading through Yahoo webmail

Of course, the neoconservatives retain well-known figures like Charles Krauthammer. But when it comes to true depth or originality of thought, Krauthammer and other neoconservatives like Richard Perle might also be described as straw hyenas -- prominent and strikingly vicious features of the American foreign policy ecology, but hardly intellectual lions.

Fukuyama's strongest claim to have pursued for many years a trajectory quite different from the neoconservatives is provided by his best book, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, published in 1996. This work is distinguished not just by its scholarship and sophistication, but by the breadth of its sympathy and understanding for a range of very different cultural, social and economic traditions.

As was said here years ago, and even now, Trust remains his best book.

Truly deep and radical thought in the foreign-policy-oriented sections of US academia and think tanks is deadened both by the hegemony of American civic-nationalist ideology and by the interlacing of these institutions with the organs of government. As a result, too many formally independent American experts in fact tailor their every statement so that it can never be held against them by a possible political patron or at a Senate confirmation hearing.

The training in self-censorship starts, sensibly enough, with risque pictures on MySpace. It produces, decades later, the kind of silence that leads to violent insurgency halfway around the world.

If Fukuyama wants to emerge as the great public figure that his intellect and learning qualify him to be, he needs to gamble: to risk short-term unpopularity and abuse in the belief that events ill eventually vindicate his stance.

Breaking with the neoconservatives is controversial but "safe"; challenging the basic assumptions of the US foreign policy elite on Russia and other key issues is not safe at all.

Western intellectuals and journalists instinctively turn to such liberal intellectuals, rather than either officials or ordinary people, for analysis of their societies. At best, this produces a copulation of illusions, with Westerners and their local interlocutors passionately misconceiving together. At worst, it lays us open to deliberate misinformation and manipulation by a range of would-be Chalabis.

This Anatol Lieven guy has a knack for phrases.

I am compelled here to reference Alan Kay:

If the children are being instructed in the pink plane, can we teach them to think in the blue plane and live in a pink-plane society?

The Two Fukuyamas | The National Interest