The creator of the popular online file-swapping software BitTorrent has lined up $8.75 million in financing from a venture capital firm in a bid to build his software into a commercial distribution tool for media companies.

BitTorrent Lands $8.75 Million in Funding - Yahoo! News

LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wash., has successfully tested a robot climber — a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon.

Furthermore, the company has created LiftPort Nanotech in Millville, N.J. That company is delving into mass production of nanotubes, focused on creating super-strong materials, “because, ultimately, that’s what leads to a long and strong ribbon in the sky,” Laine said.

“We’re not a PowerPoint company anymore … we’re a hardware company,” Laine concluded.

This is great to hear. Michael Laine did several very interesting talks at DragonCon this year. I was quite impressed. Hopefully everything will work well for them as they push their climber designs to the one mile limit.

Space elevator robot passes 1,000-foot mark - Space.com - MSNBC.com

An Internet video newscast called the Voice of the Caliphate was broadcast for the first time on Monday, purporting to be a production of al Qaeda and featuring an anchorman who wore a black ski mask and an ammunition belt.

And the early adopters of video blogging are [drum roll] al Qaeda.. This is clearly a poke at Voice of America...

The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq and expressed happiness about recent hurricanes in the United States. A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.

Purported al Qaeda Newscast Debuts on Internet

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

This is really interesting, but one suspects wildly inaccurate. Dolphins that are trained to shoot people? Really? Even if its true I find it hard to believe that the Navy would have left them armed as the storm approached. They tend to have fairly careful security proceedures.

The news this past week has been unusually surreal. Between attack dolphins and weather machines, its getting a little hard to take anything seriously. Ok, so I wasn't taking the weather machine thing seriously. Maybe I took the SuicideGirls thing a little two seriously... But in the face of killer dolphins, I think I have some leeway to work with. I love these moments in time when everything sounds a little closer to fiction then reality. Somewhere between weather machines and killer dolphins, I hope to find the balance.

Update: The Navy denies trailing dolphins to attack humans or deliver bombs to ships. That means no suicide bomber dolphins.

The Observer | Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

According to the Washington Post, the new anti-obscenity squad, which will consist of eight agents, a supervisor, and assorted staff, will be responsible for accumulating evidence to use against those that produce and distribute criminally obscene content. So what constitutes criminal obscenity, and how does that relate to our first amendment rights? Under current American law, the Miller test is the means by which the courts determine if content is obscene and consequently not eligible for first amendment protection. The Miller test evaluates the literary, artistic, political, and scientific value of content as well as contemporary community standards. If content or expression is well within accepted community standards or it has intrinsic value, it does not constitute criminal obscenity. According to an electronic memo from FBI headquarters, established legal precedents indicate that conviction is most likely in cases where the content "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior."

The War Against Porn rages on, to the dismay of anyone with a realistic view of civil liberties and free expression. I'm all for hanging folks from the trees that exploit minors. Sure, lets pull the stockades out of the basement, line them on both sides of the DC Mall, and stick the child pornographers in them. Of course, we do have the 8th amendment, so I'm not about to hop into the car with a bushel of tomatoes and head to DC..

Someone at the Justice Department needs to read over the 1st. Wait, correction.. Several people at the Justice Department needs to have sessions similar to what they did to the guy in A Clockwork Orange. Rather than pure scenes of violence, they need to be shown cops breaking up raves, the Waco raid, feds seizing fetish pornography collections, all manors of law enforcement doing illegal searches, et cetera, you get the idea.. Occasionally the soundtrack of explosions and screeching metal would stop, some heavenly music would start, the 1st and 4th amendment would scroll on the screen, they would be given a chance to blink, and then the cycle would repeat. After their "session", they would be forced to sit in a room for an hour to contemplate, its walls lined with plasma displays showing the events of September 11th, the Oklahoma City bombings, rooms filled with meth heads, et cetera. Maybe they would come out the other side with an image in their heads of what's important.

If you want to post pictures of yourself getting peed on, go for it. I have nothing against consenting adults doing nasty fetish crap, and neither should anyone else. Its a form of expression. Granted, its one focused on sexuality, rather than the more palatable ideas we are used to defending. Its still a form of expression, that many consider art, and the people's right to do it and share it should be protected. I jus... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Justice Department in War Against Porn, chilling effects hit SuicideGirls

Since Katrina, Stevens has been in newspapers across the country where he was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying the Yakuza Mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. He was a guest on Coast to Coast, a late night radio show that conducts call-in discussions on everything from bizarre weather patterns to alien abductions. On Wednesday, Stevens was interviewed by Fox News firebrand Bill O'Reilly.

Woah. I don't even know where to begin. I'm feeling a little lost here. I love a good conspiracy theory. I like to share them, like jokes. Every telling, there is always critique, and usually someone comes up with a good idea to add to them.

The Yakuza Mafia using Russian-made weather manipulation equipment? That's unique. The Russian technology angle makes sense to me. The Yakuza angle sounds good too, but using Bin Laden as an actor seems more reasonable. This might simply be because I like the image of him sitting on his magic carpet floating in the sky and controlling the weather. Its more amusing. The Hiroshima motivation thing seems a little thick.. Of course, my idea is weakened by the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, Bin Laden does not have a magic carpet.

No matter which way you look at it, this conspiracy theory needs development. In this day and age any conspiracy theory has to involve the Bush family, and if at all possible, Skull and Bones. Every conspiracy theory needs a masonic tie-in. Its mandatory, and that's clean way to do it. The nature of this one does not require brining in the second coming of Christ, aliens, or the end of the world. This one is clearly geo-political in nature.

At several points recently when discussing the government's response to Katrina, I've joked that the intelligence agencies could not have prevented the hurricane, leaving them off the hook for once. Well, maybe I was wrong.

"There's a chess game going on in the sky," Stevens said. "It affects each and every one of us. It is the one common thread that binds us all together."

"The Soviets boasted of their geoengineering capabilities; these impressive accomplishments must be taken at face value simply because we are observing weather events that simply have never occurred before, never!" Stevens wrote on his Web site. "The evidence of these weapons at work found within the clouds overhead is simply unmistakable. These patterns and odd geometric shapes seen in our skies, each and every day, are clear and present evidence that our weather has been stolen from us, only to be used by those whose designs for humanity are rarely in alignment with that of the common man."

So maybe he is nuts. I think he should be supported in his research. Why not? I've been nuts before, and I've come up with some pretty good ideas when going nuts. I think his progress should be documented. It could be interesting. Entertaining at the very least. Who knows? He might just wind up saving the world.

All of you watching the news tracking Rita, just close your eyes, and picture Collin Powell presenting this guy's research in front of the UN Security Council. If there is nothing you can do, laughing in the face of disaster isn't that bad of an approach.

Weather Wars Website by Scott Stevens

Weather Warfare - Best Conspiracy Theory of 2005

The Phuture of Phishing
by: Billy Hoffman

Phishing, or the act of tricking a user into revealing confidential information, is a big business. In this presentation, we first discuss what phishing is and how it works. We examine the current tricks and techniques that phishers use to steal information such as CSS positioning, host obfuscation, and malware. Next we evaluate the pros and cons of current phishing defensives such as blacklisting, country reconciliation, and reputation systems. Then we discuss a coming trend in phishing attacks: using cross-site scripting (XSS) to embed a phishing site inside the victim website. Finally, we discuss how XSS/Phishing attacks circumvent most existing defenses, and we demonstrate a free defensive tool, LineBreaker, which can actively detect and stop these types of attacks.

SPI Dynamics is hosting Acidus's Toorcon presentation and is hosting his free defensive tool. The above summary isn't on the page yet, but you can download the source code/Jar of LineBreaker, and a PDF or Flash version of the presentation form the memed website.

Acidus quoted Tom Cross in the presentation when discussing the offensive tool (which cannot be downloaded):

Tom Cross: This technology has no legitimate use.

I assure you that's a complement. Its in reference to an offensive tool. Industrial Memetics is proud to have Billy around.

Kudos to SPI Dynamics for supporting Billy's current research.

Phuture Of Phishing: Presentation and code

Almost all of the south-eastern oil refineries that were not in the path of Katrina are in the path of Rita. This is further proof that Bin Laden has a weather machine and he is using it against America.

Think I'm crazy? Well, if I'm crazy, than the Bush Administration is crazy too! They know about the weather machine!

In a previous briefing, Secretary of State Colin Powell described the alleged weather machine as "capable of massive weather disruption through use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's). These UAV's disperse snow-generating chemicals pollutants into the clouds..." said Powell. Powell described this as "a material breach of UN Resolutions." Today Colin Powell will present further evidence today that Iraq is evading inspectors by moving the massive weather-disrupting satellite dishes to remote locations, sometimes just hours before inspector visits.

I think this proves once and for all that there was an Iraq/al-Qaida connection...

Stop laughing! No one will be laughing when this slams into the coast of Texas...

Map: Refineries in the path of Rita (GIF)

If President Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he should make a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation.

Well, here it is.. The first new Friedman column behind the New York Times subscription wall.

Goodbye Tom! I refuse to pay $7.95 a month when there is only one columnist I regularly read there. I might pay $10 a year for "FriedmanSelect", if half of the money made it directly to Tom. All NYT's other content, I usually find via discussions taking place on the web. Those conversations all start to go dead today. The New York Times voice of commentary is about to get really, really, really soft and quiet.

Hopefully this will not last long. Thomas, if you can hear me, PUT UP A BLOG. PLEASE!!

Thomas Friedman's Latest Article | NYT Subscription Wall Goes Up

The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

Think we will ever hear a final official number for how many tax payer dollars were misappropriated due to this guy?

Why trim the pork when you can just get rid of the pigs? Haw haw haw..

Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe