] Homeland Security recently has lost or will be losing its
] well-regarded deputy secretary, James Loy, as well as its
] inspector general, chief security officer, deputy for
] cyber security, director of domestic preparedness,
] undersecretary for protecting critical networks and
] assistant secretary for public affairs.
]
] Observers said other top officials also are considering
] leaving, including Asa Hutchinson, the undersecretary for
] border and transportation security. Hutchinson, who had
] been mentioned as a possible replacement for outgoing
] Secretary Tom Ridge, is contemplating running for
] governor in Arkansas.

Our President, once long ago described as CEO like, continues to show a surprising inability to build solid leadership teams. We've seen Internet startups in the dot-com era that have had less turnover in their senior leadership. Intelligence is not living up to its own name, and the only element of our nation state that appears to have stable leadership, command, or control is the military.

Sleep well!

Homeland Security exodus alarms terrorism experts

I am the operator with my pocket calculator. I am adding and subtracting. I'm controlling and composing.

If you had one of these, you could press a special key and it would play a melody, sort of..

Kraftwerk: 1981 Merchandise pocket calculator

] Mapping the Global Future is the third unclassified
] report prepared by the National Intelligence Council
] (NIC) in the past seven years that takes a long-term view
] of the future. The National Intelligence Council, as a
] center of strategic thinking and over-the-horizon
] analysis for the US Government, takes this as one of its
] key challenges.

China and India will be leading Globalization, which fully appears to be unstoppable. Terrorism, of course, will still be an issue. The spoils of technological advancement will go to the developing nations under the cloud of the global economy. The EU will continue to expand.

I didn't read this in too much depth. Its easy to parse quickly, although many sections are not exactly easy to read due to the authors' desire to make it look pretty.

NIC - 2020 Project

] When you join omidyar.net, you start with a feedback bank
] of 10 points. Your feedback bank can be given away, one
] point at a time, as either positive feedback or negative
] feedback to any member, workspace or discussion.
]
] As you use omidyar.net, your feedback bank will increase,
] based on how you use omidyar.net, and what you do. You
] basically get more "credit" in your feedback bank the
] more you contribute. If you simply "lurk," which means
] you don't ever post a comment or start a discussion,
] etc., your feedback bank will grow far more slowly. If
] you are an active discussion participant, and you
] contribute to a group's workspace, your feedback bank
] will grow more quickly. In fact, even the act of giving
] feedback will help your feedback bank grow. If someone
] gives you positive feedback, both your score and your
] feedback bank will increase by one.

Looks interesting..

Omidyar Network

Hangs on your keychain and turns off virtually any television!

TV-B-Gone From Cornfield Electronics

A sophisticated computer hacker had access to servers at wireless giant T-Mobile for at least a year, which he used to monitor U.S. Secret Service e-mail, obtain customers' passwords and Social Security numbers, and download candid photos taken by Sidekick users, including Hollywood celebrities, SecurityFocus has learned.

This might be the reason that my GPRS Bluetooth Internet does not work anymore. Their network appears to be riddled with holes and bad design. Apparently the only reason I had Internet dial-up access was because they expect the phones to be the point that authorizes access to the network, as opposed to some method that isn't inherently flawed. I can still find ways to get traffic through their current firewalls, although any way a full net connection could be established would require methods that would make it way more inefficient then it was when it worked normally. Right now, imaps and DNS look ups work for instance. That's both a UDP and TCP way to funnel a tunnel right there... Or you could just pay $19 a month for less then 19.2k worth of dropped TCP connections and spotty connectivity you'll use about once every three months.

Lets hear it for major telecommunication providers with ass backwards security. Phbttt..

SecurityFocus - Hacker penetrates T-Mobile systems

This Canadian television show is more funny then anything currently airing in the states. It follows a group of guys who live in a trailer park community as they go about doing crimes in the style of a fake reality show.

Trailer Park Boys

For each week of 2004, we provide a graph of that week's social network activity, the most popular discussions, and the most popular users. Every link between people in the graphs represents at least one blog entry that was read and re-recommended; hence propagated further through the network. The arrows point to sources; they represent the flow of reputation. The users in each graph are those whose memes were re-recommended in the preceding two weeks. Users are colored depending on their popularity that week, with the highest scores getting the brightest colors. Links are only mapped for memes posted on a user's MemeStream. Replies in threads are not graphed.

MemeStreams - Year in Graphs 2004

] David Banach, 38, is the first person charged in a rash
] of recent incidents in which lasers were shined at
] aircraft around the country. Justice Department officials
] said they do not suspect terrorism in any of the cases,
] but said Banach's arrest shows how seriously they take
] the matter.

I've heard it said on the news terrorism was suspected in these cases by the FBI. I myself have been suspecting stupidity.

] After being taken to an FBI office and given a
] lie-detector test, Banach said he had hit the jet with
] the beam, court documents say. During questioning by the
] FBI, Banach showed an agent his laser. After the agent
] switched it on, Banach warned him "not to shine the laser
] in his eyes because it could blind him," the court
] documents say.

My suspicions seem confirmed by this man's statement. Don't look at the laser. Well, don't aim the laser somewhere it might meet someone's eyes.. Idiot. That is a very clear case of putting others at risk by not thinking. I'm not saying this guy should wind up in jail, but he was posing a risk to aviation, and a visible example of some sort should be made. Making someone look stupid that is doing something stupid using the mass media is a good way to go about it. Hopefully it ends there.

Green lasers are way more likely to harm the human eye then those red ones most people have because of the way your eyes see the color spectrum. The big brother to those little red laser pointers can to do very significant damage to the eye. If these risks are not seen by someone playing with even a weak laser, then they should be educated. We also don't know the specifics of what he had. A user on this system had a green laser that was strong enough to light a cigarette with, I know because I lit several with it. Blind pilots guiding a major airliner isn't something anyone would care to see, and that can happen, easily and accidentally.

Comments have been made regarding the 4th Amendment and the Patriot Act.. I could be missing details, but it seems like the Patriot Act was only what they charged him under, not how they collected evidence. I await to see how it is handled in the court. A sentence maximum of 25 years would actually make sense in a case where it was the expressed goal to take out the aircraft and its passengers. In a case of being stupid, I would assume the maximum would not apply. I could be wrong.

If a police helicopter looking for places shooting lasers at aircraft found itself being shot with a laser, well, that's not very intrusive. I don't see a 4th Admendment angle here. The search was in public space the searchers are designated to protect. The seizure occurred in a situation where the specific place and the specific item were identified. That is like a cop car driving around your neighborhood looking for people shooting bullets at cars, and finding itself shot at.

NJ Man charged with aiming laser at aircraft

] A few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI
] agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked
] to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark
] Lombardi, an artist who had committed suicide the year
] before. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper,
] Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and
] arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and
] international terrorism.

Something to listen to while you look through the year in graphs.

NPR : The 'Conspiracy' Art of Mark Lombardi