Michiko Kakutani calls Fukuyama's new book "tough-minded and edifying."

In "America at the Crossroads," Mr. Fukuyama questions the assertion made by the prominent neoconservatives Mr. Kristol and Robert Kagan in their 2000 book "Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy" that other nations "find they have less to fear" from the daunting power of the United States because "American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality." The problem with this doctrine of "benevolent hegemony," Mr. Fukuyama points out, is that "it is not sufficient that Americans believe in their own good intentions; non-Americans must be convinced of them as well."

That's where the General Memetics Corporation comes into the picture.

Fukuyama writes:

"Bureaucratic tribalism exists in all administrations, but it rose to poisonous levels in Bush's first term. Team loyalty trumped open-minded discussion, and was directly responsible for the administration's failure to plan adequately for the period after the end of active combat."

Fukuyama is getting hell from people for what they perceive as him changing his mind. First, I'm not sure that's completely the case. I was happy to see Saddam go down as well, even though I thought our timing and approach was way off. I also do not think its contradictory to be anti-war and applaud the downfall of Saddam at the same time. You can be happy about ends and still think that means suck. You can also want a particular end, but have a different set of means in mind to get there. However, all these things involve complex arguments. Most people don't like complex arguments that actually require a few levels of thinking. Meaningful ideas are like onions, they must grow a few layers before they are edible and taste good. The outer layers don't have as much flavor, but they can also easily be peeled off.

Since I've followed Fukuyama's works, I'm looking forward to reading his new book and seeing where he goes with it. I don't always agree with him, but I consistently find some great insight in his writings.

This interview is also worth a read. Dare I say it ends on a note that makes Fukuyama look like an intellectual snob?

NYT Review of 'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama

The prankster decides to unwittingly enlist his cat in the fun. The cat has a subdermal pet ID tag, which the attacker rewrites with a virus using commercially available equipment. He then goes to a veterinarian (or the ASPCA), claims it is stray cat and asks for a cat scan. Bingo! The database is infected. Since the vet (or ASPCA) uses this database when creating tags for newly-tagged animals, these new tags can also be infected. When they are later scanned for whatever reason, that database is infected, and so on. Unlike a biological virus, which jumps from animal to animal, an RFID virus spread this way jumps from animal to database to animal.

I ignored this article this morning but its actually pretty cool. SQL injection, CSS, and buffer overflows from data stored in RFIDs is a vector that few people have really looked at. I wonder if the new U.S. Passports are vulnerable?

RFID Viruses: Is your cat infected with a computer virus?

The last three questions of this CircleID interview with Vint Cerf came from MemeStreams founder Tom Cross. Read on...

Q14: Years ago it was often argued that consumers in the United States were confused by domain names in TLDs other than .com… Has the popularity of search engines, and particularly search bars in web browsers, changed playing field in terms of consumer’s ability to use alternate TLDs and the amount of traffic seen by sites in alternate TLDs from U.S. consumers?—by Tom Cross

Vint Cerf: That’s a good question. There isn’t much doubt that “.com” became a kind of symbol for domain name registrations in the US. My honest impression is that search engines have tended to diminish the importance of “guessing” domain names although I understand that a substantial number of people still try that—and if they fail, they likely turn to search mechanisms. A more serious problem has been that JAVA programmers for web pages often don’t know that there are more than seven gTLDs and that many of them have more than three letters. That leads to rejection of email addresses and other entries into web forms that make reference to domain names. We need some educational outreach to fix that.

Q15: Does ICANN view the bulk domain monetization business as a legitimate activity that contributes constructively to the Internet as a communications tool?—by Tom Cross

Vint Cerf: As an engineer, I must admit that this particular “business” has been a surprise for me. However, it seems to fit within the present framework allowed by domain name operation. Advertising seems to be the primary driver here and it is argued by interested parties that advertising is an important form of commercial communication and therefore qualifies as a constructive Internet application.

Tom Cross (CircleID comment): In particular, with regard to question 15, if you replace the words “domain name” with the word “email” you have an answer to why Spam is good for the Internet. One need not make a general indictment of all commercial speech in order to observe that a practice which increases the street price of domain names by several orders of magnitude while providing comparatively little value in return might not be the most effective use of an artificially scarce namespace. This is where your justification for broadening the number of TLDs lies.

Q16: How much of an impact does the bulk domain monetization business have on the revenue that registrars, registries, and ICANN generate from the domain name system?—by Tom Cross

Vint Cerf: That’s a good question and I don’t know the answer. Probably a key metric is the ratio of bulk domain registrations vs. registrations that are related to resolvable addresses leading to web pages, email boxes, etc. Perhaps some of the registrars and registries who are reading these Q&As would be willing to respond to that question.

At the time of this posting, none of the registrars or registries have chimed in.

Answers from Vint Cerf: The Road Ahead for Top-Level Domains

"Whitedust is running a very interesting article with the DEF CON speaker and cryptographer Elonka Dunin. The article covers her career and specifically her involvement with the CIA and other US Military agencies."

Elonka continues to prove why she is the most famous user on MemeStreams. Rumor also has it she has been accepted into the Industrial Memetics Institute...

Go Elonka! I truly cannot wait till I have a copy of her upcoming book. I expect it to be very well recieved by a very wide audience. I think the result will be suprising...

Elonka should wind up on the talk show circut. We need to get Elonka on Oprah after her book comes out! It's imperative.

Slashdot | Interview With Cryptographer Elonka Dunin

Turns out that if someone types "startkeylogger" or "stopkeylogger" in an IRC channel, anyone on the channel using the affected Norton products will be immediately kicked off without warning.

hehehe.... The problem with a lot of automated tools that try to respond to attacks is that an attack can trigger them intentionally. Dropping in a firewall rule to block anyone who port scans you? Why don't I spoof a port scan from your favorite website? Even worse is the idea of automatically retaliating. Retaliating security software is Texan for distributed denial of service zombie.

Leveraging automated attack response

Peter J. Biondi, NJ Assemblyman for District 16, has introduced A1327, a bill to force every ISP and website with comments/forums to demand user identification from every single poster (called an "information content provider" in the bill). The bill also forces all ISP and websites to turn over that information upon demand to anyone who claims to have been defamed, without any legal process or protections:

Well, it appears Seigenthaler's stupid campaign to remove due process protecting the identity of Internet posters, based on the inane assumption that claimants are always good guys who always have a legitimate claim, has gotten traction in the New Jersey legislature. MemeStreams users in New Jersey ought to contact their local representatives and calmly and respectfully explain that for every human problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.

Talking points:
1. Anonymous and pseudononymous speech has a long history of political significance in our country.
2. People seeking to identify Internet users do not always have a legitimate claim. Sometimes they are stalkers or other criminals.
3. Having a court decide whether Internet Services are required to turn over personal information about their customers creates a process which validates the legitimacy of a claim before personal information is forcibly disclosed.
4. Internet message boards are often informal things run by hobbyists. Information collection and reporting requirements create barriers to entry for those seeking to operate message boards, which has a deleterious effect on the free flow of discourse critical to our democracy.

Update: Biondi can be message on the web here. Office phone number: (908) 252-0800. Office address: 1 East High Street, Somerville, NJ 08876

LawGeek: New Jersey Assemblyman introduced bill to force online identification

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Very few people have really paid attention to the banking surveillance. All kinds of transactions are carefully monitored by the feds.

Big Brother: Whats in your wallet?

Masked, plainclothes police carrying assault rifles staged a midnight raid on the country's oldest newspaper and its sister television station early Thursday, burning tens of thousands of newspapers in the most dramatic attack on the press in Kenya's history.

Boing Boing: Media shutdown in Kenya -- TV station, newspaper torched

Bunch of jackass college students get on I285 in Atlanta and actually do the speed limit. Fortunately, even though there were almost several accidents, no one was hurt.

What an amazing act of civil obedience.

A Meditation On the Speed Limit - Google Video

The Global Online Freedom Act is sponsored by Smith and five of his colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans. It would make the free exchange of ideas on the Internet a central concern of US foreign policy.

For example, no US firm could locate its Internet server computers inside one of these countries. Smith said that China or other repressive countries would still be able to subpoena an American Internet provider. But the subpoena would pass through the US legal system.

In addition, the bill would make it illegal for any US company to censor Internet information hosted on a US government website. Thus, Google Inc., which offers censored Internet searches inside China, would be barred from blocking access to the website of the Voice of America or Radio Free Asia.

The bill could mean trouble for US firms like Cisco Systems Inc., which sell Internet switching hardware. It calls on the Commerce Department to set up export controls on such equipment.

Bill aims to fight Net censorship - The Boston Globe