] Here's the idea: you promise a voter 50 euros (31 pounds)
] to cast their ballot for your candidate, send them into
] the booth with a 3G phone, they send a picture via the
] phone proving that they have voted as instructed and then
] they get the cash.

The T-Mobile Election Rigger

] THE IDEA, says Sgt. Mark Hadsell, is to break a subject’s
] resistance by annoying that person with what some Iraqis
] would consider culturally offensive music. The songs that
] are being played include “Bodies” from the Vin Diesel
] “XXX” movie soundtrack and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
] “These people haven’t heard heavy metal before,” he
] explains. “They can’t take it.” Few people could put up
] with the sledgehammer riffs of Metallica, and kiddie
] songs aren’t that much easier, especially when selections
] include the “Sesame Street” theme and some of purple
] dinosaur Barney’s crooning.

All those methods would work on me too.

Psyop: The Love's Not Mutual

] The Tennessee Department of Health announced Thursday the
] first suspected case of severe acute respiratory
] syndrome, or SARS, in a Tennessee resident.

KnoxNews: SARS in Tennessee

From Lawerence Lessig's blog:

] About a month ago, I started sounding optimistic about
] getting a bill introduced into Congress to help right the
] wrong of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. I
] was optimistic because we had found a congressperson who
] was willing to introduce the bill. But after pressure
] from lobbyists, that is no longer clear. And so we need
] help to counter that pressure, and to find a sponsor.
]
] The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has
] been published, the copyright owner must pay a $1
] maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee,
] then the copyright continues. If the owner fails to pay
] the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on
] historical precedent, we expect 98% of copyrighted works
] would pass into the public domain after just 50 years.
] They could keep Mickey for as long as Congress lets them.
] But we would get a public domain.
]
] The need for even this tiny compromise is becoming
] clearer each day. Stanford's library, for example, has
] announced a digitization project to digitize books. They
] have technology that can scan 1,000 pages an hour. They
] are chafing for the opportunity to scan books that are
] no longer commercially available, but that under current
] law remain under copyright. If this proposal passed, 98%
] of books just 50 years old could be scanned and posted
] for free on the Internet.
]
] Stanford is not alone. This has long been a passion of
] Brewster Kahle and his Internet Archive, as well as many
] others. Yet because of current copyright regulation,
] these projects — that would lower the cost of libraries
] dramatically, and spread knowledge broadly — cannot go
] forward. The costs of clearing the rights to makes these
] works available is extraordinarily high.
]
] Yet the lobbyists are fighting even this tiny compromise.
] The public domain is competition for them. They will fight
] this competition. And so long as they have the lobbyists,
] and the rest of the world remains silent, they will win.
]
] We need to your help to resist this now. At this stage,
] all that we need is one congressperson to introduce the
] proposal. Whether you call it the Copyright Term
] Deregulation Act, or the Public Domain Enhancement Act,
] doesn’t matter. What matters is finding a sponsor, so we
] can begin to show the world just how extreme this debate
] has become: They have already gotten a 20 year extension
] of all copyrights just so 2% can benefit; and now they
] object to paying just $1 for that benefit, so that no one
] else might compete with them.
]
] If you believe this is wrong, here are two things you
] can do: (1) Write your Representative and Senator, and
] ask them to be the first to introduce this statute; point
] them to the website http://eldred.cc, and ask them to
] respond. And even more importantly, (2) blog this request,
] so that others who think about these issues can get
] involved in the conversation.
]
] I have given this movement as much as I can over the past
] four years, and I will not stop until we have reclaimed
] the public domain. Stay tuned for more litigation, and
] more ideas from Creative Commons. But please take these
] two steps now.

This could happen. Its a completely reasonable bill. Write your Representative and Senator, I will be.

Update: Snail mail has been sent..

Lawrence Lessig | We need your help

] We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes...
] Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, and
] Stomach Ache.

Cool!

Welcome to GIANTmicrobes!

] North Korea is training around 100 computer hackers each
] year to boost its cyber-warfare capabilities, pushing the
] South to fortify its own computer security, a South
] Korean military official said on Friday.

The main reason this seems offbase to me is the "100 hackers each year" thing. I have a feeling tracking down 100 computers in North Korea is a hell of a challenge, let alone 100 hax0rs with clue. Not to mention a decent net connection for them to search out tools over, keep up to date on discovered sploits, etc.. The thing that is going to make a cracker a danger isn't a set selection of skills that the other 99 also have, but rather the ability to think on their feet and learn on the fly.. That takes time and experience. I see this situation being very hard to cultivate, as it would require their cracker-corps to be constantally working on their skills, finding new sploits, etc.. It would require access to many of the devices/software they are interested in hacking, which is going to be nearly impossible for them.. I immagine the resources for this all are very slim..

That number also leads to believe that their intent is not to have their hacker-corps working out of North Korea, but rather send them out of the country and have them work elsewhere. North Korea proper would likely be very easy to cut off from the rest of the world in the event of a conflict, rendering their hacker teams useless.. They would have to be stationed in many places outside North Korea to be useful.

Now, if North Korea had crackers spread out all over the globe, working toegether to form some l33t North Korea cracker-corps, this might be logical.. Otherwise, its very unlikely to exist, or be a real danger. Of course, that also implies that North Korea has their shit together, something I don't think is likely. Its more likely that they have 100 people in North Korea who are being called "hackers" and being "trained on hacking", even though most of them have never actually used a real computer for more then 5 min.

This is probably another case of North Korea trying to give the impression to South Korea (and everyone else) it is more dangerous then it actually is.. They have 4 skilled and loyal hax0r kiddies, and somehow it became "100 every year".. Don't they have 300 nukes aimed at the US right now? Heh. Two or three maybe. (And more on the way, but that's another story..)

There is also another option.. North Korea has zero to do with this, and South Korea is just trying too pump up some fear in order to get its people to take computer security more seriously.. Slammer did really take them for a spin. They have reason to be concerned.

CNN.com - N. Korean training hackers, Seoul says - May. 16, 2003

Oh, yeah, this was such a GREAT idea the first time around when it was called DIVX.

The discs stop working when a process similar to rusting makes them unreadable. The discs start off red, but when they are taken out of the package, exposure to oxygen turns the coating black and makes it impenetrable by a DVD laser.

You get a week from most rental places. I don't see what the consumer appeal is going to be with these. They are not going to sell.

Oh, wait, I know.. You can buy them, take them home, and copy them with the DVD burners that are starting to become cheap..

Yahoo! News - Disney to Begin Renting 'Self-Destructing' DVDs

] I was sure we'd see a silly "Hackers"-esque 3D animated
] "hacking scene".
] Not so! Trinity is as smart as she is seductive! She
] whips out Nmap (!!!), scans her target, finds 22/tcp open,
] and proceeds with an über ssh technique! I was so surprised,
] I almost jumped out of my seat and did the "r00t dance"
] right there in the theatre!
]
] There can be only one explanation: Carie-Anne has the
] hots for me!

Fyodor wants a screenshot..

Update: And the screnshots are at: http://images.insecure.org/nmap/images/matrix/

Nmap Hackers: Whoa!

"...To the plaaaaanet core!" Boss Nass

] A Hollywood-like proposal to explore the center of the
] Earth calls for exploding a crack in the planet's surface
] and dropping a probe in behind tons of molten iron, which
] would sink and forge a path to the core.
]
] The plan is not ready for primetime, its creator told
] SPACE.com, but neither is it pie-in-the-sky.
]
] Exploring Earth's belly is ambitious in a scientific
] sense and could yield valuable data. The solid inner core
] rotates faster than the outer core, which is fluid and is
] responsible for Earth's magnetic field. But scientists
] don't know exactly why all this is so, nor do they know
] the exact composition or temperature of the core.
]
] A schematic shows how the probe would descend with molten
] iron, all in a crack that closes up behind the mission.
]
] If further research showed the core mission could
] actually work, it would be comparable in dollar terms
] with many space projects, says David Stevenson, a Caltech
] planetary scientist who has worked on several missions
] for NASA. Stevenson explains his idea in an article
] titled "A Modest Proposal" for the May

SNIP

NASA Meets Hollywood: Real Mission Proposed to Earth's Core

] 'Salam Pax" is rising as one of the media stars in
] postwar Iraq. He began blogging from Baghdad well before
] the war, and has come back sporadically since. (He calls
] his blog "Where is Raed?") He is the darling of fellow
] bloggers in the West, who light up with links whenever he
] appears on the Web. He has been written about in the New
] Yorker magazine and elsewhere, and his jottings copied
] into the Guardian in the Britain. Not bad for a person
] whose very existence has been skeptically queried. And
] who does a superb job of covering his traces, creating
] fresh firewalls around himself in the very moments when
] he appears to be giving his identity away.

Here is another take on Salam Pax..

canada.com | 'Salam Pax' plays Americans for fools in Iraq