"The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." -- Marshall McLuhan, 1969
Richard Clarke sets tone for Black Hat 2007 | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
Topic: Computer Security
6:20 pm EDT, Aug 1, 2007
Clarke leveled the harshest language on the Bush administration. "The Bush administration has systematically reduced the work to secure cyberspace." Clarke cited recent cuts to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as an example. While he doesn't believe that government is the solution--it is just a part of the solution--he said he thinks government helps set the tone. He said he thinks Bush is "setting an example how not to do cybersecurity."
FBI, IRS Search Home of Sen. Ted Stevens - washingtonpost.com
Topic: Politics and Law
4:36 am EDT, Jul 31, 2007
Federal agents searched the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday, focusing on records related to his relationship with an oil field services contractor jailed in a public corruption investigation, a law enforcement official said.
Stevens, 83, has been under a federal investigation for a 2000 renovation project more than doubling the size of his home in Girdwood that was overseen by Bill Allen, a contractor who has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators.
Agents from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service started their search at the senator's home Monday afternoon, said Dave Heller, FBI assistant special agent. He said he could not comment on the nature of the investigation.
"I continue to believe this investigation should proceed to its conclusion without any appearance that I have attempted to influence its outcome," Stevens said. "The legal process should be allowed to proceed so that all the facts can be established and the truth determined."
Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old.
He was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.
In a press interview for her film "Away From Her", director Sarah Polley laments:
"It's sad to think there was a time when people lined up around the block to see Bergman movies ... and how unimaginable that is now."
How about a theatrical re-release of "Wild Strawberries" and "The Seventh Seal"?
If you attempted to use the system most of today, you saw a message from Decius explaining that the system was broke...
Immediately after my earlier post explaining the situation with the OIDs Rattle and I leapt into action with a major overhaul of the database schema and software. Oh how this brought back memories of being an admin. Totally unexpected computer work when you're supposed to have the day off and you have to get it done before you can do anything else. Waiting on development systems to reload while sitting on a speaker phone.... that disconnected manner of teleconferences that span hours while work is getting done.... Random breaks to grab coffee, or dinner, without hanging up the phone... Your eyes getting heavy as you strain your ears to make out the details of the television news which the party on the other end of the line is using for background noise...
We got it done. About 200 lines of new code written and 650 modified. Rattle even managed to work a fix in for the redirection on login and some problems with creating a new account, and I cleaned up some annoyances with the circle interface.
MemeStreams is back. Thank you for your patience, and please let us know if you notice anything strange about the way the site works (or doesn't work) over the next few days.
Things should be back to working normally, and in some places a little better than normal.
Everyone will need to log into the system again. If there are any problems with login, let us know. Since we were trying to push this fix out as soon as possible, it's entirely possible bugs have been missed.
N.S.A. Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends - New York Times
Topic: Surveillance
8:05 am EDT, Jul 29, 2007
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
"We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."
F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"
In response to the F.B.I. complaints, N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.
US military and civilian authorities must stop thinking of themselves as a "good-idea factory" whose every thought has greater merit than those of their customers.
It could be too late for extensive rebranding of the US effort in Iraq.
Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation
Topic: Military Technology
8:21 pm EDT, Jul 28, 2007
There's nothing like the right TV spot to heal the sectarian divide.
Virtually every action, message, and decision of a military force shapes the opinions of an indigenous population: strategic communication, treatment of civilians at vehicle checkpoints, and the accuracy or inaccuracy of aerial bombardment.
Themes of US goodwill mean little if its actions convey otherwise. Consequently, a unified message in both word and deed is fundamental to success.
Business marketing practices provide a useful framework for improving US military efforts to shape the attitudes and behaviors of local populations in a theater of operations as well as those of a broader, international audience.
Enlisting Madison Avenue extracts lessons from these business practices and adapts them to US military efforts, developing a unique approach to shaping that has the potential to improve military-civilian relations, the accuracy of media coverage of operations, communication of US and coalition objectives, and the reputation of US forces in theater and internationally.
Foremost among these lessons are the concepts of branding, customer satisfaction, and segmentation of the target audience, all of which serve to maximize the impact and improve the outcome of US shaping efforts.
