cryptogon.com

2/18/2005

Blogger Is Now Mostly Unusable

Blogger has sucked for a while, but now I can only post about 25% of the time. It ranges from slow to unusable most of the time. I pretty much hate it now. Cryptogon will be moving to Drupal when the next version is released in a few weeks.

Update: As If On Cue

From status.blogger.com:

Friday, February 18, 2005

In the past several days, we've seen some performance problems with Blogger. In general, the app has been slower and users have encountered an increased number of Internal Server Errors.

We are aggressively fixing the source of the errors and have pushed several fixes in the past few days to address the problem. There is additional work to do to return Blogger back to a more responsive state - and we're on it. If you find yourself seeing errors, please logout of Blogger and completely shutdown your browser. When you restart your browser and log back in, you will be on a new appserver which may be less loaded and thus performing better.

Thanks for hanging in there as we straighten out this issue.

Posted by Jason at 8:58 AM

posted by Kevin at 8:30 PM

Microsoft Warns of Impossible to Clean Spyware :.

Yesterday, I think I managed to talk someone out of buying a Windows machine during my lunch break at work. I did it from my cube, where I'm paid good money to support Windows users all day long. What did I tell this person to buy?

"Walk into an Apple store and pick a Mac, any Mac."

OSX is really the only choice for non technical users who require decent security and reliability---out of the box. I don't want to be associated with the clueless Mac twits who have swallowed Steve Job's KoolAid, but take some number of non-technical users, half running Windows and half running OSX, and release them into the wild. After a few months, which users will have had fewer problems? If you said "the Windows users," my advice to you would be to set the crack pipe down and listen in on the calls I take during business hours.

Don't get me wrong, I have food in my belly because Windows is so bad. I guess I have B Gates to thank for that:

Microsoft Corp. security researchers are warning about a new generation of powerful system-monitoring programs, or "rootkits," that are almost impossible to detect using current security products and could pose a serious risk to corporations and individuals.

The researchers discussed the growing threat posed by kernel rootkits at a session at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week. The malicious snooping programs are becoming more common and could soon be used to create a new generation of mass-distributed spyware and worms.

With names like "Hacker Defender," "FU" and "Vanquish," the programs are the latest generation of remote system-monitoring software that has been around for years, according to Mike Danseglio and Kurt Dillard, both of Microsoft's Security Solutions Group.

The programs are used by malicious hackers to control, attack or ferret information from systems on which the software has been installed, typically without the owner's knowledge, either by a virus or after a successful hack of the computer's defenses, they said. Once installed, many rootkits run quietly in the background but can easily be spotted by looking for memory processes that are running on the infected system, monitoring outbound communications from the machine, or checking for newly installed programs.

However, kernel rootkits that modify the kernel component of an operating system are becoming more common. Rootkit authors are also making huge strides in their ability to hide their creations, said Danseglio.

In particular, some newer rootkits are able to intercept queries or "system calls" that are passed to the kernel and filter out queries generated by the rootkit software. The result is that typical signs that a program is running, such as an executable file name, a named process that uses some of the computer's memory, or configuration settings in the operating system's registry, are invisible to administrators and to detection tools, said Danseglio.

If you're wondering what I run at home: I've been using Windows 2000 Pro since 1999 without incident.

But if I think Windows is so bad, why do I use it?

All operating systems are flawed. I have no blind allegiance to any OS, I just use what works the best in most cases. Since 1999, that has meant Windows 2000 for me.

2000 is a good, all-around, desktop OS, if you know how to harden it for security, which I do. (And no, I don't use anti-virus software. I do, however, know how to use hardware/software firewalls, proxy servers and non Microsoft browsers, email and productivity applications.) Using Linux as a desktop OS has been nothing but a pain in the ass for me. It's ok, but things are always broken. I run Mandrake Linux on the server; enough said. I actually bought a Titanium Powerbook about two years ago, but I sold it because it seemed slow to me---having been used to the speed of Win2K and various Linux distros. OSX on current generation G5 Macs is now fast enough for me to consider using as my "daily driver." If I had the need (and the money) I would use a Mac. Besides, I drool a little when I use Final Cut Pro and Garage Band.

posted by Kevin at 7:29 PM

Eyeballing the President's Defibrillator :.

IF President Bush has been wearing the LifeVest defibrillator -- a possible source of the Bush bulge in the debates (since it can't be miniaturized like a receiver or bug) -- he likely is uploading his ECG to a physician on a weekly basis via this link:

https://wcdnet.lifecor.com/wcd/

This is a secure web-based data storage and retrieval system known as WCDNET (Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator NET) which allows physicians to access patient data stored in the Patient Database using a web browser and Internet connection. Only authorized users registered by LIFECOR and a password and can access WCDNET. In addition, the data transferred over the Internet is encrypted. An authorized physician or operator can view and print ECG events and generate reports related to patient wear time compliance and overall WCD 2000 monitoring performance.

Typically, once a week the physician will want the patient to connect their monitor to the LifeVest modem to send their heart monitoring data over the phone to the physician's computer for his review.

posted by Kevin at 7:20 PM

Robotic Arm Controlled by Monkey Thoughts :.

Scientists in the US have created a robotic arm that can be controlled by thought alone.

Developed at Pittsburgh University, it has a fully mobile shoulder and elbow and a gripper that works like a hand.

In early tests, monkeys had tiny probes inserted into their brains and had their limbs restrained - but were then able to manipulate the robotic arm.

The inventors believe it could help people who have lost limb function through disease or trauma.

The mechanical arm research was described at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held this year in Washington DC.

posted by Kevin at 7:17 PM

USS Jimmy Carter: NSA Sub :.

The USS Jimmy Carter, set to join the nation's submarine fleet Saturday, will have some special capabilities, intelligence experts say: It will be able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.

posted by Kevin at 6:50 PM

IRA Money Laundering :.

Very interesting:

Police have blown open an Irish Republican Army money-laundering operation, the government and detectives said Friday, but couldn't yet confirm whether cash seized in nationwide raids was from a massive Belfast bank robbery blamed on the IRA.

As their investigation expanded by the hour, detectives levied criminal charges against one suspected IRA member and continued interrogating four other people, including a Sinn Fein activist and a private banker linked to one of Ireland's most prominent dealmakers.

Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell, the government's most outspoken critic of the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party, said police had just begun to expose a wider IRA network with sophisticated money-laundering techniques.

posted by Kevin at 6:44 PM

Experts See Military Draft as Inevitable :.

"We already have our troops stretched to the limit," said J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War. The Guard and Reserve cannot continue to provide about 40 percent of the nation's combat troops, Biden said.

As a result, McNeil and other anti-war activists such as Sally Milbury-Steen, executive director of the Wilmington-based peace organization Pacem in Terris, said they think a draft is on the horizon.

"I think there's a very good chance of a military draft in the next two years. We have soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and now they're heating up the rhetoric on Iran. Where else will the soldiers come from?" Milbury-Steen asked.

Peace activists aren't the only ones thinking seriously about compulsory military service. In a well-publicized letter sent to congressional leaders in late January, conservatives and moderates said flatly that "the United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume."

In that letter, retired military leaders such as Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey joined with defense analysts such as Michele Flournoy and political commentators such as William Kristol in asking Congress "to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. ... it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active-duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years."

posted by Kevin at 1:47 PM

Iraqi Died While Hung From Wrists :.

An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture — suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

posted by Kevin at 1:39 PM

Shell, Exxon Tap 'High Cost' Oil Sands, Gas as Reserves Dwindle :.

Make your time:

A 15-year decline in oil reserves is spurring companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco Corp. to spend $76 billion in the next decade to boost supplies of oil from tar sands and diesel fuel from Qatari natural gas, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency in Paris. Oil executives say they have no choice but to try alternatives to drilling because there is not much more crude to be found in their current fields.

"We're damn close" to the peak in conventional oil production, Boone Pickens, who oversees more than $1 billion in energy-related investments at his Dallas hedge fund firm, said in an interview in New York Feb. 16. "I think we're there." Suncor Energy Inc., the world's second-biggest oil-sands miner, is his largest holding.

Research Credit: SS

posted by Kevin at 12:18 AM

2/17/2005

PENTAGON PREPARES TO BUILD $133 BILLION ROBOT ARMY :.

For close to three years, I've been warning about this. People used to send me email saying I was nuts for suggesting that the U.S. government was building terminator robots...

I haven't received any of those emails lately:

The Pentagon is spending £70 billion on a programme to build heavily-armed robots for the battlefield in the hope that future wars will be fought without the loss of its soldiers' lives.

The scheme, known as Future Combat Systems, is the largest military contract in American history and will help to drive the defence budget up by almost 20 per cent to just over £265 billion in five years' time.

Much of the cash will be spent computerising the military, but the ultimate aim is to take members of the armed forces out of harm's way. They [humans] would be replaced by robots capable of hunting and killing America's enemies.

Gordon Johnson, of the US joint forces research centre, told the New York Times: "The American military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'."

The Swords robots come in several versions, carrying either a machine gun, grenade launcher or a light anti-tank weapon.

It is controlled by a soldier from a distance of up to 1,000 yards.

"We were sitting there firing single rounds and smacking bull's-eyes," said Staff Sergeant Santiago Tordillos, who helped to design and test the robot. "We were completely amazed."

That human involvement has proved critical in convincing military lawyers that machines can be used on the battlefield. More advanced machines which can decide whether to kill would also be legal, said Mr Johnson.

"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," he said.

posted by Kevin at 10:46 AM

2/16/2005

SHA-1 Broken :.

This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result. It pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1 as a hash function for digital signatures...

posted by Kevin at 7:56 PM

Iran to Aid Syria Against Threats :.

Iran has vowed to back Syria against "challenges and threats" as both countries face strong US pressure.

"We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats," Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari.

But Washington said that if Iran and Syria had aimed their remarks at the US they were "misreading the issue".

Both countries should focus on meeting their international obligations, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"Their problem is not with the United States, it's with the international community. Both Syria and Iran ... need to abide by the commitments they have made," he said.

posted by Kevin at 7:45 PM

Australian Government Keeping Secret Database on Citizens :.

Nice one!

THE Northern Territory Government is keeping a secret database of people who criticise the Government or its policies, it was learned last night.

The files viewed by the Northern Territory News contained hundreds of names, party affiliations, their jobs or roles and a record of their comments to talkback radio.

Opposition Leader Denis Burke yesterday accused the Martin Government in Parliament of acting like 'Big Brother'.

"It's one thing keeping files on politicians but it's another keeping files on ordinary people," Mr Burke said.

"It's like 'Big Brother'. What about privacy? We certainly never had anything like this when we were in government."

posted by Kevin at 7:42 PM

Reporters Must Testify or Go to Jail :.

Two reporters who have refused to name their sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent should be jailed for contempt, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously ruled today.

Citing a 1972 decision of the United States Supreme Court, the panel held that the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, have no First Amendment protection from grand jury subpoenas seeking the names of their sources. It can be a crime for government officials to divulge the identities of covert agents.

posted by Kevin at 7:38 PM

States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile :.

Believe it or not:

Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called "tax by the mile."

Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.

"Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that," says engineer David Kim.

Kim and fellow researcher David Porter at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

"So, if you drive 10 miles you will pay a certain fee which will be, let's say, one tenth of what someone pays if they drive 100 miles," says Kim.

The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car's odometer to calculate how much you owe.

The system could also track how often you drive during rush hour and charge higher fees to discourage peak use. That's an idea that could break the bottleneck on California's freeways.

"We're getting a lot of interest from other states," says Jim Whitty of the Oregon Department of Transportation. "They're watching what we're doing.

Related: Washington State Wants Permits for Rain Water Collection

posted by Kevin at 7:32 PM

2/14/2005

Iraq: Weird U.S. Contractor Deaths :.

In the midafternoon of Oct. 9, 2003, Kirk von Ackermann, an American contract worker from the Bay Area, used a satellite phone to call a colleague from a lonely desert road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. He told his colleague he had a flat tire and needed a jack.

About 45 minutes later, the colleague found von Ackermann's car, abandoned. There was no sign of von Ackermann, who had been alone when he called. No hint of struggle, not even a footprint. All that remained was his satellite phone, his laptop computer, and, on the car's backseat a briefcase holding $40,000 in $100 bills.

"It was as if he had been abducted by aliens," Ryan Manelick told The Chronicle shortly after von Ackermann disappeared. Manelick was one of von Ackermann's colleagues at Ultra Services, a civilian contracting company they both worked for in Iraq, supplying U.S. military bases with tents, mobile homes, toilets, computers and Internet access.

Just over two months later, on the morning of Dec. 14, Manelick was shot dead near Camp Anaconda, a U.S. military base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and about 50 miles south of where von Ackermann had disappeared.

posted by Kevin at 12:48 AM

U.S. Denies Patent for Part-Human Hybrid :.

Paging Dr. Mengele, please pick up the white courtesy phone:

A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in US intellectual property law.

The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid -- designed for use in medical research but not yet created -- would be too closely related to a human to be patentable.

Paradoxically, the rejection was a victory of sorts for the inventor, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. An opponent of patents on living things, he had no intention of making the creatures. He said his goal was to set a legal precedent that would keep others from profiting from similar "inventions."

But in an age in which science is increasingly melding human and animal components for research -- already the government has allowed many patents on "humanized" animals, including a mouse with a human immune system -- the decision leaves a crucial question unanswered: At what point is something too human to patent?

posted by Kevin at 12:36 AM

Spanish Skyscraper Burns to Frame, Remains Standing :.

Maybe only American skyscrapers collapse due to fire...

posted by Kevin at 12:30 AM

2/13/2005

Can This Black Box See Into the Future? :.

Not much is new over at the Global Consciousness Project. They're still asking more questions than they're able to answer:

DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers.

'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon.

'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can all tap into without realising.

And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

posted by Kevin at 6:53 PM

:. Reading

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross This is a relatively short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward; the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.

The Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps give away our assets. Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics Guide by John Seymour The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten When Corporations Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their own narrow ends.

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener This expansion of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables, with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock, the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other topics.

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