"The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." -- Marshall McLuhan, 1969
Latest NIN Album released under a CC license
Topic: Music
8:48 am EST, Mar 5, 2008
Other information: Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.
An exciting partnership and experience regarding this release will be announced soon.
Trent is following through on his threats. I couldn't be happier.
Three propose wind farms off Jersey Shore | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/05/2008
Topic: Technology
8:48 am EST, Mar 5, 2008
An established utility, a wind-farm developer, and a consortium of commercial fishermen each have proposed building giant turbine-driven power plants off the Jersey Shore, hoping to demonstrate the viability of the ocean breeze as a clean source of electricity.
The three proposals vary widely - locations, for example, are between three and 16 miles off Atlantic or Cape May County - and timelines are iffy. Theoretically, however, within five years 100 spinning turbines could be generating 350 megawatts, enough to power 125,000 homes.
This is the first I've heard of this. Pretty cool..
Report: Man comatose after exposure to ricin poison - CNN.com
Topic: Current Events
2:25 pm EST, Feb 29, 2008
A man is comatose in a Las Vegas hospital after the deadly poison ricin was found in his hotel room, police told CNN affiliate KLAS-TV on Friday.
Police don't suspect foul play in the poisoning, KLAS reported. The FBI said it was treating the case as a criminal investigation and terrorism was not suspected.
"We don't know who [the ricin] belongs to or why it would be here at this time," said Capt. Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Authorities were called to an Extended Stay America hotel around 3 p.m. PT Thursday after a man brought a bag with a small container to the manager's office. The man said he found it while retrieving items from a hotel room.
Ricin left in a hotel room in Vegas... That should raise some eyebrows.
There is some conflicting information in this article. There is this:
Tests to confirm the substance found in the room was ricin are under way.
But then there is this:
The substance is "100 percent ricin," Lombardo said.
Copyright protest in Nashville March 5th - COPYFIGHT NOW!
Topic: Intellectual Property
2:28 pm EST, Feb 28, 2008
[1] Meet up with us next Wednesday (March 5th) to go to Nashville and protest! (5:00 AM - March 5th) we will have a bus - we will leave at 5AM in Knoxville (meet at COPYSHOP).
Gather at 8AM (if you can get there by yourself) on the corner of 6th and Union St in Nashville!
The primary broken thing about the rule being protested here is that it would require Universities to institute a surveillance system that watched network traffic and identified transfers of copyrighted content.
William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
A few hours ago, Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557) began advertising a small part of YouTube's (AS 36561) assigned network. This story is almost as old as BGP. Old hands will recognize this as, fundamentally, the same problem as the infamous AS 7007 from 1997, a more recent ConEd mistake of early 2006 and even TTNet's Christmas Eve gift 2005.
Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order (thanks nsp-sec-d) to block access to YouTube (see news item) started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider, PCCW (AS 3491). For those unfamiliar with BGP, this is a more specific route than the ones used by YouTube (208.65.152.0/22), and therefore most routers would choose to send traffic to Pakistan Telecom for this slice of YouTube's network.
I became interested in this immediately as I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to spend my evening watching imbecilic videos of cats doing foolish things (even for a cat). Then, I started to examine our mountains of BGP data and quickly noticed that the correct AS path ("Will the real YouTube please stand up?") was getting restored to most of our peers.
The data points identified below are culled from over 250 peering sessions with 170 unique ASNs. While it is hard to describe exactly how widely this hijacked prefix was seen, we estimate that it was seen by a bit more than two-thirds of the Internet.
This table shows the timing of the event and how quickly the route propagated (this is actually a fairly normal propagation pattern). The ASNs seeing the prefix were mostly transit ASNs below, so this means that these routes were distributed broadly across the Internet. Almost all of the default free zone (DFZ) carried the hijacked route at least briefly.
As always, the gory details have worked their way to the nanog list..
So, it's heartwarming to know that two things are still true. It is still trivially possible to hijack prefixes (whether maliciously or inadvertently). I can go to sleep knowing that my neighbors are happily watching their LOLCATS.
Yes, I made the lolcat image. It's the lamest thing I've ever done, yet I have no shame.
Elizabeth Rubin's latest dispatch from Afghanistan is heartbreaking -- and essential.
I went to Afghanistan last fall with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes?
After a few days, the first question sparked more: Was there a deeper problem in the counterinsurgency campaign? Why were so many more American troops being killed? To find out, I spent much of the fall in the Korengal Valley ...
As hard as Iraq was, nothing was as tough as the Korengal.
... If you peel back the layers, there’s always a local political story at the root of the killing and dying. That original misunderstanding and grievance fertilizes the land for the Islamists. Whom do you want to side with: your brothers in God’s world or the infidel thieves?
Captain Kearney met as many villagers as possible to learn the names of all the elders and their families. But he inherited a blood feud between the Korengalis and the Americans that he hadn’t started, and he was being sucked into its logic.
It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants.
... Kearney smiled. He was getting used to the routine between the Americans and the villagers — miscommunication and deception. The encounter felt as much performative, a necessary part of the play, as substantive. And I wondered how Kearney was going to keep his sanity for 10 more months.
This is the best war journalism piece I've read in months.
