Saturday, September 29

Sudan Bank Hacked, Bin Laden Info Found - Hacker A group of U.K.-based hackers has cracked computers at the AlShamal Islamic Bank in Sudan and collected data on the accounts of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization and its leader Osama bin Laden, Kim Schmitz, a flamboyant German hacker/businessman, has claimed.

Schmitz, who has offered a $10 million reward for the capture of bin Laden, told Newsbytes that the information has been turned over to the FBI. Bin Laden, a millionaire Saudi exile whose base is now Afghanistan, is suspected of being the driving force behind the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with hijacked planes.

Newsbytes could not confirm Schmitz's claim. An FBI spokesman in Washington declined to confirm or deny the story, saying that the agency's policy is not to comment on information and leads it is receiving.

Thursday, September 27

From:  jason@k...

Date: Mon Sep 24, 2001 9:55 pm
Subject: Re: My readers...


> The caution we need to inject here, of course, is figuring out
what's
> reliable or true. I have higher expectations of reliability from
the
> New York Times coverage than a first-person account or polemic from
> someone I don't know. Sorting this out won't be easy. But it'll be
> worth the trouble.

This is true of media, online and off, amateur and professional. CNN
and MSNBC in particular were reporting all sorts of stuff that turned
out to be more fiction than fact. One of the pitfalls of just-in-time
reporting...there is often no time for fact checking or bothering
with two *independent* sources (are these antiquated notions that
will fall by the wayside as JIT journalism becomes more standard?).

> Blogs, Web postings and e-mail didn't replace anything. They added
a
> great deal. Traditional newsrooms should somehow find a way to fuel
> and assist that engine of information.

This is one of the big lessons of the Internet in general. The
Internet did not replace TV, newspapers, magazines, Sears, the US
Postal Service, Barnes and Noble, or grocery stores in people's daily
lives...it augmented them.

With the dot com crash, we learned what the Internet wasn't good for.
Gradually, through careful analysis of the crash and events like

Wednesday, September 26

Real-Life Cyborg Challenges Reality With Technology Footsore visitors to the Austin Museum of Art in Texas may have been tempted by a recent installation called SeatSale, a plain wooden chair with a scrolling electronic sign and a credit card reader. But the chair has something else special: at the spot where a cushion normally goes are dozens of sharp metal spikes.

"Weary travelers no longer need to stand for hours on end," a sign says. "Use your government-issued photo ID card to download a free seating license."

Sliding a credit card through the slot makes the spikes retract, but it also commits the user to certain terms and conditions. "If you don't agree to these terms and conditions, remain standing," the device says.

Tuesday, September 25

Whooping It Up

In Beirut, even Christians celebrated the atrocity.



BY ELISABETTA BURBA



Saturday, September 22, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT



BEIRUT--Where were you on Sept. 11, when terrorists changed the world? I

was at the National Museum here, enjoying the wonders of the ancient

Phoenicians with my husband. This tour of past splendor only magnified the

shock I received later when I heard the news and saw the reactions all

around me. Walking downtown, I realized that the offspring of this great

civilization were celebrating a terrorist outrage. And I am not talking

about destitute people. Those who were cheering belonged to the elite of

the Paris of Middle East: professionals wearing double-breasted suits,

charming blond ladies, pretty teenagers in tailored jeans.

Trying to find our bearings, my husband and I went into an American-style

cafe in the Hamra district, near Rue Verdun, rated as one of the most

expensive shopping streets in the world. Here the cognitive dissonance was

immediate, and direct. The café's sophisticated clientele was celebrating,

laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet

Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked, or moved. They were excited, very excited.



An hour later, at a little market near the U.S. Embassy, on the outskirts

of Beirut, a thrilled shop assistant showed us, using his hands, how the

plane had crashed into the twin towers. He, too, was laughing.







http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001194



Oh my.





what I think you mean



Uh oh, those are some dangerous words there, Rogers. I think I can handle telling people what I mean all by myself....you know, with my "power" and everything.



"MetaFilter's too crowded. Nobody goes there any more."



MetaFilter, for me, has been disappointing because it's not what it was supposed to be (based upon my understanding of what Matt initially wanted the site to be and my observations of the site's first few months). (Matt, you should correct me if I'm wrong on any of this...)



MetaFilter was designed primarily to be a group weblog and for the first months of the site (not counting those months at the very beginning when it was just Matt posting), it functioned very well like that. The community, such as it was at the time, brought good links and intelligent commentary to the site. You could read an entire day's output in a few minutes. People seemed to care about keeping the quality high and the noise low. It was a group weblog, it belonged to every member equally, there was a sense of ownership.



Gradually (but almost completely at this stage), MetaFilter changed into something else: a watercooler conversation with 10,000 participants. MetaFilter became a discussion board with a weblog tacked on the front of it...a place to have conversations about things. In the shift from weblog to conversations and with the addition of several thousand more people, the linking aspect was de-emph

Monday, September 24

TAP: Web Feature: Three Things We Learned. by Jeff Faux. September 20, 2001. One result is that the U.S. is the only major nation that leaves airline and airport security in the hands of private corporations, which by their very nature are motivated to spend as little as possible. So the system was tossed in the lap of lowest-bid contractors who hired people for minimum wages. Training has been inadequate and supervision extremely lax. Turnover was 126 percent a year and the average employee stayed in airline security for only six months. Getting a job at Burger King or McDonald's represented upward mobility for the average security worker. In an anti-government political climate the airline corporations were able to shrug off the government inspections that consistently revealed how easy it was to bring weapons on board. The competition for customers sacrificed safety to avoid any inconvenience. How else to explain the insane notion that a 3-1/2 inch knife blade is not a weapon?
Guardian Unlimited Observer | International | Revealed: British plan for Afghan onslaught BRITISH troops will lead an international coalition alongside America to wage war on Afghanistan in the next 10 days as security and intelligence sources indicated last night that the net was tightening on Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the terrorist attacks on America.

Saturday, September 22

Samsung SyncMaster 570b Review - Page 2 There is something about having an electron gun always pointed and fired towards me that frightens me. In addition, having a LCD display on your desk definitely adds to the wow factor of your workspace.

Friday, September 21

Slashdot | MS FrontPage Restricts Free Speech II (It's True!) "Several readers have told me their EULA for FrontPage 2002 does not contain the no-disparaging-MS term, or that the term only applies to the FrontPage logo or to the Web components like the MSNBC news headline component. Just to be sure, this afternoon I went down to the store and bought a copy of FrontPage 2002 myself. In the box was the "Microsoft Frontpage 2002" license on a four-page folded sheet, titled "End- User License Agreement For Microsoft Software."
Independent News Imad Mughniyeh, head of special overseas operations for the Lebanese group, Hizbollah, and Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, a senior bin Laden aide, were named as two terrorists capable of planning the atrocities. Jane's, the respected defence publisher, quoted Israeli intelligence sources as believing the two men led the suicide assaults. Officers from Aman, the Israeli military intelligence operation, were also said to have named Iraq as having sponsored the onslaught.
These will be replaced by terror cells inside the territories, less dependent on command centers and financing from across the border. Their members, like most of the recent knife-wielding assassins, will act more on an individual, spontaneous basis and will show strong suicidal tendencies. Many will be Islamic fundamentalists. The rise in incidents involving firearms and in headline-seeking attacks on civilians using knives and similar weapons has three major causes: There's a climate of rebellion among young Fatah cadres. They oppose Palestinian participation in the peace process, object to the leadership represented by figures like Hanan Ashrawi and are appalled by the corruption and impotence of the various PLO-funded institutions in the territories. (The East Jerusalem daily Al-Fajr is currently running a series of articles on these issues.)

The pro-Fatah leadership in the territories has virtually lost control of the organization's youth wing, which has spawned groups such as the extreme Black Panthers. These groups are now seeking their own channels to PLO operatives abroad. There are widespread calls among the young for a renewal of unrestrained violence and an end to the peace talks. Participants in those negotiations have been subjected to threats and vilification, and some fear for their safety. Although the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the territories were decimated by mass arrests by the Shin Bet in 1991, the PFLP apparently succeeded in creating a fairly solid...
Bin Laden Weakened, Officials Say Bin Laden Weakened, Officials Say

By David A. Vise and Lorraine Adams

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, March 11, 2000; Page A03

Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has been seriously weakened by arrests on three continents, infiltration by confidential informants and electronic eavesdropping by intelligence services, according to U.S. and foreign government officials, law enforcement sources and terrorism experts.
Get a REAL job. When the cells aren't aware that they're working for the CIA, or think they're working for someone else, they can be put to other devious uses. For example, if the CIA controlled a cell which thought it worked for the PLO, they could send it on a terrorist mission with the intent that they be caught. This would have a two fold advantage for the CIA, first, the PLO would be blamed (providing a good opportunity for the U.S. government to expouse propaganda against the PLO), and secondly, it would allow the CIA to commit a terrorist attack with extremely little risk of exposure -- to achieve a greater level of interference in the affairs of foreign governments.
I'm going to start a company. Our sole function will be to travel to your place of business, open your inbox, and delete all but the latest 10 messages.



Because, I have 400 messages right now filling my inbox and I'm afraid there's something valuable in there.



Thursday, September 20

Pellant: BSA 240 Review
The Beeman P3 / Weihrauch HW40PCA Air Pistol Shooting the P3 is a pleasure, it fires with a satisfying POP, which sends the pellet on its way at around 400 fps plus or minus depending on the pellet. This is plenty for plinking and informal target work. The accuracy of this gun for the price is astounding, from a rest the P3 will shoot ragged single holes at 10m and a bit beyond. I have had very good results with the following pellets:-RWS CO2 target, Eley Wasp, Crosman Premier and Bisley Practice. Shooting single handed you notice a very slight muzzle flip that is reduced by its built in compensator. Two handed shooting is catered for with the comfortable trigger guard being a point of contact for the other hand.

Wednesday, September 19

SecurityFocus News: Yahoo! News hacked Lamo tampered with Yahoo!'s copy of a Reuters story that described a delay in Sklyarov's court proceedings, so that the text reported, incorrectly, that the Russian was facing the death penalty.

The modified story warned sardonically that Sklyarov's work raised "the haunting specter of inner-city minorities with unrestricted access to literature, and through literature, hope."

The text went on to report that Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference about the case before "cheering hordes", and incorrectly quoted Ashcroft as saying, "They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law."
Mark And(erson) Technology is treated as something that pushes us around rather than something we create. It's a bother, it's a boon, it's a discipline, it's a given. "What people mean by the word technology," says computer designer Alan Kay, "is anything invented since they were born." Computer designer Danny Hillis counters, "What people mean by the word technology is the stuff that doesn't really work yet." Technology is both the problem and its own solution. No wonder it obsesses us.
from _The Clock of the Long Now_
"truth in advertising" - julep cigarettes Fun Small Print:

"Should you CUT DOWN now? Why cut down on the relief and enjoyment of extra smoking now, when you feel you need it most? Even chain-smokers find that new Julep Cigarettes banish unpleasant oversmoking symptoms. Unlike ordinary cigarettes, Juleps sparkle up your mouth, refresh your throat, keep your breath clean, inviting. With Juleps, you end over-smoking jolts, you enjoy every puff, and you smoke all you want. If smoking is one of your big pleasures, smoke Juleps!
Susan asks a lot of good questions, among them:

>Is the responsibility of a Department or program to introduce Comp/Rhet
students to these new ways of thinking even if the students aren't
necessarily interested in Computers and Writing? Or is it reasonable to
insist that everyone should be familiar with it? I suppose it depends
on the mission of the school and the program, but at the same time I
realy do feel there is a responsibility to expose students to the
field-- What kind of sense does everyone have about how well schools
currently do this?
_________________________

In our case, at Northern Illinois University, is does depend on
our goals for the program, which explicitly state that students
who go through our FYcomp program will be given experience in the
computer lab writing on computers and on the Internet. So in
our case we believe we have a mandate at least to introduce
our students to electronic composition pedagogy, especially in
the course for new TAs I teach. In that course, we spend one
day a week in the computer lab talking about theory and approaches
(and exchanging lab lesson plans) for effective use of networked
computers in our composition classes.

However, there are teachers with a different point of view, who
believe that composition pedagogy, electronic or not, ought to
be up to the individual instructor. That is, with the downturn
in the dot com sector jobs, c

Tuesday, September 18

> 2) Remember that writing is a technology too: we literate people
> have always been skilled users of technology.

Amen. This point is not made often enough.

I'd also suggest teaching the importance of generalized technological
knowledge -- concepts unrelated to any specific program, operating system,
or computer hardware configuration. Such as the basics of http service,
the way file systems are organized ... not super-technical information,
but enough to facilitate understanding of general methodologies. I plan to
complete a book which covers this topic in detail done in about a year and
a half. :)

Helping students understand a bit of graphic design can make creating
writing for visual presentation more comfortable. (This may speak more to
Roger's list than yours.) Robin Williams' _The Non-Designers' Design Book_
is wonderful and quite accessible to (imagine this) non-designers. I have
a brief summary of her four principles of design here:

http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~dilger/nerd/webdev/williams-four.html

best,
cbd.
Google Groups Posting From: grokosaurus@yahoo.com (G. S.)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

Subject: moving data from palm m100 to handspring visor

NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.165.113.117

Message-ID: <839599e4.0109181607.9b5f6f5@posting.google.com>



I recently sold my palm m100 (purchased by work) and got a refurb

handspring visor. I thought I'd share my experience (or lack thereof)

because I couldn't find instructions anywhere else.



Here's how I moved data into the handspring from the palm:



1. copied the user folder from c:\palm to the desktop



2. uninstalled all palm software from desktop



3. Installed handspring desktop



4. opened desktop, and from respective applications (to do ,

addresses, memo) imported files ending in ".dat" from the folders

todo, datebook, memopad, address



5. realized that all of my data imported as unfiled. Cursed my luck,

and used mass transit to move things around



Actually, I originally installed the handspring software into c:\palm,

but some leftover palm conduits made my handspring go into a blank

screen, which was only remediable by doing a hard reset. Ugh.
Salon Newsreal | Terrorism experts question U.S. air strikes BY HARRY JAFFE , JEFF STEIN AND LORI LEIBOVICH | The bombing of six supposed terrorist sites in Afghanistan and the Sudan Thursday by U.S. forces may have given some Americans a sense of revenge -- and temporarily diverted some public attention from President Clinton's deepening sex scandal -- but a number of foreign policy experts believe it will serve only to embolden Middle East radicals bent on further terrorist acts against the United States.
CNN.com - HUD offers mortgage relief for terror victims - September 17, 2001 Specifically, he asked lenders not to start or threaten foreclosure for at least 90 days, while the families are recovering from the financial problems caused by the loss of a family member.



A single tear runs down my face.
From the Washington post:



In Delray Beach, Fla., librarian Kathleen Hensman said Mohald Alshehri, who is listed as a hijacker, and another Middle Eastern man came into the library within the past month wanting to use a computer with Internet access. She said the men appeared to be on edge and watched her to see whether she was monitoring their use.



Wonderful Words

some hugh nibley stuff in here.

Important google tip:



If you are searching deja.com, you have to include your own email address like so:



I could be wrong. You for sure have to "sort by date" to see your latest usenet posting.

Monday, September 17

Yahoo! Groups : TechRhet Messages :Message 4877 of 4879 From: Charlie Lowe
Date: Sat Sep 15, 2001 11:27 pm
Subject: Re: [TechRhet] netscape 6.1 and publishing


One thing to know about the lack of publish/ftp feature. Netscape 6.1
is built on Mozilla 0.9.1, an open source web
browser/email/composer/chat still in the development stage (at the
moment, I'm using Mozilla 0.9.3 to write this email). At this time, as
they push towards a stable Mozilla release 1.0, Mozilla developers have
no plans to include a publish/ftp option. Thus, it is doubtful that we
will see this feature enabled in any Netscape releases in the near future.
By the way, this is also why Netscape 6.0 has so many problems. It's
built on a much earlier release of Mozilla which is fairly unstable.

Sunday, September 16

A heroic last stand

Joan says, “I think it does that one person can make a difference, that one person in this country has the opportunity to change this world and make a difference.”

Richard says, “Jeremy was a patriot.”

United Flight 93 was the only one of four hijacked planes to take no casualties on the ground. Now, a widow at 31, Lyz says she is not angry and she has no regrets.

Saturday, September 15

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things "We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.



New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time."

Friday, September 14

From "sept11info"



First of all, consider that the destruction of the WTC amounted probably to (tens of

?) thousands of lives and several trillion dollars in property lost. Why was this

possible? Partly because of the extreme centralization that is common to the

industrial era. The Trade Center towers were really a monument to an age that is now

behind us -- an age of extreme centralization common to the industrial era.



We must take this as a lesson that we need to become much more decentralized (more

like Jell-O, if you will). The way to achieve that is to quit building huge brick

and mortar monuments that exemplify the industrial age (such as the Trade Center,

the Sears Tower, etc.), and improve our technology and information infrastructure.

Since we will be building that information infrastructure from the ground up (more

or less) we have an opportunity to do it right. By that I mean, we can incorporate

security safeguards and reliable backup systems. Then we can operate in a truly

decentralized manner that would make terrorist attacks much less devastating and

therefore much less desirable (from the terrorist’s point of view).




Last war post of the day:



>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu

>Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 13:43:25 -0400

>Subject: nukes in NYC

>

>I don't know if anyone has done the calculation, but the energy

>on board (fuel + kinetic energy) a fully loaded 767 moving at 400

>mph is on the order of a kiloton, which is the yield of a typical

>tactical nuke. That is the scale of attack that NYC suffered.

>

>herb



I, Cringely | The Pulpit And I, too, am just another man with a hammer. My gig is technology, and I keep thinking there must some way to use it to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. The terrorists grabbed Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft because they are very different aircraft, yet share a single type certificate from the government. This means that the cockpits are identical. Learn to fly a 757 and you can fly a 767 too, making for a much larger pool of available aircraft with enough fuel capacity to take out the towers. But having a common type certificate also means the planes have the same autopilot systems, both of which include autolanding capability.



Why, I find myself thinking, can't we build a system that takes over control of the autopilot, locks out flight crew and hijackers alike, and lands the plane at the first sign of trouble. Well, we could, but it opens a whole new area of vulnerability -- hijacking autopilots. Forget I said anything.
Dave Winer's Scripting News Weblog People don't sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let's find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let's apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better. It's clear now that when we screw up we're going to feel it.



My sense is that terrorism becomes self-enforcing at some point, especially a Jihad, and "I'm sorry" just won't cut it.
CNN.com What are your feelings now about Tuesday's terrorist attacks?



Shock

Sorrow

Anger

View Results




What are they thinking???



I will not spend the day reading about the bombings. I just can't absorb anymore, and it's not going to help anyone.
Top Stories from Wired News Now research published in the journal Science shows that the key to tough moral judgments is emotion, not analytical reasoning. Princeton University researchers scanned volunteers' brains as they pondered ethical questions -- producing images where emotion-related areas of the brain literally lit up. According to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, "we carry out our lives as though our moral judgments are based on reason," but the study, he said, illustrates that people act on "gut feelings and make up reasons post hoc."

Thursday, September 13

EBay Cancels Auctions of Attack-Related Items "I didn't understand what they were doing until I asked one man," said Jacobs, 42, a financial analyst. "He told me that he wanted to sell the stuff on EBay. I couldn't believe it. It made me so angry, I slugged him."
Terrorists Trained by U.S. Aviation The Times said authorities believe 27 suspected terrorists received pilot training.
The Rhetoric of War
Full text from adequacy.com:



Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.









Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.



Countries which I like seem to never suffer such tragedies, while countries which, for one reason or another, I dislike, suffer them all the time. The one common factor which seems to explain this has to do with my political views, and it suggests that my political views should be implemented as a matter of urgency, even though they are, as a matter of fact, not implemented in the countries which I like.



Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. But we must also not lose sight of the fact that I am right on every significant moral and political issue, and everybody ought to agree with me. Please, I ask you as fellow human beings, vote for the political party which I support, and ask your legislators to support policies endorsed by me, as a matter of urgency.



It would be a fitting memorial.





Notebook Upgrades: Hacking your Dell/Compaq/Toshiba "I have noticed that I am more productive when I change the enviroment I work in, regularly."
Ade "Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened."



A template for all of the editorializing we will be seeing.

CNN.com - A witness to the destruction - September 12, 2001 There were people passing (me) with bruises and bleeding, and some people being carried down. But what was marvelous is, we were on the right side and here were firemen carrying maybe 30, 40 pounds of load going upstairs. Where we were trying to escape, they were going to it.

Wednesday, September 12

I think I'll wait to donate blood until the planes are flying or there's some way to transport it where it's needed. How long does blood keep anyway?
CNN.com - FBI questioning 'several' people as probe intensifies - September 12, 2001 The son-in law of the owner of one of the houses said a Middle Eastern family lived in the house. The son-in-law said he thought the man was enrolled in a nearby aviation safety school because he wore the uniform of the Piper school.

The family, the son-in-law said, moved out over the weekend.

The wife, he said, dressed very modestly in Middle Eastern style clothing, covering her face and hair.
CNN.com - FBI questioning 'several' people as probe intensifies - September 12, 2001 The son-in law of the owner of one of the houses said a Middle Eastern family lived in the house. The son-in-law said he thought the man was enrolled in a nearby aviation safety school because he wore the uniform of the Piper school.

The family, the son-in-law said, moved out over the weekend.

The wife, he said, dressed very modestly in Middle Eastern style clothing, covering her face and hair.
From an email list:



"Some of the questions our seven year old son asked:



--That's the kind of plane I fly on when I visit Grandma and Grandpa,

right?



--So all of those guys must have planned this together, right, mom?



--What does it mean that they'll have "to pay"? Will this cost them a

lot of money?



--*Who* has to pay, and with what?



--Why would anyone want to hurt all those people?



--Isn't it weird not to see any airplanes in the sky? Do you think we'd

get in trouble for flying a paper airplane?



--I get to watch the news, right mom?



--When is President Bush going to talk to us? (This just after he'd

watched the whole brief speech.)



--Do you need a hug?



--Do you think Lindsey (his little sister) understands what's going on,

or is she too young?



--Is New York City close to us? How close?



--What would we do if this happened here?



--What is that noise? Can you close my window?



--Is everything going to be okay?



Good questions, I thought.



Kathy at C.O.D.

Where Was U.S. Intelligence? Haberly, formerly stationed on the East German border to track and translate Russian and East German communications, said many signs foretold the devastation at the World Trade Center on Tuesday.

"You can even look at some of the things said at the (World Conference Against Racism) last week in Durban, to point out that we no longer should be focused on Cold War enemies and instead should be focused on those who are most antagonistic towards the United States, and that is the Middle East," Haberly said.

Retired General Wesley Clark, former supreme NATO commander, told CNN that the attacks were not exactly out of the blue.

"We've known for some time that some group has been planning this," he said, adding that "obviously, we didn't do enough" to prepare for such an attack.

"It takes an incredibly diverse, skilled and robust organization with a lot of money to track these types of threats," said Don Ulsch, of the Ulsch Group, a security consultancy organization in Lancaster, Massachusetts.
"Dear Jerry,

Following is a message which my one of my best friends passed along with permission to distribute to those who might be interested. It fills in the details that I missed in my original conversation with him and attempted to relate to you.

Tom has given me permission to distribute the message - please feel free to post it if you deem it appropriate.

Sincerely,

Art Russell Major, US Army (Retired)

Message Follows:

Today was a tragedy for all of America and to my family, a very personal one. Lynn and my Niece Liz's husband, Jeremy Glick was on United flight 93 this morning. When the Hijackers took control of flight 93. Jeremy called my niece who in-turn conferenced him to 911. Jeremy relayed to the police what was happening as the hijacking unfolded. As our niece Liz listened, Jeremy told the police there were three Arab terrorists with knives and a large red box that they claimed contained a bomb. Jeremy tracked the second by second details and relayed them to the police by phone. After several minutes of describing the scene, Jeremy and several other passengers decided there was nothing to lose by rushing the hijackers. Although United Flight 93 crashed outside of Pittsburgh, with the loss of all souls. Jeremy and the other patriotic heroes saved the lives of many people on the ground that would have died if the Arab terrorists had been able to complete their heinous mission.

Please offer your prayers for all of those who perished or were"
BroadwayStars.com" I think I lost about 100 friends today. I can't count them. I keep breaking down. I don't think that I have ever been so sad and cried so much. I don't know if I will ever be the same. But I am home now. Thank you to everyone for the notes."
CamWorld: Thinking Outside the Box 1:39 AM: Reports are saying the hijackers used knives and box-cutters to hijack the four airplanes that ended up being used as giant flying bombs. Apparently, knives up to four inches are allowed to be carried on board. Unsubstantiated reports now say that the hijackers used plastic-handled devices with razor blades stuck in them. They also started killing stewardesses to lure the pilots from the cockpit in order to gain control of the plane. The knives were constructed from pieces hidden in shaving kits.
Computing Made Good, Easy Many Windows users do not understand why plain text is important. They are content to shuffle text between applications, and happily let e-mail pile up in their inbox. And in the Windows world, forget about automating away repetitive tasks -- it's way too difficult, no matter how much tedium it saves users. The Active User Paradox is alive and well.
DailyPennsylvanian.com - In eyes of experts, a new age has dawned "It is generally true that when there's a threat or an attack, the Pentagon appropriation goes through like a greased pig," Norton said.
Slashdot | Further Updates On Terrorist Attack An Anonymous Coward seeks more information about an interview that Washington area readers may be able to provide: He writes: "Fox News channel 5 (local around 6:30ish E.S.T) this evening had an interview with a witness about what he saw at the Pentagon the moment of impact. His interview was the basic 'I was in my car looked to my side..blah blah' but then he said something totally unexpected. He observed a second airplane immediately swing behind the first in a follow like manner and swoop down on the Pentagon only to pull up at the last second, out of the smoke cloud, and fly away. His description of the plane was pretty detailed, saying it was propeller-driven ... He stated everyone around him who were also outside their cars saw the SECOND Airplane following the first and it was also going in."
Index of /WTC
Collapse of the World Trade Center The planes compromised the structural tube and the fires that followed, likely fed by jet fuel, probably burned to temperatures beyond the integrity of the fireproofed steel, which is designed to withstand 1,500 to 1,600° F heat.

Tuesday, September 11

Wrap Me Up in It he said he was in midtown in the street when a construction worker radioed in and then broke down, saying into his walkie-talkie, "do you know how many men we sent to the towers this morning?" after that, he couldn't speak through his tears.
Liberty and safety in conflict: it.mycareer.com.au, General "It would be helpful for everybody if lots of people made decisions not solely based on what's the easiest thing to do today," Gillmor says.

"My deepest worry is citizens have actually concluded they're willing to sacrifice their liberty for this illusion of safety."
Attack on the United States A London-based Arab newspaper, Al-Arab, reported that international terrorist Osama bin Laden had warned three weeks ago that he was planning an attack "against American interests" and threatened that it would be a big one.
Technology Review - Free the Encyclopedias! What does Nicole Kidman have in common with Kurt Godel? Both are the subject of entries in Wikipedia, a free-wheeling Internet-based encyclopedia whose founders hope will revolutionize the stodgy world of encyclopedias.

What makes Wikipedia different from, say, Encarta (in addition to a name that hints of fruity drinks capped by paper parasols) is that anyone can contribute to it.
Old-Schooler Teaches New Tricks "The more difficult part of this implementation was that all of the classrooms in our district had only two plugs," Crane said. "In order for these schools to move into the technology age, the power capability of the schools had to be increased."

Monday, September 10

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.
The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, "Good question!" is a strong and sincere compliment.
BBC News | UK | Chess legend 'plays the web'



Bobby Fischer comes out of hiding. Sort of.

Saturday, September 8

Techno Magic Courtesy of People How does this miraculous technology work?

"It's a complex, massively parallel, organic, manual net driving, cybernetic text-input system, commonly referred to as a human being," explained Robert Lincoln, Copytalk's VP of marketing.

Friday, September 7

Nick C: Samantha's point is a good one. The Census data, it should be noted,
describe the digital divide as closing, not closed. But lurking behind
Smantha's point is the larger issue: the difference between access and
literacy, between access and quality access.

It's one thing to have a computer in your home, a machine where you can set
and adjust defaults, turn on whenever it's convenient, poke and prod, get
under the hood of if you've a mind too. It's easier to become literate--and
critical--if your access gives you time to play, experiment, and learn more
deeply the programs and interfaces you use.

Now kids who might see a computer for a few hours a week, if that much,
might be said to 'have access,' but it's a different kind of access and
they'll develop different literacy habits. Much will depend upon the school
they're in, the teachers they have and how they think to present and suggest
the machines are used, the location of libraries and community centers where
they might get online when school's out or they're out of school, the kinds
of computer work they do in what jobs they get, and so on.

Like other things for poorer school districts--more rundown physical plants,
more out of date and missing and abused books, higher teacher turn overs,
neighborhoods that can be more dangerous to pass through on the way to
school (if they're urban; rura
Lost Art of Letter Writing Revived France's Sorbonne university has launched a degree course in professional letter writing because a generation addicted to brief e-mails and mobile phone text messaging has forgotten how to pen their own.
We are throwing a tupperware party tomorrow. I am at the point in my life where I have become "post-cool" and have no shame whatsoever. Here is a fun excerpt about the birth of tupperware:



"Wise, a single mother from Detroit, pioneered Tupperware's famous "Hostess Parties"; where a hostess, usually a housewife, gathered a dozen or so women in her house and demonstrated tupperware. In these parties Wise grafted the selling of tupperware onto the American traditions of sewing circles and quilting bees. And she tapped into the psyche of the new suburban housewife: The parties took advantage of the isolation, envy, even neurotic sense of social obligation among suburban women in the 1950s. A feminist called these parties a "form of organizational parasitism analogous to ... colonialism which [used] ... the existing tribal structure ...."



But within this "tribal" system Brownie Wise was so successful that by 1954 Tupperware sales topped fifty four million dollars - and made her the first woman on the cover of Business Week. And today there is a tupperware party somewhere in the world every two point two seconds. "
I've got two palms at work. I sold one, and sent the other in for repair/exchange, so I've been without a pda for about four days. I'm carrying my two most vital pieces of information in my wallet: my long distance card code, and my schedule of research observations. All of the other data exists on a desktop, and I've only been inconvenienced once when I had to walk across campus to get an installation code. I could have put that info on a server somewhere I suppose. I think after a couple of weeks of this it would get more annoying, not sure.



Of course, the handspring with 8meg that I bought on Ebay is supposed to arrive today so we'll never now.
The Times A judge has issued a warning that text messages are the latest weapon in the divorce courts and urged cheating wives or husbands to delete them. Judge Timothy Nash gave the warning during a case at Canterbury Crown Court, Kent, involving a man who attacked his partner after reading text messages that she had received from a lover.
“One of the curses of the mobile phone are these messages and one sees it time and again in the family courts,” Judge Nash said. “Those who receive them do not have the nous to get rid of them and they are a source of constant strife.”

Thursday, September 6

YellowLinux But the tilde is ugly, and there's a better way. Read on.
Alias
Add the following lines at the end of section 26:
Alias /students/ /home/students/www/

Options None
AllowOverride None
order allow,deny
allow from all

Note that most are exactly the same as the comment lines already in this section. The Alias line tells Apache that when it receives a request from the directory /students/, it should really use the directory /home/students/www/. This allows us to request the same index.html page as follows:
http://myserver.com/students/index.html
or
http://myserver.com/students/
Notice that the tilde is gone.
Linux Month - An Online monthly Linux magazine. Linux articles for Linux Enthusiasts.

Securing your linux box
Giving the Web a Memory Cost Its Users Privacy The solution called for each Web site's computer to place a small file on each visitor's machine that would track what the visitor's computer did at that site. Mr. Montulli called his new technology a "persistent client state object," but he had a catchier name in mind, one from earlier days of computing. When machines passed little bits of code back and forth for such purposes as identification, early programmers called the exchanged data "magic cookies." Mr. Montulli would call his invention, a direct descendant, a "cookie."

Wednesday, September 5

Tuesday, September 4

Slashdot | E-mail Overload: Welcome Back to School We know surprisingly little about the social and psychological impact of e-mail, beyond usage, volume and demographics. We do know few people have workable strategies for coping, a problem that hits college students and tech and office workers especially hard. Your experiences and solutions are, as always, welcome below.
There is a sense of feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the problems e-mail creates (also acute for people not in college, since the vast majority of Americans are still on dial-up systems).

Monday, September 3

Internet Replacing Libraries for Homework - Study Of students aged 12-17, the Pew study found that 73 percent, or 17 million children, have Internet access. The Pew study surveyed 754 of those students.
Nearly all of them, 94 percent, said they use the Internet for school research and 78 percent said the Internet helped them with their homework.
The Pew study quoted one 15-year-old boy, who said, ''Without the Internet, you need to go to the library and walk around looking for books. In today's world, you can just go home and get into the Internet and type in your search term.''
More and more, parents might be off the
Internet Replacing Libraries for Homework - Study Seventy-one percent of middle school and high school students with Internet access said they relied on the electronic technology the most in completing a project, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
That compares to 24 percent who said they relied on libraries the most, according to the survey.
Upgrading the Hillbilly Highway Lillian Wennenberg and Midge Palmer watched as Corning, Ohio, eroded.
Buildings in the downtown area stood empty, casualties of the shrinking coal mining and railroad industries. Once the economic backbone of the small, southern Ohio town, the business district of the 3,000 resident town was feeling the economic squeeze.
Even the town's tallest building -- the three-story North Valley Bank Building -- went unused. That is, until Wennenberg and Palmer decided to transform the town into a mini-technology sector.

Saturday, September 1

CNN.com - Fred Dust: Designing for Dilbert - August 28, 2001 It's this kind of observation, for example, that revealed to Dust that certain students at Stanford University -- for whom he designed a learning lab space -- never went to the library to study, although they told him that's where they always went to hit the books.