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The panel investigating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found that there was “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,” according to a staff report issued on Wednesday. (read more)
Perhaps we should be more clear, people. How about saying that the government of Iraq didn’t engage in action with al-Qaeda? Surely the panel can’t have concluded that no citizen of Iraq ever cooperated with al-Qaeda… that would make Iraq one pretty damn unified nation. Even Americans have cooperated with a-Q. (It’s hard to type, ok?) And it still amazes me how many people think that Hussein and bin Laden are close personal friends or something. It’s true in some cases that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that gets overridden to a large extent when there’s religious fundamentalism/fanatacism on one side and secular dictatorship on the other.
“It tells you they’re very cautious and careful and an enemy we cannot underestimate. They’re entrepreneurial and we’ve just got to be ready for whatever they have in mind,” Kean said.
I’m 99% pacifist, but I will hit the next person that claims that a-Q is somehow disorganized or random. Get out of your box, people, we’re not being attacked at random by little anklebiter groups … a-Q is very organized and sophisticated (thanks in large part to the information structure given to them by … the western world and able to attack using technologies and devices created by … the western world… does that sound disorganized? it’s about as efficient as you can get.)
A hacker attack on Internet services company Akamai Technologies Inc. disrupted access to large Web sites including those run by Yahoo Inc., Google, and Microsoft for up to two hours early Tuesday, according to Web tracker Keynote Systems Inc. (read more)
Planes hitting stuff and bombs blowing up are bad. But what I think we need to be more vigilant about is attacks on our information structure. A plane can take out a building… that’s been done (and I suspect it won’t be done again) but a concerted attack on the structure of the internet is not only easy, but destructive. Imagine if America’s communication and banking were disrupted… it would affect nearly every person here. Business could be stopped. Banking could be stopped. If you got fancy enough, the national and international phone trunks could be stopped. There are specifications for beefing up the internet, but so far they haven’t been adopted for two reasons: cost (which is marginally acceptable as a reason… if a provider goes broke, it doesn’t matter how secure the powered-down switches are) and compatibility (Apple and Linux machines have no problems, guess what the culprit is… you got it, it’s Windows)
The owner of farms housing thousands of hogs must pay damages to 11 neighbors who said the stench forced them indoors, the state Court of Appeals said Tuesday. (read more)
OK, first question, what’s the difference between a ‘hog’ and a ‘pig’? Second question, were the people or the pigs there first? If the people were there first, the pig-farmers owe them some cash. If the pigs were there first, the people shouldn’t have moved there. Third, why is anyone raising pigs? I mean, after all, they smell bad.
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake centered in Baja California shook downtown San Diego on Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injury. (read more)
My friend Mike says he’s never felt an earthquake, and he says he missed this one too. I suppose he could have jumped into the air for thirty seconds right when it was taking place… but still.
Wired.com reports that junk faxes might increase in coming months. Who uses fax machines anymore? I mean, seriously, what does it do? It scans a thing, digitizes it, and sends that digitized data to a printer. Sounds a whole lot like e-mail to me. And you can store e-mail. And junk e-mail doesn’t use up paper and toner. Kill your FAX machine.
Irresponsible hasty generalizations:
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web as we know it, created a system to facilitate communication over large distances, which is used by a-Q to coordinate attacks. Therefore, Tim Berners-Lee is responsible for the advent of terrorism.
Microsoft provides operating system software that runs on over 90% of the world’s computers. Many people with Windows machines know how to do little else than play Solitaire on them. Therefore they don’t upgrade to newer technologies. Older versions of Microsoft Windows are not ‘IPv6′ compatible (new addressing system that can be more secure and help foil internet attacks). Therefore, Microsoft is responsible for the ability to bring down US communication infrastructure. (Some people won’t argue with this…)
