Doing the honorable thing may sound nice in concept, but there is nothing scientific or mathematical about honor. Do we need it in modern society? Do honor killings fall into this category? I do not believe they do; however in some parts of the world they are common place. As seen in this video we can see a human rights violation in progress. This 17 year old girl of Kurdish origin was stoned to death for having relations with a Sunni Muslim boy. What drives a society to the point that it hates women? We are definitely at war, but maybe not so much at war with terrorism as we are with the principals of science and secular society versus religious zealotry. The issue of science and religion will be the defining issue of our time. Terrorism, racism, and other issues will not really be so great in the scheme of things. In our own country we have the religious right attempting to stop scientific progress because of George Bush’s “Culture of Life” and outside our country we have religious groups that want to take us back to the stone age. All of which are being veiled under the right thing to do or the honorable thing to do.
Iran is apparently a Mecca for stem cell research. Due to the religious climate there an embryo is not considered alive until after 3 months. On FoxNews TV a cleric stated that since the embryos are never implanted then there is no possibility they will ever be alive which is what allows for this form of research. This is something American politicians should think about. World dominance is not just about military power. It is also about economic diversity and the freedom to innovate. South Korea, Britain, and others may be the first to innovate in this area and if they are the first to invent, then they get the patent rights. It would be much better if we were to invent and charge other countries for our hard work, but instead we have to resort to ancient superstition running our lives.
Iranian history, going back to the Persian empire, is laced with scientific achievements and one doctor told me, “the scientists would now like to go back to this era and for this reason young scientists are really excited.”
The new-found pride is not just about stem cells. It’s also about nuclear energy. The fact that Iranian scientists figured out how to enrich uranium without having to do so in a foreign country is a big reason the people and politicians say they won’t back down from the United Nations’ demands to stop.
One interesting note here that shows Iran is progressing as a country is that the scientific community wants to return to the era of innovation. The Persian Empire had many innovations. Ultimately this means you cannot have religion interfering with science to attain this level of brain power. This is one small element of hope that the Iranians are slowly slipping out of the grasp of the Islamic clerics into a new renaissance of thought.
Some observers in Rome believed that the Islamic group was planning a “denial of service” attack, in which a web site is bombarded with many thousands of simultaneous visits, overloading the available bandwidth and making it impossible for others to reach the site.
A Denial of Service (DoS) is one of the easiest attacks to pull off and also one of the easiest to screw up. In order to take a website offline through a DoS attack you have to have more internet traffic than the “pipes” to that website will handle. Considering that the Vatican is a highly visited internet property they must have some heavy bandwidth and heavy servers to handle all the routine visitors.
The Vatican might be vulnerable to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack where tens of thousands of computers around the world are used to launch an attack. Though I think it is highly unlikely that such an attack would occur since I doubt that many Muslims in the desert have computers or the electricity to power them.
I could solve the hijack problem by coating the cockpit in bacon grease and serving good southern BBQ on the plane for a whole lot less money, but hey we have to give props to the geeks that invented this thing.
The Red Tape Chronicles is covering a story where Consumer Reports sponsored a throw down of Anti-Virus programs. Consumer Reports is coming under fire from the anti-virus industry for writing viruses to test off the shelf software with. The issue is that anti-virus programs only detect known viruses with any degree of reliability. The general public typically does not understand this minor detail. They do detect new viruses using heuristics and other methods, but this method is not fully reliable. To establish a baseline Consumer Reports had an independent security firm create 5500 new viruses to test with.
Antivirus Webzine Virus Bulletin whined the loudest as a result.
The antivirus community has always been very strongly opposed to the creation of new malware for any purpose,” wrote John Hawes, the technical consultant at antivirus Webzine Virus Bulletin. “There’s just no need for it. Plenty of new viruses are being written all the time, why would anyone in a responsible position want to add to the glut?”
Obviously Mr. Hawes does not know anything about the scientific method and controlled experiments. Sure there are new viruses already out there, but if you don’t know they exist how do you know the software is effectively protecting the computer?
The antivirus industry has been very concerned with keeping their art a mystery. Anyone who creates new viruses for any reason is considered bad for the industry. One does not have to look too far to see that the antivirus companies are protecting their own interests. One case that made headlines a few years ago was University of Calgary in Canada began teaching a course on viruses to their computer science students. The basis of the class is to write viruses and then write antivirus software to catch the work of your classmates. Personally I would consider it no different than teaching lock picking to a class that will be designing the locks of the future. You have to know all the techniques the bad guys use in order to craft an appropriate counter measure.
The Calgary program created quite a controversy with many US security software companies stating that they would not hire anyone who graduated from the university with a computer science degree since it would mean they have written viruses, never mind the context. I find this viewpoint hypocritical at the very least. It is well know that many security companies hire former black hat hackers. The technicality is if you’ve never been convicted, nobody can prove that you are a criminal hacker and by virtue of turning away from “the dark side” you are now a good guy. They don’t teach hacking in college so the only experience IT Security professionals are going to get is hacking or through an internship or mentorship program.
Consumer Reports is being roasted for the same reason. If antivirus software were any good it would prevent all viruses, not just the known ones. But McAfee and Symantec, plus a whole host of better solutions would not be able to charge a yearly subscription fee as easily if you didn’t constantly need their updates. With organized crime and the jihad getting on board with hacking and virus writing I believe Consumer Reports is on target with their tests. Profit is what motivates us, but a little innovation to provide consumers with better protection and the retirement of old and out dated business models would greatly enhance security. McAfee and the antivirus industry are not putting virus prevention at the top of their priority list.
Mahmoud LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI Ahmadinejad has his own blog! It is unfortunate that he chose IIS 5.0 as his hosting platform.
Trying 217.218.165.150…
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:32:06 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 87
The cell phone company became aware of the ringtone, which uses mixed English and Spanish and threatens deportation, after an inquiry from a reporter for The Brownsville Herald.
The newspaper reported in its online edition Tuesday that the ringtone started with a siren, followed by a male voice saying in a Southern drawl, “This is la Migra,” a slang term for the Border Patrol.
“Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I’m deporting you back home-o,” the voice continued.
Hispanic activists called the product racist.
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s racist to have a ringtone! First of all, it doesn’t matter what that ringtone is. People spend money on these stupid things to personalize their phone. That’s what free market capitalism is all about. If said hispanic activists are so offended then they need to make a gringo ringtone rather than complain.
Israeli hackers have defaced several Iranian government sites. This is definitely a step in the right direction. The Iranians need to understand that Israel won’t be wiped off the map so easily. All we need now is for some Danish hackers to get involved and give them pictures of the Prophet Mohammad.
eSmokes has settled with NYC over back taxes concerning cigarette sales online. The terms would allow NYC to go after customers for taxes not paid on the cigarettes they ordered online. Eventhough I don’t care for smoking I think Bloomberg is not being a financial genius. The reason people went outside the city/state is because what they were buying was cheaper. A brilliant business man such as Bloomberg should understand lower price attracts more customers. If NYC wants smoker’s tax money then they should consider competing with North Carolina’s cigarette tax, rather than being anti-capitalistic and trying to shut down a system that allows consumers to get the best deal.
Hack in the Box: Islamic Hacker Picked Up In France. Authorities have picked up a Moroccan hacker known as Yanis. He’s been a pretty busy boy. 710 website defacements during the whole Mohammad Gate cartoon scandal with over 1100 total hacks on his “resume”. I believe he should be punished by being forced to watch porn featuring a dominatrix beating the crap out of muslim prisoners. Then let him go with a warning that the next time he’ll have to watch Lynndie England torturing prisoners. The poor man will probably claw his own eyes out.