Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Khamanei: Oooooh I'm so scared!. I don't really know what's happened to my friend, Eli Lake, who's written this story about this guy and his meeting with Perle. A "leading dissident and author," whom no one knows in or out of Iran. Who are these people kidding? I bet Kahameni would rush to join Bin Laden in his cave as soon as he knows what a great opposition leader has joined the regime change team of Mr. Shahriar Ahy. Less than 24 hours after one of Iran's leading dissidents and authors escaped to a neighboring state, the former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, interrupted his trip to central Asia to meet with him in a cramped hotel room. The meeting between Mr. Perle and Amir Abbas Fakhravar on April 29, in a location both men have asked not appear in print, may end up being as important as the first contacts between Mr. Perle and the ex-Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in the 1980s.  [Editor: Myself (English)] 6:56:33 PM    comment []

Google Trends "analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time." [Scripting News] 6:53:34 PM    comment []

Feds Want Hacker's Genetic Code. New York Times hacker Adrian Lamo faces up to five years in prison for refusing to give his blood for a government DNA database. By Kevin Poulsen. [Wired News: Top Stories] 6:48:04 PM    comment []

Assessment trends: Grading statistics for all Norwegian higher education [del.icio.us]. You can check out how many percent got an A, how many got a B, etc etc, selecting for year, kind of institution (university, private college, state college etc), gender and a few other things too. And you can go down level by level to each individual scho  [jill/txt] 6:40:43 AM    comment []

The check is in the mail. Clive Davis points to an article in the New Yorker that shows how even Massachusetts psychotherapists can fall for a Nigerian e-mail scam. [Pajamas Media] More on the Nigerian scam 6:40:39 AM    comment []

IRC and users with female names. "A study by the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering found that chat room participants with female usernames received 25 times more threatening and/or sexually explicit private messages than those with male or ambiguous usernames,"this University of Maryland press release says.From the papers conclusions."In summary,the threat of attack on IRC seems to be rather low.The only type of attack that occurs consistently daily is malicious private messages,and in and of themselves they pose no threat to computer security.This threat does not seem to depend on whether or not a user is active in a channel.Users with female names are,however,far more likely to receive malicious private messages,slightly more likely to receive files and links,and equally likely to be attacked in other ways.This implies that the attacks are carried out by humans selecting targets rather than automated scripts sending attacks to everyone in the channel". (via docuticker) Female-Name Chat Users Get 25 Times More Malicious Messages [Smart Mobs] 6:37:50 AM    comment []

Land... Land.... Land.... Land.... FLEE!. FedEx Swarming Behavior This "Time lapse radar track of FedEx aircraft arriving into the Memphis hub during area thunderstorms" reminds you once again that whatever air-traffic controllers are getting paid, it isn't enough. Via: Parker Tool and Fly [AMERICAN DIGEST] 6:35:29 AM    comment []

Comedy history of dance in six minutes: This six minute video shows comedian Judson Laipply recreating the history of contemporary dance, starting with Elvis's pelvis move and working up through time, with stops for Saturday Night Live, Walk Like an Egyptian, AC/DC, and Ice Ice Baby. It's awfully funny stuff. Link (via Kottke) [Boing Boing] 6:30:18 AM    comment []

Evil Guys Brought to Justice. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/05/ftc_spyware_lawsuits/ Tough financial break for "Spamford," the pioneer of spamming --Botmaster Sentenced To Nearly 5 Years In Prison (8 May, 2006) Jeanson James Ancheta, a member of the "Botmaster Underground" pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of conspiracy, fraud and damaging U.S. government computers. He was given a 57 month sentence, the longest sentence for spreading computer viruses, according to federal prosecutors. http://ct.enews.cioinsight.com/rd/cts?d=188-336-1-20-148108-42789-0-0-0-1 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12694077/ "Your worst enemy is your own intellectual arrogance that somehow the world cannot touch you on this," Klausner said in sentencing Ancheta. (((I'd be guessing that intellectual arrogance is this kid's worst enemy even when he's going out for a hamburger. Something the Botmaster will not be doing for about five years.))) [Beyond the Beyond] Earlier coverage here at A blog doesn't need a clever name 6:25:54 AM    comment []

When the Professor Is a Tough Grader, and Your Dad. For many college students, in search of their own identity, being on the same campus as a parent may be as much togetherness as they can stand. By P. G. SITTENFELD. [NYT > Education] 6:21:34 AM    comment []

Iranian Letter: Using Religion to Lecture Bush [New York Times: International News] 6:19:51 AM    comment []

Spime Watch XVIII: Search Engines plus 3-D CAD. *Google bought Sketchup, a 3-D virtual design company, which is now "Google Sketchup." This may seem an odd acquisition, but in spime theory, this makes a certain sense. Six aspects of spimes: 1. Machine-readable unique identity 2. Locatively trackable 3. Searchable and data-mineable 4. Recyclable 5. Virtually designed and archived 6. Fabbable If these six trends are really going to converge, then there will have to be entities that stick those trends together in various useful or profitable combinations. SketchUp makes virtual structure plans that can be mashed-up onto Google Maps, enhancing both these systems. Interestingly, they're also both exploiting free labor from social-software architectures of participation, which I'm coming to think of as the solvent that glues those six converging trends together. Who on earth would actually want to make spimes happen? Who would want them and use them? As the SketchUp guy says, "three words: benevolent magic elves." [Beyond the Beyond] The rest has lots of groovy bruces riffs and more detailed analysis of the point of the acquisition for Google. 6:19:31 AM    comment []

Boston University Gave Ex-Chief $6.1 Million, Officials Say. The deferred compensation for John R. Silber, two years after he stepped down as the university's leader, touched off outrage among other academics. By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO. [NYT > Education] 6:18:41 AM    comment []

Spot a Bug, Go to Jail. Computer crime laws and zealous prosecutors too often conspire to hide security flaws that put your data at risk. It's time for a change. Commentary by Jennifer Granick. [Wired News: Top Stories] 6:17:26 AM    comment []

Video: Daily Show on Bush's Hayden/Goss deja vu. he used the same phrase to describe his new CIA director nominee as he did two years ago with Goss   [Waxy.org Links] 6:16:07 AM    comment []