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Wednesday, September 19, 2001 |
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Adam Curry. To Go or Not to Go. That is the question. Why fly when it puts you far away from the people you love during these uncertain times? I think Adam is thinking what a lot of people are thinking. Why take risks?
Travel used to be an uncertain business. It was tough, risky, prone to mishap, and not something to be taken lightly. It is only in the modern age that travel has become a matter of little concern. Our system made it soooo easy (and inexpensive!). Well things have changed.
One thing that will happen: decentralized software tools will become very important. We at UserLand operate on a decentralized basis. How do we do it? Mail lists and distributd publishing. We build tools that make it easier to operate a distributed company. Use decentralized tools when possible.
One note to Adam: I used to live a life where I kept a bag packed in my trunk for rapid assignment. I went to risky places. I put myself in harms way. My wife knew me, and my mind, and accepted it. My kids accepted it. It was only through that travel that I could do what I loved.
Adam, you take risks everyday and I know you to be fearless otherwise. This is a new type of risk, a physical and emotional risk. Wives and kids are much tougher than you think. This is something everyone needs to learn in these new times.
8:53:14 PM 
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Netizen News. Hacker alters Yahoo News.
"20-year-old hacker Adrian Lamo modified an August 23rd story about the criminal prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov under the highly unpopular and unconstitutional DCMA by saying the Russian programmer faced the death penalty. The article warned that Sklyarov's work raised "the haunting specter of inner-city minorities with unrestricted access to literature, and through literature, hope" and said that at a press conference to "cheering hordes", Attorney General John Ashcroft's said "They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law." Other articles included a senate commitee report to the NSA quoted as saying "Rebuilding the NSA is the committee’s top priority. In partnership with AOL Time Warner, we fully expect to bring you a service you can’t refuse"
8:27:53 PM
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A solution to denial of service attacks. Build P2P Web applications. Everything that is done on the net today can be done via P2P and desktop Web applications. These applications scale, are inexpensive to implement, and are immune to a single point of failure. How to start? Build a Web application in Radio.
8:11:58 PM
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Irish Times. Military analysis on an Afghanistan operation. We should already have remotely piloted vehicles in the sky already gathering intelligence. Also, the CIA and the military should be recruiting arabic and farsi speakers right now. We are a melting pot -- utilize it!
7:59:42 PM
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Reuters. Wireless stocks surge on demand for wireless phones. After the stories of people calling home for one last time on their wireless phones last week, demand for new phones is up sharply.
4:10:24 PM
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Pakwatan (the Web portal of Pakistan). Interview with General Hameed Gul (Pakistan's former intelligence chief). He implies Israel is behind the attacks.
"They (the Jewish lobbies) have been told to indulge in acts of terrorism in the past. Why can't they do it now? If you would recall, after the Wye River accord when (President) Clinton went begging (Israeli prime minister Binyamin) Netanyahu to accept peace, Netanyahu said over the CNN that we (the Jews) will set Washington on fire, and they (the CNN) had quickly switched off the telecast."
11:09:09 AM
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A chain of connectivity. P2P Web applications present the opportunity to chain together desktops in a way that can accomplish great things.
The concept is simple. I publish to my buddies, who in turn publish to their buddies, and so on ad infinitum. There may be as simple as a single Web site published from one location or it may be a complex app that incorporates input from many locations and propogates the changes among all the desktops running it.
For example, say I had an desktop Web application that helped people find missing persons during a disaster. I publish it to my buddies putting the names of the missing people I am looking for. They in turn put in names and resolve any missing person reports that they have knowledge of. This app could, using the chain of connectivity outlined above, incorporate the knowledge and resources of millions of people.
10:32:43 AM
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Enclosures. The next wave of a super smart enclosure-based virus spells the end of enclosures. How will people distribute documents and files in the post enclosure world? Personal Websites. For example, if I wanted to send and a document/file (word, excel, powerpoint, MP3, MPG, etc), I would post the document to a personal Website. I would then annotate the document/file with some text with an explanation of what its contents. I would then send the link with an e-mail to anyone I wanted to distribute the document/file to. Simple. An added benefit: the document/file would be available as an archive and the link could be forwarded to others. For anyone faced with the problem of scaling an Exchange or Notes e-mail database, this is a godsend.
10:11:50 AM
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Jane's. Could Iraq be the sponsor of this terrorist attack?
Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden. It was a mistake to leave Saddam Hussein intact after the Gulf war. The millions of Iraqi dead due to starvation and ill treatment are the result of this miscalculation. In their collective minds, citizens of the US knew this and voted the elder Bush out of office. Regardless, Iraq's government was probably involved to some degree.
9:20:20 AM
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Esquire (Feb 99 One of the last western interviews). Interview with Osama bin Laden.
"After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians," bin Laden said. "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda . . . about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat." One soldier, with a big grin, told of slitting the throats of three American soldiers in Somalia.
For insight into the Somali conflict read, "Black Hawk Down: A story of modern war" by Mark Bowdin. It is a chaotic and messy. They also plan to do a movie based on the book. I wonder if it will make it to market.
Meanwhile, bin Laden's reach has now been documented among Albanians fighting the Serbs in Kosovo. Wherever Muslims are in trouble, it seems, Osama bin Laden will be there, slaying enemies, real or perceived. A modern nightmare, really—a big-screen villain, a freelancer with the resources of a state but without all the nasty obligations. Sort of a Ford Foundation for terrorists—or freedom fighters, depending on whom you ask. Again, this is the first time in history a single individual has declared war on the world.
The day after the American counterstrike, an ABC News colleague in Pakistan got a call from Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had been at the camp with us that night. Al-Zawahiri said bin Laden was alive and very well and that he had a message for us: "The war has just started. The Americans should wait for the answer." From bin Laden's perspective the he and the US have been at war since Clinton's strike against him.
7:01:39 AM
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Reuters. Boeing to lay-off 30,000 workers. The toll continues.
"Aerospace is the industrial future of America. We would hope that some of the $24-billion government airline bailout would be earmarked to preserve American aerospace jobs,'' said Mark Blondin, president of the Seattle chapter of Boeing's machinists union." Boeing and the airlines are quickly taking steps to downsize in anticipation of a gov't bailout. However, it is unclear that a bailout will preserve jobs. Why? The companies will use the bail-out money to boost the bottom line and eliminate debt from past loses, it will not stop a drive to profitability by cutting employee headcount.
6:25:35 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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