There’s a buffer overflow in the AIM client that will allow malicious folks to take over Windows machines. AOL says they’re implementing a fix on the server side, which means, I guess, that the server won’t let people send messages that exploit the buffer overflow. Seems like a decent enough hack until they can fix the overflow in the next version of AIM (assuming they do).

Bernard Goldberg’s new book Bias is getting a lot of attention, at least among conservatives, but if the quality of writing and insight are as absent as they are in this WSJ piece from 1996 that precipitated the book, there’s not much to look forward to. The New York Times reviewed the book back on December 13 (a reader sent a direct link to the review).

I finally got to read the full Wall Street Journal story about the contents of the Al Qaeda computers that they bought. The computers were used by several people, including Al Qaeda higher ups like Mohammed Atef and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the files they found are both fascinating and disturbing. If anyone has a pointer to a copy of the article available on the Web, please send it along.

When Betrayal and Paranoia Are Part of the Job: Tom Mangold writes about counterintelligence for the New York Times.

Despite the fact that I haven’t owned or really used a Macintosh in the past few years, I still get excited every time Macworld Expo rolls around. I’m especially anxious to see what’s announced this year, because even Apple itself is hyping the event like crazy. The current tagline at apple.com is “Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond.” I wonder if it’s just an LCD iMac (which would still be pretty damn cool), or if they have something more interesting in store.

It looks like Pakistan is really stepping up to the plate in combatting Islamic extremism. President Musharraf has ordered an end to all military support for resistance groups in the Kashmir, and has banned all support for groups made up of people not indigenous to the Kashmir. The article also mentions that he has instituted new regulations for madrasas in Pakistan that will require them to teach a broad curriculum, and will require foreign students to have permission from their governments to attend. If they actually enforce the requirement for a broad curriculum, I imagine it will simply put most of the madrasas out of business.

On December 28, I linked to an article from the CS Monitor that quoted Qari Ahmadullah, the Taliban’s chief of intelligence, as saying that Osama bin Laden is still in Afghanistan. Now he’s dead. He was killed by US bombing in the village of Naka on December 27. It’s quite likely that the article in the CSM was his final interview. (A former Taliban commander called Rocketi is also presumed to have been killed in the attack on Naka, the CSM has an interview with him here.)

It’s a baby step, but it’s still a step: Turkey granted “equal rights” to women, as of January 1. They are no longer required to have their husband’s permission to work outside their homes, and are entitled to an equal share of the family’s assets in the case of divorce. Only people who marry after the law went into effect are subject to it, but it’s an improvement.

Argentina just got its fifth president in the past two weeks. I wonder what makes this guy think he can succeed where his predecessors failed. He’s going to decouple the peso from the dollar, that should help, even though it will cause pretty massive inflation in the short term.

The Status Quo
Tne thing I’ve realized since September 11 (2001) is that there’s a lot more continuity in government than I had previously thought. Despite the fact that every 4 or 8 years, we get a whole new Presidential administration, sometimes one that operates from a political stance diametrically opposed to the previous one, inertia keeps things moving in the same direction most of the time. The issues the two political parties fight over are usually a side show. Will the government spend a lot of money, or slightly more than a lot of money over the next few years? Will some obscure environmental regulation that was never really enforced properly be repealed, or will we add some new ones that the regulatory agencies will ignore anyway?

The fact is that about 1.7 million people work for the federal government (not counting the US Postal Service), and they will continue to do so until they retire. Policy and laws are nice, but what really matters most of the time is what these guys decide to do when they get to work in the morning. Congress passes a bill that will theoretically completely alter security screening at airports, and the bureaucrats in charge of implementing it change things back to the status quo. Ho hum.

Ronald Reagan is often credited with putting the pressure on the Soviet Union that ultimately brought it to its knees. Our funding of the mujahideen is generally considered to be a key component of that pressure. You know who started funding the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan? The Carter administration. Reagan just kept it up.

You know all those nasty bits of the PATRIOT act that got my hackles up? They had been on the wish list of the Justice Department for forever, the September 11 attacks finally gave Congress an excuse to make them into laws.

In a way, this should reassure us, I think. Regardless of whether George Bush or Al Gore won the election back in November, things were going to continue basically as before. In another way, it should scare the Hell out of us. We vote for this person or that one, and the bottom line is that a bunch of people we don’t elect determine how the government really affects our lives. The elected officials try to alter the course of the nation, but inertia carries it on its merry way. Despite all this, I resolve in 2002 not to stop caring or paying attention.