Well Apple’s first big announcement was widely anticipated – the flat-panel iMac lives. It looks sort of like a studio lamp, with a dome base to weigh it down and the screen on an adjustable arm. (I didn’t like the way it looked until I realized it was supposed to look like a desk lamp.) The computer’s guts live in the lamp base, which means that the computer really won’t take up a lot of desk space. I think it’s going to be a big hit. ...
Risks Digest recently had a couple of items about buffer overflows. I can remember when Windows people used to point out that Unix programs were fraught with buffer overflows, back when the buffer overflows in every suid root program were getting explointed left and right. The fact is that people hadn’t even begun delving into buffer overflows in Windows applications yet. Because pretty much everything that runs under Windows is privileged, we’re going to see literally hundreds of buffer overflow exploits for Windows apps before it’s all said and done. ...
Why is there no bipartisanship in Congress? Paul Krugman argues (based on actual data) that it’s because the Republicans have moved to the right and the Democrats have pretty much stayed where they were. This rightward shift coincides with the rising income gap between the richest Americans and everybody else.
Computer in Kabul holds chilling memos (Here’s the WSJ article on the contents of the al-Qaeda computers that they purchased, syndicated via MSNBC. Thanks for the link, Dan.) There’s an AP story on the increasing trend toward crackers (really script kiddies) turning to home computers as targets. The article sort of misses the main reason why home computers have become targets – script kiddies often simply scan banks of IP addresses and hack whatever returns the result they’re looking for. Whether the computer is a home or business computer is irrelevant in those cases, any old victim will do. Ultimately, what’s going to have to change is the software industry. We need operating systems and applications that are secure out of the box, most people can’t or won’t take responsibility for securing their own computers. I think that what’s going to happen is that businesses are going to pressure Microsoft (and others) into better securing their products (even home products) out of weariness with banks of home computers being used as launch pads for attacks on business computers. ...
The controversy over the Secret Service agent kicked off the airplane won’t go away. American Airlines says that they didn’t racially profile the guy, they became suspicious of him because his bag had Arabic looking books in it. Well, OK then. I took a look at the Mozilla Development Roadmap today and noticed two things. The first is that they’ve really been hitting their dates over the last few releases. That means we might really see Mozilla 1.0 in April. The quality of the current milestones is already higher than that of several released versions of Netscape Navigator. The second thing I noticed is that four of the seven project managers of Mozilla don’t look like they’re on AOL’s payroll. That has to be a good sign. ...
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. 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.) ...
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? ...
This New York Times article on the Pashtun tribal areas on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan makes an interesting point I hadn’t read elsewhere – this is the first time in Pakistan’s history that army troops have ever been deployed to the tribal region. Newsweek has a story on plans in Afghanistan to rebuild the buddhas at Bamiyan that were destroyed by the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal bought a couple of computers from a looter that used to belong to Al Qaeda. A review of the contents of the hard drive revealed all sorts of interesting stuff, including a smoking gun that implicates Al Qaeda in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud. If you ask me, the fact that Al Qaeda assassinated Massoud right before the attacks clearly indicates that Al Qaeda’s leadership knew full well when the attacks would occur and what the attacks would consist of, and that they had been planned far in advance. By assassinating Massoud, they hoped to eliminate the Northern Alliance as a potential ally for the United States when we went after them for the attack that was about to happen. ...
Remember Special Forces Captain Jason Amerine, who was interviewed for a Washington Post article earlier this month? He also has some quotes in a New York Times article from yesterday. The article discusses the ups and downs of using the Northern Alliance troops as a proxy force on the ground. It also has a more detailed description of the battle of Tarin Kot, where Amerine’s detachment of troops basically prevented a massacre at the hands of the Taliban. ...
A quick note on the most recent Osama bin Laden video: in it, bin Laden states that the attacks were intended to force the United States to end its support for Israel. To me, this seems like the most craven sort of political rhetoric there is. As the intensity of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians increases, bin Laden further seeks to capitalize on it in his statements. I’m certainly not foolish enough to believe that he’s actually interested in the plight of Palestinians, and I hope the Palestinians aren’t either. Besides, the last thing they need is a friend like Osama bin Laden. The Palestinians have a just cause in seeking sovereignty for themselves – the anti-Semites within their ranks, and those goading them on from the sidelines throughout the Muslim world do nothing but discredit them. ...