Food For Thought

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool….




To weep is to risk appearing sentimental….




To reach out for another is to risk involvement….




To expose feelings is to risk rejection….




To place your dreams before a crowd is to risk ridicule….




To love is to risk not being loved in return….




To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure….












But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.




The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.




He may avoid suffering and sorrows, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or love.




Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave - he has forfeited his freedom.










Only a person who takes risks is FREE!

Iraq attacks kill scores

Aljazeera.net - 3 hours ago
Up to 50 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a series of attacks in Iraq, including a car bomb that ripped apart a crowded market in a town near the Syrian border. In the deadliest attack in Iraq ... read more »

Two things Navy SEALS are always taught:

Keep your priorities in order

Know when to act without hesitation

A college professor, an avowed atheist and active in the ACLU, was
teaching his class. He shocked several of his students when he flatly
stated that once and for all he was going to prove there was no God.
Addressing the ceiling he shouted:

"GOD, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform.
I'll give you exactly 15 minutes!!!!!"

The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes
went by.

" I'm waiting God, if you're real knock me off this platform!!!!"

Again after 4 minutes, the professor taunted God saying,
"Here I am, God!!! I'm still waiting!!!"

His count down got down to the last couple of minutes when a SEAL, just
released from the Navy after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq and newly
registered in the class, walked up to the Professor.

The SEAL hit him full force in the face, and sent the Professor tumbling
from his lofty platform. The Professor was out cold!! The students were
stunned and shocked. They
began to babble in confusion. The SEAL nonchalantly took his seat in the
front row and sat silent. The class looked at him and fell
silent.....waiting. Eventually, the professor came to and was noticeably
shaken. He looked at the SEAL in the front row. When the professor
regained his senses and could speak he asked:

"What the hell is the matter with you?! Why did you do that!?"

"God was really busy protecting America's soldiers, who are protecting
your right to say stupid shit and act like an ass!!! So he sent me!!"
ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE

Jesus wants A Few Good Men! Living A Life You Always Wanted!:

Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup) (marine cornel) YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH ….Son, we live a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. You curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have that luxury of not knowing what I know. And that my existence as grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. I know down deep in places you don't want to talk about, you don't want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like HONOR, CODE, and LOYALTY. We use these words as the very backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide. I prefer you to just say thank you and go on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don't give a crap what you think you are entitled to!" (end of scene) more »

fallout shelter

A fallout shelter is a civil defense measure intended to reduce casualties in a nuclear war. Nuclear fallout is radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon explodes. The explosion vaporizes any material within the fireball, including the ground if it is nearby. Much of this material is exposed to neutrons from the explosion, absorbs them, and becomes radioactive. When this material condenses in the cloud, it forms dust and light sandy material that resembles ground pumice. The fallout emits gamma rays as if each particle were a tiny x-ray machine. Much of this highly radioactive material then falls to earth, subjecting anything within the line of sight to gamma radiation, a significant hazard. A fallout shelter is designed to allow its occupants to avoid exposure to harmful fallout until radioactivity has lowered to a safer level. read more »

Wanted: A Few Good Men

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good,
but very few men that are both great and good.

- Charles Caleb Colton

Google goes to Washington

Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel


It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C. affect Google and our users more every day. It’s important to be involved - to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we’ve opened up a shop there. The first member of our Washington team is Alan Davidson, a veteran thinker and advocate for issues we care about.


Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation. OK, that sounds a little high and mighty, so let me break it down into something a bit wonkier with a sampling of the U.S. policy issues we’re working on:


Net neutrality. As voice, video, and data rapidly converge, Congress is rewriting U.S. telecommunications laws and deregulating broadband connectivity, which is largely a good thing. But in a country where most citizens have only one or two viable broadband options, there are real dangers for the Internet: Should network operators be able to block their customers from reaching competing websites and services (such as Internet voice calls and video-on-demand)? Should they be able to speed up their own sites and services, while degrading those offered by competitors? Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out? Or, if that’s not blunt enough for you, what’s better: [a] Centralized control by network operators, or [b] free user choice on the decentralized, open, and astoundingly successful end-to-end Internet? (Hint: It’s not [a].)


Copyrights and fair use. Google believes in protecting copyrights while maintaining strong, viable fair use rights in this new digital age. We support efforts by the U.S. Copyright Office to facilitate the use of orphan works (works whose rights-holders can’t be found), while fully respecting the interests of creators. We applauded the Supreme Court’s carefully calibrated decision in the Grokster case, but worked to defeat legislation that would have created new forms of liability for neutral technologies and services like Google.
read more »

Technology Quotes and Proverbs:

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.



Peter Drucker


read more »

150 computer one-liners

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.


Computers can never replace human stupidity.



It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...


read more »

Key Volunteer Network - Home Page:

The Key Volunteer Network is an integral part of a Marine Corps unit family readiness program and is the primary communication link between the commanding officer and the unit families for the enhancement of mission readiness.

The Key Volunteer Network supports the spouses of the unit Marines by providing communication from the command, serving as a source for information and referral services and by helping foster a sense of community within the unit. Learn more

How the Red Cross Began

Humanitarian relief, 19th-century style

The full extent of the Hurricane Katrina disaster is starting to become clear. It hasn't been a pretty picture, and people are asking hard questions about what might have been done differently by government and local citizens.

One thing is sure: private charities and relief workers are on the scene in force. The American Red Cross, one of the nation's largest private relief services, has mobilized its largest-ever response to a national disaster. As people open their wallets to support these volunteers, we're opening the books to look at the 19th-century Swiss humanitarian who helped start the Red Cross itself.

Stock Market News and Investment Information | Reuters.com:

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, acknowledging the initial federal relief effort for Hurricane Katrina was unacceptable, said on Saturday he will send 7,000 additional troops to storm-ravaged region.

"Today I ordered the Department of Defense to deploy additional active-duty forces to the region. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, more than 7,000 additional troops from the 82nd Airborne, from the 1st Calvary, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, will arrive in the affected areas," Bush said.

Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:# Hurricane Katrina (2005, Atlantic) - catastrophic storm that devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast

• Hurricane Katrina (2005, Atlantic) - catastrophic storm that devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast

The Case for Modeling and Simulation of Information Security:

“When I hear I forget. When I see I remember. When I do, I learn.” Confucius

Abstract

A challenge that stands before the security community is to better prepare management, system administrators, and users to respond appropriately to information security crises while simultaneously reducing the anxiety associated with them. One clear approach to achieving this goal is to use modeling and simulation for education, training, and testing. This paper will present the available range of modeling and simulation capabilities in Information Assurance. It will also establish some principles for extending these capabilities into the community. It will do this by establishing a case for utilizing more simulation in our discipline, reviewing past modeling & simulation efforts within information security, reviewing the traditional types of modeling and simulation methodologies, addressing capability and experiences in computer modeling within other areas such as telecomm and economics, and providing a framework for future computer based modeling and simulation efforts in Information security.

Introduction

bad storm

CRASH TEST DUMMIES LYRICS

"Superman's Song"


Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man
He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin' around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[Chorus:]
Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home


[Thanks to kevin_c4@hotmail.com, sean_ee@hotmail.com for correcting these lyrics]

[ www.azlyrics.com ]

Molly.com That's why it's Called Beta:

I WOKE UP this morning to find countless emails and IMs pouring into my accounts asking me about the IE 7 beta.

Some developers are expressing relief at seeing some of the bug fixes and improvements, but of course as I’ve been expressing all along, this is a process with which we have to be patient. Expecting full bug fixes and implementation in any beta software is ridiculous, as is expecting that WaSP / Microsoft Task Force can perform retroactive miracles. more »

E-Mail Wiretapping' Prosecutions Could Increase in the Future

By Gene J. Koprowski

A federal appeals court ruling in Boston last week on e-mail wiretapping is reverberating throughout the Internet community-and legal world-with a consensus emerging that there may be prosecutions in the future for what today is considered normal business practice by ISPs.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals, voting 5-2, ruled that an e-mail service provider that supposedly read e-mail, intended for customers only, could indeed be tried on federal criminal charges.

This is True: The Lord Giveth, the Feds Taketh Away:

When William H. Irvin III received a government check for $836,939.19 in June, 1992, he considered it a gift from God since he had recently prayed for self-sufficiency. A federal court jury in Kansas City, Mo., was unmoved: it was a computer error, they said, not God, which boosted his $183.69 check to the higher amount. Convicted of knowingly spending government money, filing a false tax return and money laundering, he faces 43 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine. (AP) ...Then his prayers have been answered: he won’t have to buy food or shelter for 40 years.

Plug-and-play bots worming and warring among Windows systems

More than a dozen different worms have been created from the latest Microsoft Windows vulnerability and readily available bot software and have started attacking each other's compromised systems, security experts warned on Wednesday. “ These guys have been pretty desperate for a new exploit for a while. They had been using LSASS for too long, and been scraping the bottom of the barrel for exploits, so now everyone and his mother is now going to use this instead. ”


Joe Stewart, senior threat researcher, Lurhq The worms--which appear to come from three families of code dubbed Zotob, Botzori and IRCBot--started spreading on Sundaywithout much fanfare. However, on Tuesday, computers at CNN and the New York Times became infected by one or more variants of the worm, and the public profile of the programs increased a notch. more »