Month: September 2001

Unsavory – Continuing to read Taliban. The hisory of Afghanistan and Central Asia over the last few thousand years makes the Balkans look like a church. The Taliban rose to power with bribery, backstabbing, smuggling, opium traficking; and they look like saints compared to the people they defeated. It is shocking that Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States, and others actually ever trusted them enough to negotiate anything. As far as I can tell, the Taliban have broken every promise they have ever made to anyone outside of their realm.

To add to my comments yesterday about how hackers are pretty deluded if they thought they could do anything “computer” to stop Bin Laden, the book talks about how the top leaders of the Taliban coordinated most of their troop movements and negotiations via instructions written on pieces of paper from the back of cigarette packs. It is only recently that they have become wealthy enough to use normal pads of paper to write their directives. Their leader, mullah Omar and his second in command have never been photographed. You can, however, recognize them based on the former's missing right eye and the latter's gouged wooden pegleg and missing finger. Mullah Omar in 1996 donned the cloak of the prophet Mohammed (yes, the actual 2,000 year-old piece of cloth) and was declared by a few thousand Islamic teachers to be the leader of Islam. Some other interesting facts: Zoroastrianism is still alive today in parts of Afghanistan. Christian followers of the heretic Nestor were centered in Afghanistan. The Turkic language first took on a life beyond Persian in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was the seat of government for Timur the Lame. [Better Living Through Software

Unsavory – Continuing to read Taliban. The hisory of Afghanistan and Central Asia over the last few thousand years makes the Balkans look like a church. The Taliban rose to power with bribery, backstabbing, smuggling, opium traficking; and they look like saints compared to the people they defeated. It is shocking that Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,… Continue reading Unsavory – Continuing to read Taliban. The hisory of Afghanistan and Central Asia over the last few thousand years makes the Balkans look like a church. The Taliban rose to power with bribery, backstabbing, smuggling, opium traficking; and they look like saints compared to the people they defeated. It is shocking that Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States, and others actually ever trusted them enough to negotiate anything. As far as I can tell, the Taliban have broken every promise they have ever made to anyone outside of their realm.

To add to my comments yesterday about how hackers are pretty deluded if they thought they could do anything “computer” to stop Bin Laden, the book talks about how the top leaders of the Taliban coordinated most of their troop movements and negotiations via instructions written on pieces of paper from the back of cigarette packs. It is only recently that they have become wealthy enough to use normal pads of paper to write their directives. Their leader, mullah Omar and his second in command have never been photographed. You can, however, recognize them based on the former's missing right eye and the latter's gouged wooden pegleg and missing finger. Mullah Omar in 1996 donned the cloak of the prophet Mohammed (yes, the actual 2,000 year-old piece of cloth) and was declared by a few thousand Islamic teachers to be the leader of Islam. Some other interesting facts: Zoroastrianism is still alive today in parts of Afghanistan. Christian followers of the heretic Nestor were centered in Afghanistan. The Turkic language first took on a life beyond Persian in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was the seat of government for Timur the Lame.

[Better Living Through Software

The Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, Version 3.02

The Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, Version 3.02. Seems we are cursed to repeat our computing mistakes forever. Write Once, Run Everywhere: UCSD Pascal was the Java of the 80's. Microsoft's CLR will be the Java of the 00's… Buffer overflow bugs were well known in the 50's. We are still enjoying the benefits… Universal incompatible… Continue reading The Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, Version 3.02

AFP

AFP: “A young Palestinian schoolgirl clutches flowers during a demonstration in support of the victims of the terror attacks on installations in the US, at the Beshir al-Reiss school in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip. Both Palestinians and Israelis have shown support and donated blood for the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks in… Continue reading AFP

Matt Blaze

Matt Blaze, the AT&T Research scientist who was a chief critic of Clipper, said in an essay this week that: “I believed then, and continue to believe now, that the benefits to our security and freedom of widely available cryptography far, far outweigh the inevitable damage that comes from its use by criminals and terrorists.”… Continue reading Matt Blaze

OutGuess

OutGuess. OutGuess is a universal steganographic tool that allows the insertion of hidden information into the redundant bits of data sources. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

How to defeat bin Laden

How to defeat bin Laden. The U.S. should drop its war rhetoric and convince the Islamic world that he is a dangerous fugitive from justice. [Salon.com]

Russ Feingold warns against taking liberties

Russ Feingold warns against taking liberties. Wise counsel from Senator Russ Feingold in today's Online Beat. “These are the moments that are the greatest tests of our commitment to Constitutional liberties,” says Feingold, who heads the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. [More Like This WebLog]

American Greetings buys Excite unit

American Greetings buys Excite unit. The greeting card giant acquires Blue Mountain Arts, the online greeting division of Excite@Home, for $35 million in cash. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]