ToorCon, meanwhile, has acquired a reputation of its own. It’s considered to be a con for the serious-minded hacker, a place to learn, exchange information, and party a little, but not on the grand scale of def con. “We’ve heard that ToorCon is the PG version of DefCon,” a La Jolla father of a 13-year-old boy told me. The two would attend ToorCon 2002 together. The boy, who wore his blond hair in choirboy bangs and had braces on his teeth, reluctantly revealed his handle: “Qwertykey.” Proud father patted son’s shoulder: “He’s my budding geek.”
A Trip back to ToorCon 2002
Trackback Spam
136 Trackback Spams and counting. Maybe I should put a counter in the sidebar. When is MTBlacklist 2 coming out?
Pak Con
There is now a hacking convention in Pakistan. The 1st Pak Con was announced on multiple SecurityFocus mailing lists (I subscribe to honeypots) today. They are currently calling for volunteers and papers for the event in Karachi, Pakistan on October 2nd & 3rd.
Pak Con is an exclusive hacking convention, the first initiative of its kind in the history of Pakistan IT scene. Pak Con is the brainchild of a group of capable security professionals who have employed their genius and aptitude to provide an overall extensive and comprehensive experience of information security in the form of a wide-ranging convention on information security.
There will be wireless internet at Pak Con, but only for the lucky people that pre-register. There will be a Capture the Flag contest (the wargame you dorks) for small hacking teams. The cost hasn’t been released yet but the email does point out that, “All charges are in Pak Rupees.”
Congrats Lance
Congratulations to Lance Armstrong for winning his 6th Tour de France. He finished with a time of 83 hours 36 minutes and 2 seconds making it the second fastest tour ever. In 2nd place was Andreas Kloden, behind him by 6 minutes and 19 seconds.
The 9/11 Commission Report
After 2.5 million pages of documents and over 1,200 witnesses, the 10 members of the bipartisan 9/11 commission unanimously concluded that the United States failed on multiple levels of intelligence. The New York Times (registration required) pointed it out so well by saying:
The terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded because the government of the United States — shackled by a mentality and a national-security bureaucracy more appropriate for a bygone cold war era — failed at many levels, the commission investigating the attacks said today as it warned that other, even deadlier attacks are likely.
Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the commission added, “The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.” He also pointed out that, “It is not our purpose to assign blame,” but also said that the Clinton and Bush administrations should share blame.
The commission vowed that they would try as hard as they can to see their recommendations implemented. Both major candidates in this year’s presidential election said they would take action. George Bush said he would look over the panels “constructive” recommendations. John Kerry is urging the Bush administration and Congress to come together and implement the recommendations as quickly as possible.
Lee H. Hamilton, the panel’s vice chairman, said a new “National Counterterrorism Center” would unify all intelligence and operations for counterterroism, but also said it would not support the creation of an agency like Britain’s MI5.
It called, too, for creation of a national counterterrorism center that would both unify strategic intelligence-gathering against Islamic terrorists and operational planning against them. But the report emphasizes that the enemy is not Islam, “the great world faith, but a perversion of Islam.” New York Times
The Washington Post elaborates on the point about the Islamic terrorists point and goes on to point out the huge influence of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Regarding the prospect of future terrorist attacks, the report says, “The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In this way it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Laden may be limited in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts. Yet killing or capturing him, while extremely important, would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue.”
The document adds: “The enemy is not Islam . . . but a perversion of Islam. The enemy goes beyond al Qaeda to include the radical ideological movement, inspired in part by al Qaeda, that has spawned other terrorist groups and violence. Thus our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network and, in the long term, prevailing over the ideology that contributes to Islamic terrorism.”
Vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the “United States must promote an “agenda of opportunity” in impoverished countries, join “the battle of ideas,” so that those regions do not become incubators of future terrorists.” He also said the strategy “must integrate all the elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, homeland defense and military strength.”
Some fundamental aspects of life may change. Such things as getting a driver’s license or birth certificate. The panel also said the United States should discuss problems with Saudi Arabia and “build a relationship beyond oil.”
The panel tried to avoid what happened 40 years ago, with the bipartisan panel for John F Kennedy.
In the summer of 1964, the Warren Commission was rushing to finish its work before the presidential election. On Sept. 24, the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was not part of “any conspiracy, domestic or foreign” when he killed Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. It determined, too, that Jack Ruby acted alone when he shot Oswald in the Dallas police station two days later.
Quicksilver
I recently downloaded Quicksilver and I must say, it is very nice. The interface, unlike many launchers, is very customizable. There is even a theme called “Flashlight” that looks a lot like the new feature in Mac OS X Tiger (seen in the screenshot at left).
I would recommend it to almost any Mac user. It is very useful and now you don’t have to even use your mouse to open up your browser.
Summer has begun!
Well, it’s the day after July 4th (one could even go as far as to call it July 5th) and San Diego has gone through some pretty drastic changes, literally over night. This is a temporary change that goes on every year, and I like to call it tourist season.
Mission Bay Park is getting very crowded. Rental boats are littering the bay with their mediocre sailors and the power boats are getting tickets for towing water-skiers and wakeboarders in a 5 mile per hour zone. There are single girls coming to sun bathe in peace, without the crowds that flock to the beach on a sunny summer day. You see the occasional boat, beached, waiting for low tide while the hung-over owners can’t think of anything to do but sit out in the sun. The beach is littered with beer bottles, used fireworks, trash cans and cigarette butts.
Summer is definitely upon us, and families are flocking to the beach. All we can do is sit back, grab a soda, some pizza and go sailing. This summer has been sort of slow so far and I hope it will pick up, but hey, I’m going to Oregon next week.
Fireworks
I walked down to the Cove to watch fireworks from the middle of the street with my brothers and my dad. We went through all the communist jokes, on to the terrorist jokes and then on to some Canadian jokes. We also discussed the American imperialism and why everybody is moving to Canada.
At around 8:50, most of the lights were suddenly shut off, but the announcer still kept singing that old Bob Hope hit, “Thanks for the Memories”. Everybody continued talking, people were running out of room in the park and were beginning to fill the streets. After “Thanks for the Memories” was over, the band went on to their first rendition of “God Bless America”.
9 O’Clock came around and the fireworks began. As I was watching the fireworks, I started thinking about why I waste my time watching such a crappy display of our nation’s pride. I realize that it is supposed to symbolize cannon fire and the sounds of battle, but it just didn’t amaze me as much as it has in years passed. As the crowd went on with their “Oohs” and their “Aahs”, I stood their thinking about why they were doing it. The fireworks show was not all that amazing, maybe only three or four fireworks in the air at the same time until the finale, which was spectacular but excessively short.
The part I really enjoy (and I enjoy it every year) is watching all the people that were in the park and on the street walk up the hill and back to their homes or cars. It’s really amazing because there are only two streets out of the cove and they go of in a sort of “Y”. The really funny thing is the few cars that decide to go “Sunday Driving” through the crowd of people and get all pissed off that they’re not going anywhere.
Winer’s Not So Great Idea
Dave Winer had an idea that, I personally think, is quite stupid. I seriously don’t think it will work because nobody, besides him (and maybe Joi) spend every moment of their time blogging. I, personally, have better things to do in my life then check my comments every day.
Here’s a free idea I had the other day while cleaning up a spewage of comment spam. What if comments, by default, were deleted after 24 hours? What if the owner of the site had to check a box in order for a comment not to be deleted? That way if a comment had lasting value, the owner of the site could make sure it sticks around.
I haven’t had very many problems with comment spam, mainly because I don’t get very much traffic. Actually, I have had none since the move to Movable Type 3. These two do not correlate but it is kind of weird because MT-Blacklist has issues with MT3. (via James Seng)
Nothing of importance happened today.
“America is lost!” This was King George III’s response to the loss of their 13 colonies across the Atlantic Ocean. The date of the letter that contained those three words is unknown, but it carries an important message. It has been 228 years since America declared it’s independence and tomorrow is its real birthday.
If you are bored, you can make your own fireworks show, but if your more of the sociable type you can check out the Union Tribune’s guide to the Fourth of July events in San Diego. Looks like there will be seven fireworks shows in central San Diego. Shouldn’t be too hard to find at least one of them.
Kid Pix 3
Kid Pix was one of those programs that changed my young computer life. I drew everything on it, and now, they have it for Mac OS X. It has been completely redone for OS X. Some new features include integration with iLife, cleaner graphics, bigger canvases, 3D buttons, and International languages.
I was a little puzzled by the iLife integration. What can you do with iMovie when you’re 5? Well, it turns out to be pretty cool. You can freeze a frame in iMovie and animate something. iMovie would then pause at that frame so you could see the graphics. You can also import music from iTunes. Finally, you can import pictures from iPhoto for your editing needs. Man, I wish I had this stuff when I was younger.