http://vizedu.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twitter-as-a-twool/

Friday, May 16, 2008

Why did the chicken cross the road?

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE! JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road. HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road.This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me....... DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT'problems before adding 'NEW' problems. OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens. GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here. COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road... ANDERSON COOPER - CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road. JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it. NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks. PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American. MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information. DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told. ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone. JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side'. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that. GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough. BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road. ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road. JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace. BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never crash...#@&&^(C% ........reboot. ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken? BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken? AL GORE: Globel warming has made the chicken cross the road. Millions of chickens have cross the road due to the climate changes within the past 20 years COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one? DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun? AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

NSA Attacks West Point! Relax, It's a Cyberwar Game

By David Axe West Point cadets work in shifts around the clock to check incoming and outgoing network traffic for suspicious activity. Courtesy West Point Public Affairs Five hours into their assault on West Point, the hackers got serious. The SQL [structured query language] inserts that came earlier were just pablum intended to lull the Army cadets into a false sense of security. But then the bad guys unleashed a stealthy kernel-level rootkit that burrowed into one workstation, started scraping data and "calling home." It was a highly sophisticated attack, but this time the bad guys were really good guys in wolves' clothing. For four days in late April, the National Security Agency -- the nation's most secretive repository of spooks, snoops and electronic eavesdroppers -- directed coordinated assaults on custom-built networks at seven of the nation's military academies, including West Point, the Army university 50 miles north of New York City. It was all part of the seventh annual Cyber Defense Exercise, a training event for future military IT specialists. The exercise offered a rare window into the NSA's toolkit for infiltrating, corrupting or destroying computer networks. The 34 Army cadets comprising the West Point IT team operated in a different kind of battlefield, but their combat skills and instincts need to be every bit as sharp. Like George Washington said: "There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy." The SQL injections, targeting their Fedora Core 8 Web server, were a piece of cake for these IT combatants. Each injection tried to smuggle malicious code inside the seemingly harmless language used by the network’s MySQL software. The cadets handily defended with open source Apache web server modules, plus some manual tweaking of the SQL database to "avoid any surprises," in the words of Lt Col. Joe Adams, a West Point instructor who helped coach the team. But the kernel-level rootkit was much more dangerous. This stealthy operating-system hijacker can open unseen "back doors" into even highly protected networks. When they detected the rootkit's "calls home" the cadets launched Sysinternal's security software to find the hijacker, then they manually scoured the workstation to find the unwelcome executable file. Then they terminated it. With extreme prejudice. "This was probably the most challenging part of the exercise, since it required them to use some advanced techniques to find the rootkit," Adams says. And rooting it out helped boost the West Point team to the top of the pile when, in the aftermath of the exercise, the referees rated all the universities' network defenses. For the second year in a row, the Army placed first over the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and others, winning geek bragging rights and the privilege of holding onto a gaudy, 60-pound brass trophy festooned with bald eagles and American flags. Adams credits the team’s thorough preparation and their excellent teamwork despite the round-the-clock schedule. At the network control room on the second floor of West Point’s 200-year-old engineering building (which once was an indoor horse corral and still smells like it in some remote corners, according to one instructor), the IT team set up cots and, just for the hell of it, camouflaged netting. They worked in shifts, with one team member always monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic. He or she would alert other cadets -- "router guys" -- to block any suspicious addresses. Meanwhile, off-shift cadets would make food and coffee runs to keep everyone fueled up and alert. Together, the team was "faster than anyone else," Adams says. But the way the cadets designed their network was a big factor in their victory, too. The NSA dictated some terms: All networks had to be capable of e-mail, chat and other services and had to be up and running at all times despite any attacks or defensive measures. Beyond that, the teams were free to come up with their own designs. West Point's took three weeks to build. The cadets settled on a fairly standard Linux and FreeBSD-based network with advanced routing techniques for steering incoming traffic in directions of the IT team's choosing. The choices in software tools for responding to any attack really boiled down to "automatic" versus "custom," says Eric Dean, a civilian programmer and instructor. He adds that while automatic tools that do most of their own work are certainly easier, custom tools that allow more manual tweaking are more effective. "I expect one of the 'lessons learned' will be the use of custom tools instead of automatics." Even with a solid network design and passable software choices, there was an element of intuitiveness required to defend against the NSA, especially once it became clear the agency was using minor, and perhaps somewhat obvious, attacks to screen for sneakier, more serious ones. "One of the challenges was when they see a scan, deciding if this is it, or if it’s a cover," says Dean. Spotting "cover" attacks meant thinking like the NSA -- something Dean says the cadets did quite well. "I was surprised at their creativity." Legal limitations were a surprising obstacle to a realistic exercise. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own. But only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations (and heaven knows what else) is allowed to take down a U.S. network. And despite the relative sophistication of the NSA's assaults, the agency told Wired.com that it had tailored its attacks to be just "a little too hard for the strongest undergraduate team to deal with, so that we could distinguish the strongest teams from the weaker ones." In other words, grasshopper, nice work -- but the NSA is capable of much craftier network take-downs.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Indisputable mathematical logic

Someone sent me this indisputable mathematical logic. It also made me Laugh Out Loud. This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint...it goes like this: What Makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life? Heres a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions: If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Is represented as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26. Then: H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98% And K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96% But , A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100% And, B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T 2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103% AND, look how far ass kissing will take you. A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G 1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118% So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the BS and butt-kissing that will put you over the top.