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Byte Wars
My friend who nodded as if this was the same game he played every day in the courtroom. If no one knew what was going to happen, the jury's instincts could be manipulated with a mixture of fear, sympathy and tribalism. Juries were always afraid of watching a good, relatively innocent man lose everything, he explained. Corporate executives were just as worried of the same thing happening to them.
The Y2K binge is long gone and the biggest effect on computers seems to be found in the bits representing the bank accounts of Y2K consultants. Gimmicks may fade but human nature and human fear remains the same. The destruction of the World Trade Center has given new life to the fear mongers who worry that someone may obliterate our electronic infrastructure. Edward Yourdon, the old school computer consultant who made plenty of noise about Y2K, is back with another book, Byte Wars: The Impact of September 11th on Information Technology .
When I say old school, I mean that he started programming and writing about programming in the mid 1970s and this shows in the way he spells ( "Obe Wan Kenobee") and talks about "paradigm shifts" instead of "memes." He comes from the age group that decided how much to spend on Y2K and he knows how to talk to the group that will control how much we spend on our fears of terrorism.
There is no mention of his record on Y2K on the book cover or the biography, but if you're interested, the net never forgets. The book does mention the scary days of December 1999 a bit in passing, but only to note that there was "very little awareness in the media" that some "small organizations did suffer moderate-to-severe Y2K problems." He also notes with some pride that many companies survived the turmoil after the World Trade Center attack because they made so many preparations for the turn of the millennium.
This time around Yourdon is blessed with a much more concrete threat and this both helps and hurts his cause. On one hand, no one can debate the power of airplanes as weapons in the same way we can still debate whether Y2K would make a difference to embedded controllers. On the other hand, it's not really clear what the latest attacks have to do with computer networks. He even notes that the DOD's computers were relatively unhurt by the destruction of the Pentagon. How many web sites or e-commerce sites can anyone knock out with a box cutter? One company I knew with offices on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center used a co-lo facility that survived. Their web site kept on pumping out hits even after their entire office turned to dust.
Yourdon dodges all of this by being politely vague and abstract. His chapter on risk management, for instance, counsels that we should find a "realistic assessment of risks" and weigh the probability against the danger. If we develop a process to deal with the risk, then we can ensure that the risks are shared between the stakeholders. Most of the chapter could have been written at any time about any risk , but he makes it all a bit more current by including a few references to kamikaze players who are shifting the paradigm.
Some of his advice gets so abstract that it's hard to know exactly what he is suggesting. He tells us to "examine the practical impact of increased security and decreased privacy." To him, that means warning people who rely upon the social freedom of "don't ask, don't tell" to realize that so much information about us will eventually be documented by the new security state. "Now is the time to think about such matters, not two or three years from now when you suddenly find that you can't get a job, or can't buy a house in a particular neighborhood." Should we rise up or acquiesce? Which side is he on? I'm still not sure. He does such a good job playing to everyone's fears.
Occasionally, he doles out some practical advice that is close to the needs of managers worried about the aftereffects of 9/11. We are told that terrorists may be posing as "ordinary employees" or even government employees who've "risen to high levels of trust and authority." He reminds us that "hardly anyone watches the programmers." Is some terrorist slipping in a buffer-overflow loophole? Or maybe just a crook? One of the most practical suggestions is that corporations should do more code reviews.
He's also hip to some of the latest intellectual fads. Emergent organisms like Napster can be useful and resilient. He's a big fan of empowering employees by cutting away bureaucracy so the organization can evolve some emergent intelligence. Of course, we must also be ready for more scrutiny from the security bureaucracy checking to ensure that the emergent organism isn't evolving buffer-overflow backdoors. This gets a bit confusing and he waves away much of conflict with abstract calls for balance.
In the end, Yourdon can't offer many answers because there aren't many answers to give. We had risks, terrorism, info warfare, bombs and whatnot before September 11th and we'll meet them again despite the security. Anarchists detonated a horse powered wagon filled with explosives in front of the NY Fed in the 1920s. Not much has really changed and the book ends up being a distilled version of the inchoate fears that haunt us.
The real challenge is determining how much fear we should have. Yourdon is far from the only person who automatically assumes that the attacks on New York mean more attention to cybersecurity. All of the major beltway consultants near Washington are gearing up with the new tools. The more I read the book, the more I began wondering why. Why do some kamikaze hijackers mean that the web needs to be locked down? Who really has time to worry about some al Queda l33t d00dz owning my site when so many people are dying true deaths that can't be fixed with backup tapes?
At the end of one of the chapters, Yourdon exhorts us to get our act together and secure our home computers. Our old, pre-9/11 computing style was equivalent to "living in a house with the doors and windows wide open", he says, something that was "a pleasant way to live if you were in a small town in the 1950s."
Ah, the 50s. He and everyone else should rent a copy of George Lucas's pre-Star Wars classic, "American Graffiti." In one scene, the teenagers cheerfully drop a cherry bomb down the school's toilet. In another, they destroy a police car by wrapping a chain around the rear axle. The laugh track blessed both events in the movie, but all of us know that they would bring out the SWAT teams today.
The movie managed to avoid much of the discussion about Eisenhower, Francis Gary Powers, the Russian H-Bomb, or any of the other fears rippling down our spines. The 50's seem so much more fun after editing out the fact that the Russians had (and still have) fusion bombs on the tips of missiles. No amount of frisking by airport security can keep them out of our airspace. Yet we survived and managed to laugh about kids trashing police cars.
Another solution is not to quiver and worry about Osama bin Hacker's script kiddies. We can redefine the terms of engagement in much the same way that the cops in the "American Graffiti" just laughed at those impish kids. Hacked web sites are easy to restore if you have adequate backups. Denial of service attacks from zombies on cable modems sound threatening, but they rarely last longer than Friday evening rush hour.
It's hard to argue with much of the plainspoken, largely abstract advice offered by Yourdon. All of it makes good sense. The harder problem is finding the right attitude to carry us through the night. This book is filled with worry for our future and awe of the unseen l33t d00dz hiding under the bed. There are bits of light and a stab at optimism near the end, but most of the book trades on the thoughts that will keep us up well past midnight.
Peter Wayner has two resilient books emerging this spring: Translucent Databases , an exploration of database security, and Disappearing Cryptography: Information Hiding, Steganography and Watermarks , the second edition devoted to hiding secret messages in plain sight. You can purchase Byte Wars from bn.com. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.
The US government came under fire on Tuesday over its stance during Rwanda's 1994 mass killings following the release of declassified official documents showing Washington anticipated events now seen as among the most gruesome atrocities of the late 20th century.
"The US response was literally running away from any responsibility," said Salih Booker, director of the Africa Policy Center. He was reacting to documents, released on Monday by the National Security Archive, showing that as bloodthirsty Hutu militias fanned out across Rwanda, US diplomats advocated "an orderly withdrawal" of the Rwanda-based UN force known as UNAMIR that some believe could have helped protect civilians. According to Booker, the documents belie the claim made at the time that the administration of former president Bill Clinton was unaware of the scale of the killings.
"This report makes clear that the US was aware, but decided not only not to stop genocide, but also to prevent others from intervening in a way that could have saved hundreds or thousands of lives," he added. "No one had the political will to act," said William Ferrogiaro, project director of the National Security Archives, an independent research agency. "There were advocates for an initiative but bureaucratic infighting slowed the US response to the genocide." "US officials knew exactly who was leading the genocide, and actually spoke with leaders to urge an end to violence," said Ferrogiaro.
In fact, the deaths of US soldiers the year before in Somalia and difficult interventions in Haiti and Bosnia dissuaded the Clinton administration from doing more, Ferrogiaro said. US State Department representative Philip Reeker said on Tuesday the priority at the time had been protecting US citizens. "In the midst of this massive tragedy, our first response was to try and sort through the chaos and confusion to protect American citizens."
But he said it was important the international community "seek to learn lessons from the events in Rwanda in 1994." Offering to refer reporters back to statements made by Clinton in 1998, Reeker added that, "we fully recognise that what engulfed Rwanda at that time was, in fact -- as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has since determined, was genocide."
The killing rampage was triggered by the April 6, 1994, death of Rwandan Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana in a suspicious plane crash blamed by many Hutu on ethnic Tutsi. Within hours of the crash, according to witnesses, extremist Hutu militias backed by elements of the armed forces set up roadblocks and barricades in preparation for the 100-day massacre that would eventually take the lives of as many as 800 000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The US Defence Department knew about these activities, the newly released documents show.
In a memorandum to undersecretary of defence Frank Wisner dated April 11, 1994, a Pentagon official noted that "unless both sides can be convinced to return to the peace process, a massive (hundreds of thousands of deaths) bloodbath will ensue that would likely spill over into Burundi." But just three days later, the State Department instructed the US mission at the United Nations to work toward a withdrawal of the UNAMIR mission. The "department believes that there is insufficient justification to retain a UN peacekeeping presence in Rwanda and that the international community must give highest priority to full, orderly withdrawal of all UNAMIR personnel as soon as possible," the confidential cable said. The UN Security Council voted April 21, 1994, to pull out the troops.
Even as images of mutilated bodies began appearing on television screens, US officials were loath to classify the killings as genocide for fear it would compel the United States to intervene, the documents indicated. The Pentagon also shot down a proposal to use US electronic jamming planes to silence Hutu hate radio broadcasts inciting further killings.
There was no immediate reaction to the documents' release from the Pentagon.
Yeah right. And both of these chicks were your first cousins or sisters I'm sure.
I am completely disgusted with everyone milking the September 11th attack for their own benefit. If you have something on your agenda to promote, just find a way to attach it to September 11th and you're set.
I barely read long ass posts. I'd just like to point out that a book like that is a waste of paper. I love how n00b progammers like to talk about stuff instead of actually doing anything.
I didn't submit because I'm sure others will.
n el / 204.0/0004.html
PEOPLE: Linus Torvalds sent a mail to linux-kernel list stating that it is time for a new leader for lead the future development of linux kernel.
Check it out, and be prepared to comment when the article gets in the front page.
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/ker
Every place I've been with more than a couple of dozen employees has had a Yourdan disciple in management.
And every on-line forum I've visited has a bunch of posters who can't spell a word correctly even when it's right in front of their face.
The man's name is Yourdon.
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