Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Hawash, Monomania, Rocketships
Yes, charges are nice after six weeks of unexplained incarceration. purdue_thor writes "The various news agencies (CNN, FoxNews) are reporting that after being held for six weeks, software engineer Mike Hawash has finally been charged. His detainment as a material witness and subsequent incarceration without formal charges was discussed previously on /. Friends of Mike Hawash have created a website to publicize his case and have released a statement regarding the charges."
Randolpho adds "The Free Mike Hawash website has released the following affidavit (PDF file) received from the Federal Terrorism Task Force. The affidavit states that Hawash traveled to China in 2001 with several co-conspirators 'in an attempt to enter Afghanistan to fight against United States forces.'"
This just in from the cork-topped bottle. danny writes "One of the disadvantages of living in Australia is that my review copies arrive late. But my review of Google Hacks may be of interest, even after honestpuck's earlier review."
Free as in books. Author John F.X. Sundman writes: "PDFs of the complete Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices are available for free download from wetmachine.com under the Creative Commons license."
And Robotech_Master writes "Remember the Honor Harrington CD-ROM, which Baen packaged with its most recent Honor Harrington book? The one that included over three dozen e-books and came with explicit permission to copy and share but not sell?
Well, Baen's done it again. The new CD comes with the fourth book in John Ringo's Aldenata trilogy, Hell's Faire . It includes still more free e-books, mp3s, and even a D20 Aldenata roleplaying game in electronic form. The book hits the stands this month, and the ISO is already available on-line. (Scarywater guy, please take note. :) Download it, burn it, give it to your friends...or buy the book and support one of the most Internet-clueful publishers out there today."
Free as in "you pay money." An anonymous reader submits "The original Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, was first a book, then a radio series. Adams edited both. All 7 hrs and 30 minutes of the Radio series have been released by the BBC in MP3 CD format. If you only caught the TV series this is a must."
I wish more audio books would arrive like this (compressed, so as to occupy fewer disks), though I'd choose a better method of audio compression ;) If you want to hear the HHGttG, though, a few minutes on Google will probably turn up some fan sites with recordings from the BBC broadcasts. (innocent whistling)
Yeah, but there's no Epcot Center. Sacarino writes "Las Vegas is *almost* on par with Disney now. The regularly-updated Monorail Society website has tons of pictures of the progress. Vegas' monorails are the same type as Disney's (Bombardier Mark VI), only with inwardly opening doors... slick! Also mentions the old MGM-Bally's monorail that's getting absorbed into the new automated network."
Is this what Microsoft thinks of viral licensing? Vagary writes "One of my friends just got a Microsoft router and asked me to check the security features for it. The ping denial doesn't work, which is good because a port scan found some pretty interesting things, including this string in the TCP/IP fingerprint: 'i586-pc-linux-gnu'. Does that mean Microsoft must provide Linux source to purchasers of this product?"
Can anyone confirm, deny or explain this interesting claim?
Click here to discuss the size of a fictional spacecraft ... photozz writes "The infamously slashdotted site comparing the relative sizes of several hundred starships from various Sci-Fi series has been mirrored to a somewhat more robust server. So cool. It's in draggable format, so you can put King Kong on top of Deep Space 9 and re-create a dream I had last night......."
HH was a radio series first, then a book.
I recommend "Don't Panic" for the whole story...
I've always agreed to the concept of voting with my wallet. If I don't the a company I don't buy their products.
The reverse of that is of course, companies that have a clue(tm) get my hard earned cash.
I picked up the new John Ringo book this Sunday and wrote John Baen a thank you e-mail on Monday.
As a matter of minor irony, if they hadn't had the CD in the latest Honor Harrington, I wouldn't have read the first John Ringo book, and wouldn't had subsquently dropped $25 for the latest. But, so far the e-book thing is working well for me. Ten of the last fifteen books I've purchased have been electronic versions from Baen online bookstore.
*A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer.*
If he is not a U.S. citizen and/or is committing acts that demomonstrate a lack of allegiance to the U.S., I don't see why he should be treated as such.
He is a U.S. Citizen, idiot.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
> The ping denial doesn't work, which is good because a port scan found some pretty interesting things, including this string in the TCP/IP fingerprint: 'i586-pc-linux-gnu'. Does that mean Microsoft must provide Linux source to purchasers of this product?
Answer: No.
I'm 99% certain that you've misinterpreted nmap's output. When nmap doesn't find a matching fingerprint, it displays the parameters in a parsable format used in nmap-os-fingerprints. More recently (i.e. not originally, but it's been this way for some time), nmap also prints out the OS it was compiled on (presumably to weed out any OSs that mangle the data and prevent bad fingerprints from being distributed with nmap.) This information is printed out in a line like:
SInfo(V=3.20%P=i586-pc-linux-gnu%D=4/29%Time=3EAF1 974%O=-1%C=80)
I'm guessing that this was seen and the submitter jumped to conclusions... At any rate, I believe they'd be required to give source (if they changed it) to anyone per the GPL.
At any rate, I believe they'd be required to give source (if they changed it) to anyone per the GPL.
Slightly wrong. They don't have to change it one bit to be required to give away the source.
I have been pwned because my
ITYM "Jim".
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
You can download an updated firmware for the MN-100 from Microsoft. Go to the page and select the MN-100 from the second pulldown box and download the self-extracting exe.
Other than the readme.html, there's a MN100_runtime_v1.08.003.dlf file. DLF is a downloadable firmware format used by several embedded device manufacturers, but I can't find any info on it's format.
There's no visible strings, so I assume it's compressed, but neither file(1) or I have any idea.
Could someone with some file format skills please have a look at it and post instructions for extracting the image?
Basically, from what I can glean from the news sources, this guy was the perfect example of an immigrant who "made it" and became an exemplary American citizen. He's married to an American (a Christian, according to the WSJ), owns a house, has kids, and is a trusted member of his company (Intel) and is preety much an ideal upscale, upstanding citizen.
Basically, there was a bunch of disgruntled outcasts in the local area who wanted to "go fight the US on behalf of the Taliban", the FBI nabbed them, then nabbed him too because he employed one of these miscreants, and because he traveled to China. Then, it looks like they held him for 6 weeks without charges until they could dig up something to charge him with. Understandably, this whole process has pissed off many of his friends, and scared his family senseless (having an armed squad of guys descending on your house to grab everything after the head of the household has been carted off to jail is not a fun experience.)
Is he innocent? Is he guilty? Well, that remains to be seen. But clearly, he's not another wanna-be Taliban drifter like John Walker Lindh or Richard Reid, or a short-term agent like Mohammed Atta. On the face of it, it smells like another witchunt, like what happened with the Chinese guy (Wen Ho Lee) that worked at Los Alamos until they decided to charge him with treason...
Actually, that is incorrect. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.
Learn to Improvise
What seems to have drawn attention to the group was that the group, not including Hawash, were found practicing with guns in a gravel pit in Washington State on September 29, 2001. This discovery cranked up a major FBI effort. After a while, the FBI had two informants in the group. The members of the group, other than Hawash, were indicted last October.
These guys aren't big-time terrorists. They come across more like a bunch of bozos. If they'd achieved their goal of going to Afghanistan to fight on the Taliban side, they would have been just a few extra guys with guns. They didn't even get that far. All they really did was go to China for three weeks. Some of them made it to Bangladesh. Then they turned around and came back to the US. Thus, they're not charged with treason, only "conspiracy to levy war against the United States".
Ultimately, the courts will have to sort out who did what here.
"When four sit down to talk revolution, three are fools and the fourth is a police spy."
Here's a link to the home page, alowing you to see the Deathstar, Vader's Destroyer, etc.
That's a silly abuse of the language. If you know where he is he hasn't been "disappeared". For that matter, if he's known to be alive, he certainly isn't.
One would hope that people concerned with precision of expression (eg those who write computer code, as most do here) would be more careful with how they use words.The material witness statute is intended to cover people important to an investigation who represent a substantial flight risk. If you have read the affidavit (I did), you will see that Hawash put all his goods and possessions in the hands of his wife and prepared for her a power of attorney. This certainly suggests that he was more of a risk of flight than an ordinary married man with children. Furthermore, the material in the affidavit discusses a trip to China, allegedly with anti-U.S. co-conspiritors. Again, reason for concern about flight.
Though Hawash was held for a while as a material witness, he has now been charged, as required by the law. I have a somewhat icky feeling about the material witness laws, but as far as I can tell, this is a case where the system worked. The government had to present evidence to indict him, and is doing so. Hawash will have his day in court, which is what he's entitled to.