U.S. Warns of Possible Cyber Biz Attack

mikesd81 writes "The AP has an article about a possible attack against the New York Stock Exchange via the internet by a radical muslim group. The notice was issued to the U.S. cybersecurity industry after officials saw a posting on a 'Jihadist Web site' calling for an attack on U.S. Internet-based stock market and banking sites in December, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke. Knocke has said: 'There is no information corroborating the threat and that the alert was issued as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution.' There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time. The attacks were to be conducted in December, 'until the infidel new year,' the site said, according to a U.S. government translation. It called for attackers to use viruses that can penetrate Internet sites and destroy data stored there. Spokespeople for the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq declined to comment on the cyber-terror threat."

Comments

blame the muslims

[nihaopaul]

seriously, is this new?

Re:blame the muslims

[Threni]

Exactly. If you're bothered, make sure your systems are patched, secure and have someone watch monitor them.

Next.

Re:blame the muslims

[Danga]

blame the muslims. Seriously, is this new?

Well if some of the radical muslim websites did indeed post information saying they wanted to carry out attacks like these then I think it is reasonable to keep an eye out for it. It is not like it is completely unfounded.

If a KKK website posted threats that they were going to group up in say Jackson, Mississippi and lynch some darkies this december would you think it would be stupid to beef up police forces and keep a close watch on what is going on for a while?

Re:blame the muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

And if some KKK website told people they were going to take down the NAACP network by using "viruses to destroy it from the outside" or whatever, would anyone take them seriously?

Re:blame the muslims

[nihaopaul]

what i meant is, if they are proposing an attack, why would they be the first in, many people out their would love to claim the NYSE as pwned, are the muslims armed with somthing special that we dont know about?

1, propose we target CNN
2, watch them spend millions on protection
3,.. profit? ... ah here we go, this is where we will offer protection services to CNN
4, win win

this was my crack at making a joke, it doesn't matter what the ethnicity is, we're all even on the intarweeb

Re:blame the muslims

[tritonman]

I heard about this in a news report yesterday. They said "there is no evidence that this is a threat, but the government is reporting..." uh, no evidence? So wtf? Let's just try to scare some people around xmas so they can remember that we are here to protect them when nothing happens.

Re:blame the muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

"are the muslims armed with somthing special that we dont know about?"

Allah.

Oh yeah, we know about Allah... never mind.

Re:blame the muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that would be more likely to happen in Chicago than Jackson. Unless you're a Lincoln apologist.

Re:blame the muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

They have. It's called Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. There's more than a few dollars flowing trough those areas. You want to see some amazng new construction, google for the projects going on in Dubai. Next you might want to take a look at who exactly owns a lot of mortgages upstream from your local bank, and who is sitting on a lot of US debt paper. And maybe you might have forgotten about this "oil" stuff, but I assure you, the rest of the planet hasn't.

Re:blame the muslims

[Fred_A]

With a bit of luck they'll buy some extra stuff to comfort themselves and the GDP will fatten a bit. All the bases are covered :)

Fear mongering...

[lixee]

If I wanted fear mongering info, I'd be watching Fox.

Re:Fear mongering...

[SkunkPussy]

This is not flamebait??!!

Re:Fear mongering...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted fear mongering info, I'd watch CNN.

Advertising attacks?

[haluness]

How seriously can you take would be crackers who go around blabbing about an upcoming attack?

Sheesh, and the media just have to take it up. They even contradict themselves in the same paragraph!

Re:Advertising attacks?

[joe 155]

I think we can largely take people who annoce these things before hand, its just like foreplay for them. They want the media to report on it (which they do - handy really) and they want people to know that they are considering doing it. Its just another tool for spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Besides don't you think there could be a certain amount of l33t points (or some kind of jihad alternative) for saying your going to do an attack and them still being un-able to stop you... I'm assuming this will be like a DoS attack or what have you from bot-nets; does this mean running an unpatched copy of XP is helping the terrorists?

Re:Advertising attacks?

[russ1337]

Exactly,

If they were really serious they'd submit an article about taking down the stock exchange, and include a link to the stock exchanges webserver to have it Slashdotted...

It looks to me like mikesd81 is trying to take down excite.com. (why do you hate our freedom?)

Re:Advertising attacks?

[truthsearch]

The intent of terrorists is to incite terror in order to bring about change. Terror can be spread without any actual attack. Just the fact that the government and companies are responding to a threat, plus the spread of this information through media, increases fear. Since we are listening the terrorists are successful to some extent, even without actually committing the cyber-attack.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[joe 155]

but if they never commit the attack then people will no long belive them next time... I think they do need to at least have a go at it. Although you are right on the whole that the fear is a big part. I think with the brand of "islamic" terrorism though there maybe some part which requires an actual attack - maybe because of a percieved need to hurt someone or something, maybe because of the instruction from the people at the top.

Basically, I agree. But maybe they do want to do it aswell.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[shadow349]

How seriously can you take would be crackers who go around blabbing about an upcoming attack?

I think this quote from Sneakers sums it up nicely:

Cosmo: Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.
Martin Bishop: Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.
Cosmo: Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Martin Bishop: Conclusion: You can make banks fail.
Cosmo: Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.
Martin Bishop: Stock market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Currency market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Commodities market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Small countries?

Re:Advertising attacks?

[diersing]

There is no information corroborating the threat

the alert was issued as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution

There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time

The title of TFA is "U.S. Warns of Possible Cyber Biz Attack" but the article is full of back tracking and spin. There will come a point when they issue so many warning that people tune out and the valid warnings will lose value, I recall a fable about a boy and wolf. 9/11 didn't happen because someone didn't act on a couple memos (amongst tens of thousands), 9/11 happened for a lot of reasons (some decades in the making) and fear mongering by the constant issue of warnings is only aimed to keep the masses in a state of fear. You can't go out and enjoy your life, not without Terror Insurance (6 month premiums start as low as 75.99, call this toll free number.

When Bush says FREE Market, he means FEAR Market. - now that's strategry at its finest.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Basically, I agree. But maybe they do want to do it aswell.

Congratulations. You have been successfully terrorized.
Have a nice day.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Knara]

Or, maybe more ironic for the times, "Congratulations, you've let the terrorists win. Have a nice day."

Re:Advertising attacks?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Real crackers don't use obscurity to hide their attacks. They give warnings of exactly what they're going to do, and still manage to do it.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

When you get punched in the noce you have 2 choices, punch back and continue punching until the threat is GONE, or do nothing and accept the fact that it will continue to happen regardless of what action you take.

Bullshit. The world is not black and white and neither are your options.

Got punched in the face? Analyze the situation, figure out why you got punched in the face and take a-p-r-o-p-r-i-a-t-e action to reduce the chance of it happening again to an acceptable level. Maybe that means killing the guy punching you. Maybe it means using a different swing on the playground. Maybe it just means kicking the guy in the nads. Maybe it means calling your older brother over to intimidate the guy.

Whatever the case, your simplistic analogy has no place in the real world.

Make your choice, stick by it, and shut the hell up.

Yeah, because changing your mind in response to new information is just not macho. Grow up pequito.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[houghi]

In the real world, that is calld FUD. So when will FUD become an act of terrorism?

Re:Advertising attacks?

[jackbird]

The intent of terrorists is to incite terror in order to bring about change.

Actually, the object of terrorism as spelled out by its ideologues is to provoke increasingly outrageous responses from your enemy, undermining their credibility and political support from their citizens and the community of nations. It appears to be working very well in many parts of the world.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[belligerent0001]

I think you missed my point, Sir. There were 2 main points I was bringing up. First, that as soon as there is an attack, people, typically liberals, suggest that someone should have done somethign to prevent it, But whenever someone does something, such as issue a warning or try to apprehend potential aggressors, those issuing the warnings or apprehending agress are call fear mongers or jack booted thugs or whatever term you wish to accept by they same a-holes that complain that nothing was done shoudl there ever be a success attack. Don't believe me...look at everything that has happened from 9/10 until now. Second, I was trying to illustrate in simple terms (obviously not simple enough) that you either accept the actions of an agressor or you fight back with ALL means at your disposal. Once you commit to one or the other, you have to be prepared to continue to do the same until the threat is eliminated. Waffling on your decision will only encourage an agressor to continue and invite others to follow suit. It's not about being macho. It's about making a stand, which libs tend not to be able to do with effect very often. I am surprised that a slashdotter doesn't believe in 1's and 0's, ons and offs, black and white. Everything can be boiled down into binary terms. I also find it interesting that you have taken this so personally...how my opinions effect you is beyond me.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[smooth wombat]

liberal views start crying "Someone should have done something to prevent this".

Funny, I seem to recall a decade or so ago Clinton wanted to go after Al Qaeda and related folks but it was the Republicans who were whining that he was doing it to shunt attention away from the Lewinsky fiasco.

It was the Republicans who blocked every effort to go after the folks who were attacking us and even went so far as to criticize every attack that was launched against Al Qaeda as being self-serving.

Funny how Bill left a warning to W telling him to beware of Al Qaeda yet W ignored those warnings until a month before September 11th.

You might want to review the record on who did what and you'll be amazed at how all the people who are now so gung ho on occupying a foreign country, one which played no part in attacking us, were so quick to dismiss and ridicule someone who at least tried to do something to prevent further attacks after 1993.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[truthsearch]

undermining their credibility and political support from their citizens and the community of nations

But why? To bring about change. In the end terrorists don't care if the citizens of the US lose support in their government. They want the support lost so the government changes its involvement in their territory. They want us to stop controlling their economy, altering their culture, and undermining their governments.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[orielbean]

Sir, your response that "continue to do the same until the threat is eliminated" is exactly the problem here. If you have a virus that changes its face and tactics and resistance to medication constantly, then you must change tactics to suit.

Terrorism is a virus in that it lives within groups of innocent cells or civilians masquerading as "normal." If you have Tuberculosis, and take penicillin to fight it, often we see that the virus is entrenched enough to slip between the cracks and build resistance to that tactic if the medicine is not applied properly or in the incorrect dosage.

You can take a heavy-handed approach, and punish all the innocent cells AND get a few terrorists. This is like the chemotherapy that makes your hair fall out and forces you to puke several times a day - you are alive but miserable. People who get their civil rights removed due to the "threat" of terror are more miserable and fearful of their goverment in this regard.

The terrorists used planes for terror. We focused our treatments on air terror issues instead of targeting recruitment and financing. Then different terrorists used bombs on trains in Spain and England instead. So now we beef up security and shoot some ignorant Brazillian man in the Underground because everyone's nerves are frayed.

Making a stand in this situation is simply what the terrorists are banking on. Bin Laden's goal with the terror attacks was not to overturn the entire government.

He wanted people drawn to his cause on his own, without having to spend more money on recruitment and to expose himself. He got just what he wanted with our muddled response.

Our dual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were akin to cutting off your foot to remove the "wart" of Bin Laden's Taliban in Afghanistan. Sure, he's hiding now. Sure, we almost got him in Tora Bora. Sure, we got rid of the Taliban for a few months.

But now he has something far better than some cheesy Army recruitment ad; he has real live Americans over in his time zone ripe for the shooting. They become the classic target for the disposessed and those who use the success of America as the reason for their own disapsora.

We needed to respond to the threat of terror in an appropriate manner. Instead we squandered our opportunity and he escaped.

We needed to respond to the intelligence that our normally capable agencies had collected, but we instead created a Biodome of homeland security and added complexity to a red tape nightmare that created the problem in the first place.

The jack booted thugs are called such when we feel that the only answer to our problem lies in regressing back 50 years and treating criminals like animals, then demanding more wiretapping without oversight because those you tortured ended up lying or not being useful anyways.

The warnings being issued are done because they want to avoid being called ignorant again when something happens; it serves no preventative or useful function to avoid an attack.

They warn because they cannot stop it if they wanted to - their red tape situation has created such a dismal fog over intelligence that all those who figured out the 9-11 guys were up to something never had the chance to communicate effectively to those who could decide and make the cruical difference.

Making up a war to overcompensate for that ineffective fog has only deepened the mistrust of people in their government - to the point where we vote out the republicans for the equally ineffective democrats. The same democrats who don't bother to offer new ideas, only "at least we aren't republican" as a campaign platform.

Stop painting people as simple liberals or conservatives, and less people will view your explanation as inflammatory. Those terms are too broad to describe a thinking person who has a nuanced view or two.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[snarkth]

Got punched in the face? Analyze the situation, figure out why you got punched in the face and take a-p-r-o-p-r-i-a-t-e action to reduce the chance of it happening again to an acceptable level. Maybe that means killing the guy punching you. Maybe it means using a different swing on the playground. Maybe it just means kicking the guy in the nads. Maybe it means calling your older brother over to intimidate the guy.

  Another option is to apologize for being an asshole and hope your antagonist accepts it ;-)

  Just pointin' out....

  snarkth

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Vancorps]

Thank you for providing sanity to the completely insane idea that the real world is black and white or binary. Most people recognize the real world as analog with limitless options. Every time someone uses the world liberal or conservative to describe a group of people I almost immediately stop listening as this categorization is completely pointless since most "neo-conservatives" are actually incredibly liberal with their spending while "liberals" are calling for oversight in all the spending. Everything is backwards so I throw out the democrat, republican, conservative, liberal stuff and instead focus on individual hypocrisy.

I wish more people understood that the reason America got ahead was because we fought better than everybody else. We stood for what was good and true and abandoning the principles of which we were founded upon is both not necessary and incredibly counter-productive. How can we say we're right when we're using the same universally condemned tactics. To use a cheesy quote from Top Gun,; "You need to be doing it better, and cleaner than the other guy." There is no reason we need to resort to torture and other tactics we've cast off as immoral over the years. Sure there were cases in the past where torture occurred, pretty much under every president there were cases. In the end it was never considered acceptable or a preferred method of treatment since it is very ineffective is most scenarios. Of course all that has changed.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I also find it interesting that you have taken this so personally...how my opinions effect you is beyond me.

I take it personally because people who think the same way you think are destroying my country. Bin Laden smashes our thumb and you are already amputating both arms in response.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[belligerent0001]

Well in my case, I spent 8 years defending this country and shed blood for it. Both sides of my family had relative who fought in both the French and Indian War, and teh War for Independance. So when Bin Laden attacked MY country not once not twice but three f'in times and the ahole in power feels that it more important to get a hummer in the Oval Office than to respond with undoubtable force it pisses me off. It is people that think the same way that you do that have allowed it to happen. I am betting that you voted for Clinton (both times) and that particular President did little to protect MY country when he had the chance. The continually "turn the other cheek" policy didn't prevent 9/11. I am proud that we finally have a President who says "Enough is enough" and is doing something about it. Personlly I think that we should neutron(the only good thing that Carter gave us from his administration)the friggan place and leave it to the mother lovin rats but too many touchy feely huggy wuggies feel that that wouldn't be humane. I argue that they aren't even human so being humane has little to do with it. Go hug a tree hippy. Leave the protect of the country to people with balls enough to do something when attacked

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Go hug a tree hippy. Leave the protect of the country to people with balls enough to do something when attacked.

The only balls you got are the ones you are slapping against the trees.

You and the cowards like you are responsible for changing my country from the land of the free and home of the brave to land of the fearful and home of the brainwashed. Fucking, dumbshit tribalist.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[belligerent0001]

I am not afraid...fear is not a factor for me...know why? because I am willing to fight to continue to live in the land of the free and home of the brave. Do you think that Mr. Jihadi gives two shits about the land of the free and home of the brave? No, all he cares about is causing destruction in the hopes that you will either convert or die. Read their book, there is nothing in that rag that states "be peaceful with your neighbors". As for calling me a coward...go get shot at and then have some asshole tell you that you are a coward. Where is your bravery asshole? typing a few pathetic words on a forum decrying how your rights have been trampled (still not certain as to which ones they are) and how your country isn't what you think it should be is not bravery.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am not afraid...fear is not a factor for me...know why? because I am willing to fight to continue to live in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Any dumbshit can fight. Cowards like you are afraid to uphold the values of our constitution no matter what the price. The phrase "Freedom isn't free" does not mean you give up freedom in the face of adversity, it means sometimes people will abuse that freedom to hurt you - that's the real price of freedom.

You fuckers cut and run on being American at the first sign of a threat, you are all too willing to give up what makes America better than other countries just because some guy in a cave has you scared shitless. You salute the flag, but you don't have one damn clue what it stands for. You are just another tribalist, no better than the people you so 'bravely' fight.

Read their book, there is nothing in that rag that states "be peaceful with your neighbors".

Oh, now I get it. You are just another dumbfuck dhimmi-meme lover, probably because you think it validates your tribalism and excuses you from being a real American. How do you know that the quran does not say that? You haven't read it. Fuck, even a dumbshit like you should be able to use google to find out the truth If you weren't a coward you would be looking for the truth, not justification for failing to live up to the standards of being a real American.

Sura 8:61
"If they incline towards peace, then you incline thereto, and place your trust in God;"

Sura 4:90
Exempt those who join a people with whom you have concluded a peace treaty, and those who come to you with hearts unwilling to fight you, nor to fight their relatives. Had God willed, he could have placed them in power over you and they would have made war on you. Therefore, if they leave you alone, refrain from fighting you, and offer you peace, then God gives you no way to go against them.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, sorry, but that won't wash, the Koran and other Muslim texts have been copied, translated,re-translated, re-copied and effectively re-written so many times that different groups of Ayats and Surrahs project different views and attitudes, producing ideological contradictions in the text.

The issue is not the Koran, but what Muslims make of it. The problem is (and I say this as a non-American non-Westerner man who has lived among Muslims for a long time) that most Muslims follow the Koran selectively ignoring the peaceful passages and taking the aggressive ones literally. A typical Muslim is more likely to know Bukhari 4:52 ("...and Allah's apostle said, I shall be made victorious through the use of terror, like a sword cast into the heart of the infidel"), or 3:82 ("If anyone desires a religion other than Islam , never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost all spiritual good") than, say 2:256 (Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things) because the maniacal,intolerant and hatemongering side of Islam is more seductive to them then the tolerant and peaceful side (currently adhered to by a small minority of Sufi Muslims in a mountain somewhere, merrily and harmlessly singing praises of Mohamed while the more mainstream Muslims cheer for the destruction of modern society).

Given their literalist interpretation of a certain subset of the Koran, it is relatively easy for them to be incited into being human bombs and projectiles at the urging of the local Deobandi or Wahabi Imam. So yes, Islam as it is followed normatively is the danger here, and no amount of quote mining the Koran will change that truth.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[belligerent0001]

Thank you for supporting my point nameless other.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[belligerent0001]

Thank you! I only wish that you would have included your name.

Yes I am a tribalist....MY tribe doesn't cut and run like a coward. My tribe not only understand the meaning of the flag but is willing to bleed, if necessary for it. My tribe understands that there is a group of people on the rock that hate our very existance, who ONLY want to destroy our way of life and the liberal mindset continues to provide them with ammunition to use against us. Still haven't demonstrated these lost freedoms. I would really like to know how your rights and or freedoms have been impacted. Mine haven't. No one that I personally know have lost anything. So tell me. I call you a tree hugger because YOUR mentality is to ignore the problem, You've issued NOTHING to suggest a solution other than calling me a coward, I guess the couple of medals I was awarded were also based on lies...too bad I got them under your favorite purgeror, which is a crime.
Lets, entertain the lib strategy of "run away like frenchman"(it worked so well for them in the past. We abandon the war on terror, do you think that it will go away? Do you think that they will just have a big ole party and shout "Yeah, we won" and leave it at that? If that were true, why is it that the Russians are having a problem in Georgia? You know the Islamist that are causing chaos there? I don't recall the Russians being in Iraq or Afghanistan. How about Indonisia? They barely have an army, and they are having problems with the "religion of peace". Oh and speaking of our 'friends' the French. Didn't they have nearly 2 weeks of rioting by these peace lovers? weren't there people killed? How about the up roar from a cartoon dipicting their oh so peaceful god? There have even been problems with Muslims in Brazil for crying out loud! And Somolia? And Kenya andd the list goes on and on.
The one thing that all of these country have in common is that none of them support the US's strategy to deal with it.
How many times do these "great lovers of peace" need to declare Jihad on the west, and on the USA before you will take them seriously? How many building blown up does it take before you will understand that these people HATE us? How Many innocent live must be lost before you will admit that this is a WAR? They just want us dead.
Please PLEASE I beg you read more than the Washinton Post, listen to more than Stern or Frankin, Watch other stations besides CNN and really try to understand the onslaught that is before us. You think that there is a better way to wage this war, then put it out there lets discuss it. Otherwise shut the hell up because you just prove my point.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes I am a tribalist..

Then get the fuck out of America. Tribalism is as anti-American as communism.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Otherwise shut the hell up because you just prove my point.

Just remember you are the fucking grunt who is cowering in fear over a posting on a website that our own government has said that it has "no information corroborating the threat." You gutless, anti-american traitor.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Er, sorry, but that won't wash, the Koran and other Muslim texts have been copied, translated,re-translated, re-copied and effectively re-written so many times that different groups of Ayats and Surrahs project different views and attitudes, producing ideological contradictions in the text.

Could you be more of a dumbfuck? The whole of point of the quran is that the literal original text has been preserved perfectly, word for word. You lead off with that kind of bullshit and expect to have any sort of credibility? And then you follow up with a quotation that isn't even from the quran. It is very clear you are working to deceive.

The belligerent coward said plainly that "there is nothing in that rag that states 'be peaceful with your neighbors'." It took me less than 5 minutes to find two examples disproving his claims. Now you come along, coincidentally 10 minutes before he comes back, and try to wiggle his foot free of his own mouth. No such luck.

(and I say this as a non-American non-Westerner man who has lived among Muslims for a long time)

Whoopdy fucking doo. With a billion muslims in the world your experience is hardly more than anecdotal. I'm pretty confident that I have lived in closer proximity to muslims for longer than you have. So don't be pulling that "I know them better than you do" shit. You'll have to come up with a more convincing false authority than that.

So yes, Islam as it is followed normatively is the danger here, and no amount of quote mining the Koran will change that truth.

If that were true, that all one billion muslims, hell, even just one tenth, were so easily incited into destroying the west because that is "normative islam" then we would all be dead. In case you haven't noticed, we aren't. Hell, more Americans die in traffic accidents in two months than have been killed by terrorists in the last 50 years. The number of muslims who feel anything stronger than distrust for the US is small, just a couple of years ago the British intelligence services put the number of islamic terrorists, world-wide, at under 1000.

But, big deal. This thread is all about how we conduct life at home in the USA, not the red herring of islamofreak apologists. The belligerent coward stands ready and eager to fight the enemy by telling us to hide beneath the desk, quivering in terror whenever an anonymous website posts a completely unsubstantiated threat. I am the one who flew less than a week after the planes were in the air after 9/11 and I am the one who thinks it is entirely foolish and destructive to our national character to let a risk of death that is significantly less than the risk of dying in a traffic accident so radically change the way we live our lives.

Re:Advertising attacks?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Didn't they have nearly 2 weeks of rioting by these peace lovers?

You know, you go on and on about what you think you know about me.
You don't know shit.

You think I voted for Clinton. You think I haven't served in the military. You think you know more about muslims than I do. You think you are more widely read than I am. You think that because I don't support genocide, that I am an ignorant 'lib.'

All false, as is just about every other assumption you've made in this thread.

I shot down your ignorant justifications about the quran not containing a single instruction to be peaceful to your neighbor.
I will now shoot down another ignorant claim on your part:

When the riots started, they were treated in some quarters as a "suburban intifada". "Jihad comes home", ran one newspaper headline. Some American observers regarded the uprising as further proof of Europe's inability to control the spread of radical Islam. France has Europe's biggest Muslim population--an estimated 5m, or 8% of France's inhabitants--so it comes under special scrutiny.

A report into the riots by the French Renseignements Généraux, the domestic intelligence-gathering service, however, found the opposite. Islamists had "no role in setting off the violence or in fanning it," it concluded. Clichy's mayor agrees. "I completely reject the idea that the riots were an Islamist plot," he says. "During the rioting I never heard of a young man burning a car in the name of Allah; but I heard of plenty of Muslims saying, 'go home in the name of Allah'."
--The Economist, Oct 26, 2006

I've read all the islamofreak propaganda that you have taken as gospel, except I read it with a critical eye. You are the one who needs to pay better attention.

Infidel New Year?

[minotaurcomputing]

I can't wait to watch Dick Clark's Infifel New Year's Rockin' Eve!

-m

Attack through the tubes

[alexhard]

They will probably attack through the tubes..like that weird V dude..or something

Re:Attack through the tubes

[Timesprout]

Such an attack is doomed to failure when the terrorists encounter the first cyber actors.

Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[khasim]

So, some joker on some website posts a piece about how people should release viruses to attack the stock exchange ... and our government issues an alert?

What happens when the same joker posts a call for nano-viruses to be released into our water supply to create a generation of flesh eating mutants from our own children?!?

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[plover]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

But you don't get re-elected by ignoring the threat. You get re-elected by trumpeting the threats loudly and then touting the lack of successful attacks. Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Thansal]

What happens when the same joker posts a call for nano-viruses to be released into our water supply to create a generation of flesh eating mutants from our own children?!?

I buy the movie rights!

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[kfg]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.

Bingo! You have a clue, now it's time to unwrap it. If it isn't the way to deal with terrorism, but it is what they are doing, what are they actually up to, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Now be afraid. Be very afraid.

KFG

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[spellraiser]

Remember the short-lived slashdot meme '... in Japan'?

There seems to exist a disturbing real-life parallel: '... by Muslim terrorists'.

Any threat automagically gains newsworthy status if this phrase is tacked onto it.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.

Heh! Not really. This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control. They certainly didn't win seats by actually spelling out contstructive, real-world things they'd actually, successfully do that would actually be helpful in any way. In fact, just yesterday they made it clear they were already going to break one of their loudest campaign promises (to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission). Fear is exactly what it's all about, but they just played it differently ("the republicans want to starve your baby!" "the republicans want to make sure your social security money is wasted on dot-com investments!" "the republicans like to see our soldiers die!" "the republicans work for scary corporations that want to hurt you!"). Say you don't know exactly what I mean.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.

You obviousally did not read the white house memo on responding to terrorist threats.

Step 1 - whip pulbic into a frenzied panic.
step 2 - Hype it! Hype it! Hype it!
step 3 - announce that new law to protect citizens from terrorism will be passed soon.
Step 4 - go back to step 1

Terrorism is the biggest blessing the government could ever want. It's a free ticket to trample and remove any and all rights and with the current population that enjoys being afraid this is the best time to exploit it.

Want to fix things? start slapping the shit out of your neighbors and friends and relatives until they come to their senses about the whole thing and then get them to do the same.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

what are they actually up to, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Ok, what would you do? You've been accused plenty of not "putting together the pieces" of a looming threat. Arabs taking flying lessons? Nah, that's benign, etc. Then something ghastly happens and it's your fault for not shouting to the rooftops that there's a risk of people crashing airplanes into buildings, etc.

What if there was a bot-net-powered DoS attack on a couple of popular exchange-related sites/services? No big deal in the real scheme of things, but more than enough to seriously spook some investors, and for at least a while, take billions of dollars out of investment circulation. That impacts business growth, tightly-margined industries like air travel, and so on. And you knew it was being talked about - and said nothing! Why, you were obviously in on it, just like the CIA blew up the WTC, etc. You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it. That's the new reality. So, what would you do? Would you ever convey any warning, at all? About anything? How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Vellmont]

The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control.

LOL! You really must be drinking a LOT of the republican kool-aid. The Republicans lost because they've not done anything about the Iraq war, and people are tired of it. They also lost because they've increased spending by a LOT. Combine that with all the scandals hitting the Republican party, and it's pretty obvious that they've dug their own grave. The Democrats are really the only ones you can't blame for this one.

They certainly didn't win seats by actually spelling out contstructive, real-world things they'd actually, successfully do that would actually be helpful in any way.

In some ways yes, in some ways no. There's not a lot of leadership in the Democratic party, more like a lot of common interests pooled together. The Republicans have a default leader of the President (though most Republicans have tried to distance themselves from him).

("the republicans want to starve your baby!" "the republicans want to make sure your social security money is wasted on dot-com investments!" "the republicans like to see our soldiers die!" "the republicans work for scary corporations that want to hurt you!")

Funny, I didn't see any of those ads. It's almost as if you just made those ones up to try to exagerate a point. Of course they did run attack ads. The ones I saw were largely accurate, like talking about a Republican candidate being against funding of stem-cell research. It also doesn't help that the jerk-off Senator in Virginia called some guy a "macacca" (a racial slur) and then said "welcome to America" even though the guy was born here, was accused of calling people niggers in College, at first denied his Jewish heritage (like he's ashamed of it), then had to admit to it. The funny thing is he almost won, which probbably says a lot about Virginia than anything else.

So, I guess I can't help but laugh when you try to blame (or credit depending on your perspective) the Democrats for the Republican loss in Congress.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[kfg]

Ok, what would you do?

Emulate Churchill, but then he was trying to protect his nation from an overtly agressive tyrant, not induce tyranny from the inside.

You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it.

"Winning" in this case does not mean covering your poltical ass.

How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?

By allowing them to. Without putting them in cages for it. Maybe even let them face me directly so I can put my argument to them directly.

Ya know, lead.

KFG

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[klaun]

Heh! Not really. This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control. They certainly didn't win seats by actually spelling out contstructive, real-world things they'd actually, successfully do that would actually be helpful in any way.

I don't think you are being 100% honest in saying the Democrats didn't present anything they planned to do. Pelosi had a rather prominent and publicized platform for a Democratically controlled house. The party website spells it out.

Whether they will be succesful is not something they can guarantee since they could not achieve a veto-proof control of the legislature and the current President is from the opposing party

I think the GP post was being a bit unnecessarily partisan, but I don't think the tone of discussion is improved by endulging in more partisan attacks.

In fact, just yesterday they made it clear they were already going to break one of their loudest campaign promises (to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission).[snip]Say you don't know exactly what I mean.

I don't know exactly what you mean.

Can you site some sort of reference for this? I'm guessing by the way you phrase the above assertion (i.e. "they made it clear") that it was not an overt statement to the effect of "we are not going to implement all of the recommendations..."

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[JavaLord]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

Is making the public aware the same as fear? I don't think so. Fear among the public would likely be worse if they didn't know and it happened.

You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.

The more they make threats they don't follow through on, the more they look weak, the more they look weak, the less recruits they will get. Or didn't you read that whole NIE that was released?

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[owlnation]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

Yes. Absolutely. The only way to beat terrorists is to live a normal life. If the NYSE or banks are vulnerable to attack right now without having to add extra defenses and protections, then we must all ask them exactly why our money is not safe already. It's not just terrorists out there, it's mafia botnets and mischievous teenagers and all manner of other black hats. I think we all need a very clear answer as to why any financial institution needs to take any extra security precautions today.

It seems to be a piece of cake to get red alert status these days:

1. Post Islamist blog entry that sounds like an attack of some kind is imminent.
2. Sit back, relax and do nothing.
3. Watch and laugh as Western Infidels run around in circles going ???
4. Profit.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

So, I guess I can't help but laugh when you try to blame (or credit depending on your perspective) the Democrats for the Republican loss in Congress.

You're missing the point! They didn't win by offering anything constructive, they won by saying "they suck, and we're not them!"

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[fastcoke11]

So they won by telling the truth? Maybe the Republicans can try doing this one sometime.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

Can you site some sort of reference for this?

Um... ok, here is a Washington Post piece from yesterday titled "Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion."

There's plenty more coverage of the same, but that one can hardly be accused of coming from a right-wing source, so I thought it would be a valid one.

As for Pelosi's much-trumpeted "new direction" missive... have you actually read that thing? No less a liberal than Michael Kinsley wrote an op-ed piece begging his fellow partisans to, essentially, be sure NOT to read it before they went to the polls. It's the most empty bucket of platitudes you can imagine - except for the part where they want to cure all ills via tax credits... even as they say that lowering taxes is their opposition's greatest sin. Anyway, actually read it, if you haven't eaten yet.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Vellmont]

You're missing the point! They didn't win by offering anything constructive, they won by saying "they suck, and we're not them!"

I think it's you that's missed the point. Pointing out all the ways the Republican party has screwed up isn't fear mongering. The way your post reads it's as if the Democrats are a bunch of liars and the Republicans haven't done anything wrong. The truth is if the Republicans hadn't screwed up, and people were generally happy with the direction the country was going there's nothing the Democratic party could do. Any attack ads would fall on deaf ears, people would ignore the election, and the people in power would have been re-elected like normal.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[rumith]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid. No, you deal with terrorism by overthrowing the government that created terrorist organisations in the first place and uses them to keep the people terrified ("Steamer!") and cheap to manipulate.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[fastcoke11]

Well I have an idea. Did anyone in the government think about telling these corporation security teams and coordinating some enhanced security in private?

There's no need to release this information to the public at all because it's not something they can do anything about. Instead you work with stock websites and the like in private to make sure they have ample security and are watching for the threat, but you don't go announcing this in public. The only reasons we logical beings can possibly see from the release of this information pertaining to national security to the public-at-large would be to either:
A) Inform the terorrists of where the leak in their information to the government is, or possibly what they know the government is going to believe because they believe everything from that source, etc.
or
B) Fear mongering for manipulation of the masses.

You choose. What kind of government do you want running your country?

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[JavaLord]

LOL! You really must be drinking a LOT of the republican kool-aid. The Republicans lost because they've not done anything about the Iraq war, and people are tired of it. They also lost because they've increased spending by a LOT. Combine that with all the scandals hitting the Republican party, and it's pretty obvious that they've dug their own grave. The Democrats are really the only ones you can't blame for this one.

Heh, the Dems do a lot of FUD. It wasn't that effective in the last election, but I saw claims ranging from how Bush was going to take us into Iran if the Republicans won again, or he would get rid of Social Security, Reinstitute the draft etc, etc. Never mind the nutty bloggers and the things they wrote.

You are right however, the Republicans, Bush specifically pissed off the base when it came to issues like Harriet Myers, Dubai ports, Illegal Immigration, Spending, etc. Second term incumbant presidents often lose the midterms anyway, because by then the US hasn't become the Democratic/Republican nirvana that the bases of the parties want so they usually find a reason to be pissed off. Also, since most presidents who are elected are somewhat centerist (by US standards), with 6 years in office they usually do at least one thing to tick off their supporters.

In some ways yes, in some ways no. There's not a lot of leadership in the Democratic party, more like a lot of common interests pooled together. The Republicans have a default leader of the President (though most Republicans have tried to distance themselves from him).

They actually did have some issues they ran on, but they didn't mention them much. Most candidates ran on a 'Bush is Bad' platform and won.

Funny, I didn't see any of those ads. It's almost as if you just made those ones up to try to exagerate a point. Of course they did run attack ads. The ones I saw were largely accurate,

It wasn't the attack ads as much as the third parties they got to make wild accusations. The Republicans are no way above this (If you elect the democrats the terrorists will win!).

like talking about a Republican candidate being against funding of stem-cell research. It also doesn't help that the jerk-off Senator in Virginia called some guy a "macacca" (a racial slur)

Considering the history of the term, I'm doubting he meant it like that, unless he just happened to know Macaca was a dismissive epithet used by francophone colonials in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population. Or maybe he just meant to call the guy a monkey? I fail to see how calling someone a monkey is racist. What animals can you actually call someone nowadays without someone trying to make you out as a racist?

It's great that the Democrats blew it up to make the Republicans look like racists, and basically framed that whole election over the one incident rather than the issue at hand. I'm not delusional enough to think if the shoe was on the other foot the Republicans wouldn't do the same however.

and then said "welcome to America" even though the guy was born here, was accused of calling people niggers in College, at first denied his Jewish heritage (like he's ashamed of it), then had to admit to it.

And the guy who beat him, Jim Webb admitted to using the same word.

The funny thing is he almost won, which probbably says a lot about Virginia than anything else.

Maybe people voted on the issues rather than the character assassination? Or maybe it was that Jim Webb is more of a conservative than Allen? Have you ever listened to Jim Webb? He sounds like Pat Buchanan. At one point Allen's campaign manager actually said Webb was 'too conservative'. When a Republican is complaining about a Democrat being too conservative in Virginia, you know he's fucked.

So, I guess I can't

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

So they won by telling the truth?

No. Or, if you think that's the entirety of "the truth," then I can point at a scotch-swilling orangutan like Ted Kennedy and say "Democrat Senators drown young women in their cars and get away with it," or harp on Democrat representatives that stash $90k of bribery cash in their freezers. Extrapolating people like Foley into that whole party isn't any more reasonable than extrapolating the last gay-underage-intern-affair-having democrat into his whole party. Um, except, of course, Foley's party wanted nothing more to do with him, whereas the dems put their guy right back in power... but I digress. The universal theme that washed through the dem campaigns this year was one of the scariness of their opposition (they want us to be in wars! they want our gas prices high! they like child molesters in office!). And hence the original point I made: I responded to a comment that said fear no longer played a part in the election, and maintain that it sure as hell does, just pointed in a different direction.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[klaun]

Um... ok, here is a Washington Post piece from yesterday titled "Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion."

Which doesn't quote any named Democratic sources at all. And, in reporting on statements that unnamed Congressional aides gave, says only that they are not going to implement them in the first 100 hours. Which is obviously a contradiction of the promise made by Pelosi, but a far cry from rejecting them outright. In any case the main thrust of the original post was that the Democrats did not have a platform, not that they weren't going to stick to the platform.

Regarding the rest of your comment. I have read the "new direction" missive. Do you have any substantive criticisms of it? Raising minimum wage doesn't sound like an empty platitude to me. It sounds like a concrete, realistic goal.

I have not commented at all on the wisdom or appropriateness of any of the proposed actions the Democratic members of Congress say they plan to take. Whether they are good ideas or not was not germane to responding to the original post which said they had nothing other than fear. Would you concede that they did have things other than fear? (Platitudes does not sound like fear mongering to me.)

Before evaluating the appropriatness of the solutions proposed by any party, we have to be able to have a rational discussion about them. For myself, I look for solutions not acrimony when confronted with problems. I think criticism of a proposed solution is completely appropriate. However, it is not productive if there is no rigor to the criticism. How can anything good come out of name calling and casting of vague aspersions? I think the challenge in confronting something with which we are unhappy is lucidly describing exactly what we don't like and offering some course for finding a better solution.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

I think the challenge in confronting something with which we are unhappy is lucidly describing exactly what we don't like and offering some course for finding a better solution.

My point exactly, actually. And the problem is that the dems were not (again, my point) offering anything constructive about which to talk. The notion of increasing minimum wage is a red herring. Specifically, it's framed in terms of making sure that it goes up, but also making sure that small businesses aren't "hurt" by having to comply with it. And thus, tax credits. Bigger employers typically already pay well above the federal minimum because they can't attract better employees if they don't. Small businesses - if you look at the whole picture described - would essentially be passing your tax dollars on to their entry-level employees. That's not constructive. Even if we stipulate that redistributing one group's income to another is a good thing (not something you'll find me stipulating, but let's pretend), doing so through this double-hop "increase"/"tax credit" dance is incredibly inefficient, and just places an enormous paperwork burden and IRS involvement in the loop. Not constructive. But the "fear" part was clear: vote for the dems, or the scary republicans will make sure you don't have as much money (and never mind where that money was going to come from in the first place).

I'd have layed all that out in an earlier comment, but I assumed it was clearly known by anyone discussing the issue.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Anonymous Coward]

like talking about a Republican candidate being against funding of stem-cell research. It also doesn't help that the jerk-off Senator in Virginia called some guy a "macacca" (a racial slur)

Considering the history of the term [wikipedia.org], I'm doubting he meant it like that, unless he just happened to know Macaca was a dismissive epithet used by francophone colonials in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population. Or maybe he just meant to call the guy a monkey? I fail to see how calling someone a monkey is racist. What animals can you actually call someone nowadays without someone trying to make you out as a racist?

You are aware that Allen's mother is French-Tunisian, and that Allen speaks French and probably had a good deal of emphasis on the more African dialects, right? That does make the relative obscurity of the epithet slightly less of an excuse.

There is also quite a lot of history with Allen and racism, so characterizing him as such is hardly unfair.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[zacronos]

I think you're missing the point. I agree that they didn't win (most of their votes) by offering anything (most swing voters saw as) constructive, but I don't think they won by attacking Republicans either. In fact, I think it is almost deceptive to say that the Democrats "won" their elections -- for the most part, Republicans lost those elections. In many cases, it wouldn't have mattered who was running against them or for the most part what they said -- the people didn't vote for the Democrats, they voted for "not the Republicans".

Of course, I'm sure this wasn't true in all the races. But I think the heavy Democratic gains in Congress can be mostly laid at the feet of the Republicans. It's like the difference between winning a game by playing well versus winning game because, mediocre though you played, the other team made repeated mistakes. With only two parties, a loss for the Republicans usually means a win for the Democrats, but looking at the political situation and recent news and events with a little common sense can tell you whether the Republicans lost because they were unpopular or the Democrats won because they built popularity. (In other words, although the election is zero-sum, the overall popularity of various politicians is not; therein lies the distinction I'm trying to make.)

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ultranova]

Is making the public aware the same as fear? I don't think so. Fear among the public would likely be worse if they didn't know and it happened.

The public would propably never even notice if stock exchange was knocked out for a few hours.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Vellmont]

I'm doubting he meant it like that, unless he just happened to know Macaca was a dismissive epithet used by francophone colonials in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population.

Actually his mother was of French descent. According to wikipedia:

Allen's mother, born Henrietta Lumbroso, is of French Tunisian descent and some commentators have suggested that she may have learned the pejorative during her childhood and introduced it to her son.

So it's entirely possible, even likely he knew it was a racial slur. You don't need to know the etymology of a word to know what it means.

Or maybe he just meant to call the guy a monkey? I fail to see how calling someone a monkey is racist.

Associating blacks with being monkeys has a long history of rascist useage. Anyway, why would you call someone a monkey? It doesn't make much sense. Allen also has never mentioned he thought he was calling the guy a monkey. At first he said he didn't know what it meant. Then he claimed he heard his staffers using the term (which turned out to be Mohawk).

And the guy who beat him, Jim Webb admitted to using the same word.

Eh, I don't live in Virginia, but if it's a choice between a guy who's used the word nigger before, and a guy who called someone a maccaca, is ashamed of his Jewish heritage, was accused many times of using a wide variety of racial slurs, and has a strange obsession with the confederate flag.. I think I'd choose the first guy.

Have you ever listened to Jim Webb? He sounds like Pat Buchanan.

Sure. Webb is a strange Democrat, but he's also taken a lot of positions that the Democratic party has supported. Changing the approach to Iraq, alternative energy, supporting same-sex civil unions.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Darby]

,i>The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control.

Bullshit you lying fuck.

The people were rightly afraid of the other party due to their criminal treasonous actions.
So please pull your lying head out of your ass and shut the fuck up if you can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie so idiotic that a child could see through it.

The republicans got voted out because they made far and away the most corrupt Congress in our history, because they are running fucking death camps. Get that through your ignorant head fuckhole.
Death camps where *innocent* people are being tortured and murdered with no recourse to the law. And any one of us could be sent there at the whim of a fool.

We're in a war based solely upon *lies* told with malice aforethought due to the sickeningly subhuman Republican scum.

They were voted out for crimes, cowardice, and treason.

Of course, being a good little Bush cock gobbler, none of that could possibly be true it must be all "Teh Eval Demoncrats".
Taking responsibility for their actions is like kryptonite to you cowardly treasonous shitbags.

Go kill yourself you fucking lying sack of shit.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[fastcoke11]

I stopped reading after you said "No" because your lack of a sense of humor overwhelmed my brain and I could read no more. Relax. I wasn't serial[sic].

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[foobsr]

Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.

Perfectly right. But perhaps you make deals (rating instrumentalizing as an implicit one) with terrorists by making people afraid.

CC.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

Well, if you stopped there, you missed my description of Ted Kennedy, which unfortunately may have been unfair to orangutans. It's my humorless self, I'm afraid.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

So, thanks for making my point for me. Assuming you can actually read and comprehend complete sentences, try going back one more time. I responded to a comment that said fear had nothing to do with the election results. I pointed out that the campaign (on the dem side) revolved pretty much entirely on pointing out why the electorate should be afraid having the republicans in control of the legislature. This seems to be your point, too.

So, rather than constructively pointing out how they'd get Iran to stop fueling sectarian violence in Iraq, or how they'd avoid the problems their party caused last time they were in charge of dealing with North Korea, or what they'd do to keep unemployment as low as it is - doesn't matter what policy issue we're talking about. They didn't HAVE to talk in useful, specific policy terms - all they had to do was have a shrieking fit rather like yours. Fear was their primary tool, and they used it - a lot. It was a much more unifying theme across that party's campaigning than any other topic (since they were, as usual, highly fractured on most actual matters of substance, as are many republicans). Let me know if any of my words were too big or anything, OK? Have a nice weekend.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[WuphonsReach]

Heh! Not really. This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control.

Eh? What are you drinking? Around these parts folks were simply fed up with *whoever* the incumbent was and voted accordingly. Or the folks who believe that a divided, get-nothing-done gov't is probably the best out of all bad choices.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

Eh? What are you drinking? Around these parts folks were simply fed up with *whoever* the incumbent was and voted accordingly. Or the folks who believe that a divided, get-nothing-done gov't is probably the best out of all bad choices.

I guess you weren't seeing the same ads we were here in the DC metro area! The ads this time around were totally unprecedented, as far as I'm concerned. From both parties.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Dr Damage I]

You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.

And if the threat actually eventuates and it turns out that you didn't warn anyone, you are the one that gets the blame instead of the terrorist or the silly bastard that failed to implement effective security on their network.

Unless you want to issue a blanket pardon for anyone withholding information on threats to your security from you, you're going to have to live with people highlighting threats, even unlikely ones, that they become aware of so as to cover their own ass.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Dr Damage I]

A warning was issued to the cyber security community. When it comes to security, ignorance is not bliss. It never occurred to me that I'd see large numbers of people on slashdot advocating the suppression of information. That's all this is, information. Passed onto the appropriate people for their consideration. If this process fills you with fear, you really need to get out more.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Darby]

I pointed out that the campaign (on the dem side) revolved pretty much entirely on pointing out why the electorate should be afraid having the republicans in control of the legislature. This seems to be your point, too.

No, there is a very large difference.

For an example of fear based campaigs, just look at all the recent Republica races.
"Oh no, the evil Demoncrats will ban your bibles if they're elected".

That was one of their actual tactics.

Now, that's clearly completely divorced from reality and designed for the purpose of making people believe ridiculous nonsense through blatantly dishonest fear mongering.

Now, look at the current situation in the US.
We are running a network of *death camps* in third world shitholes where Bush can, solely on a whim, send you me or anybody else he pleases to be tortured and murdered with no recourse to the law.

No matter how you try to whitewash it and excuse treason those are the facts, and those situations are worlds apart.

On the one side you have typical Republican nosense fear mongering, which is so insane that only a deeply delusional fool would but into it.

On the other hand you have people stating simple basic facts.

That's basically the crux of your failure to get it.

You don't seem to understand the very large difference between flat out lying in order to create fear which has been pretty much the whole of the Republicans' campaign strategies for the last couple of decades:
"Ohs nos duh eval Demoncrats duh eval faggotzorz!!!!one!!!"

And reality.

The current Republican party is far and away the single largest threat that this nation has ever faced.
That's reality.
Pointing that out is no more fear mongering than stating the temperature.

Fear was their primary tool, and they used it - a lot.

As I've already demonstrated - a lot, dealing with reality is different than using fear.
Again, just look to Republican campaign strategy for actual examples of fear mongering.

It was a much more unifying theme across that party's campaigning than any other topic (since they were, as usual, highly fractured on most actual matters of substance, as are many republicans).

Again, you're just demonstrating Orwellian doublethinking.

Go count the number of "OMFG we have to ass rape the constitution to save us all from the eval terroristorz" from the Repugs over the last several years, add up the number of orders of magnitude of difference between that and anything the Dems have done and then try to start actually dealing with the real world instead of just repeating the same tired old idiotic lies.

Let me know if any of my words were too big or anything, OK? Have a nice weekend.

I'm sure you can read all of the words just fine. Your problem appears to be an inability to tell the difference between reality and right wing echo chamber fantasies.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

"Oh no, the evil Demoncrats will ban your bibles if they're elected".

Do you really find that to be different, qualitatively, from "OMG! The republicans want people like Michael J. Fox and your grandmother to die!"

a network of *death camps*

Just out of curiosity, would you consider all prisons to be "death camps?" Prisoners die all the time (just like non-prisoners do). So, when someone from Syria is caught helpding to build IEDs in Afghanistan - with the purpose of blowing up supply and security personnel - is taken in for questioning (to find out who's giving him the materials and cash), what is it you're proposing, exactly: that he get assigned a public defender from New Jersey, and that everyone he works with is sent a memo so that they'll know exactly which part of their team is, right now, coughing up the details their network? It's an active armed conflict. I supposed you'd consider Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Lincoln, Johnson, and all sorts of other laudable folks to also ran "death camps?" You might want to use just a little perspective (and maybe talk to someone who actually survived a real one).

right wing echo chamber fantasies

That's rich, that is. You're spouting tinfoil-lined stuff without any sense of context whatsoever. You're also amazingly short on suggestions about just how you'd deal with catching - in the act of planning/preparing - say, one of the guys involved in something like the Madrid bombing. Or one of the recruiters, working on a fake travel visa with out-of-town money, busy slipping bombmaking materials and coaching to teenagers in suburban London. Do you pop them into the county lockup and treat them like someone who's been caught driving drunk? Or do you recognize that he's the tip of a big, toxic, actively murderous iceburg, and that you'll lose precious opportunities if you make his capture (and the operational details of it) readily known?

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Darby]

Do you really find that to be different, qualitatively, from "OMG! The republicans want people like Michael J. Fox and your grandmother to die!"

Absolutely.

There is actually some truth to that, twisted though it might be.

There is no truth whatsoever to the Republicans' made up threats.


Just out of curiosity, would you consider all prisons to be "death camps?"

No, but camps designed for the purpose of torture and murder of *innocent* peopl are death camps period.

Now, if you would like to *prove absolutely* that everybody in all of these death camps are a major threat then *and only then* would you have made a point.

You can't though.
In fact, you have no legitimate reason whatsoever to believe that *anybody* there is guilty of a god damned thing.
That is the major reason that the existence of those camps and the made up powers for the current president are lethal to freedom, and entirely treasonous actions.

Hell the *only* reason wholely illegitimate as it is, you have for believing that anybody there is guilty of shit is the word of Bush who has been proven a liar on almost everything he's said.

You might want to use just a little perspective (and maybe talk to someone who actually survived a real one).

You're the one wholely lacking in any sort of perspective.

"Durr.... welll what if somebody there was actually guilty of something?"

That's not how it works.
Your arguments are based solely on cowardice.
You need far more courage and integrity than you have to live in a free society.

The question to ask isn't "well what if some of them are guilty".
It's "What happens when ScentCone gets shipped off to be tortured and murdered on the whim of a fool".


That's rich, that is. You're spouting tinfoil-lined stuff without any sense of context whatsoever.

They're called facts. You have yet to come up with anything to disprove them, and there has been a metric assload of effort by the Repugs to spin, lie, mislead and misdirect the whole conversation on this issue and not one of them have managed to come up with one single legitimate defense of any of these programs.

Again, just like yours, all of their arguments boil down to "We're cowardly little pussies and we want to piss away everything this country used to mean in order tp pretend we're safer. We do not give a flying fuck how many innocent people we're torturing and murdering in death camps to do it."

Or do you recognize that he's the tip of a big, toxic, actively murderous iceburg, and that you'll lose precious opportunities if you make his capture (and the operational details of it) readily known?

More cowardly delusional fear mongering. Those situations can be handled quite well by normal, *legal* channels.
There is no need whatsoever to have changed any laws after 9/11. So you propose essentially completely suspending the constitution becasue your panties are all bunched up.
Grow up, be a man, not a whining little pussy and everything wiull be fine without your cowardly treasonous gestapo tactics.

Look, I get it. You're a coward quaking in your boots at every turn.
You are not fit to live in a free society since your complete lack of courage, honor or integrity is a liability.
So here's a good idea for you:
Move to Saudi Arabia.
They're your sort of people there. You'll get along just fine and then you won't be here to keep trying your damndest to make America into a clone of Saudi Arabia.
Plus then you'll have plenty of torture and murder around to make you feel safe.

How is that a losing proposition for anybody?

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[ScentCone]

There is no truth whatsoever to the Republicans' made up threats.

Well, you're just factually incorrect (and, of course, you know you are). Ever had dinner with someone who spent months in the hospital after having pieces of flaming terrorist-piloted aircraft blow through her office and nearly kill her? Or are you more of the "it never happened" camp? I'm comfortable, having talked to eye witnesses, that it did. That was five years ago. Since then, fellow humans in places like Madrid or London would probably have no trouble convincing you that the threat from people deliberately planning, and executing, murderous attacks is not "made up," however comforting it must be to you to think that's the case. The cowardice you're accusing me of exhibiting is - to cite a little PSY101 - pretty much you projecting your own head-in-the-sand about this. If this stuff is all made up, would you advocate no security at boarding gates? No security around nuclear facilities? You can't have it both ways.

camps designed for the purpose of torture and murder of *innocent* peopl are death camps period

Ah, now I see. You're making an assertion like that (because who can argue that a camp designed to murder people isn't a death camp?), but carefully dodging the responsibility of explaining who sat around a table thinking "We need to murder some innocent people ... let's design elaborate camps, fly people around the world, staff them with all sorts of expensive personnel and support facilities, so that we can murder us some innocent people! We have all of these highly trained special forces out there, who will hunt down and capture these innocent people, and then drag them all the way back to a camp where we'll kill them, since those special forces guys..." what? They aren't good enough with a weapon to kill the innocent people where they find them? Do you have any idea how absurd your point is? Your B Movie villain nonsense doesn't make any more sense in real life than it would in a cheesy movie.

You want a cheesy real life villain? Try guys like Khalid Sheik Mohammad. Sang like a bird and gave up much of his operation and contacts immediately after being captured. And, guess what! Not murdered. Man, we just can't run an effective death camp, I guess.

Move to Saudi Arabia. They're your sort of people there

Pleaes, just keep saying things like that. It saves me so much typing.

Re:Up next, nano-virus threat to create mutants!

[Darby]

Well, you're just factually incorrect (and, of course, you know you are).

Not at all. While there are bad people out there, the extent of the threat was completely overblown for political purposes.
Al Queda, while it does exist has also been blown way out of proportion. There is no huge world spanning massive conspiracy of terrorists out to hate on us for our freedom or any of the other ridiculous nonsense that has been the Republicans' entire stock in trade for a long time.

Also, gays are not a threat to marriage. Democrats are not going to burn people's bibles.

You see, those are essentially everything that the Republicans consider to be issues.

Do you care to dispute that those last two are entirely nonsense, completely made up threats of no real consequence?

Or are you more of the "it never happened" camp?

No, I'm of the "It happened, but I'm not going to piss away my birthright out of cowardice".
All of the new "security" bullshit does more to strip innocent Americans of their rights than it does shit to stop terrorists.
Add that to the fact that the terrorist threat was way overblown, the Iraq invasion did nothing but increase that threat as was predicted by most credible obbservers long before we did invade.

Since then, fellow humans in places like Madrid or London would probably have no trouble convincing you that the threat from people deliberately planning, and executing, murderous attacks is not "made up," however comforting it must be to you to think that's the case.

Well, we have outscored them on deliberately planning and executing murderous attacks, keep that in mind at all times.
Add in the number of innocents sent off to death camps.
Add in the Patriot act, the unconstitutional wiretaps, the completely made up bullshit to sell the war in Iraq, and maybe you'll start to see what the real credible threat to America is.

Terrorists haven't done shit compared to what this Republican party have done to destroy freedom in this country.

So, no, it has nothing to do with thinking there are no threats.
It's the simple fact that by *any metric you care to come up with* the Republicans are a far greater threat to me my life, my liberty and my family than all of the terrorists in the world put together.

The cowardice you're accusing me of exhibiting is - to cite a little PSY101 - pretty much you projecting your own head-in-the-sand about this. I

Not at all. I am aware that there are threats.
My approach is to face them like a man on my feet defending my liberty.

Your approach is to pull your panties over your head and cry to big government to take away all our freedoms as long as they tell you they're making you safer.

That is a canonical example of cowardice.
The fact that due to the support of cowards like you for treasonous actions, we are much less safe, and the largely made up threat of terrorism is growing.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Do you have any idea how absurd your point is? Your B Movie villain nonsense doesn't make any more sense in real life than it would in a cheesy movie.

Well, you're the one making up crap.
You still haven't addressed the 100% proven fact that we haqve tortured innocent people and murdered them in these camps.
You also have done nothing to *prove* that the people in these camps are guilty of anything.
Most importantly, you haven't done anything to address the fact that they are death camps.

So, until you can *prove* that the people being tortured and murdered in these death camps are all guilty of the most heinous of crimes, you lose. You lose on moral grounds, you lose on constitutional grounds, and you lose by making *anything* no matter how disgusting, that is done to our soldiers legitimate.
You can't piss away the moral high ground and then deny responsibility for the consequences.
Of course, avoiding responsibility for their actions is a theme with Bushies.


Ple

Yawn

[davidwr]

So the banks will have a higher-than-normal amount of crack-attempts this month, and a proportionately-higher number of successful ones.

ok, so if serious breakin attempts go up 10%, and there's a small number of successful breakins every month, that's *punchpunchpunchding* a very small number of additional successful breakins.

The bottom line - your bank's web site may be a little slower to respond, and you may get a little more spam-email "from your bank" this month. Otherwise, business as usual.

Happy shopping everyone.

Re:Yawn

[maxume]

It's not even that bad; the warning is about a posting on a jihadist message board waxing poetic about how nice it would be to attack the financial infrastructure in the US, there is no plan in motion or strategy or anything.

The super secret code word for this type of threat is "aspirational".

Re:Yawn

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

If there's anything about America I have faith in, it's the ability of the financial system to perpetuate itself. The only thing that could possibly drag it down (short term) at this point would be Microsoft going rogue and having a back door into everything they used to rip the entire system apart...

Fortunately /unfortunately enough, I don't think they're organizationally capable of this.

Re:Yawn

[Prof.Phreak]

So the banks will have a higher-than-normal amount of crack-attempts this month

From what the article describes, it seems they're bent on destroying data... and as everyone knows, all major financial institutions keep all (one and only one copy of) their most critical data on one web-server connected directly to the internet with a publically accessible website. Get access to that box, and the whole economy is in ruins.

Re:Yawn

[fistfullast33l]

You forgot to mention the password is usually "pleasechange" and it's running IIS 5.0.

Interesting..

[AnswerIs42]

The news articles I have seen, read and heard all said there was "No Credible Evidence" that this was a real threat.

Save for the one slashdot finds and posts..

crying wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this on the news this morning, why the hell would anyone release a warning that says your under attack and in the same sentence say there is no evidence to support it? uh, maybe you should find out first. I've heard more stupid scare stories that came up completely false than true, by a long margin at that. In fact I would feel safe in saying that if Homeland Security lists another location of impending doom, that that spot would probably be the safest place in america cause at least the homeland security officers might have left and people can actually get about there normal daily business.

Re:crying wolf

[DrDitto]

I saw this on the news this morning, why the hell would anyone release a warning that says your under attack and in the same sentence say there is no evidence to support it? uh, maybe you should find out first.

Because various U.S. government agencies got wind of an impending attack in August of 2001. However they had no real evidence to support it besides some "intelligence chatter". The rest is history. People are covering their asses this time.

Not gonna happen

[31415926535897]

This is a very funny attack. All of the important network connections, those that allow the NYSE and other exchanges to operate, and connections between them and brokers are not on the Internet. There are connections from the NYSE to the Internet, but they are not needed for trading (it's for when the traders are bored, they can look at porn). This group would definitely need somebody working on the inside to do any real damage.

The best these groups could do are take down the websites of discount brokerages (E*Trade, Ameritrade, etc.), but that won't have one bit of impact on the financial markets. Even if those websites go down, the brokerages will still have their direct connections to the exchanges, so if you can call your broker, you'll still get your trade through.

I wish them the best of luck, because their attack is an exercise in futility.

Re:Not gonna happen

[bughunter]

Most people don't understand these details, and they thing "OMG Comuters. Hackers. Everybody Panic!" Including the editors and reporters in the media.

Even their sources say there is no credible threat, but the mainstream media sensationalizes it anyway. And the average joe FOX/Oprah/MTV viewer gets another dose of anxiety-inducing semiotics.

That is why "warnings" like this have their desired effect. FUD.

Re:Not gonna happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah,

Most of those datafeeds go through only a few areas before hitting the distribution point.

Hit one or two of those, possibly with minimal loss of life even, and you'd effectively shut down the markets.

Re:Not gonna happen

[xzqx]

And who's to say there isn't someone on the inside? It's easy to get a job at a major financial data company, like NYSE, Nasdaq or Reuters. You could do some serious damage from within their infrastructures. I work for a financial company, and little bugs in Reuters' software do major damage to us -- the company can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars due to such a bug. Imagine what you could do with a more systemic attack.

If this was your goal, though, you wouldn't affect average americans who have some savings in the market. The people hurting would be hedge funds, market makers, arbitrage traders, etc. So some super rich people would lose some money. I'd almost cheer the terrorists on. Don't tell my employer. I hope they don't sniff packets.

about time for another one

[WolfMansDad]

Warning, that is. Don't you know we're at war! Americans aren't that good at hate, so we have to be given something to fear. Keeps the govt in business.

Re:about time for another one

[plover]

*RING* *RING*

"Hey, Osama, it's for you. Some guy, says his name is Emmanuel Goldstein, says you're stealing his routine."

FEAR Fear fear

[truckaxle]

"There is no information corroborating the threat and that the alert was issued as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution" How the hell does this make the news. Oh my the cyber-islamicfacist-terrorists are coming for us. "Radical muslim groups" are constantly making the threats. If they can do, they do, if they can't they make threats to inflate their balls and those stupid enough to follow them.

Where's the rest of this story?

[gt_mattex]

This is it? No comments from the stock exchange. Just be more careful?

SlowNewsDay?

FUD and PR Tactics

[netcrusher88]

Spokespeople for the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq declined to comment on the cyber-terror threat.

By declining to comment, they neither incite panic by saying that the threat is real (which would happen, the public tends to seriously overestimate the impact, ease, and likelihood of cyberterrorism), nor claim that it is not and wind up being criticized for underestimating the threat in the event it is. The latter is just good common sense, but choosing not to explicitly acknowledge the threat, thus allowing the public to remain disillusioned that it's impossible because the NYSE and Nasdaq are "smart enough" to stop an attack, is an unusual tactic, and one that I for one am glad to see one of the most powerful organizations in corporate America adopting. It's an excellent way to prevent spreading FUD while not trying to fool anyone, including themselves.

Not all systems on the internet

[truthsearch]

The largest banks, plus the stock exchange, still use a wide array of platforms. The stock exchange web site, for example, is not directly hitting the actual stock exchange servers. Most of your bank transactions still go through mainframes. A typical setup is for central transaction servers to push data files to data warehouse servers for reporting purposes. Most systems then run off of these reporting servers.

Between the variety of systems and the layers of security between each it's very unlikely that a virus could bring down the stock exchanges. Or your bank. It's far more likely that their web sites and corporate desktops would go down. The "money" in the wires is far safer.

LOL. Another convenient Al-CIA-Duh warning

[Anonymous Coward]

And it just so happens the weak dollar is already crashing relative to other currencies and the housing market is poised to make a significant drop.

Man oh man, those terrorists are so convenient!

why moslem

[cinnamon colbert]

those guys in oklahoma city, sure looked moslem, not to mention the ira, basque, KKK, skinheads, red brigades, shining path.......
talk about stereotype racism

Re:why moslem

[JavaLord]

those guys in oklahoma city, sure looked moslem,

While I realize you are trying to make a point, your ignorance keeps you from doing so. Ever hear of John Doe #2 at OKC? The guy they never caught? Funny how he looks like Jose Padilla . Even if he isn't Padilla, he was described as middle eastern looking by multiple witnesses even if Jose himself wasn't middle eastern.

not to mention the ira,

The guys that used to call in their bomb threats so they wouldn't kill any innocents? lol.

As for why they mention the MOOSLAMS in the article, here is a hint...they found the threat on a jihadist website which called for an attack 'until the infidel new year,'. That doesn't sound too much like white supremacist talk to me!

But hey, why not illogically cry racism at evey chance right? It's the most intellectually lazy way to say you 'hate' someone without actually saying it. Don't worry if 'Moslem' isn't really a race, most of the idiots will believe you anyway.

the thread which caused the alert...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting as AC because I have this CERT alert in my inbox, denoted as FOUO (like it wouldn't get leaked anyway)

Google can translate it for you: http://www.alfirdaws.org/vb/showthread.php?t=21091

Re:the thread which caused the alert...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love this part of the Google translation:

"
Who knows, perhaps God sees us honest "Faithful" and other words on who gave between Nagasat, Vimdna terms, in his own words, and opens us breakthrough "great" and Insserna victory "dear," he Horse cream.
"

Long live Horse cream!

Not a chance

[Salvance]

It's almost impossible that a bunch of radicalists with relatively sophomoric computer skills could infiltrate the NYSE or the Nasdaq in any substantial way. This is akin to high schoolers joking on forums and IRC that they are going to hack into the school's computers and change grades. Sure it happens, but not typically by a bunch of attention-seeking kids, but usually by some kid that is smart enough he didn't need to do it, just wanted to see "if he can".

If these "hackers" really had a chance to impact the exchanges, it means they've found a vulnerability that the exchanges don't know about. Any smart (but malicious) hacker wouldn't tip their hand to such a find, they'd wait until D-day to launch their attack. Obviously the security folks at the exchanges should take the threat seriously and evaluate their systems for holes, but it would be bordering on the ridiculous for the rest of us to be worried.

Re:Not a chance

[Blkdeath]

It's almost impossible that a bunch of radicalists with relatively sophomoric computer skills could infiltrate the NYSE or the Nasdaq in any substantial way.

What makes you think they have "sophomoric computer skills"?

Re:Not a chance

[timeOday]

Besides, there was never any question that terrorists would like to wreck the stock market, if they had some means to do so. Of course they would, just like countless other criminals would love to break into it for personal gain. So what? Issuing a new statement to that effect changes precisely nothing.

This is just like when people fly into a tizzy because some nobody halfway around the world says he'd like to establish a global caliphate and subject Europe and America to shariah (Muslim law). Whoopdie-doo. Unless they have some viable means to make it happen, they have their opinion and I have mine.

Re:Not a chance

[Dr Caleb]

"What makes you think they have "sophomoric computer skills"?"

Every Slashdotter knows, the only computers they have are Commodore 64's buried in the back yard.

We're all so smart

[bill_mcgonigle]

I wish them the best of luck, because their attack is an exercise in futility.

Let's stop underestimating the Enemy and thinking the DHS is just a bunch of foolish baboons, OK? Maybe they know something we don't, eh?

This group would definitely need somebody working on the inside to do any real damage.

This seems neither unlikely nor improbable given Al Qu'e'da's facination with Wall Street and the amount of time since the attack on the World Trade Center.

Re:We're all so smart

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. We can start by treating them as peers with whom there can be no reasonable terms of accord and which are dedicated to destroying our way of life. By using thermonuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In large quantities. The beauty of this is, they're not our peers in this fashion. So there's no where near the downside. We get to take the moral highground by treating them with the respect they deserve and win by freeing their spirits from this corporial existance to expore what else there may be should there be anything else. It's a win-win. Everyone gets what they purport to want.

Look how well it worked out with the Native Americans after they sided with the British in the War of 1812.

Re:We're all so smart

[fastcoke11]

I think his point was that what they reported was not going to be able to effect the market in any negative way, so reporting this as anything other than an assinine idea brought up by some guy writing on a website is just exaggerating.

Re:We're all so smart

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think his point was that what they reported was not going to be able to effect the market in any negative way

What do you or he know that the DHS doesn't? You should call them. As he said, they probably have an inside man.

The London train bombings and the transatlantic bombing plot were both perpetrated by educated individuals, some of them with engineering degrees. We're not talking about a lunatic in a sandy cave running his Dell via camel dung incinerators.

Re:We're all so smart

[fastcoke11]

How do you get modded up when you're just spewing nonsense through your keyboard? It's like saying that smashing the executive's car is going to crash the stock market. If they were successful with their claims, it would be completely incapable of hurting anyone. They're talking about websites being threatened, not that the internal infrastructure of the firm would be penetrated by someone who would upload a virus that could debilitate the entire financial holdings of the firm. If they started saying that kind of thing, then we would be worried and expect more security.

But let's just attack one statement of mine and be completely wrong, and let every other one of my arguments remain unrebutted.

Re:We're all so smart

[bill_mcgonigle]

How do you get modded up when you're just spewing nonsense through your keyboard?

What? You're replying to a comment that got no mod-points. 'Nonsense', indeed.

If they were successful with their claims, it would be completely incapable of hurting anyone. They're talking about websites being threatened, not that the internal infrastructure of the firm would be penetrated by someone who would upload a virus that could debilitate the entire financial holdings of the firm.

That doesn't matter. If the NASDAQ and NYSE websites get owned by camel jockeys, the market is not going to respond to a rally. Did you see what happened to the Market after 9/11? The markets infrastructure was just fine on the day the markets re-opened.

It's entirely about perception - that's why terrorism is effective.

Re:We're all so smart

[fastcoke11]

Did you see what happened to the Market after 9/11? The markets infrastructure was just fine on the day the markets re-opened. Is it just me, or does this sound like you're now agreeing with what we're saying? That we should not be so effected by this fear-mongering because it will not have any real impact on our economy.

Also, you said that if the websites went down then the market could not respond to a rally. That is wholly false. Are you trying to say that before we had the internet the stock market never responded to a rally? I think that's a silly conclusion.

Re:We're all so smart

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is it just me, or does this sound like you're now agreeing with what we're saying? That we should not be so effected by this fear-mongering because it will not have any real impact on our economy.

Also, you said that if the websites went down then the market could not respond to a rally. That is wholly false. Are you trying to say that before we had the internet the stock market never responded to a rally? I think that's a silly conclusion.

No, not at all - I'll put it as plainly as possible. If the NASDAQ and NYSE websites are owned by islamoterrorists, there will be a public loss of confidence in the markets and a massive sell-off will result, depressing the economy.

How the backends are isolated from the public websites isn't something that will affect the reaction - it's an emotional reaction so logic isn't relevant. By way of example, the massive devaluations of the markets after 9/11 were in no way related to the ability of the US Economy to produce value - people were scared and curled up like armadillos.

Re:We're all so smart

[fastcoke11]

But that's what I'm saying. We shouldn't be afraid and have an emotional reaction to something that won't realistically affect our assets. If they take down the website, there will be no real consequences, only a fearful reaction that isn't warranted.

Like I said, we're agreeing with each other here. Something like this happening will have no impact on financial assets and the like, so we should not be afraid and possibly have a knee-jerk reaction, like massively selling off, to such an attack (if it happens). Because then we're just helping the terrorists.

Re:We're all so smart

[bill_mcgonigle]

Like I said, we're agreeing with each other here. Something like this happening will have no impact on financial assets and the like, so we should not be afraid and possibly have a knee-jerk reaction, like massively selling off, to such an attack (if it happens). Because then we're just helping the terrorists.

Yeah, no kidding. I put in a Buy for the market open after the 9/11 attacks.

Everybody else in America apparently had Sell in. As a group, they're frightful an irrational, unfortunately. Probably as individuals, they all rationally made the decision that everybody else would have Sells in and so they should get out while they could.

Re:We're all so smart

[Reziac]

Wheras I think more like you: even a major glitch or attack is not going to affect the stock market in any lasting way. It's now too diversified for any single player or event to take it down permanently.

People watch the DOW go up and down and get in a panic when it abruptly drops 100 points. But I remember when the DOW breaking 1000 was a BIG DEAL, yet now it's over 10,000. Taken in perspective, a drop of 100 points now was only ten points in the old sub-1000 DOW, and back then nothing under 100 points (ten percent) was considered significant. That'd be 1000 points today. At its present level, 100 points is just ONE percent. Hardly enough to get your knickers in a twist about.

Best part is

[future assassin]

this attack will be done from American by Americas very own joe and jane's zombie machines. Dad shoul'd have stayed away from those free pron sites when mom is in bed, now he's a terrorist helper.

Rob wrote

[Rob T Firefly]

Attention tube terrorists.. could you please target the specific stock and mortgage people who keep spamming me?

The worst thing they cold do

[plopez]

Is target zombie networks and insure that Americans are deprived of Viagra ads, weight loss programs, stock tips and penis enlargements.

The cost to the US could be crippling! Think what would happen if these emails ceased!

Like I said, this is the *worst* thing they could do. ;)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

One Whole Post

[Siker]

It's amazing how much you can do with a single post on a single website when people are afraid of the dark.

Coming up next - Homeland Security issues alert after cousin's roommate's girlfriend heard from friend that man with turban was spotted in New York.

DHS

[tocs]

We must defended ourselves from these cyber bizs.
Does The Department of Homeland Security have a plan.

Security Measures

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure am glad airports randomly force us to have nude pictures of ourselves taken for inspection/storage in federal anti-terrorist databases. Such precautions really do a lot to keep us safe from terrorist attacks like this one.

Oh, wait...

Bomb threats beg for publicity

[DECS]

The worst response to a passive terrorist threat is to publicize it - by putting it on Slashdot.

That's Funny

[eno2001]

I don't EVER remember living in the "homeland" until the Bushista regime seized power. I still like to call this America myself. Former land of the free and brave. Now home of the politically blind and cowardly.

Re:That's Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kinda like Fatherland Security from the Nazi regime in WW2-era Germany, but with less goose-stepping, and with Muslims taking the place of Jews.

It's only a matter of time until people are rounded up and placed in dea^H^H^H freedom camps and exec^H^H^H^H protected.

-
Infowars.com Prison Planet.com

Re:That's Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kinda like Fatherland Security from the Nazi regime in WW2-era Germany, but with less goose-stepping, and with Muslims taking the place of Jews. It's only a matter of time until people are rounded up and placed in dea^H^H^H freedom camps and exec^H^H^H^H protected.

Morons like you have been claiming "Amerikkka" has been on the brink of becoming a fascist police state since Ronald Reagan's first term in office.

It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now.

But you keep telling yourself you're the only who knows the "truth". It's the only excitment a sad pathetic loser like you can handle.

Asshole.

Homeland?

[GrumblyStuff]

I like that term. It's like living in Soviet Russia.

It makes me feel all warm and paranoid inside.

Knew I should not have...

[KazerSoza]

Knew I should not have opened that " jihad.exe" attachment ..

Re:Tom Clancy BS

[Firefly1]

Just like his ridiculous plot where terrorists hijack an airliner and crash it into the Capitol building.

If you're talking about the end of 'Debt of Honor'... you, sir, are incorrect. That particular act was perpetrated by an embittered JAL pliot as an act of revenge for the death of his son and brother.
(a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_of_Honor"> Wikipedia reference; reference to the external links in the entry on Tom Clancy himself as well is recommended)

Dumb question.....

[8127972]

.... Given that every 12 year old wannbe 1337 h4x0r has been using "off the shelf" tools to break into places like these fore years, not to mention the armies of botnets, wouldn't these companies have already taken steps to protect themselves against this sort of thing?

I'm just asking...

The fact that they haven't done it yet.

[khasim]

There's enough source code available for enough viruses/trojans/worms that anyone who is interested could write a variation with their own payload.

And instead of creating a zombie army to spew spam, they'd just change a few random numbers in any spreadsheet that was accessible.

There, instant financial problems for most of corporate America. And the damage could take years to uncover.

With a little bit of thought, the virus/trojan/worm would spread quietly. It shouldn't be that difficult if your aim is NOT to draw attention to yourself or control the machine. Altering data would be simple and almost undetectable.

Since they cannot accomplish even that minor task, they don't have the skills to accomplish a major attack.

The Reality of Fear vs. Fear of Reality

[AslanTheMentat]

This last election was all about fear mongering. The dems gained seats in the legislature entirely by talking about how people should be afraid of the other party being in control. Hmmm... this may be the case, BUT, the reality of the situation is that the GOP was selling "fake fear", and the dems were arguably pointing out the reality of the GOP's shortcomings and that the results of these shortcomings in governing are instigating REAL things to be scared about. I really feel like the GOP was really playing the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" card as the country has gone down the tubes (at least in its position on the world stage as being a bastion of personal freedom.)

I really think the icing on the cake recently was Gingrich telling a group of Free Speech Advocates that free speech needs to be less free because ass-hat terrorists are getting on the net and collaborating. I mean, really, restricting internet access will certainly solve the problem.......sheesh...What an ignorant ass...

Re:The Reality of Fear vs. Fear of Reality

[susano_otter]

Five guys get together in a room and plan a bank robbery.

In legal terms, that's Conspiracy, and it justifies a police raid, arrests, a trial, and--if convincing evidence of Conspiracy is presented--a criminal conviction. We recognize a right to Free Assembly. We also recognize that abuse of that right is not itself always a right, but sometimes a crime.

Five guys send letters to each other, planning a bank robbery via the post office. Again, Conspiracy. We recognize a right to Free Speech. But we also recognize that abuse of that right is not itself always a right, but sometimes a crime.

Five guys get together in a chat room, or on an Internet forum, or via email, and plan a bank robbery. Exercise of the right to Free Speech, or a criminal conspiracy?

Slashdot often doesn't seem to understand just how much the Internet is going to change everything we assume to be true--especially about morality, ethics, and human rights. I often get the impression that Slashdot is so busy fetishizing the Internet as some sort of magical free speech utopia, that they totally and wilfully ignore the plain fact that it's also an excellent engine for cheap, easy, and secure plotting of criminal activities. And that Slashdot must ignore this plain fact because addressing it would require compromising their idealized vision of the Internet to reflect the realities of human nature and the technologies in question.

I'm not in favor of abridging the human right of Free Speech at all. I AM in favor of abridging the fantasy of the Internet as an anything-goes medium that magically turns criminal shit into human rights gold.

Re:The Reality of Fear vs. Fear of Reality

[AslanTheMentat]

Slashdot often doesn't seem to understand[...] Who? Over-generalize a bit much? I have seen plenty of ass-hats with opinions on here, but they almost never run the same direction for long....

[...] it's also an excellent engine for cheap, easy, and secure plotting of criminal activities. Right, so lets void the common-carrier clauses and start eavesdropping on all conversations, snail mail, internet-communications, tele-communications. Let's void all reasonable expectations of privacy and essentially bring about "ThoughtCrime" as a punishable offense. The publication of the AOL search terms earlier this year is a perfect example. I heard/read tons of comments regarding the individual who was searching for means of offing his wife, ranging from getting warrants based on his searches to immediate police action. Funny if they broke down the door to find it was Stephen King doing research for his latest murder novel... Attempting to pre-empt crime via a panopticon borders on "Minority Report"-style dystopias.

I AM in favor of abridging the fantasy of the Internet as an anything-goes medium that magically turns criminal shit into human rights gold. What you are essentially in favor of is censorship of the internet by one means or another. Making decisions about what should be on the net and what shouldn't be is censorship no matter the benevolence of the censor. Hell, the whole Net-Neutrality issue is a matter of censorship, though one of "means" more than "content" (i.e. you have to be able to afford to pay the tax on certain types of bandwidth (based on the content) to get your information out there...) This not only violates the spirit of the internet in general, but is a nasty slippery slope to be on. Furthermore, I am in favor of "abridging the fantasy" that the U.S. owns the internet or is in someway the de facto policeman of it.

Panoptic surveillance will never totally prevent terrorism/crime. Better foreign and domestic policy is probably a much better place to spend the time/energy/money/effort, at least in my opinion anyhow...
</rant>

Re:The Reality of Fear vs. Fear of Reality

[ScentCone]

Right, so lets void the common-carrier clauses and start eavesdropping on all conversations, snail mail, internet-communications, tele-communications.

Ignore the internet for a moment. If we have some reason to think that a bunch of people who communicate with each other by other means are in the middle of plotting something heinous, we look into it. Wiretaps, moles, that sort of thing. It's a lot harder, now, with disposable phones and other such technologies, which is why that's been, and needs to continue to be updated. Enter net-based communications. Same problem. But when you've got some laptop siezed in Pakistan that shows one end of network of communications, or you've got a guy in Germany that you know has been talking to that guy in Pakistan who had the laptop, and that seems to be making a lot of phone calls right about the same time that he's pushing a bunch of money around, and some of those calls land on a series of disposable Trac phones bought with a pile of cash from a Wal-Mart five minutes over the Mexican border, do you think it's pointless to at least hang onto the calling data? Because when the guy in Germany turns out to be Mohammad Atta's successor, you've at least got something pre-indexed that you can work with - and in the short-notice fashion that's needed when you realize the next Madrid is about to happen.

Re:The Reality of Fear vs. Fear of Reality

[susano_otter]

Please tell me more about how the Internet is a magical place where people can plot a crime and call it Free Speech, but the telephone network isn't.

That's all I ask.

(And when I say "Slashdot often seems..." I mean specifically "you right now seem...".)

YHLTTW, YHL, HAND.

[spun]

I suggest a new acronym, along the lines of YHBT. YLTTW: You Let The Terrorists Win. As in YHLTTW, YHL, HAND.

debt

[netsfr]

Maybe we will get lucky and they will "erase" the servers that contain the loans and debt we all carry...

Re:debt

[Aqua_boy17]

No, no, no. For a job like this you've got to think out of the box. What we REALLY need is someone to convert all the debts to credits. I for one can tell you that a $6,500 check from American Express would have me running to the mailbox every day (instead of hiding it from the mailman and surrounding it with big roetweillers like I do now).

and in other news

[louden obscure]

cyber-extremists plan to make all sorts of movies and music available on teh intarweb for free, wreaking financial havoc in california and causing extremely wealthy media moguls to extort money from blind grandmothers as compensation. film@11...

Re:and in other news

[SydBarrett]

oh noes osamba si gonnna haxorz ur printer ports with teh terrist jabascripts!!!11!

Smokescreen: real story is the dollar's fall

[ansemond]

It's at its lowest value in 20 months against the Euro, and the lowest in 14 YEARS against Sterling. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&si d=a1VgRGm8R6Hc&refer=japan The only reason it's not yet too bad is that the Yen has also been falling.

Not Unlike

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush

Our site is down

[ArcherB]

I work for a relatively small banking software company and our datacenter is down. It may just be a coincidence, who knows.

Re:Our site is down

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Wells Fargo is down too... :(
I hope it's just a coincidence.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like Ming the Merciless.

[Peter Trepan]

I shall destroy the Earthlings' puny world in three of their Earth days, on midnight of their pathetic planet's Greenwich Mean Time, on the day they snivelingly refer to as... what was it again? Oh, yes... New Year's Day.

Does "Infidel New Year" strike anyone else as a possible bad translation? It doesn't seem like something a person from a non-Western culture would be likely to say among themselves.

*why* they need us!

[mhokie]

I thought this was an appropriate quote from V for Vendetta, "I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want everyone to remember *why* they need us!"

It's about the stupidity, stupid

[neimon]

Has it occured to anyone that whoever made this threat is a terrorist equivalent of a pointy-headed-boss/marketing exec who is exhorting unknown terrorist hacker-types to unleash one of those virus thingies that he's heard about? Like, they sat in a meeting in some coffee house and said "Yeah! We could release one of those virus thingies! We'd rule the world! Get one of those computer infidels on the internets!"

Isn't this the equivalent of a pathetic "release the hounds," only there are no hounds, and the "leadership" doesn't know that?

Oh, and to religious extremists, isn't technology part of the global, modernistic infidelity?

I mean, really. After 50 years of being immersed in computing, STILL NO NON-TECHNICAL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND HOW COMPUTERS WORK and yet they STILL TELL geeks to do the IMPOSSIBLE.

What's next? A Koran that can fly and spits dates?

I, for one, am sick and tired of our moron overlords.

Re:Tom Clancy BS

[LocoMan]

Actually, I'd think either the terrorists or intelligence agencies are picking random Tom Clancy plots for their planes. Debt of Honor had the crashing of stock markets by the japanese using a backdoor, the plane crashing at the pentagon killing almost all of the chain of command, and also a focused laser disguised into a camera that was aimed at cockpit of airplanes when they were landing to make them crash, which, IIRC, was also warned as a possible terrorist act sometime ago.. :)

Re:Tom Clancy BS

[LocoMan]

Of course over there "planes" should have been "plans".. :)

Yeah yeah...

[Drakin020]

and that the alert was issued as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution.' There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time

In other words....Nothings going to happen.

Re:Tom Clancy BS

[Firefly1]

Bottom line though, its airplanes used as weapons like 10 years before 9/11.

I'll see 'like ten years' and raise you another fifty-seven or so... specifcally, here's the precedent-in-principle for the incident referred to in 'Debt of Honor'.
That said, though, I agree with LocoMan that the resemblance between real-life and fiction in this regard is amusing (when the business with lasers and airplane cockpits came up here a ways back, I pointed out the paralell there). The sole difference being that Clark and Chavez didn't use a true laser, but rather a custom high-collimation halogen lamp, which was (very plausibly) disguised as, not a camera, but its associated lighting equipment.
What all this does point out is this: if this sort of thing is surprising to security agencies, it shows quite the lack of imagination on their part, doesn't it?

Indicates nothing.

[Kadin2048]

At risk of violating some sort of Godwin's-Law like rule for making 9/11 analogies, doesn't what you're saying sound a bit like someone sitting around on Sept. 10, 2001 saying "With a little bit of thought, the terrorists could set off car bombs in front of a bunch of major airports and totally screw up air travel? Since they cannot accomplish even that minor task, they don't have the skills to accomplish a major attack."

I think you're leaving out a major psychological motivator: the terrorists in large part aren't satisfied by and don't want just small, anonymous, disruptive attacks; they want large, public, anything-but-anonymous disruptive attacks.

Messing around with spreadsheet numbers would probably seem like a computer glitch. While its effects might actually be more crippling to the United States economy than taking out the NYSE for an afternoon (just like there are a lot of other physical-terrorism scenarios that would have been even more disruptive to the U.S. than destroying the WTC), that doesn't mean that they're as attractive to a potential terrorist.

I'm not sure if a lack of small-scale attacks really indicates that the enemy is incapable of larger ones; I think that's a terribly dangerous assumption to make. All the lack of smaller attacks means is that we have no idea what their capabilities are, and need to protect ourselves on all fronts.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I agree

[WindBourne]

In fact, it is far more likely to be a right wing group trying to push some terrorism angle or some MS backer trying to get these companies off of *nix (which is what the banking and most exchanges including NYSE run).

glad you posted that...

[zogger]

...it is what I was thinking but I don't have any knowledge of the physical layout. Can anyone else elaborate on it better? Perhaps a cyber attack in conjunction with some physical attacks?

    With the ongoing and spreading polonium problem, there's another apparently easy vector, how much would it take to shut down huge areas of NYC if it looked like a radiological attack had happened? Even with all the heightened security all over, apparently a lot of places got contaminated, and no one knew until some bigshot ex spy got nailed. I am wondering why this is.

hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

blame the muslims for their own issues.. i believe this is just a get up so they (the US. government) can further invade peoples privacy and put more laws down on Americans..

Mod parent up!

[argoff]

I agree. I don't think terrorists can take out the market, but I certainly think the bankers and big brokers can. The bottom line is that the US GDP is around 13 trillion, but the amount of outstanding derivative contracts total over 350 trillion, and 24 trillion of those are interest rate sensitive. I'm sorry, but not even the fed can bail out that kind of a derivatives wash (and get away with it).

Something really stinks about this warning. They are going out of their way to publish it everywhere, but also going out of their way to say there is nothing to it. Huh? Something really stinks about the markets - in dollars they're going up, but in most every other currency they're going down. Something really stinks about the fact that gold and silver are blowing away every other investment class even after a recent huge dip. Hell, they don't even pay interest. Something really stinks about the housing market, it is crashing 5 times faster than they said it would a year ago and no one is even concerned? B-of-A has over 4 trillion in housing derivatives alone - why are they not in a panic right now? And the account deficit at over 6%, I'm sorry, but that's bannana republic territory. And how come short term bonds are paying more interest than the long term ones?

If the market has a panic, does that mean that people are going to be stuck with "bad" stocks when they freeze trading?
If a terrorist attacks, does that mean that a "terrorist" will log in and sell their "good" stocks?

All I'm saying, don't be supprised if you wake up one morning in a market crash and find all your good stocks sold, but sell orders on all your bad ones didn't get executed. I smell a big pile of shit and don't like it one bit.

Saw this today.. check it out

[deviceb]

This error made me think of this article ;)
" The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error. Please contact the website administrator. The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes. Error Occurred While Processing Request Error Executing Database Query. [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]Error establishing socket. Connection refused: connect The error occurred in C:\websites\alliancebankna\template_top.cfm: line 1 1 : 2 : Select * 3 : FROM Alliance_Link SQL Select * FROM Alliance_Link DATASOURCE alliancebankna SQLSTATE 08001 Resources: * Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax. * Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem. Browser Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0 Remote Address xxx.xx.xx.xx Referrer Date/Time xx-Dec-06 08:17 AM Stack Trace at cftemplate_top2ecfm650079821.runPage(C:\websites\a lliancebankna\template_top.cfm:1) at cfindex2ecfm329922809.runPage(C:\websites\alliance bankna\index.cfm:1) java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]Error establishing socket. Connection refused: connect at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseExceptions.createExceptio n(Ljava.lang.String;Ljava.lang.String;)Ljava.sql.S QLException;(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseExceptions.getException(I [Ljava.lang.String;Ljava.lang.String;)Ljava.sql.SQ LException;(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.sqlserver.tds.TDSConnection.(Ljava .lang.String;Ljava.lang.String;IILjava.lang.String ;Ljava.lang.String;Lmacromedia.jdbc.base.BaseWarni ngs;Lmacromedia.jdbc.base.BaseExceptions;)V(Unknow n Source) at macromedia.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerImplConnection. open()V(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseConnection.getNewImplConn ection(ZI)Lmacromedia.jdbc.base.BaseImplConnection ;(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseConnection.open(Lmacromed ia.jdbc.base.BaseConnectionProperties;Lmacromedia. jdbc.base.BaseExceptions;Lmacromedia.util.UtilDebu g;)V(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.base.BaseDriver.connect(Ljava.lang .String;Ljava.util.Properties;)Ljava.sql.Connectio n;(Unknown Source) at macromedia.jdbc.MacromediaDriver.connect(Ljava.lan g.String;Ljava.util.Properties;)Ljava.sql.Connecti on;(Unknown Source) at coldfusion.server.j2ee.sql.pool.JDBCPool.createPhy sicalConnection(JDBCPool.java:562) at coldfusion.server.j2ee.sql.pool.ConnectionRunner$R unnableConnection.run(ConnectionRunner.java:67) at java.lang.Thread.run()V(Unknown Source) "

Re:Saw this today.. check it out

[deviceb]

this had tags... sorry.
The error occurred in C:\websites\alliancebankna\template_top.cfm: line 1 1 : cfquery username="alliancebankna" password="kk37jx59" datasource="#DSN_NAME#" name="GetLinkStatus" dbtype="ODBC" 2 : Select * 3 : FROM Alliance_Link !!! sever is down atm... lol

Datamining != Warranted Wiretap

[AslanTheMentat]

I completely agree with you.,, In this case, there are the FISA courts available to quickly allow the eavesdropping in such a situation. Unfortunately, the current administration not only got caught red-handed doing datamining on millions of domestic americans, and admitted it with great pride as if they were doing anyone a favor.

I guess I wouldn't have so much of a problem with warranted eavesdropping (as a "necessary evil") if they didn't constantly use the most bullshit reasons that no one can argue against without looking like a fool (i.e. Child Porn and Terrorism) wrapped up in terrible amounts of double-speak. "Patriot Act", for instance, is perhaps one of the worst of all... Fighting for civil liberties is every American's duty, and yet to oppose the attacks on our freedoms posed by the Patriot Act, one must be an "Anti-Patriot"? Wow. The terrorists have won, but not the one's you are thinking. These terrorists operate out of a "white building". When one must constantly look over one's shoulder in fear of being devoured by one's own protector, that is terror. Quo custodiet ipsos custodiet? ("Who shall watch the watchers"?)

I guess my point is, How trustworthy is a administration that must continually lie to its own people and use doublespeak to remain in power and get its way?