Yes, you could do that, but I think that erasure and encrypting the whole drive will also accomplish this. I believe that there is still a possibility of recovering the data even if wiped over several times. You can find lots of information about this on 'the Google' if you like. Here is a link to a zdnet blog about it: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=129
If you can simply smelt the drives, that is complete destruction. Anything else depends on the level of 'it's not there anymore' you need. Far too many people don't care or believe their data can be used from an old disk. They also don't understand that a format will not necessarily overwrite anything on the drive. sigh.
Encrypting the whole drive will scramble the bits fairly well. Follow up with low level formatting and it should be difficult enough to recover anything from the drive without the encryption password, never mind that the file system has been rewritten.
Destroying the data should be a simple as encrypting the harddrives with a 100 characters of randomnes followed by a reformat and a shutdown.
Yes, if someone was truly interested, it's possible they could recover it but it is rather unlikely. Most of the data breaches appear to happen by accident, where encryption would have kept the data safe.
So,
1 - erase the data 2 - encrypt the drive with a near impossible key 3 - reformat 4 - no profit for next owner
I have to tell you I'm insulted, as are my magical elven friends. Your last paragraph nails the problem in one simple effort. Even those black hat guys are not good at this kind of security. Most data breaches are due to human error. The cost of training your entire workforce, and changing security policies, rewriting code where needed is NOT insignificant. Most of the SarBox compliance efforts I've seen are bandaids, not tourniquets.
The world IS flying blind, there is no guessing to that and criminal prosecution will not make it better, only education will... and of course the ubiquitous financial incentive. In the end, we'll end up with some way for corporate entities to end up looking righteous while they fire employees in the background and apologize through lying teeth about the data breach.
Only when the CxO is held liable for prison time will things change. That is the kind of motivation that changes budgets. Nonetheless, mark my words, it will be costly for any of several reasons:
1 - No one is exactly sure how to prevent a data breach, only how to prevent those that are known. 2 - Fighting data loss is like fighting terrorists that are not actively attacking you. 3 - Nobody really listens to blackhats 4 - What a blackhat tells you is a breach vulnerability is something that will "never happen here" 5 - Once there is prison time for the CxO, no employee will be able to own a USB thumb drive without a background check. The reaction will be like the 9/11 crap that the US government pulled on all citizens, but with the added value of being able to fire you for owning a thumb drive. 6 - real security is not cheap or convenient. To mitigate this, employees will be blamed.
I could go on, but we all know this song, or should. Good luck with that is all I have to say.
So all is ok if the stolen laptop had everything encrypted? That would seem legally equivalent to someone hacking at a server in the company's data center but not getting in. Then what kind of paperwork etc. is required for a contractor to use laptops from the company contracting them? The point being, how far can culpability be extended through the food chain? If an employee is not a security expert and does what IT told them to do but a compromise still happens, is the company or an employee guilty? If my details are leaked and my ID stolen, can I sue the company, the CIO, and the employee?
Sarbanes-Oxley has already wreaked havoc on the business world. Extending culpability for data breaches to criminal prosecution would be even more destructive in terms of the changes and security costs involved in protecting the company from financial damages in the event of a data breach.
I'm still waiting for DHS confiscation of a laptop to cause a data breach. When (not if) that happens, can we sue the government?
(I am playing devil's advocate, or rather corporate advocate)
Not sure how many people you'll find to agree with you, but I too found it easier, and less stressful in many ways. The article goes through some convolutions about children but I think it has much more to do with general contentment.
I thought that too, hopefully NVidia turns around and says "Ok, here is a cheaper version of model xyz, stripped down a bit, so you can afford to buy 4 from us for this little trick"
I'm not holding my breath but it would be worth the money methinks, even if they only sold them in 4 packs.
As pointed out, why pay for crap artists? There is a simple reason. When painted into a corner by their business tactics to date, they have decided that we'll cave and pay them for whatever music they want to give us if they stop suing kids and grandparents. The intent here is to maintain a tight fisted grip on distribution at any cost, even if that means taking a cut in revenues. That way that can keep making money from crap artists and telling the public what they should be listening to. NIN will still sell individually as will other bands so you have to pay twice if you pay an RIAA tax to your ISP because that tax does NOT pay for ALL music you might download.
It is a plan to rob all Internet users. pure. and. simple. They are shit scared to sell it by the song. iTunes already set the price and it's too low for them... even if they could break into the digital content distribution business with any kind of success. If they sold it by the song, there is EVERY chance that their current cash cows would flounder, and fast.
I, of course, am all for watching that floundering happen. Hoping for such is probably cathartic as a hobby, and we all have to have some of those.
Well, there are other more technical reasons for considering Solaris. I'm not sure how this applies exactly in detail to the OpenSolaris but Solaris handles threading a little differently than Linux and a few other minor things that can make a big difference depending on your application. When you get down to the fine technical details of each OS, there are differences that can make or break your application's efficiencies.
For the desktop, perhaps that kind of analysis is not needed but if you are planning on handling 10,000 bi-directional transactions per second, application performance is a big issue.
I am forced to use WinXP, Solaris 5.8-10, CentOS 5.x, Fedora Core 8/9, RedHat, and Ubuntu in my daily life. When it comes to desktops, it's more or less a choice of personal style, no more difficult than choosing a desktop background picture. OOorg and Mozilla have made them all function the same for me. My favorite text editor comes in win/nix flavors also. For the most part, they all function the same. Hard core performance is where they begin to vary a lot IMO.
Wow, I agree with dedazo. How will you foster a user base that is news centric rather than lolcat centric?
It's casual common sense to understand that the MSM is not going to go in-depth on news stories. Musharraf's resignation is huge, but there is (so far) no in depth analysis of this news. Anything that vaguely smells of conspiracy gets all too much of the wrong attention. How will you avoid falling foul of these types of news ruts?
I had not thought of looking at Linus' signal to noise level quite that way, but you're right: arrogant, stupid, but right. His notable quotes are both sad and hilarious at the same time.
It is those that choose to sell the vulnerability to bad guys that I believe should be considered criminals. The vulnerability finders that just want some credit... well, they should get it.
I can see how Linus perspective is a bit skewed on this subject. When he started out with the kernel there was hardly the pressure or customer base that we now have with the Linux Kernel. Security is not something he can have no opinion on.
I hope that despite the signal to noise on this issue, the industry develops a middle of the road drama-free method of dealing with vulnerabilities.
Linus is dead on right. If you find it, tell the author(s). If they don't respond? Tell the world. Software makers should credit those that find the bugs as well. This will eventually lead to credit where credit is due, and subsequent reputation building in a reasonable manner.
Gag orders just make things worse. This is where I believe the law should take a stand. If someone makes reasonable due diligence to report the vulnerability to the author(s) and nothing happens in response to the report, then the authors have no recourse on what happens when it is made public. This is in line with the intent of our legal framework now, and would not IMO violate legal values.
"Unsafe at any speed" was not exactly something the auto industry wanted to deal with, but they had to. Those lessons are very applicable here. Those who don't play nice and disclose to the public too soon should be penalized if actual damages can be shown. Restraint and respect. These two things have no dependency on reciprocal action.
I read Linus' rant and he's absolutely correct. The bigger the flame war over vulnerabilities, the more security companies make off of unwarranted fears etc. It's just a game, and where the law is concerned, we have prior examples to look at... and goddamnit, they are about cars! No analogy needed here
It's kind of funny, when I worked in the dev lab of a large telecom company Sun sparc workstations were everywhere. They were all set up correctly for network logins etc. but the IT group was slow to grant access so visiting field techs were often asking for someone's password so they could get on the network and use the workstation. I quickly changed my password to 'fuckoff' and hilarity ensued.
Field guy: Hey, can I use your login for a minute? Me: sure Field guy: what's the password? Me: fuck off! Field guy: sorry, thought it was ok?? Me: it is ok, no problem. Field guy: ohh? what's the password? Me: fuck off!
who's on first blah blah blah
and several other variants of the same conversation.
If your assertion that Russian organized crime were put to use against pro-Georgian assets is correct, then the US should be seeing an INCREASE rather than decrease in spam.
You have hit on something here. The Mac users that I know are using them for one or both of two reasons: Reputation of 'just works' and Macs are seen as high end. Nobody wants to work on their Porsche themselves. When you get right down to it, there is no secure computing platform for the average joe. They all have problems.
Once you agree to that, it comes down to price and will it run the software that I want to run. Some folks use Mac for the software (artsy bastards). Some folks don't use Mac so they can run Linux. The great masses run whatever the sales boy tells them is the best they can get for their money.
Many I have worked with use a decision making process that goes something like this:
Does it work, or will I have to fuck with it all the time?
Will it run xyz program? Xyz is often email or web browsing.
How much does it cost?
What happens if it breaks? How do I get it fixed?
If the sales guy can answer those questions and throw in some good bells and whistle type stuff, the user buys.
I usually just toss an Ubuntu CD in and reboot their machine and show them a few basics. Because it runs better than windows did on their same machine there is not much selling to do. Now, If I had to tell them that for another $2500 they could get a Mac... well, it's a tough sell.
Mac users are sold before they buy. Same with the phones. People are buying a reputation, not a product. The best product that Apple owns is their reputation. It is for that reason alone that they do not want any clones, but they can hardly tell the world that is what they are doing.
BTW, for 'most' average joe users, Ubuntu gives a close-enough experience to Apple that it (linux) is no longer out of the question for them. You have to demo it to get them up to speed on the facts, whereas Mac has the reputation to do that for them. Other distributions can be as you describe, but not all. Linux is here to stay and is getting better. The sticker shock from an upgrade to a Mac is huge if you know that you can get similar experience from a zero dollar upgrade to Ubuntu.
Dude, you don't get it ROFL If you can't get logged in, when you call their help desk they ask you the questions! You have to give some soft spoken girl the answers... ROFLMFAO
I thought about 'eatshitcunt' as an answer, but that just wouldn't work out right
Damn, I don't even play video games, but I'm writing this down so I can vote for this attitude with my money if I choose to start playing them. Amazing to see the customer so valued in this day and age...
you can use throw away or unassociated voice mail services like http://www.voicenation.com/ if you wanted, or a phone at the library if needed etc. The point is that being able to use POTS lines is important for many people still, and it is off-net. I agree with your sentiment though.
The only set of questions that are any good are the set that you can make up yourself. At my bank, they ask what was the drill instructors name if I was in the military... how the hell do I know, all I remember is 'fuckhead'
They never tell you whether spaces count or not. I would like a password reset that involved two network methods: Okay, I change it, but it doesn't count until I send a text message from my phone too, or something like that. Verification via email is good, but off-net authentication would be better. I wouldn't even mind that kind of authentication for access on a regular basis, say if my account is accessed by a pc that either does not have a cookie already or that is not used normally to access my account. Picture or background validation is also good against phishing, but let me upload my own pic? please? No matter how random I make the pic, it will always be something I know, and can update regularly. I mean, what's better than a simple text graphic for background that simply says "fuck W" or some other phrase you will remember?
Security could be much simpler than it is, much better than it is. There seems to be no inspiration to implement it. That second network usage is invaluable. Give me a screen to pick one of several options (configured in preferences) such as cell, landline, SMS message, pager etc. I pick (and provide phone number) and you send the one-time authentication code that is in addition to my normal login credentials. It's easy really.
The same authentication security can be used for password resets. Send a temp password to pre-authorized off-net device or address, or let me set the new temp password via telephone etc. It really isn't that difficult.
Victor Borge is one of those performers that just seems timeless, always good.
I've been debating whether to use digital filtering for noise/scratches when I record my vinyl collection. It's kind of nice to hear it again. I've bookmarked that page! Awesome!
I was thinking this same thing: the wording seems odd. After reading several other posted stories (such as http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93381622) I think that the phrase "The Flask" seems to be casual lab term that was used to relay the information from the investigators on the ground to those that report the story to the news and courts etc. In the same way that a mechanic might casually refer to a window regulator that was replaced on a car. It's not common terminology, but specific to those who work on those systems, and despite our vocabularies, it's a very handy way to refer to the motor and stuff that makes your window go up and down.
These sites: http://www.bellcoglass.com/searchcategoryresult.aspx?keyword=culture%20flask and http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/58/2/303.pdf would support my statements to some extent. I can't yet find anything noteworthy about there being only a single flask of this culture. It seems like a single flask is identified because of the four markers found in all the attack samples and the flask Ivins had control of. There were probably many flasks of the spores but only this one matched to the spores used in the attacks. At least that is how I read all this, despite the questions that remain unanswered.
You might have a point, but I'd rather think that mankind has more compassion than that. We DO have a moral obligation to help the members of our community IMO. It's not a game show. It's not a game. That has fsck all to do with religion or god(s).
If you don't have it in your heart to be humane, the godless and the god fearing will both want your heart ripped out. The trouble with leaving such questions to god(s) is that there is no god, and you have failed in your duty to your community and to mankind in general. So, no, I will not leave it to the god(s) to figure out. We must be watchful of what man will do or suffer the consequences of waiting for the god(s) to sort it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you could do that, but I think that erasure and encrypting the whole drive will also accomplish this. I believe that there is still a possibility of recovering the data even if wiped over several times. You can find lots of information about this on 'the Google' if you like. Here is a link to a zdnet blog about it: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=129
If you can simply smelt the drives, that is complete destruction. Anything else depends on the level of 'it's not there anymore' you need. Far too many people don't care or believe their data can be used from an old disk. They also don't understand that a format will not necessarily overwrite anything on the drive. sigh.
Encrypting the whole drive will scramble the bits fairly well. Follow up with low level formatting and it should be difficult enough to recover anything from the drive without the encryption password, never mind that the file system has been rewritten.
Destroying the data should be a simple as encrypting the harddrives with a 100 characters of randomnes followed by a reformat and a shutdown.
Yes, if someone was truly interested, it's possible they could recover it but it is rather unlikely. Most of the data breaches appear to happen by accident, where encryption would have kept the data safe.
So,
1 - erase the data
2 - encrypt the drive with a near impossible key
3 - reformat
4 - no profit for next owner
I have to tell you I'm insulted, as are my magical elven friends. Your last paragraph nails the problem in one simple effort. Even those black hat guys are not good at this kind of security. Most data breaches are due to human error. The cost of training your entire workforce, and changing security policies, rewriting code where needed is NOT insignificant. Most of the SarBox compliance efforts I've seen are bandaids, not tourniquets.
The world IS flying blind, there is no guessing to that and criminal prosecution will not make it better, only education will... and of course the ubiquitous financial incentive. In the end, we'll end up with some way for corporate entities to end up looking righteous while they fire employees in the background and apologize through lying teeth about the data breach.
Only when the CxO is held liable for prison time will things change. That is the kind of motivation that changes budgets. Nonetheless, mark my words, it will be costly for any of several reasons:
1 - No one is exactly sure how to prevent a data breach, only how to prevent those that are known.
2 - Fighting data loss is like fighting terrorists that are not actively attacking you.
3 - Nobody really listens to blackhats
4 - What a blackhat tells you is a breach vulnerability is something that will "never happen here"
5 - Once there is prison time for the CxO, no employee will be able to own a USB thumb drive without a background check. The reaction will be like the 9/11 crap that the US government pulled on all citizens, but with the added value of being able to fire you for owning a thumb drive.
6 - real security is not cheap or convenient. To mitigate this, employees will be blamed.
I could go on, but we all know this song, or should. Good luck with that is all I have to say.
So all is ok if the stolen laptop had everything encrypted? That would seem legally equivalent to someone hacking at a server in the company's data center but not getting in. Then what kind of paperwork etc. is required for a contractor to use laptops from the company contracting them? The point being, how far can culpability be extended through the food chain? If an employee is not a security expert and does what IT told them to do but a compromise still happens, is the company or an employee guilty? If my details are leaked and my ID stolen, can I sue the company, the CIO, and the employee?
Sarbanes-Oxley has already wreaked havoc on the business world. Extending culpability for data breaches to criminal prosecution would be even more destructive in terms of the changes and security costs involved in protecting the company from financial damages in the event of a data breach.
I'm still waiting for DHS confiscation of a laptop to cause a data breach. When (not if) that happens, can we sue the government?
(I am playing devil's advocate, or rather corporate advocate)
Not sure how many people you'll find to agree with you, but I too found it easier, and less stressful in many ways. The article goes through some convolutions about children but I think it has much more to do with general contentment.
I thought that too, hopefully NVidia turns around and says "Ok, here is a cheaper version of model xyz, stripped down a bit, so you can afford to buy 4 from us for this little trick"
I'm not holding my breath but it would be worth the money methinks, even if they only sold them in 4 packs.
As pointed out, why pay for crap artists? There is a simple reason. When painted into a corner by their business tactics to date, they have decided that we'll cave and pay them for whatever music they want to give us if they stop suing kids and grandparents. The intent here is to maintain a tight fisted grip on distribution at any cost, even if that means taking a cut in revenues. That way that can keep making money from crap artists and telling the public what they should be listening to. NIN will still sell individually as will other bands so you have to pay twice if you pay an RIAA tax to your ISP because that tax does NOT pay for ALL music you might download.
It is a plan to rob all Internet users. pure. and. simple. They are shit scared to sell it by the song. iTunes already set the price and it's too low for them... even if they could break into the digital content distribution business with any kind of success. If they sold it by the song, there is EVERY chance that their current cash cows would flounder, and fast.
I, of course, am all for watching that floundering happen. Hoping for such is probably cathartic as a hobby, and we all have to have some of those.
If the picture is accurate... talk about being in the hot seat?
Well, there are other more technical reasons for considering Solaris. I'm not sure how this applies exactly in detail to the OpenSolaris but Solaris handles threading a little differently than Linux and a few other minor things that can make a big difference depending on your application. When you get down to the fine technical details of each OS, there are differences that can make or break your application's efficiencies.
For the desktop, perhaps that kind of analysis is not needed but if you are planning on handling 10,000 bi-directional transactions per second, application performance is a big issue.
I am forced to use WinXP, Solaris 5.8-10, CentOS 5.x, Fedora Core 8/9, RedHat, and Ubuntu in my daily life. When it comes to desktops, it's more or less a choice of personal style, no more difficult than choosing a desktop background picture. OOorg and Mozilla have made them all function the same for me. My favorite text editor comes in win/nix flavors also. For the most part, they all function the same. Hard core performance is where they begin to vary a lot IMO.
Wow, I agree with dedazo. How will you foster a user base that is news centric rather than lolcat centric?
It's casual common sense to understand that the MSM is not going to go in-depth on news stories. Musharraf's resignation is huge, but there is (so far) no in depth analysis of this news. Anything that vaguely smells of conspiracy gets all too much of the wrong attention. How will you avoid falling foul of these types of news ruts?
I had not thought of looking at Linus' signal to noise level quite that way, but you're right: arrogant, stupid, but right. His notable quotes are both sad and hilarious at the same time.
It is those that choose to sell the vulnerability to bad guys that I believe should be considered criminals. The vulnerability finders that just want some credit... well, they should get it.
I can see how Linus perspective is a bit skewed on this subject. When he started out with the kernel there was hardly the pressure or customer base that we now have with the Linux Kernel. Security is not something he can have no opinion on.
I hope that despite the signal to noise on this issue, the industry develops a middle of the road drama-free method of dealing with vulnerabilities.
Linus is dead on right. If you find it, tell the author(s). If they don't respond? Tell the world. Software makers should credit those that find the bugs as well. This will eventually lead to credit where credit is due, and subsequent reputation building in a reasonable manner.
Gag orders just make things worse. This is where I believe the law should take a stand. If someone makes reasonable due diligence to report the vulnerability to the author(s) and nothing happens in response to the report, then the authors have no recourse on what happens when it is made public. This is in line with the intent of our legal framework now, and would not IMO violate legal values.
"Unsafe at any speed" was not exactly something the auto industry wanted to deal with, but they had to. Those lessons are very applicable here. Those who don't play nice and disclose to the public too soon should be penalized if actual damages can be shown. Restraint and respect. These two things have no dependency on reciprocal action.
I read Linus' rant and he's absolutely correct. The bigger the flame war over vulnerabilities, the more security companies make off of unwarranted fears etc. It's just a game, and where the law is concerned, we have prior examples to look at... and goddamnit, they are about cars! No analogy needed here
It's kind of funny, when I worked in the dev lab of a large telecom company Sun sparc workstations were everywhere. They were all set up correctly for network logins etc. but the IT group was slow to grant access so visiting field techs were often asking for someone's password so they could get on the network and use the workstation. I quickly changed my password to 'fuckoff' and hilarity ensued.
Field guy: Hey, can I use your login for a minute?
Me: sure
Field guy: what's the password?
Me: fuck off!
Field guy: sorry, thought it was ok??
Me: it is ok, no problem.
Field guy: ohh? what's the password?
Me: fuck off!
who's on first blah blah blah
and several other variants of the same conversation.
If your assertion that Russian organized crime were put to use against pro-Georgian assets is correct, then the US should be seeing an INCREASE rather than decrease in spam.
Oh wait, which side was the US on again?
And if you think of that in terms of what the DHS will be trying to do in the next three years, you may have a more poignant point than you think.
You have hit on something here. The Mac users that I know are using them for one or both of two reasons: Reputation of 'just works' and Macs are seen as high end. Nobody wants to work on their Porsche themselves. When you get right down to it, there is no secure computing platform for the average joe. They all have problems.
Once you agree to that, it comes down to price and will it run the software that I want to run. Some folks use Mac for the software (artsy bastards). Some folks don't use Mac so they can run Linux. The great masses run whatever the sales boy tells them is the best they can get for their money.
Many I have worked with use a decision making process that goes something like this:
Does it work, or will I have to fuck with it all the time?
Will it run xyz program? Xyz is often email or web browsing.
How much does it cost?
What happens if it breaks? How do I get it fixed?
If the sales guy can answer those questions and throw in some good bells and whistle type stuff, the user buys.
I usually just toss an Ubuntu CD in and reboot their machine and show them a few basics. Because it runs better than windows did on their same machine there is not much selling to do. Now, If I had to tell them that for another $2500 they could get a Mac... well, it's a tough sell.
Mac users are sold before they buy. Same with the phones. People are buying a reputation, not a product. The best product that Apple owns is their reputation. It is for that reason alone that they do not want any clones, but they can hardly tell the world that is what they are doing.
BTW, for 'most' average joe users, Ubuntu gives a close-enough experience to Apple that it (linux) is no longer out of the question for them. You have to demo it to get them up to speed on the facts, whereas Mac has the reputation to do that for them. Other distributions can be as you describe, but not all. Linux is here to stay and is getting better. The sticker shock from an upgrade to a Mac is huge if you know that you can get similar experience from a zero dollar upgrade to Ubuntu.
Dude, you don't get it ROFL
If you can't get logged in, when you call their help desk they ask you the questions! You have to give some soft spoken girl the answers... ROFLMFAO
I thought about 'eatshitcunt' as an answer, but that just wouldn't work out right
Damn, I don't even play video games, but I'm writing this down so I can vote for this attitude with my money if I choose to start playing them. Amazing to see the customer so valued in this day and age...
you can use throw away or unassociated voice mail services like http://www.voicenation.com/ if you wanted, or a phone at the library if needed etc. The point is that being able to use POTS lines is important for many people still, and it is off-net. I agree with your sentiment though.
The only set of questions that are any good are the set that you can make up yourself. At my bank, they ask what was the drill instructors name if I was in the military... how the hell do I know, all I remember is 'fuckhead'
They never tell you whether spaces count or not. I would like a password reset that involved two network methods: Okay, I change it, but it doesn't count until I send a text message from my phone too, or something like that. Verification via email is good, but off-net authentication would be better. I wouldn't even mind that kind of authentication for access on a regular basis, say if my account is accessed by a pc that either does not have a cookie already or that is not used normally to access my account. Picture or background validation is also good against phishing, but let me upload my own pic? please? No matter how random I make the pic, it will always be something I know, and can update regularly. I mean, what's better than a simple text graphic for background that simply says "fuck W" or some other phrase you will remember?
Security could be much simpler than it is, much better than it is. There seems to be no inspiration to implement it. That second network usage is invaluable. Give me a screen to pick one of several options (configured in preferences) such as cell, landline, SMS message, pager etc. I pick (and provide phone number) and you send the one-time authentication code that is in addition to my normal login credentials. It's easy really.
The same authentication security can be used for password resets. Send a temp password to pre-authorized off-net device or address, or let me set the new temp password via telephone etc. It really isn't that difficult.
And just for fun, do not be evil?
http://78records.cdbpdx.com/list/BARNEYGOOGLE_JonesandHare_COLUMBIA_A3876.mp3
Victor Borge is one of those performers that just seems timeless, always good.
I've been debating whether to use digital filtering for noise/scratches when I record my vinyl collection. It's kind of nice to hear it again. I've bookmarked that page! Awesome!
I was thinking this same thing: the wording seems odd. After reading several other posted stories (such as http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93381622) I think that the phrase "The Flask" seems to be casual lab term that was used to relay the information from the investigators on the ground to those that report the story to the news and courts etc. In the same way that a mechanic might casually refer to a window regulator that was replaced on a car. It's not common terminology, but specific to those who work on those systems, and despite our vocabularies, it's a very handy way to refer to the motor and stuff that makes your window go up and down.
These sites:
http://www.bellcoglass.com/searchcategoryresult.aspx?keyword=culture%20flask
and
http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/58/2/303.pdf would support my statements to some extent. I can't yet find anything noteworthy about there being only a single flask of this culture. It seems like a single flask is identified because of the four markers found in all the attack samples and the flask Ivins had control of. There were probably many flasks of the spores but only this one matched to the spores used in the attacks. At least that is how I read all this, despite the questions that remain unanswered.
Olympic Ceremony - $40 Million
Tickets to Olympics - $??????
Windows Computer - $1000
Windows XP OS - $400
Being able to tap the president on the shoulder, then point up at the BSOD screen and say "I did that" - Fucking Priceless
You might have a point, but I'd rather think that mankind has more compassion than that. We DO have a moral obligation to help the members of our community IMO. It's not a game show. It's not a game. That has fsck all to do with religion or god(s).
If you don't have it in your heart to be humane, the godless and the god fearing will both want your heart ripped out. The trouble with leaving such questions to god(s) is that there is no god, and you have failed in your duty to your community and to mankind in general. So, no, I will not leave it to the god(s) to figure out. We must be watchful of what man will do or suffer the consequences of waiting for the god(s) to sort it out.