Hockey bonding
There is something about watching hockey with a three year old that lends magic to the game. Amazingly, my daughter comprehends the basics of the game. Since she ice skates on Sundays, she can relate to the flow of the game and the concept of scoring is not lost on her, nor are the many penalties of the game where players go to "time out" for being bad and tripping or fighting. It has been well worth the extended hour past her bed-time to share a period or two of hockey with her over popcorn.
I also had the opportunity to watch "Miracle" last night with my brother-in-law. It was a great movie and brought back lots of memories from the days of college hockey practices in the early morning and late on Saturday nights. Herb Brooks was fantastically played by Kurt Russell, from his early break-down of the individual personalities to create a team, down to his inspiring pre-USSR game lockerroom speech...."Great moments are born from great opportunity. Great opportunity is what you have here tonight. Nine games out of ten, they will beat us, but not tonight." Great stuff.
Cyber-Terrorism - Broadcast Monday 14 October 2002
There's no evidence yet of genuine cyber-terrorism. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. Terrorism expert Matthew Devost says cyber-terrorism is becoming likelier for two reasons: firstly, critical infrastructure is increasingly migrating to the internet and secondly the attack tools are becoming both more powerful and easier to use.
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Nine Hundred and eleven days later
As a terrorism expert, I was immediately confronted by the fact that under certain calculations, the bombings in Madrid last week were 911 days after September 11, 2001. Snopes.com provides on of the best explanations on the coincidence that I have seen to date, including the following explanation for why we care:
So why do some of us continue to find significance in these types of coincidences? One answer is that it gives us back a sense of control over a world gone mad. Other than cower in our homes, we can do little to protect ourselves against an enemy who might strike against anyone, anywhere, at any time. Being able to find patterns, even obscure ones, between terorrist-related activities allows us to think that we can take back some measure of control; that we can indeed discern when and where the next attack might come if only we stay alert for hidden messages and use the proper keys to decode them.
Quote of the week
"This is not like the Gambino crime family, a Mafia family, where if you just arrest the leaders it goes out of business," said Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism expert. "This is more like a mass movement, and you can arrest as many people as you want. But it's very hard to arrest the movement of ideas."
Go Martin
Just a quick posting to draw your attention to the fact that Martin St. Louis is the current NHL leading scorer. Who says short guys can't play in the NHL?
There can be only one Jodie
At least from a Google page ranking perspective. When it comes to being number one on Google, this is the only Jodie I can endorse.
I was only kidding about the terrorists folks...
But this analyst can't resist.
"With the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' who are trying their hand at hacking. Some are even communicating with each other. So it only takes one or two of these groups sharing information to be able to pull something off. When you have this type of passion, it's hard to fight because these people are like virtual suicide car bombers."
Terrorists leak Windows Source Code on the Net
I'm kidding of course, about the terrorist part. There are all sorts of implications to the Windows source code leak. Can you say zero day worms, exploits and all sorts of fun?