Things That Just Piss Me Off

The thought of a cyberwar is still science fiction to most Americans. They believe that kind of stuff only exists in movies. But there is a real threat of real cyberwars in the future. Here is a good article about cyberwarfare for you to ponder; (The Title could be a book or a movie)

When Bots Attack
By John Robb of Wired Magazine

If you want to bring down a country’s information infrastructure and you don’t want anyone to know who did it, the weapon of choice is a distributed denial of service attack. Using rented botnets, you can launch hundreds of thousands — even millions — of infobombs at a target, all while maintaining total deniability. In this hypothetical scenario, a single attack launched by China against the US lasts only a few hours, but a full-scale assault lasting days or weeks could bring an entire modern information economy to its knees.

I know. It sounds like the plot to a movie as I said before, but this is real. Cyberwar is a real possibility we are not prepared for.

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Politicians and celebrities each enjoy a whole different justice system then you or I ever will. We now live in a world where if you are a celebrity or politician, you are above the law. This is just one example of politicians above the law.

Now a Lobbyist, an Ex-Senator Uses Campaign Money
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and DAVID W. CHEN of the NYTimes

When he was last running for the United States Senate from New Jersey in 2002, Robert G. Torricelli collected donations from thousands of people who apparently wanted to see him re-elected. They might be surprised to see how he spent a portion of their money.

Mr. Torricelli, a Democrat who was one of the Senate’s most flamboyant personalities and prodigious fund-raisers, abruptly quit the 2002 race amid allegations of ethical misconduct and became a lobbyist. Since then, he has given $4,000 from his campaign fund to Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress, $10,000 to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and more than $40,000 to Nevada Democratic Party organizations and candidates linked to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

All of those politicians had one thing in common: influence over Mr. Torricelli’s, or his clients’, business interests.

In early 2006, for instance, Mr. Torricelli contributed $10,000 from his Senate account to the mayor of Trenton and his slate of City Council candidates, just as city agencies were reviewing an ultimately successful proposal by the former senator to develop retail and office space in the city.

Mr. Torricelli quit the 2002 race in October of that year, several weeks after the Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter “severely admonishing” him for accepting three gifts from a contributor, David Chang.

Bottom line; Whether there are loopholes that allow him to use that money to contribute to campaigns or not, he should not be contributing to the campaigns of politicians that can help him in his new lobbying business or its clients.

But then, someone who resigned over questions of ethics, that now becomes a lobbyist, isn’t really expected to operate ethically is he?

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Things That Just Piss Me Off