National Response Framework and US Army Terrorism Guide

The National Response Framework provides a comprehensive, national, all-hazards approach to domestic incident response. The Framework presents an overview of key response principles, roles and structures that guide the national response. It describes how communities, States, the Federal Government and private-sector and nongovernmental partners apply these principles for a coordinated, effective national response.

A poster over at Daily Kos has written an excellent two part summary of the framework: Part I and Part II. Any thing I would write would be duplicative and I recommend you read these posts over (Daily Kos is political site but some things go beyond politics and this topic is one).

Finally, another reference you may want to examine is the US Army Guide to Terrorism in the 21st Century.

Risk

Over the next few days there will be several posts regarding why suburban survival preparation is important. One of the keys to understanding what to prepare for is to assess the risks that various catastrophic events might have should they occur and what the potential effects could be to the suburban survivalist.

To that end, here's an interesting news story from today's newswire regarding the potential damage that could be done to the U.S. power grid via a cyber attack. According to the article, government researchers have produced a video to demonstrate the effects of a cyber attack to the electrical grid:

commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
...
The electrical attack never actually happened. The recorded demonstration, called the "Aurora Generator Test," was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was quietly fixed, and equipment-makers urged utilities to take protective measures.
...
President Bush's top telecommunications advisers concluded years ago that an organization such as a foreign intelligence service or a well- funded terror group "could conduct a structured attack on the electric power grid electronically, with a high degree of anonymity, and without having to set foot in the target nation." Ominously, the Idaho National Laboratory—which produced the new video—has described the risk as "the invisible threat."

How likely is such an attack? The article goes on to state that while possible, probably not very likely. But if it should occur, one of the key questions is how much of the grid is affected and for how long? Its just a guess but this type of attack would most likely not be too severe - perhaps the equivalent of a major winter storm or hurricane that knocks out power for several days. Still, are you prepared for loss of all electrical power for 3 days? How about a week? Two weeks? Two Months?

The Suburban Survivalist should be sufficiently prepared to assess and handle exactly this type of situation. He or she should be able to handle the loss of refrigeration, lights, heat and communications (TV, Phone) for several months and, be able to obtain or engage an alternate source of power for electrical needs.

Jericho

If you don't know about the CBS show, Jericho, then let me recommend it to you highly.

Jericho is about the residents of Jericho, a small Kansas town, in the aftermath of mysterious nuclear attacks on several major cities in the United States. The residents of Jericho have to deal with several issues - survival, gathering of information, community identity, public order, limited resources, the value of family, and internal and external threats. The show falls into the "24" and "Lost" type mystery/drama, so if you like those shows, you'll like Jericho.

Jericho was initially canceled by CBS due to poor ratings but, thanks to the efforts of its fans (and a several thousand pounds of nuts), it was renewed for 7 episodes to be shown as a "mid-season replacement" (i.e. if one of CBS's new fall 2007 shows fails, Jericho gets the spot or, if not, then it will show sometime in January/Feburary). Wikipedia summarizes the details or check out many of the fan websites.

If you missed Jericho when it was shown last year, don't fret. You can watch all 22 of the first season's episodes for free at CBS's Jericho Video Site, although you will have to watch them on your computer and they do have commercial breaks.

If you like the show and want to support it, you can buy and download all 22 episodes at iTunes (there's a button at the bottom of this post to open the Jericho page directly in iTunes). The advantage of the iTunes downloads is that there are no commercials and you can watch on any video enabled ipod (such as the new Apple iPod Nano, the new iPod Classic or the new Apple iPod Touch and the iPhone) or, you can use Apple TV to watch iTunes videos on your TV (you can also connect video ipods to your TV).

Also, the entire first season DVD is due to be released October 2, 2007 - Jericho - The First Season.

If you like the show, then let me encourage you to buy it either from iTunes or on DVD. The show has not been guaranteed a third season and by purchasing the download or DVD, you can send CBS a message to continue the show. Also, be sure to be watching when season two airs to help boost the ratings.

Finally, as a further enticement to watch Jericho, let me say that if you want to know why suburban survival is important, then the Jericho can shed some light.

Off the Grid by Les Stroud

Well this site is slowly coming together.

I have lots of great content in the hopper that I will be rolling out over the next couple of days. Until then, I'd thought I'd share a great set of You Tube videos with you.

If you are a fan of Les Stroud of Survivorman, then check out this program he did on "Off the Grid" Living:



The video is in several parts, most under 10 minutes in length. I'll list them here for your convenience:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

If you enjoy this program, then you may also enjoy Frontier House, which is a PBS show about three modern American families who spend five months in Montana living as though it were the 1800s.

MacBook sick + Me Sick = no posts

Unfortunately I have been under the weather for sometime now with an illness (painful but not life threatening) so I have not had time to post. I'll try to remedy that over the next couple of days (I'll have something to say about WWDC, the iPhone and the lovely little dip Apple stock took today ).

Making this one of the worst weeks for me ever was that the display on my MacBoook went haywire. I got a vertical blue line down the center of the screen which, in effect, have me a "split" screen MacBook. Very odd. 20 days after the 90 day phone support expired. And I didn't buy Apple Care (Yet). Figures. But, thanks to my local Apple store, it did not cause too much of an inconvience. In the past, I would just call Apple and the next day a box would arrive and off to Texas for repairs. Now, you just take it to the Apple store where they do the repairs. They told me I'd get the machine back by monday since they would have to order a new screen. Not too shabby. Thank god for the 1 yr warranty. Cost $0.

Which brings me to an interesting point. A friend of mine just ordered a new windows laptop from one of the big 3 manufactuers. Of course, within days, the machine had problems. My friend then finds out that, although the repair would be covered, the machine comes with 90 days support. You have to pay extra for the full year. What kind of BS is that? I won't even go into all the hassel my pal had to go through over the phone. Just another reason why once you go mac, you never go back.

Apple TV and Subscriptions

Apple's earnings announcement had a surprise tidbit about subscriptions:

Apple's going to account for sales and earnings from the iPhone and Apple TV on a subscription basis for 24 months after the sale of a unit... Apple said that the reason for this is because they are going to be offering new software features for free for the iPhone and Apple TV.

Now, some people had assumed that this was to take care of the accounting rules that required Apple to charge $1.99 to Mac and MacBook users for a software update to enable the computers to support the Airport 'n' wireless networking. But, as One Analyst sees it, this is really setting up Apple to offer subscriptions via iTunes. Now subscriptions and iTunes seem to be dirty words to Steve Jobs. He is dead set against a subscription based model for music. But what about TV shows and Movies?

I suspect that in the next few months Apple will update Apple TV to allow video rentals of movies and TV shows. If it does not happen this year, then expect it in January 2008. It just makes sense. I look at my own consumption of movies to justify that belief.

I would like to think my situation is one of an average consumer. Due to my family and work schedule, I almost never go to the movie theaters. Why? For most movies, I can wait until its on DVD when I can watch from the comfort of my couch (for example, the last movie I saw in the theater was Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Before that, it was the last Lord of the Rings. So, even though I see almost all of the "blockbuster" movies, 99.8% of them I watch on DVD. I am very happy to be one of the consumers causing Hollywood and the movie theaters so much consternation, but that is another post).

Thus, my consumption of movies really is an "impulse" type purchase - a few times per week I decide to watch a movie. I look for the latest DVD releases first and then I look at other films. Assuming I find something I am interested in seeing (and since much of what is produced these days is crap horror films I won't watch), I am then faced with a trade off - buy an iTunes movie for $9.99 (or more) or, buy a movie off pay per view for $3.99 or, take a 5 minute trip to the Rental Store and rent a movie for $4.29. Each has its pros and cons:

iTunes: PROS: near instant delivery, very little to do on my part except select the movie and watch it either in my computer or my TV. CONS: Expensive compared to other choices, although I will own the movie, I probably would never watch it more than 1 time. Like 95% of the population, I am not a big buyer of DVD's but I am a big consumer of DVD rentals. Also, Apple's selection is somewhat limited right now without "new" releases (i.e. movies that came out on DVD this week).

Pay Per View: PROS: instant delivery, very little to do on my part except select the movie to watch and watch it. Inexpensive. CONS: no "new" releases as Pay per view tends to be about a month behind on new releases.

Rental Store: PROS: "new' releases available (although its very rare to be able to rent a new release the first week it comes out). Inexpensive. CONS: takes some effort on my part to get to the store, rent the movie (and 7 out of 10 times they don't have anything I want to see) and return the movie after I am done watching it.

So, looking at the list, you might be able to tell that generally I'm buying movies off of pay per view and, about 2 or 3 times a month renting from the Store (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on what's out). So, 99.9% of the time, buying a movie from iTunes doesn't even cross my mind due to the cost. But...if iTunes offered new release rentals? I'd use it every time.

And that's the sweet spot Apple has to hit with movies - new release rentals and that's where I think Apple has to get to with Apple TV.

If I were to envision this feature, I would tell iTunes sometime during the week, either through my Apple TV interface or from my work or home computer, that I want to watch 2 new movie releases. Within minutes the first movie would be available for me begin to view on my TV. I should be able to stop, rewind and pause the movie. That's it. Some people might want a purchase option after they watch the movie, although that's not important to me. Others might want the "DVD extra features", although, once again, not too important to me. I want to rent, watch (once or twice), the newest movie release and it has to cost $5 or less. The company that can digitally deliver (ruling out the Rental Store and the Netflix snail mail model) that experience is going to be the one that wins.

Apple Earnings Blowout

Apple's 2nd quarter earnings numbers are amazing. No commentary or analysis can really do it justice, the numbers speak for themselves:

$ 5.26 Billion in revenue - 56% from the sale of Macs, 44% from sale of iPods and music
$ 770 Million in Profit - up 88% from 2Q2006
$ 35.1% Gross Margin - up from 29.8% from 2Q2006
1.5 Million Macs Sold - up 36% from 2Q2006
10.5 Million iPods Sold - up 34% from 2Q2006

Analysts had predicted profit of 64 cents per share. Apple annouced profit of 87 cents per share.

Some interesting tidbits:

- Mac sales growing faster than iPod sales (so much for the iPod is the only thing holding the company up).
- iTunes sales are up (no numbers offered though).
- Sales through the retail stores grew 79% (alot of Apple's profit is coming from retail sales).
- Apple's going to account for sales and earnings from the iPhone and Apple TV on a subscription basis for 24 months after the sale of a unit. This is very intersting. Apple said that the reason for this is because they are going to be offering new software features for free for the iPhone and Apple TV.
- Notebook sales up 79% from 2Q2006. Guess 2007 is the real year of the laptop.
- Apple has $12.6 Billion cash on hand. No mention as to what they are going to do with that huge war chest.

When is a Mac hack not a mac hack?

Answer: When it affects windows too. Apparently the hack to the MacBook at last week’s CanSecWest security conference exploits a flaw in Apple's Quicktime.

So, the take away here is two fold: (1) Mac OS X was not hacked at the conference (a minor quibble but technically true) and (2) this may be a much bigger deal than I initially thought since the installed base for Quicktime is many times larger than the installed base for Mac OS X (the reason? If you have iTunes on your Mac or PC, then you have Quicktime installed).

I suspect we will see a patch for Quicktime very soon from Apple.

The iTunes Cash Cow

Apple has maintined that the iTunes store is not profitable or breaks even. They have let the electronics and music industry assume that they make thier cash on the sale of iPods. Of course, selling iPods is a very profitable business. But a new report by Andrew Hargreaves of Pacific Crest may shed some light into Apple's iTunes revenue stream. According to the report, Apple sees $0.10 of profit per $0.99 song. Not too shabby considering Apple is selling millions of songs a week.

Get out the broom - Red Sox sweep Yanks!

In case anyone missed it last night, the Red Sox swept the Yanks, in part thanks to historic 4 consecutive home runs in one inning.



YouTube

Vista sales anemic while Mac Sales grow 30%

Robin Bloor at IT-Director.com has a interesting (and I would say accurate) take on the power of Apple :

In the US, 14,811,000 PCs were shipped, indicating only 2.9% growth in PC sales in the first quarter. In other words the impact on PC sales of Vista appears to have far lower in the US. But actually that 2.9% figure is not what it seems, because 1.15% of that growth is attributable directly to Apple. The sale of Apple Macs grew by 30% in the quarter as they have in quarter after quarter for quite a while now. In other words Vista made no competitive dent whatsoever in the sale of Macs—and that very bad news for Microsoft.

Now that's good news for Apple, but here's the really interesting analysis by Bloor:

Apple now has 5% of the US market, which may seem small, but that 5% punches well above its weight because Apple focuses on the home market—that 5% is more like 15% of the people that actually choose their PCs (in the corporations you get what you are given) and at current rates of growth that 15% will be 30% in the US in about 2 years, unless Apple's momentum slows. Now consider the fact that the US market drives PC buying trends in the rest of the world to some degree and Apple's momentum comes more into focus. Apple's momentum has not been stopped at all by Vista, and this is ahead of the release of Apple's answer to Vista—the Leopard version of OS X.

Although Bloor's analysis makes sense, some so-called "Technology Analysts" (see, for example, here ) will just fight this common sense tooth and nail. Not surprisingly many of those who deny this are paid consultants of Microsoft.

Omnivore’s Dilemma

Michael Pollan has an article in the NYT Magazine about why a person's wealth is the biggest predictor of obesity (i.e. the more your earn, the less obese you are). It is a great read, even if you have read Pollan's book, Omnivore's Dilemma (which I also recommend).

Pollan discusses current U.S. farm policy which rewards all the wrong things:

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Up with Math?

Here is a post that I actually think makes sense. The Author's contention is that the U.S. teaches math wrong, substituting depth for breadth and emphasizing math for science and engineering too early in a student's career. Check it out....

Macbook: hacked or not?

There's news that a MacBook has been hacked at CanSecWest , a computer security conference. Apparently as a challege, the conference organized a contest to see if someone could hack into two MacBooks. Here were the rules :

We've announced that we will be having a contest "PWN to OWN" where two, pimp, loaded up, Apple Macbook Pro's will be set up on their own AP (with security updates but otherwise default) and attendees will be able to connect to the ethernet or WiFi. The first to exploit it (there are victory conditions, and progressive rules over the three days) gets to go home with it. (Limit one per person, Can't use the same vuln on both.) If they survive the three days in the "jungle," they become prizes for best lightning talk and best speaker. Detailed contest rules to follow shortly.

At one point there were detailed rules on the site, but I can't seem to find them. As I recall, they initially proposed that the first day nothing would be done to the MacBooks, you had to get access remotely. If no one was able to get access by the end of the first day then they would relax the rules to allow access from the local network that the MacBooks were connected to. And then, on the final day they would allow access to the machine via its USB port. Of course, I could be remembering this wrong. I glanced at the rules when they announced the contest.

Apparently, after the first day, no-one could get access so they relaxed the rules. They then apparently allowed folks to send emails with links to the MacBook and the conference organizers then opened the links with Safari. The Rixstep web site summarizes of what happened next:

The CanSecWest Applied Security Conference held from 18-20 April 2007 netted one exploit against a fully patched MacBook Pro after a number of false starts and initial failures. The initial contest - to 'PWN' MacBook Pros accessible on internal IANA IPs - met with no success despite the machines themselves being the prizes to the winners.
It was only when the organisers upped the ante and lightened the rules of the contest that an exploit succeeded. The new rules specified sending URLs to the organisers which they would access from the MPBs with the default Safari web browser.
'There has not been a successful attack. Time to expand your attack surface. Email links and we will visit them using Safari', read the communique. Then, two hours twenty four minutes later:
'One OS X box has been owned! At this point all we can say is there is an exploitable flaw in Safari which can be triggered within a malicious web page. Of course all of the latest security patches have been applied. This one is 0day folks. Technical details will be forthcoming as the winner works out the release. There is still one more Mac to go.'
'The first box required a flaw that allows the attacker to get a shell with user level privileges. The second box, still up for grabs, requires the same, plus the attacker needs to get root.'
No one ever got root.

The Rixstep article lays it out pretty well. No one ever got root. And I even question the hack given what I remember about the rules - the MacBook was hacked on friday which was the third day of the conference. Of course, like I said before I could remember it wrong.

So is this a big deal? I don't think so. To me, the important thing for security is for my machine to fight attacks that I, as a user, have no hand in initiating. Clearly, if the MacBook was hacked, the attack described requires a user to open an email and click on a link. That implies that the email has to spoof the user, which to me is a pretty big deal. By now everyone is so familair with span (or should be) that it would have to be a pretty convincing email for me to click on a link (even assumping that it somehow slipped by the excellent spam filer in Apple's mail. Which reminds me of another interesting question. Would the hack work via webmail e.g, gmail? I don't know, but if I had to guess I would say no).

Nevertheless, the tech web is buzzing (as usual) with Apple Hacked headlines. IDG (as usual) put out a misleading story which the Rixstep article, I think, convincingly corrects.

Even if this is indeed a real hack and, even if you buy the contrived actions you need to preform to open the MacBook up to the hack, I can think of two things that need to be considered. First, it looks to me like an input manager hack. The changes to input manger in the next version of Mac OS X (10.5) will take care of that. Second, if it is real then it looks to me like a relatively quick fix to Mac OS 10.4 to prevent it. But, like I said, I think it a contrived hack. Any responsible user would probably never have to worry about it. I know I won't.

Also, Arstechnica has a good article on the technical details

Proof Microsoft is Crazy about the iPhone

Lets see here now, xbox is hemorrhaging money and the zune is a joke so take this comment by Microsoft exec Chris Sorenson for what its worth:

It's a great music phone, and I'm sure it will be fantastic and have an interesting user interface," Microsoft's Asia-Pacific head of smartphone strategy Chris Sorenson told press during a recent visit to Australia.

"However, it's a closed device that you cannot install applications on, and there's no support for Office documents. If you're an enterprise and want to roll out line of business applications, it's just not an option. Even using it as a heavy messaging device will be a challenge."

So, support for office documents is the end all be all of a cell phone. Now, I a few years ago, I was the typical "road warier" and near abused my cell phone and PDA. And yes, I did have lots of word docs on my PDA. But let's be frank here...reading docs on a cell phone or PDA screen just sucks.

Perhaps Apple will come up with a better solution for reading documents on the iPhone . But maybe the better question is, why would you want to? Remember that the iPhone is also an iPod . I get along just fine with my documents copied to my iPod available for me where ever I have access to a PC or Mac. And, I am really beginning to like google's docs and spreadsheets alot.

Apple Earnings Contest

Well, Apple will release its quarterly earnings report next week:

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial estimate Apple will earn 64 cents a share on $5.17 billion in revenue for its second-fiscal quarter, while the company previously forecast a profit of between 54 cents and 56 cents a share, and sales in a range of $4.8 billion to $4.9 billion.

I have been following Apple seriously since 1998. It seems every quarter to beat the analysts (in fact I cannot recall the last quarter it failed to meet or exceed expectations).

So, to that end, I'm setting up an informal contest to see if someone can guess what earnings Apple will report. I'm going to say 65 cents a share and $5.20 billion in revenue. Anyone else?

Give Lautenburg's Seniority Back

Now that Holy Joe Leiberman is (sadly) going back to the Senate, its time to start a campaign to give Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) his seniority back....

When Lautenburg went back to the senate after retiring, he lost all of his seniority. If he had maintained his seniority status, he would be ahead of Holy Joe and take over Holy Joe's committee seniority. If Joementum is going back to the senate after pissing all over his party, then I think it only fair to give Lautenberg his seniority.

Yes, Holy Joe can be part of the Democratic caucus, but a message has to be sent. Joementum can keep his seniority, but Frank Lautenburg should get his back too.

And the upside is that it will really piss Joementum off.

Election Countdown

I know that I have not used this blog in sometime. In fact, I have not blogged at all in over a year. I shut down the original Late Night Pundit blog which was hosted on its own server due to my lack of time to keep up with it.

Anyway, I hope to get back into blogging over the next several weeks but until then, here's my predictions for the 2006 mid-term elections. Take this with a grain of salt...

House: Dems pick up 37 seats to take control of the House of Representatives. This is probably a pretty mainstream pick. Most pundits seem to think somewhere between a 25 to 40 seat pick-up for the Democrats.

Senate: Democrats 51, Republicans 49. This prediction bucks the other pundits. Most seem to think that the Senate remains in Republican control - by either 1 seat or a tie with the VP vote keeping the Senate in Republican hands.

Anyway we'll see how well I did on Tuesday. Don't forget to vote!

---EDIT: Updated April 26, 2007
----> I should have posted this update after the election: I was pretty darn close. Underestimated the Dem pickup in the house, but correctly got the senate right (and very few people saw that one beforehand). Anyway...updating the blog and thought I'd gloat a bit. lol.

Required Reading: Conservatives without Conscience

For those of you who read slashdot, this post is in the spirit of the occasional book reviews they post. And now to the point... John Dean's new book, Conservatives Without Conscience, is absolute required reading (I am in no way affiliated with this book. I just thought it was that good).

Not only is the book well written, but it comprehensively and (I would say) conclusively answers the question - why are the republicans so mean spirited? Dean's short answer is the republican party is run by autocratic ego maniacs who couldn't give a lick about you, me or even their own lemming supporters.

The question that bothers Dean is one that has bothered me - namely - how could the supporters of the radical right not see how they are being played for fools? Dean's answer: their personal make-up will just not allow them to. They are classic lemmings and share many of the same characteristics of the Germans and Italians during the late 1930's and early 1940's

I don't want to summarize the book too much (after all this is not a 9th grade book report) but Dean approaches the topic masterfully. After describing how, in the late 80's the right wing attack machine went after he and his wife, he began to question why the conservative movement had become so mean spirited and the atmosphere in DC had become so toxic. Dean examines the question using social science, political science and historical analysis and quickly comes to the conclusion that the personalities of right wing leaders are simply classic authoritarians (indeed, he puts some of them - notably Chaney and Delay in a super-authoritarian category). His conclusion is downright scary as he paints a picture of the possibility of a fascist America that could develop over the next few election cycles.

What is even more fascinating is the questions that Dean's book raises. He concludes that 30% of the electorate are, and will always be, authoritarian-followers. If true, how does that bode for the moderate democrat's argument that we have to start appealing to those voters? How can you address a democratic message for people who will simply not listen, no matter what you say?

The second large question raised by Dean is probably the most terrifying. What happens if another terrorist attack occurs while Bush is still in office? Would the backlash result in more authoritarian policies and could that lead to a fascist America?

Finally, Dean lays out how the radical right wing authoritarians have destroyed the Congress by implementing procedures designed to institute the iron fist of the majority. What happens if (and hopefully when) the Democrats take control? Do they go back to the "old" rules of congress based on civility and protection of the minority (personally I say hell no. Let the repugs rot under their own rules for a few years).

Run don't walk to the nearest bookstore (or check out audible.com for the audiobook).

Welcome to Blogger

Hello and welcome. I have had this Blogger account for some time but have never used it. However, I have recently shut down the hosted version of Late Night Pundit, so here we go on blogger.

As the name suggests, I try and post when I have some free time which is usually late at night. I run the table on topics but generally try to stick to technology, with a focus on Apple technology and programming. I will also occasionally post topicd on politics, current events and, of course, the Red Sox.

I am an attorney so you may even find some discussion of legal issues. Be warned however, nothing on this site should be construed as legal advice nor do I assert that anything written here is intended as legal advice. If you have any legal questions please consult with your own attorney as I do not represent you.

With that disclaimer out of the way...off we go!