PBS has a brief but robust description of the history of The Syndicate in America. The story is mainly in regard to the establishment of Las Vegas casinos but it also touches on its role in influencing and working with law enforcement and intelligence agencies: The Office of Strategic Services (later, the CIA) in fact … Continue reading The Syndicate→
The New York Times has a pretty disturbing review of how bad tempers have become in San Francisco. They point out that parking attendants are now under constant threat of being attacked by angry car owners roaming the streets: People in the field say abuse is common, often frightening and, occasionally, humiliating. In November, an … Continue reading San Fran Parking Risks and Violence→
The New York Times had an interesting article a few days ago about the ongoing prevalence of botnets. It suggests they are still growing in sophistication and size. The article is worth a read partly because of the amusing quotes like this one: “It’s a huge scientific, policy, and ultimately social crisis, and no one … Continue reading The botnet plague→
2007 is really starting with a bang, eh? The latest outbreak seems to be defined so far by a Windows Mutex Object service. Mutex are meant to provide mutual exclusion for resource contention to allow synchronization. Here’s what seems to happen to affected systems: mutex.exe starts and runs in task manager, and can restart itself … Continue reading dangerous (lokkest) worm on the loose→