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March 18, 2004

Lecture Fun

Yesterday and today have been some pretty fun little spiels. My "other" prof, Professor Thorson, had his daughter in to talk to our poli-sci class about her work on the Dean Campaign. The aftermath of the Dean Campaign is kind of telling. I picked up this choice quote from her: "We called people to find out who they were voting for, and everybody said, 'I don't like John Kerry, but I think everybody else will vote for him, so I will too.'"

So I'll play the role of Devil's Advocate on this one. She (and others) complain about Nader running in 2004, yet get PO'd when people don't vote their conscience for their own (democratic) candidate. This isn't any kind of attack on the Dean platform (who, me sounding cynical about something? Never!), just a casual observation of the double-standard applied to poor Nader. Like I tell people, don't blame him for running, blame everybody else for voting for him (or for not voting for him, if you think he happens to represent you better).

Today was a little Systems Assurance lecture by the Maxwell School's Chris Sedore.

Chris.jpg
Chris showing statistics from the SQL worm

I have to say that I am quite impressed by Maxwell's network layout. They have quite a nice setup of firewalls, VPN servers, and intrusion detection systems, as well as far more professional custom-built tools than I have seen in ECS. No, it's not Stephen's fault (he doesn't do Windows). Blame it on Neil.

The interesting thing about this meeting was that we had members in attendance from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (as Neal Stephenson once wrote, the more adjectives tacked onto the name of a country to tell how kind it is, the more evil and dictator-like the country really is. You probably know it better as North Korea). There is a delegation visiting Syracuse University to examine the US IT infrastructure. Who knows what they plan to do with such information, but given the difficulties they must go through to even land the plane here, it must be worth it.

Doug.jpg
Poor Doug...

Doug missed out on this rather interesting little lecture/demo, sitting 15 feet away in his sealed studying cubicle, hacking away at a paper. I'm glad I'm not a real Political Scientist.

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I was wondering why there were all of these strange looking asian people walking around campus thismorning (especially on m-street). How did you find out about the lecture btw?

Posted by: henry on March 18, 2004 06:10 PM

So if you decide to come to Rockwell Church, let me know. And don't forget to buy a ticket ( http://www.ticketweb.com/user?region=penn&query=schedule&venue=point )

talk to you later
~k

Posted by: kaitl on March 18, 2004 08:29 PM
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