Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose, according to people familiar with the matter.

The exchange's trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn't compromised, these people said. However, it couldn't be determined which other parts of Nasdaq's computer network were accessed.

Investigators are considering a range of possible motives, including unlawful financial gain, theft of trade secrets and a national-security threat designed to damage the exchange.

The Nasdaq situation has set off alarms within the government because of the exchange's critical role, which officials put right up with power companies and air-traffic-control operations, all part of the nation's basic infrastructure. Other infrastructure components have been compromised in the past, including a case in which hackers planted potentially disruptive software programs in the U.S. electrical grid, according to current and former national-security officials.

"So far, [the perpetrators] appear to have just been looking around," said one person involved in the Nasdaq matter. Another person familiar with the case said the incidents were, for a computer network, the equivalent of someone sneaking into a house and walking around but—apparently, so far—not taking or tampering with anything.

This artice sums up my take on the Egyptian revolution. In short, there's nothing to fill in the void once the current government is toppled simply because there's no one person or group capable of taking the reins.

By Dan Duray, cover story for the New York Observer, February 7, 2011 issue

...In his November farewell post, after a five-year stint on the Atlantic blog, Marc Ambinder wrote that it will be a relief to head to the National Journal, where he will feel no compulsion to turn every piece into the opinion of "a web-based personality called 'Marc Ambinder' that people read because it's 'Marc Ambinder,' rather than because it's good or interesting."

"You're competitive in terms of getting something first, and then you're competitive on getting a take that is close to the truth so much as it can be approximated, and then you're competitive in building and keeping an influential and broad-based readership," Mr. Ambinder told The Observer, speaking with exhaustion of his time on the Web.

With the Jason Kottkes and Andrew Sullivans already established and still working, he added, it's become increasingly difficult to carve out a niche.

"We're at a stage now where that market is saturated, so it's the long tail phenomenon. We're getting to the point where it's really, really hard once you start, unless you're a phenomenon or something," he said.

This saturation of opinion dripped into the personal blogging sphere as well, with Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter becoming the preferred mode for oversharing....

Let’s start with the revolution in Tunisia and the ongoing turmoil in Egypt. Behind the explosion of popular resentments that’s putting once-secure governments at risk is the simple fact that in both countries, and across the Third World more generally, people are having an increasingly hard time getting enough to eat as food prices climb past records set during the last spike in 2008. Plenty of factors feed into the surge in food costs, but one major factor is a string of failed harvests in some of the world’s important grain-producing regions, which in turn has been caused by increasingly unstable weather. Pundits in the US media talk earnestly about the end of an era of cheap food, but what that means in practice is that over a growing fraction of the world, incomes are failing to keep pace with food costs, and as the number of hungry and desperate people grows, so does the pressure toward political explosions.

Compiled by ABC’s Erin McGlaughlin and Joanna Suare,

ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, Feb. 3, 2010:

We’ve compiled a list of all the journalist who have been in some way threatened, attacked or detained while reporting in Egypt.  When you put it all into one list, it is a rather large number in such a short period of time.  (UPDATED - send us more stories if you get them)

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Here's WaPo's announcement of the arrests of their people which I happened to run across--it is on the above list. The New York Times piece, also linked on the list, is a sort of summary roundup.

It's clear they are targeting the worldwide "MSM," and not just via attacks by plainsclothes thugs,  but actually arresting reporters from the major western news organizations.

That's absolutely amazing crazy hubris--it's hard to understand what is going on with some minds over there.

Despite that, Christiane Amanpour (who is on the list as having her car attacked yesterday,) got an interview with Mubarak, which is to air on tonight's ABC primetime news. Here is the "Breaking News" video Diane Sawyer did with her today announcing that interview. Amanpour talks a bit about the interview in it.

The bill, introduced earlier this month, would establish a White House Office for Cyberspace Policy and a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications, which would work with private US companies to create cybersecurity requirements for the electrical grid, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.

The bill also would allow the US president to take emergency actions to protect critical parts of the Internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a cyber-emergency. The president would need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.

Here is what one does know about Raymond Davis. He is a staff member of the US consulate in Lahore, shot dead two Pakistani men last Thursday in a crowded part of Lahore (Mozang Chowk); according to him in self-defence. A vehicle of the US consulate rushed to Mr Davis’ ‘rescue’ ran over a third person, who also died. A murder case was registered against Raymond Davis, who was handed into police custody. A case has also been registered against the driver of the US consulate vehicle that ran over a third person, but the driver has yet to be apprehended.

After a fair deal of scrambling by both US and Pakistani officials on what to do or say, their positions have now started becoming clear and they have taken the stance that is usually taken in such cases: the US is asking that Raymond Davis, as a diplomatic functionary, should be handed back to them; Pakistan seems to be responding that the matter is sub judice and that the law should take its course.

Beyond that, there are more questions than answers. For most part, these questions fall into three categories: (1) Who is Raymond Davis? (2) What exactly happened at Mozang, Lahore? (3) What should happen now?

Oil and gas service companies injected tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel into onshore wells in more than a dozen states from 2005 to 2009, Congressional investigators have charged. Those injections appear to have violated the Safe Water Drinking Act, the investigators said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.

Sooner or later, the line gets crossed and people can take no more. Nicolae Ceausescu wrote his own death warrant on the day in December 1989 when he decided to summon the people of Bucharest for just one more compulsory rally where they would have to stand, screaming with inner boredom, and clap their hands to order while he spoke for as long as he liked. I remember thinking, of the Egyptian "elections" of last fall, that President Hosni Mubarak would have gotten more respect for simply canceling them than for pretending to hold them in the insulting way he did. Something similar applies to the "green" rebellion that followed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most recent plebiscite: Everybody already knew that things were "fixed," but this time the mullahs didn't even trouble to pretend that they were not fixed. It's possible that people will overlook outright brutality sooner than they will forgive undisguised contempt.

[Hitchens]

Hordes of citizens stand up to their nation's hated leader. But observers worry that when the revolution finally comes, religious fundamentalists hostile to democracy will seize power.

We're not talking about the Tea Party this time -- we're talking about the ongoing, massive demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Rightbloggers were torn about this one. While many at first enjoyed the people-power street scenes as a celebration of freedom, their enthusiasm waned as they realized that Muslims were involved.

It will be against the law not to own a gun in South Dakota!