Beginning in the fall of 1999, a number of Internet-related businesses and financial institutions in the United States suffered computer intrusions or "hacks" that originated from Russia. The hackers gained control of the victims' computers, copied and stole private data that included credit card information, and threatened to publish or use the stolen credit cards or inflict damage on the compromised computers unless the victims paid money or gave the hackers a job. Some of the companies gave in and paid off the hackers. Some decided not to. The hackers responded by shutting down parts of their networks and using stolen credit card numbers to order thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment. THE LURE is the true, riveting story of how these Russian hackers, who bragged that the laws in their country offered them no threat, and who mocked the inability of the FBI to catch them, were caught by an FBI lure designed to appeal to their egos and their greed. The story of the sting operation and subsequent trial is told for the first time here by the Department of Justice's attorney for the prosecution. This fascinating story reads like a crime thriller, but also offers a wealth of information that can be used by IT professionals, business managers, lawyers and academics who wish to learn how to protect systems from abuse, and who want to respond appropriately to network incidents. They also provide insight into the hacker's world and explain how their own words and actions were used against them in a court of law - the evidence provided is in the raw, uncensored words of the hackers themselves. This is a multi-layered true crime story, a real-life law and order story that explains how hackers and computer thieves operate, how the FBI takes them down, and how the Department of Justice prosecutes them in the courtroom.

Four Truths is not a traditional scholarly work. It consists of three short stories and a verse drama built around the four noble truths of Buddhism--each followed by a prose reflection in the form of a series of theses. The text is complemented by thirteen images from a series of ink brush paintings done by Macao artist Debby Sou Vai Keng in response to the book. It is an invitation to conversation rather than a systematic philosophical or theological argument--though it is an invitation in the scholastic tradition of academic theses that will appeal to students of comparative religion and philosophy and could serve as an entry point for discussion in ethics and moral philosophy as well as philosophy of religion.

Grappling with the challenge of Wallace Stevens' masterpiece, "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird," Steve Schroeder and Sou Vai Keng combine the poet's craft, philosophical ways of thought and the practice of Sinology to reconfigure and metamorphose Laotse's wisdom book into a poem in totally natural English. The product speaks to our world today with its maddened consumerism, war as national habit, the eternal questions of death and creativity, and the struggle to be rather than just exist. This elegant and beautiful little book helps us understand some of the eternal questions-and some transitory ones as well.

These are lyric poems set in China by a leading American poet, Steven Schroeder, who has lived, studied, and taught for many years in China.

Description: This book is an attempt to critically embrace a tradition--a culture--in which the author was formed and against which he has often found himself in resistance, using academic disciplines in which he is well versed but about which he is deeply suspicious. This book began to come together as a book in a series of lectures on the history of Western thought at Shenzhen University in the People's Republic of China, an opportunity to cultivate disciplined criticism that might afford a second look at traditions behind the West which are being embraced all too quickly. In a time of acceleration, this book offers a meditation on the virtue of hesitation. The book is an invitation to philosophy and the history of ideas, but it is also a sustained critical reflection on the religious dimensions--explicit and implicit--of those ideas, with enough utopian vision left to imagine a city in which violence is not necessary. Endorsements: ""Combining erudition of a true scholar and insight of a gifted poet, professor Steven Schroeder offers his readers an adventurous 'pilgrimage' of mind into the realms of cultural history, philosophy, and religion. This perfectly structured, consistent, and well-argued book is a good companion to anyone who wishes to transgress the boundaries of supposedly 'Western' ideas and open new vistas to the territories that reflect the legacy of so many vanished civilizations."" --Almantas Samalavicius Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius University ""This new book by Steven Schroeder contains careful examinations of and insightful reflections on the intellectual history of the West. It not only provides us with guidance when journeying through the labyrinth of Western ideas, but it enables us to see how ideas, almost always intertwined with human desires and fears, are projected into the real world and contribute to transform the place we live in. It is highly illuminating for understanding the human creation of ideas, and therefore, is instructive to anyone who wants to coexist harmoniously with others in the twenty-first century."" --Dongming Zhao Shenzhen University, People's Republic of China. ""Without ever raising his voice, the author challenges some of our most cherished assumptions--the centrality of 'the West, ' the primacy of Greek thought in the development of Western philosophy, and the identification of heroic virtue with aggression and conquest--among others. Here is philosophy restored to its mission of 'passionate engagements in a controversy that matters.' The fact that Schroeder is a poet as well as a scholar makes this book a pleasure to read and of interest to the general reader as well as to scholars and specialists. --A. G. Mojtabai author of Blessed Assurance ""How to summarize this heady ride from Babel to Thebes to Shenzhen, from the meaning of language to the meaning of meaning . . . Where is God? What is really real? Who is the stranger? This book rockets from the paradox of free will to the paradox of slavery, from redefining Descartes to rediscovering forgotten giants such as Anne Conway. Read this book and rediscover what the work of philosophy and the play of wisdom is all about."" --Rev. David Breeden author of This Is Just To Say: Meditations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams About the Contributor(s): Steven Schroeder is an instructor in Asian Classics and the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago Graham School and Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Shenzhen University in the People's Republic of China. His most recent book is Six Stops South (2009).