I found it interesting that they are expanding beyond suicide attacks and promoting life in prison as an equal reward:

My Muslim brother, who wants to support the religion of Allah: do not make too many calculations and forecasting of the results and consequences. It is true that' Umar ai-FarOq and his brothers Nidal Hassan and Shahzad were imprisoned, but they have become heroes and icons that are examples to be followed. We ask Allah to grant them steadfastness.

If they were sincere and steadfast, their imprisonment would be an increased status for them. The hadith says: "If Allah loves a people, He would put them through trials." The result of these trials would be the highest levels of Paradise, the pleasure of Allah, heaven in the hearts in this world and eternal pleasure in the Afterlife.

That is followed by the pitch:

My Muslim brother: we are conveying to you our military training right into your kitchen to relieve you of the difficulty of traveling to us.

If you are sincere in your intentions to serve the religion of Allah, then all what you have to do is enter your kitchen and make an explosive device that would damage the enemy if you put your trust in Allah and then use this explosive device properly. Here are the main qualities of this bomb.....

According to Inspire,

In one or two days the bomb could be ready to kill at least ten people. ln a month you may make a bigger and more lethal bomb that could kill tens of people.

Law enforcement leakers have told the media that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told his interrogators that they moved the date of the bombing up from July 4 because the bomb took less time to build than they expected. But if they were going by Inspire, shouldn't they have expected to be able to build it in a few days or a month, at most?

In any event, since Inspire was found on Tamerlan and his wife's home computer, it seems Tamerlan did get help from the Magazine. As to how to find and prevent the next lone wolf attack, I'm pretty sure this is a lousy strategy:

Some law enforcement officials say that the Boston case vindicates their aggressive strategy of dispatching informants posing as Qaeda operatives to meet young men who are flirting with violent jihad. Such sting operations often end when the aspiring terrorist attempts to detonate an ersatz bomb provided by the F.B.I.

A more reasonable approach:

Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now at the A.C.L.U., said the problem with focusing on extremist views was that the vast majority of people who express them never turn to violence. Instead, the bureau should focus on illegal acts, he said.

The FBI should get out of the intelligence game and get back to the purpose for which it was formed: investigating crimes that have occurred.

I disagree with German though on this point:

In the 2011 Russian warning about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Mr. German said, the key point was not that he had embraced radical Islam but that he planned to travel to Russia to join underground groups.

There is still zero evidence of that. If it were true, it's unlikely he would have returned here to launch an attack. He would have stayed there to fight alongside them. The Caucasus fighters have no interest in fighting the U.S. They want to fight Russia. Why would they waste their time training someone for a mission that didn't advance their goals? Neither of the two terrorists mentioned in unconfirmed reports as potential acquaintances were interested in attacks in the U.S. The Canadian who allegedly provided his name in December, 2010 as someone he communicated with on the Internet, did so under torture and was then released because he had committed no crime. It was later, and well after his purported internet communications with Tamerlan that the Canadian turned from a peaceful religious student into a militant. For all we know, it was the torture that caused his radicalism. From the Russian article about this:

William Plotnikov, 21, a Russian who converted to Islam in Canada, was detained in December 2010 in the town of Izberbash, suspected of ties to militants. At first the RDCCE agents “worked him over,” then the Dagestan Republic’s FSB office. They worked totally seriously, employing “a wide arsenal of special means” [hint : torture]. During the interrogations, Plotnikov told the agents that he had come to Dagestan from Toronto, where he had lived since 2005 with his parents, and had come alone – to study Islam. He also gave a list of the names of other emigres from the North Caucasus in Europe and America with whom he had been in contact over the Internet. The law-enforcers ran the names through social media networks and found among them figured a certain Tamerlan Tsarnaev “from Dagestan”. Plotnikov actively communicated with Tsarnaev at one of the popular Islamic social networks – the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which Tamerlan had joined from his page on Youtube.

There is no evidence that Tamerlan went to Russia for any reason other than to get his passport and see his sick father. Or that he got training there.

I think whatever motivated Tamerlan to strike in the U.S., was learned in the U.S. It was in the U.S. that he collaborated with his brother, who until recent months, had shown little interest in religion and none in any violent acts.

Tamerlan returned from Russia in July. As late as November, 2012, Jahar was still planning on going further in school. Here's one conversation he had on Twitter with his friend Junes, who was quoted about him yesterday in the New York Times portrait of the brothers. While Jahar's tweets have been available, Junes' responses have not been since he deleted his Twitter account. This cached version was still available days ago when I saved them.

(As to speculation that Junes is somehow linked to a terrorist in Chechnya because they share a last name, that's baseless gossip. It's a very common last name, and Junes and his brother Adam have already been interviewed by the FBI. While Junes and his sister Heda are among those supporting Jahar, there is zero evidence they have militant views. They think he's been framed.)

In the above tweets, Jahar certainly shows no interest in rewards from the afterlife. He's willing to go through another six years of school and clearly focused on this life. According to the New York Times in an earlier article, it received a copy of his grades and he was failing a lot of subjects. Maybe that resulted in his disillusionment and susceptibility to whatever his brother was proposing. But it sure seems like four months before the Boston attack, he was still focused on a normal life.

At the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dzhokhar began to struggle academically. According to a university transcript reviewed by The New York Times, he was failing many of his classes. The transcript shows him receiving seven failing grades over three semesters, including F’s in Principles of Modern Chemistry, Intro to American Politics and Chemistry and the Environment. According to the transcript, Dzhokhar received a B in Critical Writing and a D and D-plus in two other courses.

Looking for foreign links to these brothers seems likely to be as productive as chasing ghosts. It's pretty clear they don't exist. Their reasons for turning to bombs, if they did (the allegations against them have not been proven) are likely to be far more mundane and rooted in their disillusionment with their lives right here in the U.S.

There are still a lot of puzzling details about the Boston plot. Why the brothers didn't cover their faces. Why they picked a place where cameras were so plentiful (the finish line.) Why Jahar went about his life as if nothing happened and didn't try to leave Boston. Whether the bomb plot came from Inspire or not, I highly doubt either one of these brothers bought Al Qaeda's marketing of life imprisonment as a reward.