Monthly Archives: April 2005

Phishing for a story

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The BBC checks in with a story about how computer security is threatened because computer users are threatened by the language the experts use.

Confusing “geek speak” used by experts and media included “phishing”, “rogue dialler”, “Trojan” and “spyware”. Eighty-four percent did not know that phishing describes faked e-mail scams.

Well, duh. If ever jargon was created that was clearly meant to be used only in email, that was it. Spam has that nice, pronounceable quality to it. Phishing, not so much.

What do you use to catch a phisher? B8?

But look, this isn’t entirely our fault. We don’t get to make the language, remember? In our community, “hacker” is still a term of respect — meanwhile in the rest of the country people still think that word is somewhere between “terrorist” and “child molester” on the list of things you don’t let your babies grow up to be. We used that word for years, and then Time came along and blew it away with one cover story.

Granted, “spam” is all our fault. To think that Monty Python has gotten words into everyday use….

But here’s the deal the geek community will make with the Muggles. We’ll stop speaking to you in Perl. And you’ll stop cherishing our lingo more than we do. We don’t care that you’ve got a 2.4 GHz processor that can channel 3.9 teraquads of dilithium into your flux capacitor. If computers are still needlessly complex — and they are — face facts and realize that this is true because most people want them to be. Because otherwise, they’ll have to rely on their knowledge of car engines to show off how technically erudite they are. Or they’ll stop having convenient excuses not to become minimally computer literate.

Kerckhoffs’ Principle

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Bruce Schneier linked back today to an excellent essay he wrote in 2002 outlining the definition of security by obscurity, and why systems that depend upon it are fragile.

One group of people knows how the cockpit door reinforcement was designed. Another group has programmed screening criteria into the reservation system software. Other groups designed the various equipment used to screen passengers. And yet another group knows how to get onto the tarmac and take a wrench to the aircraft. The system can be attacked through any of these ways. But there’s no obvious way to apply Kerckhoffs’ Principle to airline security: there are just too many secrets and there’s no way to compress them into a single “key.” This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to secure an airline, only that it is more difficult. And that fragility is an inherent property of airline security.

What the Christian Right really stands for

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Via Pandagon, this Rolling Stone article is required reading for anyone who doesn’t think it’s a swell idea for America to become a Christian theocracy.

“Most people hear them talk about a ‘Christian nation’ and think, ‘Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing,’ says the Rev. Mel White, who ghostwrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography before breaking with the evangelical movement. “What they don’t know — what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know — is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”

A few years ago I had dinner with an Italian of Jewish descent who had had a rough time of it under Mussolini. I commented at the time that I thought that America was immune to such treatment of Jews, and he said that I was commendable for being so young and naïve. Over time, I’ve come to believe he was right, and what scares me is how many people I think are buying into the myth of American exceptionalism, as I did.

My religion forbids dispensing insulin

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Pandagon with an excellent essay on pharmicists who pick-and-choose which medications are ethical:

People who want to deprive women of contraceptives claim the moral high ground, but they are actually deeply immoral. It’s immoral to force pregnancy on someone who doesn’t want it. It’s immoral to add stress to marriage, especially in this day and age when marriages are already under strain for economic reasons. It’s immoral to view other people’s bodies as objects to play out your power fantasies on, as the Pharmacists for Life like to do.

What I’d like to know is whether there’s one case of a man being denied his Oxycontin by a pharmacist on moral grounds.

What I’d also like to know is whether anyone has noticed that these people are acting outside of their code of ethics, and whether their state licensing boards use any of the same wording.

Proposition 27

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Some scary talented friends have come up with another 48-hour movie. Should you be in Philadelphia, this will be a worthwhile outing. For those of us who are not, looking forward to the wide release on 2,400 screens, or at least the streaming Quicktime version.

Postscript, 1:12 PM: I should note that watching Terrence Ryan running for his life will always be a treasured memory for me. And I’d gladly sit through some Shockwave advercrap to see Craig’s Variety Hour. So, Wumpus, when’s the deal with Atom Films? Perhaps you know someone who could walk you through it?

Crucial programming tool

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This programming utility should really make a difference in my workflow.

The Commentator uses revolutionary real-time language processing to actually grok your code and add the necessary comments on the fly. No more doco to slow you down. Just install The Commentator and watch as your coding elegance is eloquently decorated with insightful, nuanced commentary …as you type.

Before you get too excited, note that it was published on the first day of April. Still worth a look.

Modern amenities

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A friend of mine is coming to Washington and staying at the Red Roof Inn, so I was checking out the neighborhood for her. This amenity brought me up short:

This location offers interior corridors

So now I’m going to spend the rest of the day visualizing back before they installed those corridors and their customers had to use the catwalks suspended nine stories over downtown DC.

Thank God he didn’t use a $1,000 bill

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See if you can count all of the instances of monumental stupidity in this story:

[O]n the morning of Feb. 20, [Mike Bolesta] buys a new radio-CD player for his 17-year-old son Christopher’s car. He pays the $114 installation charge with 57 crisp new $2 bills, which, when last observed, were still considered legitimate currency in the United States proper. The $2 bills are Bolesta’s idea of payment, and his little comic protest, too.

For this, Bolesta, Baltimore County resident, innocent citizen, owner of Capital City Student Tours, finds himself under arrest.

Finds himself, in front of a store full of customers at the Best Buy on York Road in Lutherville, locked into handcuffs and leg irons.

Finds himself transported to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, where he’s handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service is called into the case.

Stop Bolton, 2005 edition

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Wade Boese with some reasons why John Bolton shouldn’t be trusted with anything more important than a model train set.

[A]lthough Bolton can point to a few successes on his watch, his uncompromising mindset prevented some potential nonproliferation breakthroughs. His legacy as he seeks confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is largely one of jilted and discarded treaties, offended diplomatic counterparts, and lingering proliferation dangers that the Bush administration refused to confront directly.

More here.