Sysloggin' one day at a time.
Almost as a corollary to the previous post, we have this one…
Yoran and Spaf’s Law
In his book “Practical Unix and Internet Security,” Professor Gene Spafford of Purdue University spells out Spaf’s first principle of security administration: “If you have responsibility for security but have no authority to set rules or punish violators, your own role in the organization is to take the blame when something big goes wrong.”
Amen! I’ll be presenting this to the appropriate people that (currently) think security is irrelevant
Security Sounds Good, But Does It Make Me Money? (Business)
From time to time, I find myself sucked into discussions about the return on investment of security. The discussion goes something like this: from a business perspective, if security is an expense and I can choose to incur it or not, why should I? I seem to have done just fine until today. Then, a more enlightened issue comes up: if I understand the risk and I am willing to take it, that means I have the choice of spending money on prevention or remediation. Why not wait until something happens and then%u2026 we%u2019ll call you.
That just about describes the biggest misconception in business today.
Albert Einstein quotes and quotations – BrainyQuote
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Albert Einstein
Due to the increasing amount of comment spam lately comment moderation has been enabled for any post more than a week old. When posting a comment on such a post you’ll get no notification that it’s awaiting moderation other than your comment not actually appearing immediately. :) Sorry for the bother but I think everyone will agree that the spam is worse than waiting a few hours for your comment to appear on the page.
Cory Doctorow:
Flickr users are using the “eclipse” tag to collect photos of the lunar eclipse from all over the world. Some are breathtaking.
(via Waxy)
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…
Cory Doctorow:
Steve Jurvetson snapped this great sign and posted it to Flickr — how the hell do they collect?
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…
Mark Frauenfelder:
Dr. Robert M. Nelson is a NASA senior research scientist for NASA and according to Salon, an “international authority on image analysis. Currently he’s engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn’s moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.” He used Photoshop filters to outline the bugle on President Bush’s back seen during the first debate, and concludes that it is some kind of “device.”
However, our President sheepishly admitted it was “a poorly-tailored shirt.” Poor guy. We should send him some money for a shirt that doesn’t have big rectangular pooch and a rope hanging from it. Link
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…
presentation on Google [WMV]
Link
…excerpt from: blogdex.net…
Photoblogs.org… – The Photoblog Resource
Photoblogs.org… is a resource designed to help people find all kinds of photoblogs. If you’re not sure what a photoblog is, check out the FAQ. Our database currently holds listings for 6,405 photoblogs in 70 countries and 35 languages.
Yahoo! News – Marijuana measures on 3 states’ ballots
Alaska will become the first state to make marijuana legal if voters approve a measure on Tuesday’s ballot that has drawn criticism from the Bush administration.
Apple – iPod Photo
The newest member of the iPod family, iPod Photo comes in two sizes: a 40GB model, available for $499, and a capacious 60GB model that sells for $599. Both feature a razor sharp LCD display that lets you see your photos in vivid color %u2014 65,536 colors, to be exact. And with its built-in backlighting, you%u2019ll be able to admire those photos indoors or out.
In his post The
gender profile of Wikipedia Joi ito writes
I haven’t conducted any scientific analysis or anything, but Wikipedia seems much
more gender balanced than the blogging community. I know many people point
out that ratio of men at conferences on blogging and ratio of men who have loud blog
voices seems to be quite high.
The core mistake in the assumption Joi Ito makes here is in assuming that participation
is equivalent to talking about participation. I’ve seen several statistics and surveys
on blogosphere (God, I hate that word) participation which all seem to point to the
same conclusion; the number of female bloggers tends to outnumber the number
of male bloggers.
For example, according to the LiveJournal
statistics page there twice as many females blogging as males in that community.
Given that LiveJournal is one of the oldest and largest blogging communities with
almost 2 million active blogs (and almost 5 million user accounts) I think this
counts for a lot more than claiming that a lot of women aren’t seen at geeky
conferences like Web 2.0 or Tim O’Reilly’s FooCamp.
O
…excerpt from: Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me� well, so says the quote. But honestly, with so many conflicting claims and lies, I�ve become increasingly frustrated by my own inability to figure out what�s actually true. Whether it�s lying through omission, lying through misdirection, or outright lies, it�s awfully hard to extract nuggets of truth from the noise.
So, being a civic minded individual, I did some extensive research, and am pleased to offer this guide to detecting who is lying during this joyful campaign season:
…excerpt from: Dan Appleman: Kibitzing and Commentary
Cory Doctorow:
Windows errors on giant public billlboards are their own cult Internet photo-genre, but this is a great example of the species: an enormous Windows error dialogue-box on the towering billboard across from Toronto’s Eaton Centre. It showed up in my RSS feed of images on Flickr tagged with “Toronto.”
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…
ABC News: School Says Halloween Disrespectful to Witches
A Washington state school district is canceling its annual Halloween celebration, and the explanation has some parents baffled.
A letter sent home to parents Wednesday said there will be no observance of Halloween in any of the district’s schools.
The district said Halloween celebrations and children dressed in Halloween costumes might be offensive to real witches.
“Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that,” Hansen said.
The Wiccan, or Pagan, religion is said to be growing in the United States and there are Wiccan groups in Puyallup.
It’s a good job that these wiccans don’t live in other parts of the world.
…excerpt from: xo.typepad.com…
Coffee May Raise Heart Disease Risk
Moderate Amounts Raise Inflammation and May Increase Heart Disease Risk, Says Greek Study
I was cleaning up my hard disk today – and i discovered a little piece i had downloaded a few years ago – its a thought that both attracted and terrified me then.
Still does in some ways, but also resonates deep inside me today ……
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true t
…excerpt from: Conversations with Dina
Does this ring a bell ?
You Know You Blog wayyyyy too much when… [thanks Sameer, for the link]
“… you post the wrong article on the wrong blog
… your family prefers to interact with you through your blogs.
… you met your girlfriend/boyfriend through a blog.
… your “blog community” is much, much larger than the number of people you know in real life.
… you consider yourself an “alternative journalist”.
… you start your day by checking your blog stats.
… a day without blogging seems like a month without food.
… your feedreader is open all day.
… you get more “approve this comment” email messages than spam.
… you know what RSS stands for and you know how weak the medium is.
… people worry about you when you do not post anything for a day.
… work is the little time you spend in between writing on your blog and IRC.
… my pagerank is bigger than yours!
… invalid XHTML is a bad word to you.
… you check your blogshares weekly, more than you check your savings account.
excerpt from: Conversations with Dina
Awesome – part 2. I’m too tired right now to follow and read all the links on the page but I plan to make a point to do it tomorrow.
Conversations with Dina
[excerpt]
“Every reader is a writer, every writer is a reader.” – Jay Rosen
Writing my last post made me reflect on how i write a blog post.
Sometimes my experiences just trigger off thoughts and i use my blog as an outlet to share thoughts, sometimes feelings, test ideas, and even rant. At other times, i voice my point of view on a subject and try to add value by linking to relevant posts or articles. And some posts are more ‘constructed’ – i read something and pull together pieces that somehow come together in my mind.
Awesome – part 1
Conversations with Dina
[excerpt]
Lilia talks about ‘Weblog as a pen’ :
A piece I guess I have to cut out from a paper I’m trying to finish:
Weblogs serve many purposes. Like a pen could be used to write a diary, a novel, a letter to a friend, or just a shopping list pinned to a fridge door, weblogging tools can be used in a variety of ways. For instance, they can provide a venue for self-expression, serve as a community space or be used to publish formal corporate news.
That was my reaction on the whole “weblog as a genre” discussion. Do you study “pen as a genre”?
Not a huge surprise given how the last three games have gone; but, it was surprising the Sox pulled off a 10-3 win. I guess the Yankees were tired after all. Fine by me; they’ve certainly had more than their share of winning, especially against Boston. Hope the Sox win the Series, too; like everyone else, I’m sick of hearing the whining about the Curse(tm). :)
Bwa-haha… I’ll get you, my pretty!
canadaeast.com… – CP Atlantic Regional News
Halloween this year falls on Sunday-the Christian Sabbath – and the thought of small devils and demons loose in the land is causing considerable ecclesiastical and municipal concern.
Now that’s one whopper of a fish story.. *cough*
STUFF – STORY – HOME : New Zealand’s leading news and information website
A sunfish that washed up near the base of Farewell Spit is a monster with a strange sense of timing, a marine expert says.
Very technical, but very cool!
Tesla Coils, Lichtenberg Figures, and Quarter Shrinkers!
The Quarter Shrinker uses a technique called high velocity electromagnetic metal forming, or “Magneforming”. This technique was originally developed by the aerospace industry in conjunction with NASA, and has been popularized by Aerovox, Grumman, and Maxwell. It involves quickly discharging a high energy capacitor bank through a work coil to generate a very powerful and rapidly changing magnetic field which then “forms” the metal to be fabricated. While it works best with metals of relatively high electrical conductivity such as copper or aluminum alloys, it will work to a more limited extent with poorer conductors such as sheet steel.
And this should be a kick in the shin if the previous post wasn’t.
The tide is turning… || kuro5hin.org…
Whilst some may claim that the British are staunch allies of the United States (depite being having clearly different agendas on the World Stage), the recent request made to Britain for additional support, namely 600 troops from Black Watch to be moved North to Baghdad to help out the 130,000 US troops who want to move upto Fallujah, is being met by the British Parliament with what we might politely call some hostility. As the Honourable member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (yes, it is as grim as it sounds), Geraldine Smith asks:
“I’m concerned about the timing. We’ve been asked by the Americans two weeks before their election to cover for their troops. Is this a ploy to allow Bush not to send more troops? If we made a decision to send troops tomorrow, it looks like we are stepping in to help out the President.”
Okay, when other countries start taking an open, active (open being the key word) role in our politics you know something’s not quite right.
The worst sides of two nations on display
The UK newspaper The Guardian has undertaken a campaign urging its readers to write US voters in Clark County, Ohio and urge them to vote against President George W. Bush in the US presidential elections.
GooOS has me a little apprehensive, but this is just scary…
Ballmer: Cheaper PCs will stop piracy (and boost profits)
Ballmer outlines Microsoft’s plan to curb piracy in the developing world by working with governments to offer inexpensive systems bundled with Windows.
Great, something else to be paranoid about.
Bluetooth a Mile Away – Popular Science
With a simple modification to a USB Bluetooth adapter, you can extend your wireless range to record-setting distances.
Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor
There is nothing better than a Slashdot interview with someone who not only reads and understands Slashdot but can out-troll the trolls. Admittedly, the questions you asked Neal Stephenson were great in their own right, but his answers… Wow! let’s just say that this guy shows how it’s done.