Category: Uncategorized

Point and Click Gmail Hacking at Black Hat:

Gmail username and password authentication takes place over HTTPS, but then you get a session cookie and the rest of your session takes place over unencrypted HTTP. Robert Graham’s demo at Black Hat showed that by sniffing the cookie over an open network, the Gmail session can be hijacked.

Gmail supports HTTPS, but the only way to get it is to specify ‘https:’ in the URL when you load the site. Google should redirect all HTTP Gmail traffic to HTTPS by default.

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Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side:

In this movie, Sauron lasers Sam and Frodo before they get to Mount Doom. Darth Vader doesn’t help Luke out in the end. Megatron wins. Wile E. catches the Roadrunner. Elizabeth Bennet learns that Darcy is a loser. Etc. Etc.

• The Brooklyn Paper: The ‘bride of Fourth Street’: Sleeping beauty has block abuzz
  not sure what’s more quirky, the story or the byline (Beethoven Bong?).
  (tags: culture news weird neilgaiman)
• did you know you could clean a keyboard in the dishwasher?
  Me neither and I have one that’s pretty cruddy.
  (tags: Apple video hygiene)
• Thirteen Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site
  Working with Yahoo’s now YSlow tool to see how things can be improved. Finding out that sending compressed pages and useful expire headers is not as easy as it looks.
  (tags: internet networking technology efficiency)
• Gonzales Is Gonna Need a Pardon Too
  Time for a new Constitutional Amendment, prohibiting pardons to people in the administration of the incumbent president. Why would anyone worry about breaking a law if they knew they would walk?
  (tags: law worstpresidentever corruption hypocrisy)
• Green Steam Engine Home Page
  one of those ideas you look at and think, why did that take so long? But such is innovation: breakthroughs are few and far between sometimes. Could this be one of those game-changers?
  (tags: design engineering economics efficiency energy)

I decided to run this page through the new YSlow tool that Yahoo! is sharing with us. Ack, 63? I can do better, surely.

Continue reading “YSlow. Or is it?”

Thirty years from now:

You know what I’m going to hate, if I’m still around? Thirty years from now, people will be talking about how we could have won in Iraq if only whichever President takes office in January, 2009 would have had the guts to see the war through.

• Bloomberg didn’t get the memo: we’re supposed to be scared to death
  Bloomberg On JFK Plot: “Stop Worrying, Get A Life” … “You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist,” he added.”
  (tags: terra politics values)
• Reconsidering Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: it was an influential book…
  Why’s everybody hating on Rachel Carson? Simple: a divide and conquer strategy funded by the tobacco industry et al.
  (tags: health science environment greed)
• Bin Laden alive and well, says Taliban | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
  “These are just military tactics. He prefers not to appear [in public] because if he appeared in the media or met people he might face danger,” he said. “He is alive, active and well.”
  (tags: osamabinforgotten worstpresidentever iraq war)

A Nashville-based blog aggregator quoted a local bigot’s obnoxious riff on the death of Steve Gilliard under this headline:

Nashville is Talking » Teaching Libs a Lesson

With no comment, no expression of disapproval, and that headline, what else could be interpreted by agreement with the vile post linked to? The headline has nothing to do with Gilliard or the crap scrawled about him.

The comments read like a middle-school debate club meeting. One more reminder why I’m glad I left the South.

I hear all this noise about eMusic so I thought I should take a look. Of course, you have to sign up for a free trial just to search for stuff. This means I have 25 free downloads.

I have 19 7 left after several hours of searching. What I see is a lot of outtakes, bootlegs (perhaps endorsed, but of dubious quality), and stuff that’s not quite what I’m looking for. But I finally found Television’s The Blow-up.

Anyone have any suggestions of things they like and can recommend?

So far, I have grabbed a couple of tracks from Leo Kottke’s debut, a couple of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac rave-ups, White Stripes (Ball and Biscuit: didn’t think it could be them when I heard it the other week, ‘cuz the drums were on the beat). I think there may be a lot of current material but old farts like me don’t know anything about it.

This really does feel like getting a gift card or scrip to a kind of second-hand shop or flea market. There’s not a whole lot I can see that I want but it’s free. Um, great.

Reconsidering Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: it was an influential book...:

Update: Scienceblogs’ Tim Lambert has been following a campaign to discredit Carson and her book. More here and at Google. (thx, jim & paul) (link)

Yup, that’s me. In a nutshell, Prof Lambert has unearthed a “divide and conquer” strategy whereby various thinktanks and lobbying groups, including Big Tobacco, are trying to undermine Carson and by extension, the environmental movement, conservationists, organic food producers — in short, anyone who doesn’t worship the almighty dollar. And I couldn’t let Jason get caught in that.

All this kerfuffle over Apple embedding the names of purchasers in iTunes music files: I assumed it was in case the files got mislaid and they could be returned to their owners.

What other motivation could there be? And what reason would anyone have not to have the name associated with someone they purchased? Maybe no one needs to know you have a copy of this? I understand. Or this?
Continue reading “you’d think people would be more grateful”