Blackmoor Vituperative

It’s bad enough having to shell out exorbitant amounts of money in order to travel, but there’s no reason any individual should be forced to choose between a certified health risk or a humiliating, invasive search of their person by ill-trained government agents. Even the airport personnel have expressed concerns about the scanners. The Allied Pilots Association has urged its members to opt out of the body scanning measures because of the “ionizing radiation, which could be harmful to their health.” That caution has been echoed by the Federal Aviation Administration’s medical institute, which has raised a concern about the effects of radiation exposure on pregnant pilots and flight attendants.

(from Cancer-Causing Airport Scanners? Enough Is Enough, The Rutherford Institute)

Ran across this article (which I heard about from Gareth Michael-Skarka, ironically), which made me wonder for a moment if my choice to take the high road in online disagreements was ill-considered. Only for a moment, though. Ultimately, my not being an asshole to people who act like assholes is about my being happy, and not about making them change their behaviour — which I do not think is possible, anyway. Whether it’s nature or nurture, some people are, sadly, simply unpleasant. Ignore them, avoid them when you can, and don’t expend any unnecessary effort on their behalf.

On the other hand, don’t penalize yourself on their behalf, either. Harlan Ellison might be an arrogant jerk, and Orson Scott card might have some unpleasant personal beliefs, but my life would be poorer without their books. I don’t have to want to socialize with someone for me to benefit from their work. Keep things in perspective. Life is too short to hold grudges.

A brave soul by the name of Todd Vierling has posted a compelling opinion piece explaining why, in his words,

… those of you who think that using real names will make people more open and social are horrifyingly deluded. Your idealistic vision of “real” interaction through real names isn’t just nonsense; it’s making online socialization more dangerous for everyone by putting them at risk of real-world prejudicial action.

(from Why the Google Profiles (or any) “Real Name” Policy is Important to Me , duh.org)

It’s worth reading. I suggest that you do.

When you are arguing with someone, try to remember that there is a difference between the person and their ideas. When you’ve made your point as well as you can, agree to disagree. Don’t ever say nasty things about the person. For one thing, it’s irrelevant, and it demonstrates that you have sloppy thinking. For another, particularly on the internet, you only see the other person through a very small window. There is a great deal more to the other person than just that they disagree with you on some political policy that neither of you has any control over, or some game rule that will never matter because you don’t play in each other’s games. The other person has an entire life outside of your insignificant disagreement with them. Basing your judgement of them on such scanty evidence is irrational. Assume that they have family and friends and lovers who respect them, just like you do.

And if they’re wrong, so what? Let them be wrong. You’re wrong sometimes, too.

edit: To clarify a point of confusion: this is not directed at anyone in particular, and I include myself among the target audience.

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.

(from Samsung cites Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ movie as prior art against iPad design patent, FOSS Patents)

Let’s hope that the judge tells Apple to stop bullying people and stop pretending they invented everything.

I have been saying for years that passwords, as a concept, need to go away. As implemented, passwords don’t work, and the ludicrous “complexity” requirements imposed my many companies are little more than a guarantee that the user will write their password down, which is one of the easiest ways for a system to be compromised.

Here’s a cartoon from xkcd that illustrates why ridiculous password policies don’t even make sense from a security perspective.

The gist of it is this: long passwords (passphrases, actually) are more secure than short ones.

Controversy continues to rage over the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District’s unilateral decision to follow in the footsteps of Egypt’s now fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak, by cutting off cell phone services in an attempt to quell protests (in BART’s case, a protest that didn’t actually occur).

The “Anonymous” group has today already hacked BART’s external Web sites in response, and more protests triggered by BART’s actions may be forthcoming.

Is comparing Mubarak and BART unfair? Over the top? After all, various U.S. observers have been supporting BART’s decision, saying that riders really didn’t need cell service at those locations, didn’t have it in those locales a relatively few years ago, and have suggested that pretty much anything was acceptable in the name of proactively preserving “public safety” — even in the face of nonexistent protesters.

And since luckily it appears that no critical phone calls (“Sorry, I can’t reach the doctor’s cell phone!”) were blocked as a result of BART’s action, it’s no harm, no foul, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

[…]

(from BART, Cell Phones, Lenin, and a Steel Cage, Lauren Weinstein’s Blog)

Here is how to remove the Facebook tab from Skype 5:

Stop Skype from running on your computer (Quit). Go to Windows Start. In the search box type %appdata%\skype and press Enter. In the Skype user folder, that will open, locate the folder with your Skype user name. Open this folder and find file with name config.xml. Open this file in any text editor, e.g. Notepad++ or similar. Scroll down until you find section starting with the key . In this section you should see following items

<FlamingoDisconnected>1</FlamingoDisconnected>
<FlamingoLastRead>0</FlamingoLastRead>
<FlamingoLastUpdate>0</FlamingoLastUpdate>

The first item is the one controlling whether the Facebook tab is present or not. If the value is 1, the tab is disconnected, 0 means the tab is connected. If the mentioned item is missing, then you should just add it in front of the two other items. Save the config.xml file and restart Skype. The Facebook tab will no longer be there.

(with thanks to ruwim)

I ran across a set of tutorials and cheat sheets for a few of the more common security vulnerabilities this morning. I thought other people might find them useful. They’re from a company called Veracode. The guides are free, and they point to other free resources if you want to learn more, so they seem to be a pretty good starting point if you are interested in this sort of thing.

• SQL Injection
• Cross Site Scripting
• Cross Site Request Forgery
• LDAP Injection
• Mobile Code Security

Oracle announced a proposal this week to transfer the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The move would put OOo under the umbrella of the Apache Incubator program and involve transitioning the project’s source code to the permissive Apache License. The proposal is currently under review by the Apache Incubator Project Management Committee, which has not yet issued a decision.

[…]

Dumping the largely abandoned husk of OOo into the Apache Incubator so that it can continue to be developed parallel to LibreOffice is not a particularly constructive maneuver. If Oracle had opted to take this route last year before its friction with the community necessitated the LibreOffice fork, it would likely have been welcomed by all parties. But handing the project to the ASF at this point, when a significant portion of the OOo community has already chosen to back TDF, is just petty and distasteful.

[…]

This parting shot from Oracle punctuates the company’s legacy of bad stewardship and mishandling of OpenOffice.org. It’s not clear yet whether the proposed Apache OOo will find its footing, but it seems likely that LibreOffice will continue to flourish as OOo’s successor despite this move by Oracle and IBM to fragment the community.