It is stunning isn’t it?  All of the attention they have paid to security for the last 5 years and things like this are still widespread.  Click here to read.  No matter how much attention you give MS software, it never seems secure.

There is a flaw that lies within. It is hereditary, no human is exempt. Though the force may be stronger in one than in another, it is present in all. It is the greatest evil for from it results all other imperfection and malignancy. Because of it lives have been destroyed, nations torn apart, morals devalued. Through it occurs death, disease and poverty. Running rampant it ravishes, rages, renders useless. To remove this aspect of the human character would unquestionably alter the condition of the world for the better. Yet, to remove selfishness one must eliminate the ablitity to choose and in turn the very essence of humanity. To save mankind from its own unconscious suicide in effect means to destroy humanity itself.

“Yes, hi, it’s me.”

Caroline clutched the receiver in her hand. She looked at Mr. Adams, and words failed her as tears sprung into her eyes. She hadn’t heard Marty’s voice in almost three years. Now, out of the blue, there he was, sounding just as he did before. Mr. Adams walked into his study and picked up the phone on his desk there. He spoke into it in a quiet, sad voice.

“Where have you been, Marty?”

“Oh,” the voice over the phone sounded taken aback. “Hi, Dan.”

“Well?”

“I- I’m sorry,” the voice began to choke as the words tumbled out. “I’m so sorry, to both of you. It’s just that after Susan… and then the funeral was just horrible and Claire wasn’t speaking to anyone and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the both of you blamed me somehow – blamed me for listening to Susan, for not telling you sooner, for hiding it from you for a year. And then the operation – and the doctors didn’t know that they’d find what they found and just – we didn’t know, and it was supposed to be easy and quick and gone within a few months and Susan felt that it was bad enough that we lived so far away and I just…”

“Oh, Marty,” breathed Mrs. Adams.

She and Mr. Adams had the same memories flooding their senses. Both were remembering their blissful lives, teaching at the university and living peacefully in this house that they finally managed to pay off the mortgage on. Both remembered how three years ago they got a phone call from their only daughter, their Susan. They remembered her calm and collected voice as she lied to them outright, telling them that she needed to have some really minor surgery and not to worry and not to come down to Manhattan for it – it was just this tiny lump the doctors needed to take out, it would be over in a few days. The surgery had, in actuality, been for removing her breast-cancer, which she hadn’t told her parents about since it was considered curable. The doctors hadn’t expected what resulted in the surgery – a complication, a blood clot. They’d removed it, but apparently some of it had traveled through her bloodstream already and had obstructed some smaller veins. She’d died from the blood not managing to travel to her brain rather than from her cancer.

She hadn’t told her parents about any of her chemotherapy, hadn’t told them about what she was going through – she didn’t want to worry them, as she told Marty over and over again. It was bad enough, in her eyes, that Claire, their daughter, had to know and see what was happening. That was Susan’s biggest flaw and always had been – she wanted to take everything on herself, without help from the outside, without causing worry to anyone. Mr. and Mrs. Adams knew this. It was themselves they blamed for not guessing more about her surgery. They blamed Susan, too, although it had taken them two years in counseling after her death to be able to admit it to themselves. But the only thing they blamed Marty for was his cutting his ties with them after Susan’s funeral. They loved Marty like a son, and they wanted to be a part of Clair’s life.

This is what they both, through many moments of choked silences, managed to convey to Marty during their conversation that August evening. Marty, who had broken down completely and sobbed into the phone a few times, sat alone in his apartment in Manhattan – Claire was at her drawing class – and felt that for the first time in three years he had some hope in his horizons. He’d lost his own parents when he was much younger, and the simple warmth of Susan’s folks and the way they forgave him immediately for his mule-headed guilt-trip went straight to his heart.

It sealed his decision. After hanging up with his in-laws, and promising them that he’d bring Claire for a visit very soon, he made a big post-it note and hung it on the fridge. It said “CALL REAL ESTATE AGENT AND SAY YES.” He underlined the word “YES” three times, picked up his keys, and set out to pick Claire up, thinking that the future might finally be looking up.

It’s true my friends, I have found a flaw with my iPhone. For some reason, the sun of California must have made the iPhone inventors sun-centric, because they did not take into account the cold evenings in December in New England. If they had put down their frisbees and taken off their sunglasses long enough they might have seen some temperature maps of the country and noticed that the whole country isn’t always 70 and sunny.

Now to my point, there is no hand-related way to answer the phone in the winter. If you have gloves, no matter how thin, you can not slide the little button across the screen. I found this out the hard way. I’m driving and my phone starts ringing. With my gloved hand I take it out of my purse and attempt to answer it. Boy did I feel silly when I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to take my glove off and drive at the same time. So I did what I had to do, used my tongue. Yes, creepy people, I used my tongue as a finger. I had tried my chin but that wasn’t working. And it worked like a charm! But I was/am still annoyed that now I am going to have to cut the right pointer finger off of every glove so that on the rare chance that someone calls me, I can answer. Or perhaps I should move to Hawaii!

How on earth did that happen?  Nicole Kidman must have looked in a mirror the last opportunity she had before stepping on the red carpet!

An over-zealous makeup artist must have decided to give her a quick finishing touch in the limo and not blended properly.  A costly mistake.  I can’t quite imagine the scene that must have ensued when Nicole saw these pictures. 

I wonder whether it was noticeable to all who was there or whether the excess powder only showed up against the glare of the paps’ camera bulbs.  I can imagine the other high profile female stars (Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz etc) of Nine having a good old cackle about it.

One of my favorite Security writers, Bruce Schneier, had an interesting entry last week called Reacting to Security Vulnerabilities where he discusses the recent reports about the security flaw in the SSL protocol and how we as users should relax and essentially, ‘do nothing.’  “What?!? – Do nothing??”  Yup, and he has some good reasons why.  Usually, new exploits, threats, breaches and the typical security stuff that garners the headlines, makes security folks jump.  Jump to search the internet for anything related, jump to see if our systems are infected or vulnerable, jump to put an action plan in place to reduce the risk.  These are reactionary behaviors when gloom gets delivered and we fully don’t understand the risk.  I’m not saying ignore warnings or plan for the worst, but since several new ‘weaknesses’ seem to get published on a monthly basis, you do need to prioritize and put some context around it.

With anything in life, there are certain things we have control over and others we do not.  For many years now, we’ve been warned that it is risky to click on embedded links in a suspicious email or dangerous to click through the certificate warnings from your browser and hopefully many people have changed their behavior.  That’s within our control.  But when a researcher finds a specific vulnerability in a particular protocol, potentially affecting several vendors, there is really not much an individual user can do.  Sure, you or the IT department can check with their vendor to see if it applies to their product but would you immediately stop using something when it’s a critical part of your infrastructure.  Once again, which is usually the case for security, you must weigh the risks and determine if it’s within your control.  Bruce points out that many of the vulnerabilities affect systems that are out of our control and if your data is already out there, unplugging your computer will not lessen the potential exposure.

What you can do is simply stick to your general security practices (AV/FW, OS patch, Auto updates, backups, common sense), which already protect you from a slew vulnerabilities but let the experts/vendors figure out the best way to handle new exposure(s) since they must deal with them on a daily basis.  If the risk is too great and your infrastructure is vulnerable, push your vendor for an answer.  Most vendors, especially with security products, are fairly reasonable and typically move fast when it comes to security holes – their reputation and revenue are at risk.  You can also report to CERT if you’re not getting a response but most vulnerability ‘finders’ alert the vendor fist and give them a chance to fix or respond to it.

Protecting yourself from the multitude of threats on the internet can be daunting, never ending, and always changing so you do need to be vigilant with the things you can control but as you peruse the Top 9 Beaches of 2009 or the Top 15 Most Common Attacks, you find there was/is little you could do to avoid them.

ps

• #25 out of 26 Short Topics about Security
• Previous stories: 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13.5, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

*For the record, F5 is listed on the US-CERT site as being potentially vulnerable but we have tested our products/versions and are not vulnerable to this issue.  F5 Networks has published a security advisory in the past to cover similar vulnerability and provide best practice recommendations. These best practice recommendations can be found at the F5 support site:

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/6000/900/sol6999.html

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/10000/700/sol10737.html

Man is a rational being. It knows choice and reason. Being irrational is an unconscious choice of not choosing. If something bothers you, it is your choice to do something about it or dwell on it. In my life, I have been told by two people that emotion is a human flaw and this wasn’t said to me in hypothetical way. Taking everything in context, I know I am succumbing that flaw at that very moment. They make sense and seeing how they are, that belief is taking them places.

I can be focused and rational but not all the time. As I always said, I want to be human and feel emotions. But at the rate on how my emotions take over me, I need a quick brush up and evaluate. Is it really worth crying over spilt milk? What would that accomplish? If I linger on a bruised feelings, would it make me better? Crying is a good relief but it makes me think of more hurts. I guess when you carry excess baggage and not throw them out like you are supposed to, it will make your load heavier. And you will never get over.

What am I scared of? I haven’t really given it a thought. Fearing the unknown is the stupidest thing to do so why waste time? What has been done is done so let it go. If I enjoyed the moment, why would I resent it when it is over? Emotion is the most vague concept that can be felt but never defined. As a rational being, it is such a weight that pulls you down to dwell on it for more than you should.

Emotions. Feel it, reason it out then do something. We can’t be stuck on something that we can’t do anything about. We’ll still be human, a more rational one.

Malware has been blamed for a problem with the Windows 7 operating system, dubbed the 'Black Screen of Death'.

Some Windows users are confronted by a totally black screen after they log on to their system.

Initially it was thought that Microsoft's own security update could have caused the problem but that has now been ruled out.

The software firm that suggested the security update was the problem has apologised for its claims.

Reports suggest the problem also affects Windows Vista and XP.

In a blog posting on its security site, Microsoft said that it had investigated the claims and "found that our November Security Updates are not making changes to the system that these reports say are responsible for these issues".

The firm said that the behaviour was associated with malware, such as Daonol, and that this was probably the root cause.

Software firm Prevx, who had said the November update may have been to blame, have since retracted their statement, saying it had been a "challenging issue" to identify the cause.

"Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we've done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog," the firm wrote on its website.

"Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor."

Prevx apologised to Microsoft for "for any inconvenience" its earlier claims may have caused.

The firm has issued a fix for the problem, which it says could affect "millions" of computers.

"Users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem," the firm's David Kennerley wrote in a blog post.

"We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload."

Unknown problem

The firm said its fix did not work in all cases.

"There can be many causes," said Mr Kennerley.

"But if your black screen woes began in the last two weeks… or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time, then this fix will have a high probability of working."

Mr Kennerly said the firm had identified "at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions".

"These appear to have been around for years now," he said.

The firm reports that the problem affects editions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, and Windows 2000.

Microsoft said that people who are affected by the problem should contact its customer service line.

The "black screen of death" moniker is a play on the "blue screen of death", which appears when Microsoft operating systems crash. 

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The objects in my mystories have the atmosphere of ease, perfection and

natural beauty. The basic sense of touch is excited by the smoothness, gliding along easily. There is a sense of ease with something that is smooth and natural.

In contrast, we can become wrapped up in our search for perfection and end up missing sight of that which naturally is perfect. People who are perfectionists can live in an atmosphere of frustration, something that I experience frequently.

I struggle with how I should behave in this world. On one hand, as in Wabi Sabi, the world’s perfection and flaws are meant to be admired, enjoyed, and celebrated. On the other, I cannot help but strive for perfection in myself.I live my life hoping that one day I can sit back in ease: no worries about money, looks, love, security, and adequacy. However, I know that it is beautiful to be human and fallible. I cannot help but think that life is hard.

The world is naturally beautiful and meant to be enjoyed. However, humans can be overwhelmed with wanting to emulate or find this flawless beauty. We can become obsessed with needing perfection in all things, even though the perfection can be in the flaws. The smoothness of life is preferred to its rocky points but it is often found that life is hard to live in a constant state of ease.

Is it me or has Firefox turned into the new IE? I remember when I first used FF, I was positively impressed: the browser was light, fast, practical (IE still hadn’t implemented tabbed browsing, and I had come straight from it), secure… However, with every new version it seems to stray farther and farther away from all these qualities and get closer to IE.

Maybe their project got too big. As a result of their gains on the markey share, FF is now being targeted more often, so more vulnerabilities are being found in it. The browser was elected the least secure of all 4 major web browsers in 2009. Don’t believe me? Check out the report. However, what really puts me off is the fact that they’re making the browser heavier and slower with every update. Sure, every website you run into today will be fully compatible with Firefox, but you know what? I’d rather have it be as light as before, and just use IE whenever I needed to access a single website that didn’t comply with its protocols.

Google Chrome seems to be playing the role of the new, lightweight, practical browser nowadays. And to my surprise, the vast majority of websites are compatible with it and work just fine. Eventually you’ll meet some malfunctioning features on smaller websites, but Google’s doing a good job so far. Hopefully, they won’t follow the tendency and will keep away from whatever it is that makes browsers get worse as they become more widely used.

I sorta agree with people who say the media idealizes people. or something. Anyway, I’m talking about the mass placement of beautiful, decorated, and seemingly smart and confident people everywhere in the media. It’s true. obviously not everyone looks as perfect as the majority of the people saturating the media, but something about what the cameras and lighting and make up do for the scene just makes the media world seem so idealistic. This supposed ideal atmosphere gives people the illusion that this type of atmosphere really exists and these people are really as smart, classy, and natrual as they seem. I feel like if you saw someone all dolled up in make up and flashy clothes on the street and laughed to yourself ever, it wouldn’t be that different from what you’d see on the set of a photoshoot or movie.

It goes for the plots and events in movies and songs too.  characters interactions are written so elegantly, and of course dramatically, and i think people are led to believe their life reflects that. People get into an argument and suddenly they are somehow led to believe they’re fighting some epic battle, with lives at stake, with tears and rage in everyones face, and cameras spotting those tears and rage. I think i’ve touched on this topic before, but it relates here as well

my new thought has to do with this as well, just with the actual people. let me make a diagram

1. media makes people seem smarter, more attractive, classier, frankly, less of a person. not so much in that it takes a regular person and makes them seem like more of any of those things (although it certainly does that too), but more in that it makes the world seem like it has more of these people, when in reality dumb, unattractive, not so classy people are at every turn. sure high-end people like that are around, but not as commonly as the media makes it seem

2 this leads to people having false images of the world. I feel like making the decorated people seem so far above real people makes people strive for achieving likeness with them. be it the fan that worships their idol as a god, the guy who isn’t satisfied without a supermodel girlfriend, or someone feeling embarassed by being associated with real people, which to them seem inferior.

In the end it just seems like the people in the media have no flaws or quirks. In reality they do, (unless i’m proven wrong by a flawless person, in which case i’ll let you know :p)  The flaws and quirks are what make them human though. Media can transform people into inhuman, robotic tools.

Don’t i sound like an old geezer?

that is all, good day

Keanu Reeves: Photo Courtesy of keanu.org

In this week’s premiere of New Communication Technologies (NCT) class, our great lecturer, Ping, showed us Minority Report. I was beginning to think whether it was a coincidence (Ping could have been intending to recruit Keanu Reeves fans like herself) or that there was a more significant agenda – to let the ignorant children trapped in the protective environment of this classroom open their eyes to what could be the future of the universe!

We have the usual adventure story – good guy, righteous and all, wronged by the bad guys hence set out to clear his name… by kidnapping a bald-shaven and pale woman – who can barely communicate well with her stutters, which is good because it prolongs the storyline and the air time.

Alright, who am I kidding?

The crux is this – the technology used and displayed in the show is beyond the present. However, many revolutions have passed through the centuries and the sci-fi in Minority Report could just be the next in line.

And current technology seems to be edging towards the Minority Report reality. Compare the following:

Today’s technology – a man interacting with a projected surface using his fingers:

(click on image for video)

Minority Report – Keanu Reeves interacting with holograms using his fingers:

Keanu Reeves: Photo Courtesy of flixster.com

Aren’t those two most alike? Not forgetting location-based services are personified as the Precogs (ones who are capable of telling the future) in the movie as well. It is indeed amazing to see the human race mingle with science to create possibilities and bring about what seems to be convenience to the society.

However, things appear too perfect. And too-perfect things can be flawed in some way or another.

Think about this – one of some other problems that may surface: what will happen to the privacy of each individual if tracking whereabouts of individuals were as simple as a click on a system – especially with the impending proliferation of location-based services?

Do privacy and convenience with technology possess an inverse relationship? Think about it while you tweet, facebook, plurk, stumbleupon or use that android application.

]]> http://zerocredibility.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/java-ee-got-it-wrong/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:08:14 +0000 Jeffrey Blattman http://zerocredibility.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/java-ee-got-it-wrong/

After working on two large-scale, cross contains / platform, web application projects, I’ve come to the conclusion that Java EE is fatally flawed.

If someone asked you to state the most important, guiding principle of the Java language, what would you say? You would would probably say “write once, run anywhere.” Indeed, for Java SE this holds true most all of the time. In Java EE however, it is hopelessly broken. The reality is that every web container is slightly different in ways that force developers work around problems, avoid certain features, or even have different code paths. Different code paths in a language that was never designed for it.

Different aspects of Java EE have different levels of stability. JSP works almost the same across all containers. Things like JSF and Java Persistence (JPA) however are hopeless. My most recent experience is writing a web administration console using JSF for the OpenSSO project. OpenSSO claims to support at at least 8 different web containers. Every container required JSF tweaking that ranged from annoying to just plain terrible. Needless to say I had egg on my face to some degree over the choice to use JSF. It was a no-brainer for me. JSF is the chosen MVC framework for Java EE. My mistake.

The only container where JSF “just worked” was Tomcat. Tomcat isn’t a Java EE container at all.Tomcat doesn’t include JSF or any of it’s dependencies. We might be on to something here. Let’s look at another example: Spring. Spring is essentially a lighter-weight, simpler replacement for Java EE. Why is Spring so popular? One reason is that it is an elegant design. But another, perhaps more important reasons is that no matter what container you are developing on, Spring is Spring. It’s the same JAR, the same code, the same implementation. It makes very few assumptions about the capabilities of the underlying container. Another example is Facelets, a light-weight JSP replacment. I use JSF+Facelets on the OpenSSO project, and it has been flawless (the Facelets part). Why? Because I include the Facelets JAR, it is not provided by the system.

What if Java EE had followed the same model? Java EE should have been nothing more than a plugin framework and some base services. Want to use JSF in your project? Just include it from a managed, networked Java EE module repository. Include the one, common implementation of JSF. Include the approved version for your level of Java EE. If you support Java EE 5, you get JSF version X, across all web containers.

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This is a video of me (sitting in the lawn chair at the start) and my little brother, Mathew (behind the shed yelling bear noises at the start).
I posted this video on YouTube about July 2008 (the summer before ninth grade, I believe. I was thirteen, Mathew was … nine, I think?).
It was about a year and a half ago, I believe. It feels like it was longer, though.
There’s been a lot that’s happened since then.

I started high school.
I won an art award.
I went through 9 exams.
I went camping at a beautiful provincial park with the student’s council.
I gained like, 10 of some of my best friends in the world at pathfinders.
I got a facebook account.
I got a blog.
I’ve attempted to finish writing several novels.
I got an iPod.
I went ‘out west’ for the third time in my life.
I visited Vancouver for the first time in my life.
I dipped my feet in the Pacific ocean.
I went to my first high school dance.
I went to Niagara Falls on a (geography class) field trip with some really great people and got in trouble with the teachers because we brought too much sugary pop and chips for our own good and all had sugar rushes at midnight.
I had the time of my life in Dinner Theatre.
I discovered a secret passageway in my school’s proproom hidden behind shelves.
I invented the word ‘AWESOMAZING’.
I’ve made a zillion more people laugh.
I joined my city’s youth council.
I met the mayor.
I discovered Twilight a few weeks after the above video was filmed.
I’ve come to terms with myself. (I am not so ashamed of who I am anymore. Because I am awesomazing.)
I spent a night in a haunted hotel.
I contacted a ghost. (One of my BFF’s birthday party. Her place was haunted so we pretended to be like TAPS.)
I sang ‘Tomorrow’ (from Annie) at the top of my lungs in the middle of a forest while cleaning an outhouse.
I sang ‘Tomorrow’ (from Annie) at the top of my lungs in the middle of a forest with some of my very best friends.
I have learned that everything has flaws but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful and perfect by all means.
My kitten turned three years old.
I discovered that I truly would prefer world peace over all the money in the world anyday.
I have done way more than I ever thought I would and today it has occured to me that the past two years of my life have been worth every second, and I wouldn’t change anything at all.
I really truly wouldn’t.

The following two websites display a humorous look at the most annoying and common logic flaws and stereotypes found in movies. In other words, here are some lists of common movie cliches. They are really funny if you’ve seen a lot of movies.

http://www.moviecliches.com/

http://www.saviodsilva.org/lists/f9.htm

Enjoy!

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