OmniNerd

Ad-Blocking: Dueling Views

Jackson — Thu Mar 11 12:53:40 -0600 2010

Lately I have been playing around with extensions on Firefox (on Linux) and Chrome (on Windows). Chrome has a few really interesting plug-ins that I have played around with. One is an “IE Render” button, that will open a new Chrome tab and render it as if it were IE8. This may sound ridiculous, but some sites (like USAA until a few months ago) do not render correctly in Chrome, but do in IE. It totally works, so I convinced my wife to stop using IE8 completely. I consider that a big win.

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Scientology: We've had it with you

Occams — Mon Mar 08 19:01:22 -0600 2010

We have been giving the Mormons a hammering over the last few days. Although I find their beliefs highly improbable, it is hard not to admire their loyalty to them and their willingness to defend them. They say adversity makes us stronger, and this sect has had enough of that to become very strong.

For me, what is far more concerning are the pseudo religious cults that abuse their members and challenge us all through their defiance of our laws and societal values. Prime amongst these must be the fast-growing Scientologists whose depravity is becoming increasingly better understood.

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Hurt Locker vs Reality

VnutZ — Mon Mar 08 09:27:32 -0600 2010

The 2010 Oscars have come and gone and the outcomes were interesting. Many people were surprised when The Hurt Locker destroyed Avatar. It was viewed as a breakthrough for women as director Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director as her film went on to more awards like Best Picture. Therein lies the question.

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Winter Olympic sports?

VnutZ — Mon Mar 08 06:02:41 -0600 2010

Cast Your Vote - Winter Olympic sports?

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A Short Look into a Phishing Email

VnutZ — Sun Mar 07 13:03:11 -0600 2010

So the other day, I came out of the movie theater and checked my iPhone to see what I missed while being entertained by Alice in Wonderland. In my AKO mail was a curious looking message about North Korea having tested a missile with a nuclear detonation in Okinawa, Japan. The message indicated alerts being made for pending mobilization of military units. WTF?


Office of the Director of National Intelligence

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Cyber Security Challenges

VnutZ — Sun Mar 07 06:58:13 -0600 2010

The intent to defend America’s IT infrastructure is quite old, but often even new initiatives are so mired in secrecy that nothing ends up happening. Recently, the Obama administration declassified pieces of the Bush era Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative which was an effort to make sweeping changes to America’s security posture. A subsequent congressional review of the declassified portion concluded that while the plan had areas of significant merit, the declassified pieces presented various characteristics that were at odds with itself and along with hindrances to the development of solutions. For instance, the findings state the program was too secret for its own good (essentially nobody could work on it since nobody knew about it) and that R&D should be centrally managed by a specialized agency such as DARPA rather than parceled out piecemeal to competing academic environments.

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Internet Energy Savings

Brandon — Tue Mar 02 14:29:50 -0600 2010

While making a rare drive to deposit a check, I realized something: It’s possible the Internet will do more to reduce global warming and conserve energy than 2007’s Nobel Peace Prize winners: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — combined. (Well, unless you count Al Gore as the inventor of the Internet, but I’m not going to go there.) It’s difficult, of course, to put a number on how much the latter two have done or will do to help reduce the amount of Carbon in the air – but in the end, I don’t think it makes much of a difference.

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Has the Notion of Academic Cheating Changed?

VnutZ — Mon Mar 01 07:53:07 -0600 2010

I remember when cheating was easy to identify. Hidden answers for a test? Cheating. Copying another’s work (without citing)? Cheating. Working beyond time constraints? Cheating. So what is it these days that seems to make so many people justify the act? Perhaps its just the “I’m Special” generation not wanting to have anything negative associated with their persona. Maybe the Internet has made the concept of share and share alike just part of culture. Or it could be status quo and this is simply the modern evolution of yesterday’s cheater.

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Have you cheated (academics, work, etc.) to get ahead?

VnutZ — Mon Mar 01 04:36:03 -0600 2010

Cast Your Vote - Have you cheated (academics, work, etc.) to get ahead?

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Recent Hacking News

VnutZ — Sat Feb 27 08:08:31 -0600 2010

So in recent news, the United States was ‘p0wned’ by itself during a virtual cyber-attack exercise. The outcome more or less showed we have quite a journey ahead of us to properly prepare politically … and technically. The latter is mentioned not so much in that our CNO (Computer Network Operations) is in question but rather the vulnerabilities to require us to have a CNO response in the first place. Mitre and SANS together have assembled the 2010 enumeration of common weaknesses in programming, a list that seems to change very little over the years showing how systemic many of the problems really are. For example, the list is still peppered with buffer overruns, improper bounding and type overflows amongst a slew of web vulnerabilities.

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Mock Cyber Attack Exercise

VnutZ — Fri Feb 26 07:18:53 -0600 2010

A Washington DC area non-profit organization known as the Bipartisan Policy Center recently hosted an exercise called Cyber ShockWave. Developed by Michael Hayden (former director of the NSA and CIA), it intended to allow participants to experience a simulated, nation-wide cyber attack to role-play how the US might respond. Notable folks such as Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, Fran Townsend and Joe Lockhart participated, indicative that the role players were experienced in the positions and not amateur think-tank employees speculating. As was likely predicted whenever political talking heads put their minds together, the US failed. In a nutshell, the attack began with malware on the cellular network through widespread phishing followed by the loss of some pipelines and eventually the east coast power grid. While the exercise showed a failure of America’s public capabilities, it was successful in opening eyes regarding how an adherence to existing authorities, jurisdictions and policies were the equivalent of American stepping all over its poncho while running at full speed, a glorious Washington DC faceplant. Amongst the questions raised were:

whether private communications companies would even comply with government requests to use their infrastructure in defensive and offensive ways

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Laptop Monitoring by Pennsylvania

VnutZ — Wed Feb 24 19:46:25 -0600 2010

So in recent times, the Lower Merion School District or Pennsylvania issued Apple laptops to its high school students. What nobody knew, was the laptops came installed with software for remotely (and covertly) enabling the built-in webcams for monitoring student behavior. The matter came to light when the vice principal disciplined one student using a photo from the webcam showing activity at from their residence. Naturally this stirred all sorts of privacy controversy which led to the superintendent issuing a response stating the technology was intended to be used for recovering stolen school property in the event of a loss. Everything is winding into a class action lawsuit with both sides vigorously defending their positions. In the meantime, a federal judge has ordered the school to cease and desist all use of the remote monitoring software until a decision is made while the FBI conducts its investigation.

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Computing discussion you find yourself having most often?

markmcb — Mon Feb 22 04:20:36 -0600 2010

Cast Your Vote - Computing discussion you find yourself having most often?

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Most Irritating User

VnutZ — Mon Feb 15 04:59:02 -0600 2010

Cast Your Vote - Most Irritating User

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Legalizing medical marijuana?

VnutZ — Mon Feb 08 04:40:30 -0600 2010

Cast Your Vote - Legalizing medical marijuana?

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