2003-02-14 · 08:55

Todd strikes again

My friend Todd is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. He has a disarming aw-shucks manner (born of living in Alabama for most of his life), a quick mind (despite the fact that he attended Auburn), and a terrific sense of humor, as evidenced by this gem (original source unknown):

Question: You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two
small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner and is running at you while screaming obscenities. In your hand is a Glock .40 and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?
Liberal Answer:
Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question! Does the man
look poor or oppressed? Have I ever done anything to him that is
inspiring him to attack? Could we run away? What does my wife think?
What about the kids? Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and
knock the knife out of his hand? What does the law say about this
situation? Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me? Does he
definitely want to kill me or would he just be content to wound me? If I
were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he
was stabbing me? This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with
some friends for a few days to try to come to a conclusion.
Conservative Answer:
BANG!
Texan’s Answer:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
click… (sounds of clip being ejected and fresh clip installed)
Wife: “Sweetheart, he looks like he’s still moving, what do you kids
think?”
Son: “Mom’s right Dad, I saw it too…”
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Daughter: “Nice grouping Daddy!”

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2003-02-12 · 14:15

Don’t be like Mike

Mike Masnick writes this cautionary tale: How I Accidentally Became a Porn Spammer. Be sure you have some spam filtering, or you too may end up as a p0rn kingpin.

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2003-02-06 · 16:22

Terrorist? No, journalist

Computerworldrecently reported that Slammer was the work of a terrorist group. As it turns out, a reporter had squatted on a terror group’s domain name and taken the site over– he was the one who made the claim. Computerworld has retracted the original story and posted an explanation. The reporter in question, Brian McWilliams, has done a couple of other slimy things, too, as described in the . Keep this in mind the next time you see a mass-media story about anything having to do with computer security (and, beware of security shops like Mi2g.com that fall for this kind of hoax– would you trust them to provide accurate data if they’re taken in by something like this?)

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2003-02-06 · 13:24

We are living in a material world

Brandt said:

it’s apparent that the administration is trying to hide something in regard to Iraq. if “material breach” of U.N. Resolution #1441 is what the U.S. is striving for, then why were Blix and El Baradei not informed earlier of the U.S. Intellegence that was presented yesterday?

First off, you appear to have bought into the common misunderstanding of “material breach” (John and I already had a conversation about this.) That phrase has a specific meaning, and it’s not “Iraq gets caught holding banned weapons”. It means that Iraq is not complying with the resolution’s inspection requirements. (The exact language: Iraq is in breach if the UN “decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below”). Blix and ElBaradei have both said that Iraq has not complied with the inspection regime. Voilà: material breach!
The pre- and post-Gulf War UN resolutions don’t just ban Iraq from having WMD, IRBMs, and so on. They ban them from attempting to obtain them. So, even if the Iraqis haven’t succeeded in building their al-Hussein derivative, guess what? Material breach again.
As for why we didn’t share our intel, well, you can’t have it both ways. If we reveal intelligence to the UN, we are essentially betting that they will protect the sources of that intelligence and the methods by which it was gathered. This is a dangerous bet, particularly in the case of people inside Iraq who are spying for us– it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what the Iraqis would probably do to anyone they suspected of leaking information to the US. Of course, as soon as the UN says “you’re in breach: we know you have $badThing at these coordinates”, the Iraqis move it, rendering us unable to strike it in the event of war. (I’m leaving aside the whole pre-inspection argument that the US and Britain were penetrating the inspection apparatus to gather intelligence– if those governments had such great intel, that argument must not have been true.)
Now, on to the argument about casualties: the reason for the buildup is a matter of two things, strategy and tactics. Both dictate assembly of an overwhelming force whenever possible: tactically for a massing of forces, and strategically as a deterrent or means of applying pressure.
Lastly, Brandt’s offhand suggestion that the evidence is manufactured is crazy. Take a look at a map, and you’ll see that Iraq has a significant number of different terrains, including some marshlands that aren’t all that different from south Louisiana (well, except for the Kurds…)

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2003-02-05 · 09:57

The crypto gardening guide

Peter Gutmann’s done it again; he’s produced a wonderful paper for crypto implementers. It posits questions like “Consider whether your design can be implemented on a system with a total of 1kB of memory, or alternatively whether it can process a 1GB data block in a machine with 128MB of memory” and offers pithy comments like “No matter how cool/interesting/useful/mandated in standards a new design is, it won’t be used if it requires redeployment of all existing hardware and
software for little apparent gain.”

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2003-02-04 · 12:10

A little early Christmas shopping

Could be that I know some people who are getting these for Christmas…

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2003-02-04 · 10:18

Two new Microsoft webcasts

Microsoft has two upcoming webcasts that may be of interest to all you Titanium-watchers out there.
The first one, on 2/12 at 1000 PST, covers Exchange 2003 deployment methodologies. The second, on 2/20 at 1000 PST, covers Exchange security. The TechNet chat summary page lets you get reminders, add the chats to your Outlook calendar, or spam your friends with reminders. See you there!

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2003-02-04 · 09:44

OfficeMax to Paul: mea culpa

After my strong letter to OfficeMax, I wasn’t really expecting a response. I was upstairs stealing some of Arlene’s candy getting a snack and I noticed that the fax machine was humming. It was a letter from OfficeMax’s CEO, apologizing and promising that I’d hear from their director of customer service. What a deal! (I’ll post it when I have more time, which will probably be in 2009 sometime.)

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2003-02-03 · 11:17

Website for sensory integration

My friends Tyler and Rima have a daughter with sensory integration dysfunction. I’d never heard of it, but they’ve launched a pretty comprehensive website that explains it and provides a wealth of educational and teaching resources. Check it out.

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2003-02-03 · 10:05

XP SP1 “phone home” paper moved

I just got an IM from John Matteson informing me that my link to the whitepaper on how Windows XP SP1 uses the Internet is broken. The paper is now here. It’ll probably move again at some point in the future, as MS is wont to do.

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2003-02-03 · 09:20

Bachelor diary, day 2

It’s hard to adequately describe how good the boys were yesterday. Everyone got up and ate breakfast without major incident; the boys got dressed without complaint and watched the cartoon version of “Elijah” while Matt and I showered, then it was off to church. Unfortunately, Matt had a bad case of the wiggles, so he and I spent most of sacrament meeting out in the hall. To make things worse, I had the effrontery to try sneaking out of the nursery, and he didn’t like that one little bit.
Once we got home, it was time for lunch. When Arlene’s out of town, I try to eat as much stuff that she doesn’t like as possible, so for lunch we had fresh-made (bread machine, alas) sourdough bread and Seabear salmon chowder. The boys fell upon it like they hadn’t eaten in weeks; everyone had seconds. Matt napped while the boys watched a video and I made ice cream (cookies and cream, another Arlene not-favorite.)

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2003-02-02 · 14:56

Bachelor diary, day 1

A friend of ours from Alabama is deathly ill, and another friend is undergoing chemo after a dual radical mastectomy. Arlene had been planning a visit for a while, but friend #1’s health was deteriorating quickly, so we decided she should go sooner rather than later. With David’s birthday coming up on Tuesday, “sooner” meant “0530 Saturday morning”. She packed Friday night, got up early and drove to the airport Saturday morning, and was in Huntsville by 0945. In the meantime, I was here with three small, noisy, active boys. Here’s what we did.
0715: Matt got up, so I brought him back to my bed for some cuddle time.
0745: Tom got up; the first words out of his mouth were “Where’s Mom?” followed closely by “Can you scramble some eggs for breakfast?”
0810: woke up David.
0820: Dad called to invite us to McDonald’s for breakfast. Too late; the eggs were already in the skillet. We plan to meet at 0900 to go see some model trains at a local hardware store.
0840: Cycle all three boys and myself through the two showers. This happens in a surprisingly orderly manner. Everyone ends up bathed and dressed in about 25 minutes.
0910: Pick up Dad and Tim and drive to the train place.
0940: Observe expressions of stupefaction and wonder on faces of all three boys. This lasts until one of the hardware store guys comes over and actually turns on one of the trains, at which point Matt starts to cry.
0942-1015: Try to convince Matt that he likes trains, at which I fail miserably. Dad compensates by giving him some circus peanuts.
1020: I buy some spacers for the kitchen and we set off for the barbershop.

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2003-02-02 · 14:32

Why Southerners make good Marines

Dear Pa & Ma,
Am well, Hope you are to. Tell brother Walt and brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled. I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt & Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.
Men got to shave but it is not so bad, they git warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings. Like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc…, but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie, and other regular food. But tell Walt & Elmer you can always sit between two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you till noon, when you get fed again.
It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.. We go on “route” marches with the Platoon Sergeant who says they’re long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore
feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice, but awful flat.
The Sergeant is like a schoolteacher. He nags some. The Capt. is like the
school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around & frown. They don’t bother you none.
This next will kill Walt & Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk and don’t move. And it ain’t shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.
Be sure to tell Walt & Elmer to hurry & join before other fellers get onto this setup & come stampeding in.
Your loving daughter,
Gail
Original author unknown; I got it from my mom, who got it from a friend, etc.

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2003-01-31 · 16:13

The seven seals

The US Navy has helpfully posted a guide to tamper-resistant seals. What does this have to do with Exchange? Basically nothing. However, it’s still cool, and it offers some interesting insight into how high-value assets can be physically protected against tampering. In particular, chapter 2 (“The Theory of Effective Sealing”) has a lot of good attitudinal information that’s worth reading if you’re a computer security person.

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2003-01-31 · 15:19

Sample chapters finally arrive

At long last, the book’s sample chapters finally arrived. If you’re interested in security for Exchange Server, go check ’em out. (And if you’re not interested but still have $35 to spare, buy the book anyway!)

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