Small Bits: Canada, DNA, Microsoft and Tea
- While publicly recalling their Ambassador over the brutal murder of Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian government was playing host to Iranian officials, looking for security information, reports the CBC:
In dozens of e-mails, there is no mention of Kazemi, and no one questions why Canada would help Iran, considered by some to be a brutal police state. As well, no one asks why a government with a known track record of sponsoring terrorist attacks might want information about a new passenger security screening procedure.
- Paul Saffo presents a doubleplus good future in A Trail of DNA and Data, in the Washington Post.
The ubiquitous collection and use of biometric information may be inevitable, but the notion that it can deliver reliable, theft-proof evidence of identity is pure science fiction.
- The Register reports on recruiting flyers handed out by Microsoft after a party:
Can you 0wn someone just because they browsed your web site? Is the first thing you do after installing new software seeing how you can break it and get root? Can you tell me what x90x90x90x90x90x90x90x90 is? Can you modify a HTTPS request sent from an application to its server? Do you start code reviews by following a malicious input to see where it is parsed?
I don’t know why these Microsoft folks can’t spell. That’s *pwn.
Finally, if I drank tea, I’d be all over TeaForte. They look like the Apple Computer of tea. Their website is beautiful.
Thanks, DM, S. for the MS and tea pointers, respectively.
Pennygate
Jim posts his proposal for fixing email crypto. Rumours abound about trouble in Wall Street based on derivatives. Citibank is drowning in unmatched derivative positions, and their plan is to net it all and write off the rest. No, they…