Dangerous Thinking

http://www.chamaeleonmc.com/issue_30.HTM

Woody Allen. “Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought– particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.” [Quotes of the Day]

Am I the only person in the world who is victimised by his keys?

EDS bans IM. Big hammer, small nut [The Register]

The Register delights in running down EDS in this story. But how about this for some old-style thinking, from The Register itself?:

Gateway AV tools or managed services providers can be used to block infectious emails before they reach end users, but instant messages go directly to workstations – so skipping a layer of defence.

IM is convenient but it can create holes into an organisation. Instant messaging attacks have become a common method of propagation in recent viral outbreaks, and (as CERT warned back in March) a tool for social engineering, including tricking users into running malicious software (potentially DDoS attack tools) on their machines.

Neil Barrett, technical director of security consultancy firm IRM, said IM products are “implicitly clandestine” and make the exchange of files easier – something likely to be frowned on by security-conscious organisations.

The world has moved on, chaps. Live with it.

Think horizontal firewalls enclosing workgroups and co-operative teams, rather than vertical ones pulling up the drawbridge on the corporate monolith. Accept people need to co-operate inside and outside the corporation, and find new ways to work and to protect assets.

I seem to remember the Maginot Line wasn’t too successful.

Cellphone Radiation “Trapped” in Train Carriages.

“Passengers on packed trains could unwittingly be exposed to electromagnetic fields far higher than those recommended under international guidelines. The problem? Hordes of commuters all using their mobile phones at the same time.

Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, who is currently working at the Curie Institute in Paris, says Japanese commuter trains are often packed with people surfing the web on their mobile phones. The trend spurred him to find out what effect this had on the electromagnetic radiation in a train carriage….

‘At the moment, we have no regulation on the use of mobile phones in areas where many people are together,’ he says. The problem could also arise on buses and in some types of lifts (elevators), he adds.” [New Scientist]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Or maybe he’s fed up with people phoning to say ‘I’m on the train’.

Sweet Buns. I don’t buy a lot of cookbooks as most have bad recipes with pretty pictures of food made by… [Axis of Ævil]

Maybe I’ll try them over the weekend.

Survey Finds .NET and J2EE Neck-and-Neck [ActiveWin]

Let’s hope both camps continue to compete and also achieve full interoperability.

Can cable deliver?. With NTL filing for bankruptcy, and Telewest laying off 1,500 staff, BBC News Online ponders the future for cable broadcasting in the UK. [BBC News: business]

I know, the piece is published by a broadcaster. But let’s look at it in a 21st Century, rather than 20th Century paradigm.

The point is, I can get as much TV as I can stomach from that bit of ironwork on the roof. Until the Wi-Fi guerillas carpet the UK with radio waves of a certain frequency, I and millions(?) of others don’t have any other choice for Internet connection.