Sat 30th Sep 2006 @ 00:48 2006: Bread is Dangerous

http://www.eskimo.com/~spban/bread.html though I bet it's been elsewhere also:

!!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!!

Research on bread indicates that:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, it has been proposed that the following bread restrictions be made:

1. No sale of bread to minors.
2. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.
3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.
4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.
5. The establishment of "Bread-free" zones around schools.

Fri 29th Sep 2006 @ 09:37 2006: Richard Hammond

A little comic strip about Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. Sorry for breaking up the page.

Mon 25th Sep 2006 @ 22:57 2006: Coordination

Seriously... try this. I'm right-handed and right-footed; it may be necessary to swap things over if you are left-somethinged:

Whilst sitting down, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

Now, while doing this, draw the digit "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Fri 22nd Sep 2006 @ 21:52 2006: Misuse of ATMs

Apparently somebody reprogramed an ATM to give out $20 notes instead of $5 notes, using information available for purchase from the manufacturer. Schneier updated the blog with the URL but that has now been replaced by a redirect. Google don't cache the document (it's a PDF, anyway), but ... er, don't Google have a "View as HTML" option? Oh yes, they do.. I can't actually see any passwords listed there though; it seems that Google only convert a certain amount of the PDF (and, let's face it, not very well, at that).

Wired report that users of these ATMs will be informed on Monday. The Wired blog lists previous articles on the subject here, here, here and here.

Great quote from Wired:

I asked him why they'd allow the denominations to be reprogrammed entirely from the keypad. Why not require the ATM be physically unlocked and opened, and the operator flip a switch before getting root? "Your suggestion is well taken and it is one of the possibilities that we are thinking," he says.

Fri 22nd Sep 2006 @ 15:20 2006: Managing the Life of an Individual

"It's not big brother, it's managing the life of an individual" is how West Midlands Police support manager Fred Tracey describes their new security system of using fingerprints to control access to buildings and computer systems, according to The Register.

Well, at least they're being honest about it, I suppose :-(

Tue 19th Sep 2006 @ 22:52 2006: LinuxFromScratch

Just a note for users of UK keyboards installing LinuxFromScratch, something I did not find to be obvious:

echo 'KEYMAP="uk"' > /etc/sysconfig/console

This fixes the keymap for the console (though not X, ssh sessions, etc, as they have their own configs, for perfectly good reasons).

Sat 16th Sep 2006 @ 00:31 2006: It's not F1, it's not ID, so it must be Security... RIP

Scrambling for Safety #8 (they convened with the Home Office in August... here is their agenda, annotated with the slides (PDF). Brian Gladman's slides make the obvious statements that GOV.UK security has always been based on security through obscurity, and closed-source models, and why this is a silly idea.

I've not read the rest properly yet, but BBC summed it up as "Police decryption powers 'flawed'".

When I was a sysadmin, I found the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP) unbearable (I could have sworn that I blogged that, but I can't find it); now I'm not, it's even worse ;-0

RIP has been well documented, though poorly publicised. GOV.UK basically told me, as an email administrator, that if they wanted to see any email that passed through our system (same goes for any other UK server), that if they asked me for somebody's mail traffic, that:
(a) I must provide it
(b) I was not allowed to informed the "victim"; otherwise I would be in breach of the RIP Act.

So - even if they told me that they wanted my MD's emails, I would be legally obliged to provide it, and legally obliged, if he asked, to lie.

Unfortunately, as I'm no longer the admin for any of my email accounts, I'm on the other side or the RIPA coin... if my emails are requested, it would be illegal for the informant to inform me that it had happened (maybe it already has happened - I would only know if an admin had taken the risk of illegally informing me).

Anybody heard of a certain G. Orwell, who wrote a book in 1948 about the year 1983... or was it 1985? Sometime around then, anyway. I've got a feeling a book was written; you never know, it may be relevant.

Fortunately, I was never put in such a situation (I think that I'm allowed to admit that much!) It seems that they are still beating out the details, six years later. It gives me some hope that they have got the Cambridge guys onboard; http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/ - they often come up with sensible answers to silly questions.

Thu 14th Sep 2006 @ 12:08 2006: The Daily Show: The misappropriation of 9/11

US comedy show The Daily Show had a section on the 12th Sep called The misappropriation of 9/11. It's on YouTube, and quite droll. Other cuts from the show are also on YouTube.

Tue 12th Sep 2006 @ 00:15 2006: Alonso and Massa

YouTube has got a purpose, after all... This is footage from Massa's Ferrari which shows that Alonso (the car which you can occasionally see in the distance) did not hinder Massa's qualifying lap.

Alonso was on his out-lap (that is, the lap wasn't timed, he was just out on the track to get a flying lap having started a hot lap passing the start line at speed), Massa was on his hot (timed) lap. So, if Alonso was in the way of Massa, he should have gone off the racing line to allow Massa to pass him, as if Alonso (the blue/yellow car ... it's blue and yellow, honest; you can't tell from this video!) wasn't there at all.

However, because of this alleged blocking, Alonso was put back 5 places on the grid, from 5th to 10th and although he worked his way up to 3rd position with 9 laps to go, he could potentially have won the 53-lap race. As it was, his engine exploded, but it is possible that it wouldn't have done if hadn't been penalised by 5 critical places on the grid.

Watch the video, see if you believe that Massa (the red Ferrari) was held up at any point by Alonso (the blue Renault in the distance). See if you can even tell that it is a blue Renault; I can't tell.

The result of this was that Ferrari have gained the lead in the Constructors championship (as Alonso's engine blew up; had he started from 5th, he'd have had a much easier race, pushing the engine less, and maintaining Renault's position), and that Alonso's 12 point lead in the Driver's championship was reduced from 12 points to 2 points.

If either championship is affected by this, then Max Moseley and Bernie Ecclestone have a lot to answer for.

This travesty has tarnished Schumacher's announcement of his retirement from F1.

Nah. Massa was flat-out there, for the whole lap. He was not obstructed by Alonso.

Sun 10th Sep 2006 @ 01:19 2006: Ed and Karen

Congratulations, Ed and Karen, who got married today (photo with Ed's parents, Valerie and Michael). I went to school and Uni with Ed (who was called Eddie at the time).

Ed was my "best friend" at school; we went through a lot of stuff together (and have a lot of mutually-assured-destruction style blackmail information about each other!). He's a good man. He'll scavenge a beer off you every time, he's guaranteed not to turn up when he said he would, and all the rest, but he does have his flaws, also. Nah, Ed's a good lad, really. I reckon I could probably vouch for him, at a push ;-) As I said, he's got a lot of dirt on me, too, so yes, Ed is definitely a great guy.

At Uni, Ed helped the formation of a number of bands, including Slide Pheromone, with whom he was the drummer. SP later (without Ed on drums) became Moeker, who are still going in London.

Ed and myself (with Jim and various other friends) were in numerous bands in our late teens/early 20s, (none of which were anywhere near good enough to warrant any mention whatsoever on the superinterhighweb, of course). One of our bands was described by a neighbour as "like a chinese water torture" - praise indeed!

Ben made an excellent Best Man speech, and the whole day went very well. It was also great, for me, to meet up with some of the old peeps from Uni, as well as the DogWorld (Britain's best-selling canine newspaper) guys and the others we met on the stag night.

So - Ed: Didn't get a degree, didn't become a rock star, but did somehow convince Karen to marry him.

Congratulations to Ed and Karen, and my best wishes for the future.

Greets out also to Carol and Richard, Ben D, Phil "Destroyer" Smith and, of course, Big Jim....

I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.
I must keep in touch with old friends.

Mon 4th Sep 2006 @ 12:26 2006: And the last shall be first

This isn't news, it's nearly a month old, but it is news to me.

At the annual DEFCON security conference, there is a Capture the Flag contest, in which teams have to secure their own server whilst retrieving "tokens" from their opponents' servers.

It was won this year by a team called l@stPlace. What strikes me as remarkable here is that they were doing it explicitly as a (mainly) Christian team. They wore very explicit T-Shirts the whole time, with "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" written in white on a red cross on a black T-shirt. And johnny.ihacksuff.com who wrote this up is a professional hacker for CSC and not some script kiddie, after all. He, too is a Christian. He was also on an excellent edition of Moneybox yesterday (apparently a repeat from last Tuesday) about fraud (or identity theft as they insist on calling it these days).

Sun 3rd Sep 2006 @ 00:04 2006: CL1P.net

http://cl1p.net/

Post something onto cl1p.net, grab it from somewhere else. Password-protect it if you like. It could be text, or upload a file.

see also: http://cl1p.net/features.html and http://cl1p.net/more.html

Fri 1st Sep 2006 @ 20:21 2006: Bomb on a Plane

Bomb assembled on plane

According to this article:

A MAN WEARING a jacket and carrying a bag was able to sneak a bomb onto a flight from Manila to Davao City last month at the height of the nationwide security alert after Britain uncovered a plot to blow up transatlantic planes.

The man pulled off the same stunt on the return flight to Manila.

Had he detonated the bomb, he would have turned the commercial plane into a fireball and killed himself, the crew and hundreds of other passengers.

The man turned out to be a civilian antiterrorism expert tapped by a government official to test security measures at Philippine airports after British police foiled a plan to blow up US-bound planes in midair using liquid explosives.

“The only missing act was the push on the button to blow up the aircraft,” he said in an interview.