Silicon Asylum

Just ran across this @ slashdot and couldn't NOT mention it here. (Nice double negative there eh?) Anyway....... "For the second year running, no U.S. city has made the list of the world's top Intelligent Communities of 2007" but Ottawa is on the list (as is Waterloo). Slashdot Story Original Story As announced by ICF chairman John Jung, the intelligent city finalists are: Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea Issy-les-Moulineaux, France Ottawa-Gatineau, Ontario-Quebec, Canada Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, United Kingdom Tallinn, Estonia Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Just found this site..... http://thedailywtf.com/ one of the recent entries caught my attention http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Chocolate_Covered_SQL.aspx (Scroll down till you see the package of chocolate they actually printed their SQL query [not the results] ont he packaging).

Today's Dilbert was particularly good (IMHO) so I thought I'd pass it along. http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070122.html

So you decide to post a scan of a cheque (check) or a credit card or perhaps even a picture of a travel bug (for the geocachers in the crowd) and you blur out the important number(s). Well with scripting and storage the way it is these days that doesn't really cut it. Picture someone creating a "dictionary" of pictures with sequential blurred numbers to check against. This would be very much akin to a standard dictionary attack where all the words are passed through the same one way hash and compared against your one way hash. (Create all the possible iterations of the image, blur and compare against your image). Get the whole story here > http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php . In the future, black out the number(s) (make sure you don't have multiple layers).

Hinterland Who's Who Spoof Spiders on drugs . Freaky Octopus Camo (colour changing) etc....

Well I wrote my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Profession) Exam back in Dec. and have finally received an email stating that I've passed! YAY! Now I just have to complete all the endorsement paperwork (another CISSP or qualified person has to vouch for me and I have to submit a resume). Once that's done I'll add it to my LinkedIn Profile . As I said to m y wife, I was more excited to find out I'd passed and would be attaining this certification then I was graduating college (once you're in the middle of your final year you know what's gonna happen, there are no mysteries, either you have the # of credits or not).

Do you still you Microsoft's Internet Explorer? Well here are some more reasons why you should Get Firefox .

I was very disappointed when I saw this headline over at /. : The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars. How can that be? What normal person in that age bracket doesn't love all things sci-fi and space related? I just don't get it..... Am I missing something are the kids I hang around with just out of whack or something? What kid doesn't love the idea of being an astronaut (astronut) or digging for dinosaur bones? I'm only 30 can I really be "that" old? (Hmmmm on second thought maybe it's a male thing and a whole bunch of females were polled and are skewing the results?) Linkage: Slashdot Blurb Full Story Update: NASA only understand part of the picture . While I think it's great to attract the normally nerdy section to the space program we also need the support of the general public.

As some of you know I'm a great fan of pointing out individuals would should be Darwin Award winners or runners up. Anyway without being long winded the 2006 winners are here . For those of you who have never heard of the awards here's a little blurb explaining further: "Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it, thus ensuring that the next generation is one idiot smarter. Of necessity, the Awards are generally bestowed posthumously." Update: This kid deserves a Darwin award....I know I always try to plug-in electronics when I'm dripping wet having just come out of the pool :D DUH!