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!

Ignoring the rather pathetic movie featuring "The Rock", DOOM's 13th Birthday was yesterday (11-Dec-2006). Honestly I'll admit I was never hooked on DOOM, rather QUAKE was my first addiction to FPS games. Quake, Quake CTF, and Quake II wasted many a day during my college career (though I'm no worse of for having played till my hands went pins-and-needles on a few occasions....at least not that I know of so far). Related linkage: DOOM 13th BDay on theRegister Doom @ IDSoftware.com

I don't know if any of you out there are regular reads of theRegister but I their BOFH column is priceless for anyone working in IT. Their most recent Episode really made me laugh this morning. Canadian Site

Darin lead me to this: What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. The Inland North   Philadelphia   The South   The West   The Northeast   Boston   North Central   What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz I've always told people I don't have an accent (not that accents are bad things), I just always thought I was pretty neutral. (I can't believe the quiz doesn't ask about milk [Milk, Melk, Malk......people really manage to mangle that word].

Well he didn't kill himself so he's not up for a Darwin Award , but he's pretty close. Get the details here .

Continuing from my previous post on Keyboard Shortcuts : Windows Desktop/Explorer Window: F1 > Open Windows Help (Or active application help if you aren't on the desktop or in windows explorer) F2 > When you have a file selected F2 will take you into Rename mode F3 or WinKey + F > Open the find file or folder applet F5 > Refresh Window WinKey + M > Minimize All Windows WinKey + shift + M > Restore All Minimized Windows WinKey + D > Show Desktop WinKey + L > Lock Windows (Not available before WinXP) WinKey + E > Launch Windows Explorer WinKey + B > Set Focus to the TaskBar (dunno why you'd want to do this) WinKey + ctrl + F > Open the find computer applet shift + delete > Permanently remove a file (same as delete followed by empty trash) alt + tab > Cycles through your program list alt + shift + tab > Cycles backwards through your program list alt + space > Activate the window control menu (same as right clicking the icon in the top l...

I came across this book/site the other day, it's a really good mind bender. Hit this link , then select "Imagining the Ten Dimensions" in the leftnav. It'll walk through a flash animation describing all ten dimension (theoretical).

Just caught this over on /. and thought I'd add my support. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/01/1923237 Go Pink? Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research. Over the month I'll try to post some info on the latest/greatest developments in the fight against breast cancer.

Cartoons are great, I have a couple that I read every morning. What got me thinking about this was a few more recent User Friendly (UFies) cartoons from the weekend: User Friendly - 2006-09-23 . User Friendly - 2006-09-25 . I'll add a list of my daily cartoon's to the leftnav.

Live in or near Ottawa/Gatineau? You'll probably appreciate this (especially if you've experienced frosh week here). A friend passed it along to me and I couldn't help but link to it for others. Way too funny! Gatineau Cougar (Hinterland Who's Who spoof) Update 20131001 : Seems the link above is dead, here's an updated one: Gatineau Cougar (Hinterland Who's Who spoof)

People often notice that I don't use the mouse as much as most people. Personally I find it much quicker to do a lot of tasks using the keyboard. Therefore I've decided to post a list of keyboard shortcuts from time to time. Hopefully you'll enjoy them and and find them useful like I do. When editing text: ctrl + arrow (Left or Right) > Move the insertion point left or right entire words. ctrl + shift + arrow (Left or Right) > Highlight entire words (left or right of the insertion point). double click > Highlight an entire word. triple click > Highlight an entire line (not sentence). shift + home > Highlight from the insertion point to the start of the line. shift + end > Highlight from the insertion point to the end of the line.

Checkout this article: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/07/lacie_safe_drive_range_expanded/ Note the last line: "LaCie has also announced two SAFE Mobile drives with built-in encryption, which should reassure the more paranoid user. In the US the 80GB costs $219.99, which is a premium of $50 over the non-encryption SAFE, while the 120GB costs $299.99 - a premium of $20." Does anyone else see a problem there? If you pay a premium for encryption "over the non-encryption SAFE" doesn't that kinda suggest that their regular "SAFE" drives are just a pretty enclosure with a thumb print scanner that interfaces with software to do basically zero? If the data isn't encrypted then what prevents someone from stealing the device, ripping the drive out, and plopping it in any system or enclosure? Now I'll admit, I have't bothered to read LaCie's site so maybe I'm missing something but this seems like a complete Gimmick to me......give the con...