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First boat into to the inner harbor from the volvo ocean race |
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I am thinking about get this 1 Gig usb drive then it occurred to me. The first every hard drive I owned was a 540 Meg unit.
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And another one of the squirrel |
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squirrel large Squirrel on the national mall in washington DC |
US-Visit computers failed due to a virus.
To me this is crazy that computers could be affected so badly by a virus. Lets assume that you haven’t installed the patch because you are testing it. That is a reasonable enough situation, but in security you don’t just rely on just one layer of protection instead you use multiple layers. For a moment lets assume that these machines are not used for reading email, surfing the web and only have the software needed to perform the US-visit program.
1) Virus software.
Any reasonable virus software will protect computers from known viruses. Some vendors will also give you the ability to block buffer over attacks and perform some behavioral blocking. All the machines should be managed from a central location that allows the machines to all be updated to the latest virus definition files.
2) physical or logical separation.
In this example they are running machines that have a single purpose, to collect and valid passports. This allows you to put the computers on a firewalled segment that only allow the specific traffic needed to run the us-visit machines. If they they are connected to an untrusted network then tie them back to a central secured network using a vpn connection.
3) Hostbased Firewall
Windows XP includes a very simple firewall that allows you to block traffic going to the machine. When dealing with a machine that is there to serve a single purpose it should be a fairly simple to create a set of firewall rules that blocks most traffic to the machines.
3) Hostbased application control
Again since these are single purpose machines you can install a security application that controls which applications are allowed to run and what types of network connections those applications are allowed to make.
What is even more amazing is that wired has published a copy of there Network Architecture
I can’t believe Spirit and Opportunity are still working their way across mars.
And this is reported on a UPI feed
A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Baghdad diplomatically told The Mirror that the pair’s sleeping arrangements were “a private matter which I couldn’t comment on.”
And the head line from the Daily Record “FINAL STRAW WAS JUMPING INTO CONDI’S BED”
I have no idea why this is being reported in a Welsh newspaper but apparently the age of chivalry is dead and Jack Straw is here to prove it.
New Immigration proposal. This is seems like a good compromise. It splits the illegals into three groups based on how long they have been here. If you have been here less than two years then you need to leave and get back in line for a legal visa. If you have been here 2-5 years you can get a temporary visa at the border. If you have been here more than 5 years then you don’t have to leave. If you are applying to for citizenship then you will need to provide evidence that you have paid all the taxes owed. This still bed the question how to do you prove how much they earned but that is something the US Tax system deals with on a daily basis. It also forces people to report how many years they have been in the country so that solves the problem of someone saying they have only been here a year in order to avoid more taxes.
The next problem is how to do this with out screwing all the people who have been here legally and applying for a green card. Few few of the reports mention anything about the people who have spent thousands of dollars in order to stay in the US legally.
Slashdot post an article on Health problems of a geek which I thought was interesting.