Misc. Ramblings

Bumper Snicker. "Driver carries no more than $20 in ammunition."

And a top of the morning to you! I survived our Saturday class. But I wasn't sure I was going to make it. That night, I went to sleep at 9:00pm and didn't get up until 7:00am the next day. And I'm still tired...

Drop your cookies and come out with your hands up! InfoWorld's Brian Livingston has a column on, inter alia [love those Latin phrases], web bugs. You remember, those 1X1 size graphics hidden in web pages and even emails. These, along with cookies are used to track where you are and where you go. The top 10 commercial users of these things are:

1. Doubleclick.net, ad agency
2. Akamai.net, streaming media network
3. LinkExchange.com, Microsoft affiliates
4. Bfast.com, affiliate program
5. Demon.co.uk, streaming media ISP
6. Extreme-dm.com, Web stat software
7. HitBox.com, Web stat software
8. LinkSynergy.com, e-commerce links
9. Akamaitech.net, streaming media network
10. Commission-Junction.com, affiliate program

Are there non-commercial users of this technology? Probably. Think law enforcement. Think Big Government. Heck, think Organized Crime. See the column here.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping. Palm announced two new models - the m505 and m500.

The m505 has 65K color, an expansion card slot and a universal connector. Price: $449(USD)

The m500 is monochrome but otherwise seems similar to the m505. The price: $399(USD).

Note that the site is very slow right now and also requires that JavaScript (hawk, spit) be enabled.

Belated Welcome. A big Hawaiian welcome [insert picture of tanned hunk giving a lei to swooning tourist on the beach at Waikiki - Ed.] to the latest addition to the Netwidows. This one is Mr. Dominik's better half - Ann.

I will make no comment about her choice of graphics other than to say its red, glossy, and .... well, I think I've said too much already. See her site here. But beware, you need to have your shields up and at full power because there be cookies there (and I don't mean the kind you pour sugar on top).

I have a two-and-a-half hour training to go to this morning. The subject? Harassment-Free Workplace Policy Training. This is mandatory. If you don't go, you will be harassed until you do.

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

Tuesday - 20 March 2001

Ad Space. One of the interesting things we've come across in class is an article that lists the percentage of advertising space for different types of publications. According to R. K. L. Collins and D. M. Skover (do they get paid by the number of initials?), in a 1993 article entitled "Commerce & Communication", Texas Law Review, 71, 697-746, advertising occupies almost 60% of newspaper space, 52% of magazine pages, 18% of radio time, and 17% of prime time TV.

In a book by L. Bogart entitled Strategy in Advertising: Matching Media and Messages to Markets and Motivations (2nd ed.), Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, Bogart found advertisements blanketing our daily lives. How big a blanket? Each year, 12 billion display ads spill forth from daily newspapers in the US, another six billion appear in magazines and other periodicals, 2.6 billion commercials are broadcast via radio, and 330 million commercials are shown on TV.

This means that US teenagers will have watched an average of 350,000 TV commercials by the time they are 18. This is roughly equivalent to watching advertisements nonstop from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm every day for a year. Think about this and then ask yourself; "Self, is this a Good Thing?"

I have to create some histograms based on some data provided to us in class. They also want us to calculate the mean, median, and mode for the data set. I'm curious why they didn't ask for the standard deviation but maybe I'm getting ahead of things. In either case, I gotta go - Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

Hump Day Wednesday - 21 March 2001

Pearl II. So the latest news on the film "Pearl Harbor" is that it will premier aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. The carrier will be tied up at Hotel Pier near the USS Arizona Visitors Center and Museum. There will also be a fireworks show based on barges surrounding Ford Island. Expected at the premier are stars Ben Affleck, Josh Harnett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kate Beckinsale, Dan Aykroyd, and Alec Baldwin.

Got Game. While the men's basketball team at the University of Hawai'i got eliminated from the NCAA tournament, the women's team is another story. The Wahine are in the the Elite Eight of the Women's National Invitational Tournament. Win tonight's game against Oklahoma State and they'll be in the Final Four. Good Luck to all of the players and coaches.

Network Support. Another interesting, and very provocative, article we had for class is by J. McNair and S. L. Swatrz entitled "Local Church Support to Individuals with Developmental Disabilities" in Education and Training in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, 32, Dec 1997, 304-312.

The journal article makes two points: First, people are best served by support systems made up of those who they choose to have close associations with. The second point is the church is a natural place for support.

Typically, support systems take one or a combination of four forms: 1) government supported networks, 2) contrived networks, 3) natural/existing networks, or 4) self-developed networks.

The government network is made up of a myriad of agencies seemingly designed to do something to a person instead of for them. All of these agencies provide services because that is what they are paid to do. To be fair, this is not to say they can not or do not provide good services. However, it can be said that a relationship built on paid services is qualitatively and quantitatively different from one based on free association or friendship.

The contrived network is based on the "circle of friends" or "circle of support" concept. The underlying assumption is that individuals need assistance in developing their own support group. Hence, an agency would help in creating a network for the individual.

The natural/existing network supports people, as the name suggest, through the use of existing help systems. While there are many of these types of networks, the article defines four criteria that are required to be useful for persons with disabilities: 1) the individuals who are meeting have an interest in supporting one another, 2) that the people who are meeting represent a diverse group, and 3) that the group itself be committed to helping people. They also say it would be helpful if the network exists in virtually every community. Finally, the authors say the network should not have an affiliation or funding relationship with any governmental agency so as to preserve autonomy and freedom from outside regulation and red tape.

The above should define a church. They go on to state that churches probably comprise the largest philanthropic organization on Earth and that if they do nothing else, they should be in the business of improving the lives of others. Unfortunately, research on churches as agents of support is minimal if not entirely non-existent.

The self-developed network, being one created by the disabled person has the highest potential for support. However, what does society do if the person, due to their disability or some other factor, is not able to create such a network? The answer is usually to go directly to governmental support, bypassing the natural and contrived systems - both of which tend to provide better, more efficient services.

The article then goes on to do a random stratified sample of churches in the "Inland Empire" of Southern California (San Bernadino, Riverside, and part of Los Angeles county) to determine if they have services for the developmentally disabled. If they answer in the affirmative, the survey asked them questions relative to their program, if not, they were asked to describe an ideal program.

I'm not going to describe the results because the main point is there are various levels of support available to the developmentally disabled. The controversial recommendation made by the authors is government should provide support to the churches. I believe there are ways of doing this while not running afoul of the Constitution. But this must be done carefully and with a lot of thought as to the proper roles of government and the church.

I will reproduce, in toto, their recommendation:

5. Last, programs such as St. Louis's "Interact" should be supported. These projects are grassroots efforts to address felt needs in the community. The authors would go so far as to recommend that state monies be spent to encourage the embracing of individuals with disabilities by religious institutions. If monies are spent for the provision of support, why couldn't the money be spent to encourage natural support? The argument is analogous to the state supporting out-of-home placement for persons with disabilities but not in-home placement. Should money only be spent for state-run support providers when there are thousands of others across the country who could provide significant amounts of natural support for significantly less money? The authors contend it is both logical and cost effective to pursue these types of support with state monies.

You decide. Is this a good idea or not? YMMV.

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

Thursday - 22 March 2001

Final Four. The University of Hawai'i (UH) Wahine basketball team won their "Elite Eight" game over Oklahoma State last night and are now in the "Final Four" of the Women's National Invitational Tournament. They will play New Mexico Saturday in Albuquerque. Go Bows!

Speaking of Sports. Croydon College, in England, has a volleyball player by the name of Yassir Sliti. He was born in Morocco but moved to London when he was six. "So what?"; you say. Well, the six-foot-six, 190 pound (~1.98m and 86.2kg) middle blocker is on his way here to play for the UH. With players like Chala, Miladinovic, Theocharidis, Zimet, Podelewski, and Tuyay it's clear that the UH likes to recruit foreign students. In this case though, Sliti decided to come here on his own. He's reported to have said one of the reasons for coming was the support the community has for the game. Which is true, the NCAA average attendance figures for 1998 (the most recent year I can find figures for), indicates:

Ground Zero. Or perhaps, ocean zero, if the Russians can predict where the spacecraft Mir will splash down. Starting today at about 2:30pm (HST or 4:30pm PST), the Progress will fire its engines for 20 minutes. It will repeat the procedure around 4:00pm (HST). Then, at 7:00pm (HST), Progress will fire its engines one last time for 23 minutes. If all goes as planned, the last firing will set the Mir on a firery trajectory (which will take about an hour) towards the Pacific Ocean 2,000 miles south of Tahiti and 2,500 miles east of New Zealand. There are a bunch of sites following the Mir's progress (pun intended) but most are so saturated with people trying to get in that I won't even bother to list them.

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

Aloha Friday - 23 March 2001

It's Friday!

Alert 1! Alert 1! Emergency Action Message Follows:

I'm sure other sites are also raising this alarm but it is so serious I think it warrants repeating here. Below is the CERT Alert:

Overview

On January 29 and 30, 2001, VeriSign, Inc. issued two certificates to an individual fraudulently claiming to be an employee of Microsoft Corporation. Any code signed by these certificates will appear to be legitimately signed by Microsoft when, in fact, it is not. Although users who try to run code signed with these certificates will generally be presented with a warning dialog, there will not be any obvious reason to believe that the certificate is not authentic.

I. Description

Microsoft released a security bulletin on March 22, 2001, describing two certificates issued by VeriSign to an individual fraudulently claiming to be an employee of Microsoft. The full text of Microsoft's security bulletin is available from their web site at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-017.asp

Additional information about this issue is also available from VeriSign's web site:

http://www.verisign.com/developer/notice/authenticode/index.html

This issue presents a security risk because even a reasonably cautious user could be deceived into trusting the bogus certificates, since they appear to be from Microsoft. Once accepted, these certificates may allow an attacker to execute malicious code on the user's system.

This problem is the result of a failure by the certificate authority to correctly authenticate the recipient of a certificate. Verisign has taken the appropriate action by revoking the certificates in question. However, this in itself is insufficient to prevent the malicious use of these certificates until a patch has been installed, because Internet Explorer does not check for such revocations automatically.

II. Impact

Anyone with the private portions of the certificates can sign code such that it appears to have originated from Microsoft Corporation. If the user approves the execution of code signed by one of the bogus certificates, it can take any action on the system with the privileges of the user who approved the execution. The fake certificates can only be used for Authenticode signing.

III. Solution

Check "Microsoft Corporation" Certificates

You can identify the fake certificates by checking the validity dates and serial numbers of the certificates. When prompted to authorize the execution of code signed by "Microsoft Corporation", press the "More Info" button to obtain additional information about the certificate used to sign the code.

The fake certificates have the following description:

Issued to: Microsoft Corporation
Issued by: VeriSign Commercial Software Publishers CA
Valid from 1/29/2001 to 1/30/2002
Serial number is 1B51 90F7 3724 399C 9254 CD42 4637 996A

Issued to: Microsoft Corporation
Issued by: VeriSign Commercial Software Publishers CA
Valid from 1/30/2001 to 1/31/2002
Serial number is 750E 40FF 97F0 47ED F556 C708 4EB1 ABFD

No legitimate certificates were issued to Microsoft between January 29 and 30, 2001. Certificates with these initial validity dates or serial numbers should not be authorized to execute code.

The certificate revocation list for the fake certificates can be found at

http://crl.verisign.com/Class3SoftwarePublishers.crl

Apply a Patch from Your Vendor

While there do not appear to be any patches available at this time that directly address this issue, Microsoft is working on producing patches that will ensure the invalid certificates are not used.

Appendix A. - Vendor Information

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft has published a security bulletin describing this issue at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-017.asp

Netscape

Netscape takes all security and privacy issues very seriously. The Netscape browser does not allow the execution of ActiveX controls, signed or unsigned, and therefore Netscape users are not vulnerable to exploits which rely on signed ActiveX. In the unlikely event that Netscape users are presented with signed content from Microsoft requesting enhanced privileges, Netscape users can protect themselves by denying permission to any such request.

______________________________________________________________________ This document is available from:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-04.html
______________________________________________________________________

I spent most of my time this morning trying to troubleshoot a problem a friend of mine is having getting KDE running on his system so this post will be very short. Also, Monday is a state holiday commemorating Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole (which means a late post).

Prince Kuhio lived from 1871-1922 and was descended from the kings of Kaua'i -- he was a cousin of King Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani and a nephew of Queen Kapiolani). Educated at San Mateo, California and at the Royal Agricultural College in England, he returned to Hawai'i shortly before the overthrow of the monarchy. He participated in and was arrested for his part in the counter-revolution of 1895. He served for about a year as a political prisoner.

Later, in 1902, he was elected as the Hawai'i delegate to the U.S. Congress where he served until his death in 1922. Among his accomplishments were the establishment of the Hawai'ian Home Commission, and the introduction of a bill in 1919 to admit Hawai'i as a state.

You can read more about him here from the Bishop Museum.

We have a staff meeting this morning so I need to get ready for that. Have a Great Weekend Everyone! - Aloha!

© 2001 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.