cookie theft demonstration, originally uploaded by jeff_robertson.

/work

This is some of what you're going to miss seeing if you don't come to my security presentation tommorrow.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has issued the attached guidance, “Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment.” For banks offering Internet-based financial services, the guidance describes enhanced authentication methods that regulators expect banks to use when authenticating the identity of customers using the on-line products and services. Examiners will review this area to determine a financial institution’s progress in complying with this guidance during upcoming examinations. Financial Institutions will be expected to achieve compliance with the guidance no later than year-end 2006.

In the U.S., federal regulators
are now requiring banks to have at least two-factor authentication with
their websites by the end of 2006. The Federal Financial Institutions
Examination Council (made up of the FDIC - Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the U.S. Comptroller the Currency, and
others) has very recently issued a press release as well as specific, non technology-specific guidance (PDF) on the need for two-factor authentication. It's an idea being sold to banks and the public as a way to address identity theft in a supposedly proactive manner.

The Element Construction Set is a Java API for generating elements for various markup languages it directly supports HTML 4.0 and XML, but can easily be extended to create tags for any markup language. It is designed and implemented by Stephan Nagy and Jon S. Stevens.

Ok, I'm about to finally jump on the bandwagon and try Firebird.

I first tried Mozilla somewhere around Milestone 13. At first I found that the Windows version was noticeably slower than MSIE, at least on the 500mhz, 128mb of RAM that I had at the time. And I don't just mean startup time, I mean everything was slow (you could actually speed it up appreciably by using the classic theme instead of modern). It actually didn't take many more milestones after that to close this gap, though.

I've been using Mozilla regularly since approximately 0.8. For a while I actually used it on a 133mhz machine running Red Hat 6.2. That was just asking for trouble, and I got some of it in the form of long startup times and occasional crashes, but it did HTML and CSS so much better than Netscape 4 that it was worth it.

Around 1.1 time was when I finally decided to forget how to use MSIE and just use Mozilla for all my browsing except for the few intranet applications that use ActiveX controls and stuff like that.

I guess my point is, except for those early experiences I've never found myself saying "this thing is bloated! I want a smaller browser!". So I just never got the point of the Phoenix/Firebird project. But if that's the way that the Mozilla winds are blowin', I guess I'll have to go along.

Firebird just finished downloading; I guess I'll go install it.

I am convinced that Gilmore Girls carries a secret anti-big-government, pro-free-enterprise message.

Proof? Which secondary character is more positively protrayed: Taylor, who constantly tries to use the organs of town government to further his own agenda; or Luke, who just wants to be left alone to run his restaurant in peace?

Watch this space. I may actually get bored enough to write an essay on this topic fit for submission as a 10th grade term paper.

Because the U.S. chose to get involved in the affairs of Iraq, we now have a moral obligation to set up an actual free society there. If we replace one tyranny with another, we have betrayed our own highest principles. Ways in which we could fail include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

If we install or allow the formation of some kind of a government where "tribal" membership is very important and tribal leaders have a lot of influence, you can bet that we will just be paving the way for the warlords and their private/family/tribal armies to carve up the place in a few years.

If we install or allow the formation of any kind of theocracy, we will produce a government that will eventually be much more likely to attack the U.S. than the one we just removed.

If we set up a government that has no actual support from its people, then it will either require our continuous military help just to stay in power, or resort to totalarian measures of its own, or fall apart and be replaced by something much worse. Or all three, in that order.

If we decide to keep Iraq under our thumb and run their affairs for an indefinate time, that would be naked colonialism, a repudiation of the principles of the American revolution itself (unfortunately, far from the first in our history).
me

I don't usually say much about war or politics, either here or in email or on usenet. But I don't think this would be a real weblog if I didn't say something now.

Once the shooting starts (and it may have already started by the time you read this), the anti-war folks may as well go home and start working on your signs and slogans for the next big crisis. If protesting didn't do anything to prevent the war (and it didn't), then it sure isn't going to end the war or bring our troops home one day sooner. In the event that the war goes badly (however you define that), no "I told you so!" smart-assed-ness will accomplish anything except to make you look like pseudo-traitors who enjoy seeing the U.S. fail in every way possible.

On the other side, making a spectacle of pouring French wine down the drain and boycotting the Dixie Chicks doesn't accomplish anything except to make the people doing these things look like a bunch of ignorant medieval peasants burning some hated person in effigy. In the event that the war goes well (however you define that), no "I told you so!" smart-assed-ness will accomplish anything except to make you look like bloodthirsty hooligans who enjoy watching your military smash and destroy other countries as if it were all some kind of spectator sport.

If the Iraqis surrender quickly, this could be a short and relatively bloodless war. If they put up a fight, it may or may not be short, but it will certainly not be bloodless. I don't know which of these is going to happen. I do know that the war itself is out of my hands and its out of yours, too. What is still very much in our hands is how we behave towards each other during and after.
me

The Wang systems had similar problems with charcter sets, so much so that not only were there "characters" that could not be generated from the keyboard, they also had caracters that could not be represented by an 8-bit hexadecimal code.

Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it.
Bill Watterson