Links for August 14th 2009

Riding home from work today I barely escaped the rain. On Tuesday I wasn't as successful as the rain drenched me. And the weather people "promised" the weather would change to Mediterranean style due to global warming. I guess they were as accurate as always when trying to predict the weather, even for the next day. I wouldn't mind a few more sun hours à la Spain's south coast, though. Maybe my garden would actually produce some veggies and fruit for once, as it is now the summer is too short for any significant growth of anything. Bring it on!

  • Incidents: Conficker just doesn't give up. Goes on and on forever it seems. We had serious infections earlier this year in Sweden when hospital computers went out of service due to Conficker. In Missouri City computer and phone networks gave in Thursday morning.
  • Hacks: Have you ever used the "Free Public Hotspot" WiFi service? They seem to pop up everywhere, not just airports. They are seldom free, you normally pay with your information, credentials and your data. If really unlucky, with real money from your bank account.
  • Money: Good news! Gartner (you can trust them, can't you?) predicts good growth for security related work in the near future. This report aims at Asia, but my, not too far fetched, guess is it could be applied on the western hemisphere too.
  • Big Brother: It's a weird world we live in. Police in the UK has been granted warrants (26 times!!!) to get encryption keys from people to decrypt files/disks/name-your-gadget. And if you decide to refuse, you face up to five years in prison. Wow... The solution: Be sure not to know your encryption key when being asked for it.
  • Interesting: OK, here's a quiz: Pack more data into smaller space, Johannes Kepler, dodecahedron and icosahedron - what brings those together? Let's look at work being conducted at Princeton U.
  • Trivia: Les Paul has given up his worldly posessions and fame. He is now picking guitar in a better place.

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