Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Medicare's impact on the senior vote. Bill gives GOP a boost as it courts a crucial voting bloc in 2004. Drug plan impact depends on where you sit. Medicare bill will help many seniors, disappoint others. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 9:40:31 PM    comment []

dave at stanford. Dave Winer spoke at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's lunchtime series. The talk will be archived here soon. There was a great turn-out keen to learn from the master, and the master taught well -- mixing genuine and useful insight with an idealism that is too rare around here. Law students begin life as idealists, and there's an obvious and powerful idealism in the Winer's arguments. I'll point to my favorite parts when the talk is posted. Meanwhile, I was happy to tell him that the Center will be copying his experiment at Harvard next fall, and offering a blog for every entering student in the law school. Turow's One L, or even Alex Wellen's Barman will be nothing in comparison. [Lessig Blog] 5:17:04 PM    comment []

U.S. funds study of tech monocultures. The National Science Foundation says it will pay $750,000 to two universities for studying how diversifying information systems and software could help fend off future cyberattacks. [CNET News.com - Front Door] Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico, if you're wondering. 5:03:48 PM    comment []

For security ask yourself...what would Microsoft do? By Paul Roberts, IDG News Service. Enterprise Networks / Security / For security ask yourself...what would Microsoft do? Related links More on this topic. Breaking news Today's top news. By Paul Roberts IDG News Service, 11/21/03 Despite taking a beating in the press and from customers for security holes in its products, decision makers at Microsoft appear to think the company still has something to teach the world about computer security. The software giant this week published a technical white paper that describes its internal security practices, which Microsoft hopes will "help customers successfully secure their environments," the company said. Advertisement: The paper, simply titled Security at Microsoft, details the methods and technologies that the company's Operations and Technology Group (OTG) use to secure the company's global corporate network of more than 300,000 computers and 4,200 servers. In the paper, Microsoft describes its risk management strategy, which involves classifying different computing resources according to their "value class" -- from servers hosting the Windows source code down to test servers. Microsoft also provides guidance on how its security group assesses the potential risks and threats to those assets and creates policies to secure the assets that are appropriate, given the value of the data they contain. Just as interesting are the tidbits of information about Microsoft's security operation that can be gleaned from the document. For example, Microsoft discloses that the company experiences more than 100,000 intrusion attempts each month and receives more than 125,000 infected e-mail messages. To protect corporate assets from threats introduced by remote workers, Microsoft said it has invested heavily in smart card technology, deploying more than 65,000 smart cards to remote workers that enable them to log on to the corporate network using two-factor authentication. The company is also candid in admitting to past security failures, acknowledging that the company has been attacked in the past and that there is a medium to high probability that within the next year, a successful attack will occur that could compromise the High Value and/or Highest Value data class, such as source code or human resources data, according to the document. Security at Microsoft white paper. 9:25:43 AM    comment []

The Ultimate On-the-Fly Network. Here's how a flock of reclusive seabirds became pioneers of pervasive computing. A case study from the sensor net frontier. By Martha Baer from Wired magazine. [Wired News] 7:45:21 AM    comment []

Dear Husband: About that Wi-Fi. Dear Husband, If you are still kicking around the idea of creating a wireless access point at The Someday Cafe, you may be interested in the following snippet from the Doc Searls weblog -- it describes a package for managing a public wifi access point . . . . [Learning the Lessons of Nixon] 7:41:32 AM    comment []

Thanks to Eliot, I now know about Wittgenstein's music -- all four bars of it -- Ludwig Wittgenstein's only known musical work had its world premiere last week in Cambridge. It is called, according to the title that he had pencilled above his two-line score, Leidenschaftlich (in English, 'Passionate'). At four bars, it lasts less than 30 seconds and is little more than a powerful, fiery flourish. Yet it brought an invited audience of 150 curious Wittgenstein enthusiasts, unaware of his musical pretensions, to Emmanuel College's acoustically refined new Queen's Hall auditorium... ( Andante) (or, possibly, Andante)) 3:23:55 AM    comment []