Friday Links: FBI Security flaws, dying computer skills, and more
I love the irony in seeing an article about a report on the FBI’s internal security being somewhat lacking. With several movies having come out in the last little while about these types of agencies (The Good Shephard, The Departed) and a recent conversation about some of the classic computer-ish movies (Hackers, The Net), can we expect to see these two genres two crossover in the near future? The Departed even touches on security, to a degree, when Matt Damon is trying to access the file for the undercover operative but is thwarted by a carefully chosen password - the operatives real name. Probably doesn’t have capital letters and no numbers or ascii characters - I see the lack of security already! The report suggested that the lack of security was more related to an insider attack.
I remember the first time I heard about Y2k (although the actual year escapes me - 1995 or so). I was at a Comdex conference at Science World (Telus World of Science?) and the speaker mentioned the Y2k situation and how Cobol programmers had been booked solid trying to fix this oversight. This article talks about dead and dying computer skills, including Cobol programming, C programming, and ColdFusion.
Paul Kedrosky, one of my favourite bloggers has a couple good articles to check out. One on U.S. online ad spending and a couple on Google are intersting (here and here), and he has an interesting take on Plaxo and their connectedness data. I really like the two on Google, as they raise questions on the company that aren’t asked often enough, especially if you read the comments on the blog post that he links to by Jeff Barr. Finally, one that might not appeal to everyone is an article on FAHF-2 and Herbal Medicine. If nothing else, it brings back fond memories of my biochemistry days in University - I miss them, I miss the information I learned, but reading over that quick clip, I’m content to not be mutating little white mice.