[Quote:]

Found in my mail – anybody ever heard of them?

Hi,

I wanted to give you a heads up that your blog has a link from Time.com’s web site, powered by Sphere. To see your featured post, go to www.time.com and look within the story: “Behind Rumsfeld’s Fall: The Perils of Hubris.” Then, look for the orange sphere it! logo and click on it. You should see your post in the first two pages of results.

Sphere is working with Time and other publishers to get great blogs like yours in front of more people. We think this is pretty cool and a great way for people to discover blogs as well as introduce a broader, more mainstream audience to great blog content like yours. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to contact me at victoria@sphere.com.

We’d like to offer you a Sphere featured blogger badge. You can choose one here:

http://www.sphere.com/fb-badges?topic=featured

Keep on blogging!

Best,
Victoria

http://www.sphere.com

Bush’s keeps bringing out the most corrupt of retreads of past Republican administrations – check out the new Secretary of Defense.

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Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran/contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

via

Both Allen and Burns will have the right to call for a recount, it seems. Yet given their prior public comments on recounts, we should expect them to pass.

Burns press release, 11/28/2000:

On November 28, 2000, when the Florida election results were certified,
Conrad Burns said Gore “appears more and more like a man who wants to
win at any cost.” Burns added, “It is time, as some have said, for Vice
President Gore to stop being a litigant and start being a Patriot. The
good of our nation is greater than any one man, and it is time for Mr.
Gore to end these challenges and bow out gracefully.”

More Burns in the 11/30/2000 Great Falls Tribune:

At the end of November 2000, Conrad Burns said he would like to see an
end to Gore’s legal efforts in Florida. Burns said, “Mr. Gore should
step aside and let the Bush team begin its orderly transition to the
presidency.”

And Allen on the Today show 11/8/2000:

The morning after Election Day 2000, when Florida was counting absentee
ballots, George Allen said, “we’ll need to move America forward as soon
as those votes are cast.”

I’m sure these former Senators will stand by their words, and not develop a double standard now. Right?

Right?

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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, intends to resign after six stormy years at the Pentagon, Republican officials said Wednesday.

Woa. Now that’s fast….

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They call it the “Johnny Carson attack,�? for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope.

Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers.

Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen.

The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards — cards whose data is relayed by radio waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. Tens of millions of the cards have been issued, and equipment for their use is showing up at a growing number of locations, including CVS pharmacies, McDonald’s restaurants and many movie theaters.

The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate “128-bit encryption,�? and J. P. Morgan Chase has said that its cards, which it calls Blink, use “the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government.�?

But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the researchers here found that the cardholder’s name and other data was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150.

They say they could probably make another one even smaller and cheaper: about the size of a pack of gum for less than $50.

And because the cards can be read even through a wallet or an item of clothing, the security of the information, the researchers say, is startlingly weak. “Would you be comfortable wearing your name, your credit card number and your card expiration date on your T-shirt?�? Mr. Heydt-Benjamin, a graduate student, asked.

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Do you ever wonder what the heck is wrong with top management? Why don’t they see risks associated with IT security breaches? Why don’t they help you do something about it?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been asking some of the same questions. So it asked The Conference Board — the same people who develop the Consumer Confidence Index and Leading Economic Indicators — to find out. Yesterday, The Conference Board published the results of the study.

Most C-level executives still view security as an operational issue, not a strategic issue, according to “Navigating Risk: The Business Case for Security.” The study, which researched the attitudes of some 213 top-level corporate, non-security executives, found that most security organizations are still operating in silos that are far removed from their highest-ranking decision makers.

[..]

A key problem, Cavanagh says, is most security managers don’t know how to map their priorities to business objectives, and most top managers don’t understand how security fits into their business objectives.

For example, when asked how well their company’s security was aligned with business goals, 79 percent of high-ranking executives said the most effective alignment was in complying with government regulations (79 percent), protecting confidential information (74 percent), and maintaining business continuity (71 percent). Only 44 percent said security enhances the value of the brand, and only 36 percent say it helps in managing the supply chain.

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“I was coming into Birmingham on transit to Singapore from Palma when I was stopped by a customs officer. I was wearing a stripy jumper with the shape of a pink gun sewn on to the front.

“The customs officer stopped me to let me know that if I was leaving the country through Birmingham then he was going to have to arrest me because I had a gun on my jumper. I know it isn’t best to argue with these sort of people but I had to question whether he had confused a pink fabric gun shape stuck on a jumper to that of a real gun. His answer – Some people wore t-shirts which had photo’s of guns in holsters or positioned to look as though they were guns sticking out of trousers (as it happened I had one of these in my bag. I wonder if I could have been done for concealing a t-shirt?

“But for me that argument didn’t stand well as I wasn’t wearing a life like looking image of a gun. When I posed this to him he changed his tune a bit and explained that the reason he wanted to arrest me was due to the fact that wearing the fabric shape of a gun on my jumper was offensive.”

Do you feel safer yet?

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Dell today gave freelance programmer and sysadmin Dave Mitchell, of Sheffield, UK, a refund of 47 pounds ($89) for the unused copy of Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2 bundled with his new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop, Mitchell says. Dell also refunded the tax, for a total of £55.23 ($105).

[..]

The online version of the Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition EULA states, “You agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA by installing, copying, or otherwise using the software. If you do not agree, do not install, copy, or use the software; you may return it to your place of purchase for a full refund, if applicable.”

The language in the version that Mitchell received was slightly different. It read, “If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, you may not use or copy the software, and should promptly contact manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund in accordance with manufacturer’s return policies.”

[..]

Mitchell was careful to document that he did not run the Microsoft product or accept the EULA. “I booted the laptop, then photographed every step of the boot process up to and including clicking on the XP ‘no I don’t accept’ button. I also scrolled through each page of the EULA, taking a photo of each page,” he wrote in an e-mail interview.

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The huge voting bloc, which helped elect President Bush twice and had been swinging more heavily Republican, seems to have become disenchanted with the GOP after the Mark Foley scandal and the high-profile resignations of several Republican congressmen.

Almost a third of white evangelicals voted for Democrats in today’s election, according to early exit polls reported by The Associated Press. Most of them cited corruption as an important factor in their decision.

That’s a change from the 2004 presidential election when 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for Bush and 21 percent voted for Kerry. That was a recent peak in evangelical attachment to Republicans.

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If air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport want to leave the tower for a lunch or dinner break, they have to go on vacation.

Or they can use accumulated personal time.

Otherwise, they have to stay in the 327-foot tower above Concourse C, where their menu choices are a bit limited. Just like airline passengers, controllers can’t bring liquids or semi solid food items through security checkpoints.

And a recent edict from the Federal Aviation Administration said controllers can’t leave the tower during their shift unless they use vacation or other personal time.

“We call the tower the ‘lockdown cafe,”‘ said Michael Coulter, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s unit in the DIA tower. “We’re under house arrest for eight hours.”

Before the recent ruling, controllers could take a short break and take the tower elevator to the food court on Concourse C.

Now, that’s not an option.

“Any meal run outside the Denver (air traffic control tower) shall require the use of leave,” according to the memo, signed by FAA tower manager Robert Fletcher.

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Tyler Stoken was a well-behaved fourth grader who enjoyed school, earned A’s and B’s and performed well on standardized tests.

In May 2005, he’d completed five of the six days of the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning exam, called WASL, part of the state’s No Child Left Behind test.

Then Tyler came upon this question: “While looking out the window one day at school, you notice the principal flying in the air. In several paragraphs, write a story telling what happens.”

The nine-year-old was afraid to answer the question about his principal, Olivia McCarthy. “I didn’t want to make fun of her,” he says, explaining he was taught to write the first thing that entered his mind on the state writing test.

In this case, Tyler’s initial thoughts would have been embarrassing and mean. So even after repeated requests by school personnel, and ultimately the principal herself, Tyler left the answer space blank. “He didn’t want them to know what he was thinking, that she was a witch on a broomstick,” says Tyler’s mother, Amanda Wolfe, sitting next to her son in the family’s ranch home three blocks from Central Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, Washington.

Because Tyler didn’t answer the question, McCarthy suspended him for five days. He recalls the principal reprimanding him by saying his test score could bring down the entire school’s performance.

“Good job, bud, you’ve ruined it for everyone in the school, the teachers and the school,” Tyler says McCarthy told him.

Aberdeen School District Superintendent Martin Kay ordered an investigation. “My suspension was for refusal to comply with a reasonable request, and to teach Tyler that that could harm him in the future,” McCarthy told an investigator. “I never, for a second, questioned my actions.”

Tyler, who’s 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs 70 pounds (32 kilograms), hasn’t been the same since, his mother says.

“He liked the principal before this,” she says. “He cried. He didn’t understand why she’d done this to him.”

Now, Tyler blows up at the drop of a hat, his mother says. “They created a monster. He’ll never take that test again, even if I have to take him to another state,” she says.

Tyler’s attitude about school changed. He became shyer. He’s afraid of all tests and doesn’t do as well in classes anymore, his mother says.

Results for the Senate

Results for the House

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A poll worker was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and interfering with an election for allegedly choking a voter and pushing him out the door, officials said.

It apparently started as a dispute between the two over marking the ballot, said Lt. Col. Carl Yates of the Jefferson County sheriff’s office.

The voter told poll worker Jeffery Steitz that he didn’t want to vote in a judicial election because he didn’t know enough about the candidates, but Steitz told him he had to vote in the race anyway, Yates said.

Steitz, 42, eventually grabbed the man by the neck and threw him out of the polling place, Yates said.

“The poor guy went back in and he threw him out again,” Yates said. “At least it wasn’t over a Democrat or a Republican being on the ballot.”

Peter Neumann interviews Doug Jones. Lots of insights about technological issues, political issues, and just people issues.

And an interesting detail:

Doug Jones: It is important to understand that the U.S. system of elections places more contests on a single ballot than any other country in the world. In Clay County, Iowa, a relatively small rural county, the November 2000 ballot held 20 distinct contests, ranging from President of the United States to County Agricultural Extension Council, as well as 11 judicial retention questions and one referendum. Hand-counting ballots of this complexity is far more difficult than hand-counting ballots in a parliamentary democracy where there is only one race on the ballot, for member of parliament. This complexity is why the United States began applying machinery to vote counting a century ago.