September 30th, 2007 Anthony Towry
In a recent article featured over at InfoWorld a Gap Inc. is playing out a story that is all too familiar. Two laptops have gone missing from one of their vendors that aids in processing applications for employment.
So, the story of the day is "we don't lose data, we hire people that do that for us". You may have seen the post earlier in the week covering the Unisys/Homeland Security incident. At any rate, when the headline hits it's always the corporate giant that's named.
Rightly so in my opinion. I'd guess that there are quite a few contracts with contractors out there that don't have a single bullet covering security/privacy. Businesses are going to have to throw a shorter leash on managing vendor work and practices if they're wanting to stay out of the papers.
It's important that because a process gets moved out of sight it doesn't get moved out of mind.
Posted in Security | No Comments »
September 29th, 2007 Anthony Towry
Sometimes everyone needs some inspiration. One of the most enriching ways to drum up some of this stuff in short order is to go check out other great work.
I'm of course telling you this is the only way to go, because it seems to help my situation and ever so conveniently I got out into the world today and saw some amazing stuff. I made the trip to the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern Art to view the sculptures of Mr. Ron Mueck, an extremely talented fellow who sculpts incredibly realistic figures of people in various stages of life.
The exhibit features quite a few pieces and a film of the artist working. The art certainly makes an impact. The scale and realism are overwhelming. What captures my attention most however is the craftsmanship that is required. The level of detail and dedication are things that any software developer should be able to both appreciate and enjoy.
All of this falls in line with my belief that devs need to be around passionate/interesting people/work. Get out there and find something like this.
[Ron Mueck is running through October 21st @ Ft. Worth Museum of Modern Art]
Posted in Art | No Comments »
September 28th, 2007 Anthony Towry
Scott Berkun is one cool cat. He's had a couple of books that have been wildly successful. The first book of Scott's that I read was The Art of Project Management, which played to his business experience with corporate America. This book stays in that vein, playing on creativity coaching.
I really love this book because it attempts to blow away some of the structural cruft that people build up through a life of fairy tale innovation. It's easier to accept that innovative thoughts are placed into the heads of geniuses through some sort of black magic and voodoo. It's much harder to recognize the hard work that is required to achieve a goal. Which explains my lack of innovative productivity.
The Myths of Innovation is easy to read and insightful.
Posted in Books | No Comments »
September 25th, 2007 Anthony Towry
The boys at Homeland Security have detected compromised information uploaded to Chinese language sites. The story over at TMCnet goes on to quote officials running down a government contractor, Unisys Corp. Unisys is a huge contractor for the fed, in this case charged with keeping the boxen secured, we'll see if this damages the relationship.
Posted in Security | No Comments »
September 24th, 2007 Anthony Towry
The iPhone remains one of the focal points of our lives these days. Hell, I don't even have one and I'm seeing all sorts of interesting news.
Today's special is "Apple Hosing Devices". So, Apple is pushing out a firmware update that is possibly going to have the side-effect of breaking hacked iPhones. Which, on the one hand, if I'm a manufacturer I don't have to make my next version of software play nice with the hack jobs on the street. OK, cool. However, when the update is aimed at the hack jobs, that's not cool.
Remember, if they don't want you to play with it...you probably should.
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
September 23rd, 2007 Anthony Towry
This episode is about 5 minutes of me yammering about de-perimeterization and why I think there's something to the idea. It's all about moving the guards closer to the crown jewels!
Show notes:
De-perimeterization [5:46m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download (70)
Posted in Podcast, Security | No Comments »
September 14th, 2007 Anthony Towry
This episode of the Silver Bullet Security Podcast hosts guest Eric Cole. Eric has written several books on security and offers insight into how security practitioners should be judged, the evolution of secure coding and more.
This episode is packed with some great analogies and an excellent explanation of the technical debt that organizations are willing to accept for short term gains.
Posted in Security | No Comments »
September 12th, 2007 Anthony Towry
Lately I've been taking a look at Ruby again. This is one of the many languages I want to write a little code in, but just haven't had time to invest much into.
I'm currently pouring over O'Reilly's Learning Ruby book by Michael Fitzgerald. It's only around 213 pages. So far it's been a quick read.
Everything I've experienced with ruby has been smooth barring one area Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Programming | No Comments »
September 12th, 2007 Anthony Towry
Podcast where I rant about the importance of community involvement. We touch briefly on LINQ, but for the most part this is just a short b.s. session. I've got a voice mail message at the end of the cast that is pretty hilarious, so keep listening.
Get Out There! [13:37m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download (61)
Posted in Podcast | No Comments »
September 8th, 2007 Anthony Towry
Tearing up one of the basic business models of the internet is the news of the day boys and girls. The blogosphere is a buzz with the release of a popular Firefox extension by the title of Adblock Plus. This extension allows users to build a list of unwanted advertisements (including full domain blocking) or subscribe to an already established blacklist. When the user visits a site where ads match the list the ads are prevented from displaying.
After a few days of using the extension, I'm in love. I think I became desensitized to how much crap I was being bombarded with on a daily basis. Oh, but not any more kids! I'm now surfing in a cleaner and more focused way.
So this is great for me, but what about the money making? Won't this cause the tubes to rust?
I personally don't think so. Advertising in podcasts and videocasts are perfectly safe for the time being and there are already ways of subverting this blocking software (some suggested by the creator himself).
I don't know how feasible some of these ideas are, but I really don't care and neither will 80% of the users out there. Most of us want to kill the crap. It's distracting and its clumsy.
One of the most idiotic attempts to run Adblock Plus off the road is the redirection of all Firefox users to whyfirefoxisblocked.com. The author fires off on a rant calling the ad blocking public thieves. What are you smokin' and how much for a garage full?
Send whatever you want down the pipe to me buddy, but I get to determine what to do with it. Go get the extension and use it. It rocks.
Posted in Web development | No Comments »
