Monthly Archives: October 2007

An Open Letter to Al Gore

Posted on by
869

Al,

I know you’re busy so I’ll keep it short. Now that you’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize (congrats!), more folks are asking you to toss your hat in the presidential ring.

I’d like to counter that opinion. First of all — and please don’t take this personally — you’re a white guy. Isn’t it about time we had someone for president that isn’t a WASP (yeah, Kennedy was Catholic: we’re so diverse!). There is no affirmative action policy up in the White House, but I think it’s time for a change from the same ole same old.

Second, and far more importantly, there are a lot of folks that don’t take you seriously. I know, it’s sad that people don’t want to accept that climate change is real. But those people justify their skepticism by claiming all your good work is just a vy for the presidency. Don’t feed into this way of thinking.

I know lots of people are saying that being president would give you the power to implement the changes that need to be made. But think of all you have accomplished in the last four years. Do you really want to stop all your good work and start fundraising? Do you want to talk about social security and learn how to laugh in such a way that the media does not find offensive? Then, once elected, you cannot focus exclusively on global warming. You would have to meet foreign dictators and do photo-ops with crippled puppies and sign or veto bills. Not to mention getting entangled in this war, dealing with Korea and Iran.

Wouldn’t you rather keep hanging out with Polar scientists and spreading the good gospel of truth?
The American people didn’t really get to know you until you “lost” (I was in Florida; I know the truth) the presidency and devoted yourself whole-heartedly to your true calling.

Thanks for your time.

Trust No One

Posted on by
460

My boyfriend got miffed at me a few weeks ago. I had put his email in a list that would invite him to join Shelfari. Though he was slightly annoyed to get email from them, he was more annoyed that I gave this site my google name and password. It really didn’t occur to me that this was possibly insecure.

I would have challenged him as paranoid but the day before I had been downloading aps for facebook. I came across a particularly lovely app that would auto-check your myspace and tell you if you had any updates. But the programmer who wrote the nifty app had taken it down. He had an accidental security hole that allowed the username and password to be transmitted transparently, causing malicious folks access to the email info of those who had the installed the application.

I have to remind myself that just becuase I trust the programmer that wrote the program not to do anything shady with my info doesn’t mean that its safe to pass it along.

Here’s another way to look at it: If you have a password, one reason you don’t give it out to those you trust is because if there is some kind of security breach — whether it be a home robbery or online identity theft — you can detective* out how your password got into the wrong hands. The more people who have access to your info, the more difficult that is. And I have heard of cases where the source wasn’t resolved and the same asshole cracker** came back and socked the victim again.

This is all a long lead-up to this link, from hackademix.net, about four recent security weaknesses in google.

This is particularly telling, as google is so widely respected. I don’t know about you, but I’m holding my passwords a little closer to my chest in the future.