Barnhard Blog

The hot list for 2008…

[via]

Update: Taxing Difference POLICY

Update (thx 76): War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

The right time, the whole world is watching a OS crash..

More at Presidential Watch 08.

How are these figures in the EU or Asia? Just curious..

C-Span new features, after CNN wake-up moment, a really nice development.

The brainchild of Alex Sotirov and Dino Dai Zovi, the awards were a very late addition to the Black Hat schedule. Sotirov served as master of ceremonies, calling up an individual judge to announce the nominees and the winners in several categories: Best Server-Side Bug, Best Client-Side Bug, Mass Ownage, Most Innovative Research, Lamest Vendor Response, Most Overhyped Bug, and Best Song. (linux.com)

These awards are a nice introduction in the wide field of bizar security holes we finally caught up with.. enjoy.

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Another nice example why tasers are just wrong equipment.

More new uses: Tasers as wrong medical material, result: Patient in Coma.

At www.tsa.org.au the 2008 Broadband Environment Challenge has just been launched. In essence, it requires an innovative idea or compelling proof of benefits where broadband can be used towards environmental sustainability - entries are open to anyone in the world and close on 6th October. The best submission will collect AUD10,000.

I was the original instigator of this Challenge - it ran for the first time in 2007 and culminated in publication of four articles in the Telecommunications Journal of Australia - the published articles are all available via the URL above.

This year Alcatel-Lucent is the major sponsor, and the event was launched yesterday by Australia’s Minister for Broadband, Senator Stephen Conroy.

[Via Robin Eckermann]

Stern: Die schönsten Bilder aus Peking [via bsc]

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database - even long after they have reached adulthood.

It comes amid growing concern about the increasing criminalisation of Britain’s youth and the extent of the country’s surveillance society. (more)

Why maintaining this database if the “trust” of the use of these databases is already broken. Or in a broader contect, like many of the other government databases in England. Use of the words “your protection” and “secure database” you can “trust” on are really starting to feel inflation.

In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: “use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default.” This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default.
The message from Microsoft is clear: don’t use Web standards!

Obviously, the trend of increased popularity of other browsers is likely to increase with this choice.