Yes, of course they do. They’re the government. Nothing moves quickly, and innovation is stifled 95% of the time. But alas, even Uncle Sam can’t hide under the information technology of the 90’s forever. As the web begins talk of Web 3.0 (whatever that really means), the federal government is beginning to look into taking advantage of some of the Web 2.0 technology that has been around for a couple of years.
The launch of A-Space, “MySpace for the intelligence community,” was very publicly announced as a new attempt to foster information sharing and collaboration across agencies. But whenever you deal with sensitive or classified data, security becomes a major hurdle to data sharing.
Anyway, this Federal Computer Week article, “Play it safe on the interactive Web,” caught my attention. It attempts to give tips to federal IT-types on how to avoid taking any risks while trying out some of the latest Web 2.0 tech. I couldn’t help but feel that the author misses the point of interactive, collaborative, service-based systems. It seems more like a list of how to safely give the appearance of venturing into these new technologies.
The very first suggestion is to isolate new cutting edge initiatives from the rest of the organization. Well, doesn’t that defeat a lot of the point? You can’t create a great new interactive, web-based analyst interface to query multiple, disparate databases across various agencies if you are going to keep things isolated (as an example). Tip number two: “keep an eye on XML.” Sorry, but XML is not some newfangled thing that might be useful. I’m positive that it’s already all over government IT systems. Sure, it can present new challenges in sharing data, but it also allows for new, innovative solutions to old problems. (Just remember that XML is not always the right tool for the job.)
I must say, the article isn’t all bad. It does bring out some issues with Web 2.0-type systems, such as the need to really validate untrusted user input. And I can’t argue with the last tip of embedding security into the development process. But overall, I think the government should be more aggressive in adopting new ideas and software technologies. Security should be included, but not a roadblock.
A distributed computing project known as GIMPS (The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) was used to discover the 45th and 46th Mersenne prime numbers. These are huge numbers, with way more digits than the human mind can really grasp the size of. Every time something like this happens, I’m reminded of the incredible reliance of cryptography on prime numbers. Obviously, numbers this big are not exactly useful, but the process of discovering them could teach us something about primes in general. In any case, it’s an interesting mathematical achievement.
Some of the press coverage I’ve seen has been wrong, giving credit to UCLA mathematicians, when it was really just a computer that happened to be in UCLA, which was connected to the GIMPS network. GIMPS has thousands of computers from volunteers all over the world working on the problem simultaneously.
(237156667-1) and (243112609-1) are both prime!
I love learning new technologies by first getting a quick overview, and then looking at lots of examples. This method usually gets me up and running fast, and helps me know what to focus on when I do further reading to go in depth. Nowadays, screencasts are the trendy way of doing demos, and they’re really quite good at helping people understand how something is done.
In this case, I’m talking more about programming - in particular with Django (the Python-based web framework). This Week in Django, which I had never heard of previously, has created an awesome series of screencasts to help users hit the ground running. They cover the basics, like installation and project creation, all the way to user authentication and the forms library.
The series is worth checking out even if you already know how to use Django in general. You might pick up a few tips, or discover a better way of doing something.
I know this sucks when it happens to you, especially if you’re famous, but it really is kind of funny how easy it was.
As detailed in the postings, the Palin hack didn’t require any real skill. Instead, the hacker simply reset Palin’s password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search. [Threat Level from Wired.com]
This definitely makes a good case for two-factor authentication. That way just having the password would not be good enough to log in to her account - you would also need the physical token (like a SecurID) that she would own.
Here’s an interesting story of unintended consequences. iPhone users, you know how when you press the Home button, the screen you’re looking at shrinks away as the main menu comes up? Well, that’s a pretty simple graphics trick to do, but it does require treating the current screen as an image. So, each time the iPhone needs to perform that user interface magic, it takes a screen shot of whatever you happen to be doing.
That basically means that there is a pretty good record of all your activity throughout the iPhone, including stuff you do in Safari, Mail, or any other apps. In theory, the screen shots are only temporary and get deleted automatically. But just like on any other computer storage device, deleting data usually does not really mean it’s gone.
The article below talks about how computer forensics investigators have been using this unintended consequence to their advantage. It’s actually helped them discover critical evidence in some pretty serious cases.
But from a personal privacy stand point, this kinda sucks. Assuming Apple wants to keep this pretty feature around, one solution would be to securely wipe the screen shot as soon as it’s done being used. Another possibility is to make sure that the image is always written to the same file and location on disk, so that you can only easily recover the most recent one. Anyway, I have a feeling this issue will stick around for a while, so just be aware of the consequence.
IPhone Takes Screenshots of Everything You Do | Gadget Lab from Wired.com.
Thanks so much for the kind words about This Week in Django. Eric did an amazing job and has a ...