Thursday, June 06, 2002

Lisa pointed me to an article from Reuters: Norwegian scientists said on Thursday they had confirmed Swedish research indicating that fried and baked foods contained a cancer-causing substance and urged big eaters to cut back. The Norwegian Food Control Authority said its study indicated that high levels of acrylamide in fried and baked foods caused 30 cases of cancer a year among Norway's 4.5 million population. Wish I knew what "big eaters" means, or how high is high. Of course, the flip side is that just by being alive you're bound to die somehow, and what's the harm in some french fries here or potato chips there if you're over fifty times more likely to experience some kind of violent death anyway? 4:52:09 PM

From The Register, an "interesting" security plan: "make sure the operating system and software it runs are so old that current hacking tools won't work on it." Hmm. The article raises some decent points, but it seems more like a deterrent than a valid security policy. If I put up a small sign outside my house, maybe a red stop sign with silver reflective lettering, "Security by Whoozitz," then I'd expect Joe Punk Criminal looking for something to do on a Saturday night will simply move on, looking for an easier target. But if James Expert Criminal has decided that he wants a particular bobble that he noticed through the window, I don't think the signage is necessarily going to keep him out. And whether I've got a deadbolt, a Doberman, or lasers surrounding a pressure-sensitive floor, he'll simply gauge his experience level against the complexity of my security system. 11:24:19 AM

Usability Matters Courtesy of slashdot: We have just finished a study that shows how user interface design flaws allow users on Kazaa to share their personal files without their knowledge. In a laboratory user study, only 2 out of 12 subjects were able to correctly determine that Kazaa was sharing their entire hard drive. We looked at the current Kazaa network and discovered that many users are sharing personal information such as email and data for financial programs such as Microsoft Money. To see if other users on Kazaa were aware of this and taking advantage of users ignorance, we ran a Kazaa client for 24 hours with dummy personal files. During this time, files named "Inbox.dbx" and "Credit Cards.xls" were downloaded from our client by several unique users. Bolding is mine. Just imagine the hurdles Microsoft is going to have to jump over if they want people to take their connectivity solution -- TrustBridge ("designed to allow companies to easily share information about customers, employees and other common users of applications and networks") -- seriously. File sharing can be a very tricky thing. 9:02:59 AM

Mark Twain. "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." [Quotes of the Day] 6:12:19 AM