NBC mistakenly reveals face of Saddam's judge

Posted onAuthornetjeffLeave a comment

Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News led off the Tuesday March 1
newscast with an "exclusive" that the presiding judge in the trial of
Saddam Hussein had been assissinated.  Although a judge was
assassinated, it was not the lead judge in the Saddam case.  Oops.

Not surprisingly, nearly everbody has blurred out the lead judge's
face and never referred to the lead judge by name.  But NBC,
believing that the lead judge was dead, aired footage of the judge without his face blurred.  Double oops.

So now, anybody who saw that newscast knows what the judge who will decide Saddam's fate looks like.

I first heard about this on the

Nuttin But Stringz

Posted onAuthornetjeffLeave a comment

Heard these guys on the Tonight Show.  From their website:

When you first spy the New York duo's
streetwise style, you may expect them to start rapping, but then you
hear their violins, and an entirely profound and altogether surprising
sound awakens from their souls. Dubbed N.B.S or Nuttin But Stringz, the
talented young musicians play an intense blending of classical music,
jazz, r&b, and yes, hip hop.

They've got a 30-second audio clip available.

Epistemic uncertainty

Posted onAuthornetjeffLeave a comment

Below is an excerpt from Jonh Ridgway's book review of "Waltzing with Bears", which is about software project risk management.  The general concept of epistemic vs. aleatory uncertainty is very important.

[…] Do yourself a favour, ignore what the book says about risk analysis [for software projects] and go and buy a good book on Bayesian Methods and Decision Theory. You don't have to take my word for this, just type in 'epistemic uncertainty and Monte Carlo' into your Internet search engine and take it from there. In the meantime, here are some background notes to help explain my remarks:

There are two types of uncertainty: epistemic and aleatory. As the name suggests, epistemic uncertainty results from gaps in knowledge. For example, one may be uncertain of an outcome because one has never used a particular technology before. Such uncertainty is essentially a state of mind and hence subjective. Aleatory uncertainty results from variability that is intrinsic to the behaviour of some systems [like throwing dice] (alea is the Latin for die). For example, I can be confident regarding the long term frequency of throwing sixes but I remain uncertain of the outcome of any given throw of a dice. This uncertainty can be objectively determined. Read More …

Nanny-in-the-Middle Attack

Posted onAuthornetjeffLeave a comment

"Man-in-the-Middle" attack's occur in the "real" world, not just in computer security. In this case, it was a Nanny-in-the-Middle…
Security Notes from All Over: Man-in-the-Middle Attack

(from http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#6)

The phrase "man-in-the-middle attack" is used to describe a computer attack
where the adversary sits in the middle of a communications channel
between two people, fooling them both. It is an important attack, and
causes all sorts of design considerations in communications protocols.

But it's a real-life attack, too. Here's a story of a woman who posts an ad
requesting a nanny. When a potential nanny responds, she asks for
references for a background check. Then she places another ad, using
the reference material as a fake identity. She gets a job with the good
references — they're real, although for another person — and then
robs the family who hires her. And then she repeats the process.

Look what's going on here. She inserts herself in the middle of a
communication between the real nanny and the real employer, pretending
to be one to the other. The nanny sends her references to someone she
assumes to be a potential employer, not realizing that it is a
criminal. The employer receives the references and checks them, not
realizing that they don't actually belong to the person who is sending
them.

It's a nasty piece of crime.

The San Francisco Chronicle carried the full story.