Pirates are notorious for having shifting and disguised identities, which makes catching or even confronting them a major problem. The story of the pirate ship destroyed by the Indian Navy is a good example of the problem:
The alleged pirate ship that was blasted out of the water by the Indian Navy in the Gulf of Aden last week was actually a legitimate Thai fishing trawler that had been seized by pirates earlier in the day, the boat’s owner said Wednesday.
The hijacking of the Ekawat Nava 5 far out at sea; its apparent and immediate conversion to a “mother ship” for the pirates; the gunfight that led to its fiery nighttime sinking; and the harrowing tale of a lone surviving crewman illustrate the dangers and the legal undertow that surround many of the recent hijackings in East African waters.
The story covers the legal issues on the high seas as well as the firefight between the pirates and the Indian Navy that destroyed a private vessel and killed the crew, but did not harm the pirates.
Personally, I always think of the holiday in terms of a President who wanted a united nation to rise above its years of discontent and discord in order to notice the bounty of good deeds done even under the duress of civil war — to recognize and therefore seek a common humanitarian purpose.
Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.
Tragic, but on the other hand the holiday was meant by President Lincoln to be a time of coming together — for opposing parties even within the same family to sit around the table and feel whole again. It could be a perfect occasion to bury differences and celebrate common ground.
Several people have asked me about the change history of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). In a nutshell, change has been minor.
The exception in the latest version (DSS 1.2) is Requirement 6, which added significant changes to web application security.
Requirement 10.7 provides a good example of the subtlety found in most other areas:
Requirement 10.7:
DSS 1.0
DSS 1.1
DSS 1.2
An audit history usually covers a period of at least one year, with a minimum of 3 months available online.
Retain audit trail history for at least one year, with a minimum of three months online availability.
Retain audit trail history for at least one year, with a minimum of three months immediately available for analysis (for example, online, archived, or restorable from back-up).
Marty Ottenheimer pointed out to me the other day that Carrots do not actually help vision. Rather, the story we often hear is a result of a rumor from WWII. ABC Science explains:
…if you don’t get enough carotenes or Vitamin A in your diet, eventually you will suffer problems in your vision. This was the basis of the myth started by the Royal Air Force, the RAF.
In the Battle of Britain, in 1940, the British fighter pilot, John Cunningham, became the first person to shoot down an enemy plane with the help of radar. In fact, in WW II, he was the RAF’s top-scoring night fighter pilot, with a total of 20 kills. Some pilots were better flying in daylight, while others, like Cunningham, were better at night. His nickname was “Cats’ Eyes”. The RAF put out the story in the British newspapers that he, and his fellow night pilots, owed their exceptional night vision to carrots. People believed this to the extent that they started growing and eating more carrots, so that they could better navigate at night during the blackouts that were compulsory during WW II.
But this story was a myth invented by the RAF to hide their use of radar, which was what really located the Luftwaffe bombers at night – not human carrot-assisted super-vision.
The punch-line is that German folklore already held that carrots would make eyes better. Susceptibility to fraud is usually rooted in pre-existing beliefs and prejudice.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995