I received official notice today that I passed the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) Data Security Standard (DSS) Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) certification exam.
I guess that now makes me a PCISSCDSSQSA.
Andranik Margaryan dead at 55
Maybe it’s just me but I can’t help but notice that the Armenian prime minister is suddenly found dead a few weeks after announcing that his country would start using a new gas pipeline from Iran by 2008 to lessen its dependence on Russia for power-generating facilities.
It seems the first section was reported to be open just last week.
The Armenia Diaspora complete story does not suggest any kind of foul play is suspected at all, although they do provide this rather awkward quote:
The U.S. charge d’affaires in Yerevan, Anthony Godfrey, issued a statement on the occasion, describing Markarian as a “valuable partner of the United States.”
Apparently he was expected to step down by mid-May, yet his influence over the upcoming elections probably was still considerable. A EurasiaNet writer in Yerevan posted some interesting analysis of the security dynamics of the region.
Analysts in Yerevan have long suggested that Tehran’s main motive for maintaining close links with its sole Christian neighbor is to limit the spread of Turkish influence in the region.
And likewise we probably can assume that US influence in “western-oriented” Armenia is to help limit the spread of Iranian influence, or perhaps facilitate intervention against nuclear proliferation.
Slavery abolition poems
The BBC has posted a special section regarding the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade, to be commemorated this Sunday, March 25th:
Nigerian poet Tolu Ogunlesi has written a poem for the BBC’s Weekend Network Africa programme to commemorate the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
They are taking poetry submissions here.
A selection of them will be posted below and broadcast on BBC Network Africa.
I thought the one by Bill Taunton was pretty clever.
Subway Tunnel Art
Here’s a brilliant concept that puts a light-emitting computer-controlled projector to display images on the dark tunnel walls of a subway. Instead of staring at the empty space, passengers can watch movies of fish swimming, sharks, and other nature scenes. I’m sure someone will want to use this concept to monetize the space but in the meantime it raises all sorts of interesting security and illustrative/aesthetic questions.
Moving Canvas, Project Parasite (35MB mov)
Just in case (pun intended) you don’t want to watch the movie, here’s a brief (pun intended, again!) overview of the project.
1) the artist(s) assemble a simple mobile projector:
2) they mount it conspicuously to a subway car:
3) the box displays cool images into the dark:
4) the box is removed:
They did do some basic phrases, but it’s hard to tell if there was any poetry…
Perhaps for a strictly practical application they could project a city map with the subway’s current progress, or at least the upcoming station name.
Someone also just pointed out to me that this is similar to work done in the US by Improv Everywhere.