History, Poetry, Security

Third Degree

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This poem by Langston Hughes (1902-1967) struggles to have a voice and ends up feeling detached, looking in from an outsider’s perspective.

Two sides of a brutal interrogation fight for the reader’s attention, as if he wanted to avoid being a victim to his own poem. Faced with both views at the same time we end up without either, and can only wonder if he intended the reader to be a fly on the wall:

Hit me! Jab me!
Make me say I did it.
Blood on my sport shirt
And my tan suede shoes.

Faces like jack-o’-lanterns
In gray slouch hats.

Slug me! Beat me!
Scream jumps out
Like blowtorch.
Three kicks between the legs
That kill the kids
I’d make tomorrow.

Bar and floor skyrocket
And burst like Roman candles.

When you throw
Cold water on me,
I’ll sign the
Paper . . .

Security

AOL CTO removed

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Rumors are flying that Maureen Govern, CTO of AOL, has left her post as a result of the search results exposure two weeks ago. I noted that she has unceremoniously disappeared from their “Who’s Who” page. Here is an excerpt from the old lineup, prior to today’s change. Hope this is ok to post for reference:

AOL who's who

The current page is here for comparison. Her bio used to be available, but it has also been removed:

https://www.corp.aol.com/whoweare/whoswho/govern.shtml

Not even a redirect? I get a 404 error. And is it really necessary for AOL to advertise “Apache 1.3.33” on their 404 pages? (1.3.37 is the current legacy version)

Anyway, she was named CTO in 2005. I could not help but notice that information security was not mentioned in her bio or her hire announcement. Will this incident lead AOL to hire a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or at least put someone on the board with security expertise? Privacy boards are good, but will the CTO be more formally challenged with security concerns or is that someone else’s bailiwick? Here’s how the CEO described her when she was hired:

She has the critical combination of wireline and wireless, service provider and manufacturer, network and back-office experience to help us build and transition our infrastructure to meet the demands of the changing marketplace.

Pretty vague, but you still should see something more like “and ensure the safety…” if you want to hint that security is an explicit part of the job responsibilities, no?

EDITED TO ADD (8/21): Emergent Chaos has posted more details on who has been let go from AOL.

Food, Poetry, Security

Mislabelled meat destroyed in Northern Ireland

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This is a strange story about the global meat market and its use of labels:

Hundreds of tonnes of meat seized during a Food Standards Agency investigation in County Fermanagh must be destroyed, a court has ordered.

Some of the meat was decomposing, foul smelling and green coloured.

The court heard some meat seized at Euro Freeze Ireland (Ltd) in Lisnaskea had bogus health markings and an expiry date of October 2000.

The smell and color were giveaways. What happens when food is engineered not to smell or change color when it decomposes? The information we see on labels will only increase in value as other forms of identification, and therefore trust, disappear.

This brings me back to my concern over cherries made red, almost in a parody of themselves, while the labels to tell you how they are made red are found too alarming to be publically consumed.

I hate to say it but, speaking of rotten meat and things syrupy sweet, this story suddenly reminded me of the poem called “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Security

Silicon grafitti

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Here is a fun collection of messages found on parts of a computer, invisible to the naked eye:

Our search has led to a new collection of photomicrographs (photographs taken through a microscope) featuring many of the interesting silicon creatures and other doodling scribbled onto integrated circuits by engineers when they were designing computer chip masks. […] Engineers designing modern computer chips have a very rich sense of humor as you will discover when you visit our Silicon Creatures Gallery that we keep corralled in the Silicon Zoo. We hope you enjoy your adventure!

There seem to be a lot of Texas flags, and I thought the disclaimer and the warning were amusing.

This reminds me of the Amiga 1000, which had signatures of the designers on the inside of the case, “including the pawprint of Jay Miner’s dog Mitchy”.

Are there any puzzles or ciphers? Will these become the cave paintings of our generation?