Free TV Show from Ustream

Ustream did have a disclaimer on their page about the feed not always being available. It is nearly a mile under water after all. If it’s gone more often than visible, I’ll remove it.

Fortunately, as a result of learning the hardway, we as a [...]]]> Iceland’s volcanos are alive and well. If you haven’t read the news, just ask any number of stranded passengers in many major airports in Europe.Travelers from all over the world have been impacted by cancellations due to the volcanic cloud drifting over Europe.

Fortunately, as a result of learning the hardway, we as a species now know that flying through a volcanic cloud is a bad thing. It really screws-up airplanes. Doing so has nearly cost the lives of passengers and crew on several flights in recent history. Here’s hoping the lessons learned are not soon forgotten.

Vermomt Yankee, after drilling a monitoring well, found tritium in the soil and ground water. Tritium is a low-level radioactive by-product of nuclear plants. Fortunately, none [...]]]> Apparently, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant has fixed it’s leak. [OMG! They leak?] There have been more than 20 leaks at nuclear power plants around the country.

Vermomt Yankee, after drilling a monitoring well, found tritium in the soil and ground water. Tritium is a low-level radioactive by-product of nuclear plants. Fortunately, none of the material was found in drinking water supplies or the nearby Connecticut River.

They say the leak has caused a credibility concern for Entergy, the company that owns the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. [Ya think?] Approximately 150 cubic feet of soil and material will be removed and contaminated gound water is being pump into above gound containers for use in the plant itself.

The leak began in two pipes inside a concrete tunnel. A clogged drain was also found in the tunnel, which allowed the water to seap through an unsealed joint in the tunnel wall.

This is a case where a failure to properly maintain the technology we’ve created nearly caused a disaster. It’s highly unlikely monitoring is something a large corporation would do without regulatory motivation. It appears the government may have done something right by requiring such monitoring. This would be a bite we collectively avoided. But, with 20 other leaks and surely more to follow, it’s only a matter of time before we have a “Three Mile Island” type incident.

Google, recently bitten by a zero-day exploit in China, has been very vocal about this exploit and is threatening to pull out of China. This, in turn, has the U.S. government requesting a response from China on cyber security. Can’t [...]]]> Technology has been chewing-on businesses and governments alike over the past month or so.

Google, recently bitten by a zero-day exploit in China, has been very vocal about this exploit and is threatening to pull out of China. This, in turn, has the U.S. government requesting a response from China on cyber security. Can’t blame the U.S. government for making a case, as IP’s from China have been traced as the source of several attacks over the past year or so. Needless-to-say, China is not happy about the bad press. In fact, they’ve been quite vocal in their denials and have basically told the U.S. “Don’t mess with our business”.

China is akin to a spoiled child. The country believes it’s right on most topics and seems to enjoy “flying in the face” of the world. So long as the world allows China to behave like a spoiled brat, it will continue to do so. If they were just a little less paranoid about information that might topple their power and concentrate on improving the lives of their citizens, they’d be better off. None-the-less, China does not seem happy about the technology bite it’s received.

Microsoft can’t be any happier these days. Internet Explore contained the flaw that, in the end, allowed the perpetrators to gain access to Google’s system. It’s also something Microsoft new about in September of 2009 and didn’t plan to release a fix until February 2010. A 5 month window, from the time they were advised of the flaw to a planned fix, seems a bit long to me. Perhaps to Microsoft now too. It certainly doesn’t look good for the company when something like this happens.

Will future Technology Bites come in triads? Microsoft/Google/China all bitten at once. Very cool! Unless you’ve one of the individuals China was trying to censor.

Hackers tend to attack the most popular products to achieve maximum impact. That usually makes Microsoft the primary target for [...]]]> Having a propular product can mean boon or bust for a software company. According to security firm McAfee (see report), Adobe will become the top target for hackers in 2010, surpassing Microsof Office products.

Hackers tend to attack the most popular products to achieve maximum impact. That usually makes Microsoft the primary target for exploit. But, Microsoft’s dominance in some areas is dwindling. As other products reach levels that compare or surpass Microsoft’s, they become exploit tools for hackers.

Adobe has acknowledged their products have seen an increase in attacks and have begun to respond by decreasing report-to-patch times. The products primarily used for exploits include Flash and Adobe Reader.

Adobe is not alone, other products experienced an increase in hacker exploit activity in 2009. Namely, Firefox and Apple’s Quicktime.

2010 looks like it will be a busy year for anti-virus/security firms. A good New Year’s Resolution would be to purchase good quality anti-virus/anti-spam/anti-malware tool (or tools) and schedule daily updates of your definition file(s). It may not be a “total” answer, but it might reduce a “bite” to a “nibble”.

I’ve spent the last 2 hours waking every 15 minutes due to pain. I’m not in a good mood! Though it’s about the only thing he could have said that would “check” my tongue. This guy [...]]]> The doc was just in (4:30am). First thing he asked, “Would you like to go home today?” Duh!!

I’ve spent the last 2 hours waking every 15 minutes due to pain. I’m not in a good mood! Though it’s about the only thing he could have said that would “check” my tongue. This guy has my prescription intervals set to every 6 hours. That leaves me 2-3 hours of pain between doses. I’m not sure how you don’t figure this out based on collected data. Unless you just don’t consult the data.

It’s not just the PPN previously mentioned. It appears everyone on the night shift is boarder-line worthless. My IV alarm and my room mates both went-off multiple times last night. The alarms would have never been silenced had we not called the nurses station to have one sent down to turn it off. My roomy started cancelling the alarms on his own.

From my room it looks like the night shift does as little as possible. But I’ve only been here 3 nights. I suppose it could be they only actually work 4 out of 7 days.