The Blog of Harald

globeandmail.com : Alienation at home, criticism from abroad

I don’t think John Hostettler’s comments have anything to do with terrorism.

What I don’t understand is the actual reason he and his buddies want to close the Canada – U.S. border.

Can either of my readers enlighten me?

*Update:* There is one simple explanation floating around. Some factions within the US want to close the southern borders (both Mexico and Carribean), without creating the perception that they are singling out those borders for special treatment. For that to work, they have to close the Canadian border too.

Also, this is an election year, and politicians are experts at playing on irrational fears…

* A couple of weeks of high-priority customer escalations
* a whole bunch of internal stuff
* first communion for the kids
* Gareth’s trip to Ottawa
* digging up the back yard (which drains better now)
* preparing for vacation and summer camp
* prep for “The Queen’s Guard”:http://www.cfrq.net/~rolemaster/queensguard/ and our first session

I’m ready for my vacation now…

Darn; the census asks me about things that happened “last week”, defined as May 7-13, so I have to stop filling it out…

* very high winds, potentially damaging to kites, but fun anyway (I flew the cheap kites just in case)
* phone calls with work
* much fun tangling my spinners into other people’s kite lines
* seeing people I haven’t seen since September (sometimes caused by the previous item)
* 7 hours of code wrangling to refactor error handling and reconfiguration logic
* slightly low winds, but enough for the 5′ and 6′ deltas, which stayed parked in the sky all day
* two-line foolishness with Norm
* Gareth got a pie in the face for his birthday!

Yes, another fabulous start to the kiting season :)

I got the long census form! I got the long census form!

(I love filling out forms; it’s a weakness :-)

“Film of the Book: Top 50 movie adaptations revealed”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1756384,00.html

I’ve marked the one’s I’ve seen (any version of) and/or read (12 books, 20 movies, including 10 “both”):

1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. American Psycho
4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. [BM] Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [BM] The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [BM] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. The Godfather
21. [BM] Goldfinger
22. Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [BM] The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. [B] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [M] Oliver Twist
34. [BM] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [M] The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. [BM] Watership Down

:: rogerebert.com :: Editor’s Notes :: 101 102 Movies You Must See Before…

bq. This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

Of course, I just love movie-list memes, so here’s the list with the ones I’ve seen marked. 34 out of 102; more catching up to do :-). I know Rob & CL have some of the movies I haven’t seen; I’ll have to borrow them sometime.

I was a little surprised by the smattering of movies I have and haven’t seen, both before and after the early 1980s (when I started going to movies regularly). Although, many of the “classics” are actually Andy Beaton’s fault, via the old rep theatres in Toronto :-).

“*2001: A Space Odyssey*” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
“*Alien*” (1979) Ridley Scott
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“*Annie Hall*” (1977) Woody Allen
“*Apocalypse Now*” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
“*Bambi*” (1942) Disney
“The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
“*Blade Runner*” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“*Blue Velvet*” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
“*Casablanca*” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“*The Day the Earth Stood Still*” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
“*Dr. Strangelove*” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“*Duck Soup*” (1933) Leo McCarey
“*E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial*” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
“*The Empire Strikes Back*” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
“*Fargo*” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“*Fight Club*” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“*Gone With the Wind*” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“*The Graduate*” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“*It’s a Wonderful Life*” (1946) Frank Capra
“*Jaws*” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
“*Lawrence of Arabia*” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
“*Mad Max 2” / “The Road Warrior*” (1981) George Miller
“*The Maltese Falcon*” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
“Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“*Modern Times*” (1936) Charles Chaplin
“*Monty Python and the Holy Grail*” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
“Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
“*Pulp Fiction*” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“*Rebel Without a Cause*” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
“*Schindler’s List*” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
“*The Seven Samurai*” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“*Singin’ in the Rain*” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“*Some Like It Hot*” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“*The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“*West Side Story*” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“*The Wild Bunch*” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“*The Wizard of Oz*” (1939) Victor Fleming

Someone sent me a link to this video:

Incredible Machines – Google Video

It’s a series of short videos of Rube Goldberg type machines; apparently they were submissions to an advertising contest. Some of the mechanisms are pretty cool!

“Anita”:http://the_nita.livejournal.com/ sent me this:

Academie Duello presents – Modern uses for Historical Swordplay

Will you be ready?

I remembered to set the clocks forward.

I completely failed to reactivate the alarm before bed last night.

Getting out of the house this morning was merely fast, not frenzied, only because the boy (who has to be at school earlier than the girl) was sick today, so I got a half-hour back.

I found it wonderfully ironic that this appeared in my inbox on the same day that we are moving into a new cubicle farm:

Schneier on Security: Cubicle Farms are a Terrorism Risk

Maybe I’m a magpie, but I think that “Google Finance”:http://www.google.com/finance?q=HPQ&btnG=Search is tres cool…

“The problem with Space Elevators”:http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/stuntmutt.html?type=main&image=187

(The joke doesn’t work for me in Firefox, because I’m missing a plugin :-(

feint and attack; move and countermove. The escalation is constant.

Steel armor meant the end of bows and crossbows. Firearms that could punch through armour made it useless as a defense, since armor only made the soldier slow and uncoordinated; a sitting duck. A close formation of infantry firing volleys by the numbers was unstoppable, until the devasation of the machine gun spelled their demise. Kevlar armor influenced the development of armor-piercing rounds (which, incidentally, are *less* deadly because they tend to go through their targets).

Technology is no different:

* Many modern computer viruses and trojans are capable of automatically disabling anti-virus software.

* Carjackings are on the rise, not because criminals necessarily like violent crime, but because with modern auto security systems it’s the only way to steal the car.

* In Denmark, criminals are breaking into stores and ransacking them; not because they like trashing stores, but because they can install ATM card-skimming hardware while everyone is distracted.

* In the Netherlands, they’re less subtle; they simply blow up the ATM and scoop the cash as it flutters down. (Kind of reminds me of the back-hoe technique of driving up and scooping the ATM out of the wall :).

Plus ca change, plus le meme chose.

It’s amazing how quickly people stop stealing your bandwidth when you substitute the images they were “borrowing” with something relatively disgusting.

I’m evil, it’s true. On the other hand, the traffic load from the image theft was bringing down the server, so…

“The Queen’s Guard”:http://www.cfrq.net/~rolemaster/queensguard/

Not much there yet, but knowing Rob, there will be real soon now…

must … not … strangle …

I went to log on to my Group RRSP provider’s website today Thanks to a misguided policy that HR introduced this year, my January RRSP contributions ended up in a non-registered plan, and I wanted to fix it. It turned out that I can fix this particular problem on the web, but that’s beside the point.

When I logged in, I was informed that my password had expired, and must be changed. It’s been 18 months since I logged in (yes, I check my quarterly statements, but I’m happy with the results; no changes required). I dutifully filled in the boxes, only to be faced with password strength requirements. Now, the whole point of these things is to prevent high-speed, dictionary-based password guessing attacks. You can’t launch a high-speed guessing attack against this website because it’s really slow, and after a certain number of failures, your account is locked out. And we have the research to prove that these kinds of passwords are less secure, because people cannot remember them and are forced to write them down. But a bunch of security consultants are getting paid to write password policies, and they’re an insurance company so care greatly about liability, so there you go.

Anyway, for as yet unknown reasons, I managed to fumble the password change, so I couldn’t get back into my account. So then I trundled off to the password reset page. And it occured to me:

* My password expires regularly. The problem is, I don’t login regularly (who moves RRSP funds around that often, anyway?).
* Password strength rules are enforced (mixed-case, numbers or symbols, minimum length, etc.)

And yet, the password reset page does none of this, and doesn’t have any other security checks! At least they used to make me phone Ireland to change my password. Now, I type in the answer to my challenge question, my date of birth, and instantly a new password is printed on the screen. The answer to my challenge question doesn’t have to be mixed case or have numbers, and never changes! They don’t even take the minor step of using e-mail to send my either my new password or a temporary, expires soon password reset URL. Granted, this is a minor security enhancement, but it does keep the amateurs out.

Does anyone else see a false sense of security here?

The irony is that I spent the rest of today fighting with our own password reset implementation :-).

Bill Gates has promised that the password will be obsolete in 2007; I’m beginning to hope he’s right…

It figures. After doing a bunch of work to move my backup mailserver to a “virtual server”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2006/01/29/power-and-virtualisation/, it worked fine for about 10 days, and then suddenly I was seeing no incoming email in the logs. This is a sign of a problem; even when the primary server is working, spammers are always connecting to the backup (in the hopes of getting past filters).

Much testing has determined that rogers is now blocking inbound SMTP on my portion of the network (something they’ve apparently been rolling out for over a year now). The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that…

What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Or, as catspaw puts it, “Why do we love to hate”:http://insanecats.com/cgi-bin/single.py?month=feb06&msg=10?