Rubber

Before we start today I need to make it clear that the thing for removing pencil marks from paper is known as an "eraser" in US parlance, and a "rubber" by the British. I mention this so that readers don't later think I am talking about a condom (or rubber in US parlance) when in fact I mean a rubber (eraser in US parlance). All will become clear.

My son is confused. He's taken to sleeping from lunchtime until about midnight, and staying awake for the rest of the time. I think he's nocternal. I'm wondering whether he is a vampire or something.

David Blaine has failed in his goldfish bowl stunt after blacking out during his escape attempt. Actually, the fact that he failed makes me think that it was in fact more difficult than I originally thought. He managed to hold his breath for over 7 minutes, which is I suppose quite a feat, even if he was breathing an oxygen rich mixture. I timed myself and managed 90 seconds yesterday. I wasn't trained by Navy seals of course. What I really want to know is why the rescue divers were wearing silver suits. Did they really need suits? David Blaine didn't have one.

I know I've been rambling on about Tony Blair endlessly for the past week or so, but I need to say something else. There is much unrest in the Labour party after the disasterous performance in local elections. Blair seems to be taking the blame for this, and his own party is calling for him to step down. It has long been assumed that his successor will be Gordon Brown. Blair obviously does not want to go however, and one has to ask the question, is it because he wants to keep his job, or because he doesn't want Gordon to take over? It is well known that Brown and Blair have differences of political opinion. The Telegraph sums it up nicely in an editorial this morning, essentially postulating that Blair doesn't want to hand over to Brown because he doesn't trust him to continue with the reforms, and Brown wants him to go as soon as possible because he thinks Blair is going to scuttle the party just before the next election, not giving him a chance at play PM.

I've discovered that J K Rowling has a really neat Flash website. There are all sorts of little things hidden in various places. I have 5 things in my scrapbook now. I still can't get anywhere with the game however. If you click on the rubber, it takes you to a room with a window, a locked door, a lightswitch, and some coloured liquids. I can't get anywhere with it and it's frustrating. So if anyone can shed some light on it, that would be great. I can trade secrets. I also have no idea what the jumbled words at the bottom of the rubbish page are, click on the sharpener to get there.

There's an interesting case happening in Britain now involving the Shell fuel company. Apparently Shell has stopped using chip and pin payment methods in hundreds of fuel stations because the system has been compromised and substantial amounts of money have been removed from customers' accounts. Details are a bit sparse, but that's to be expected. It would be foolish to tell us how the crime was committed. It is however, a perfect example of how technology designed to make something more secure has done precisely the opposite.

In case you don't know, chip and pin payment is now ubiquitous in UK. If you pay with plastic, you are required to punch in a pin number to verify the card rather than sign a piece of paper.

In my view a hand written signiture is very secure. While it was apparently possible to steal a significant number of pin numbers, it would be extremely difficult to steal a lot of signitures. Also, while the average person can generally recognise a forgery of their own signiture very quickly, and therfore make a challenge based on the evidence of a signed payment slip, the customer has no such ability to challenge someone that has entered the correct pin. And of course, if you have someone's pin number, it's very easy to punch it in. If you have their signiture, it's much harder work.

I once worked in a security role for a financial organisation. Everyone had their own password to log on to the network every morning. It was noticed that people weren't changing their password, so a policy was put in place to make passwords expire every 4 weeks. When the policy was implemented, people did change their passwords, but then changed them straight back again. So a new policy was implemented. No password could be used twice in a 12 month period. People started using password1, password2 etc. So the policy was changed again. No password with fragments similar to a previous password could be used. So people started using passwords like January, February and so on. So they changed the policy again. There was a list of banned words drawn up that couldn't be used a password or a password fragment. That's when people satrted writing down their password. And that was deemed a success because people were forced to use a different password every month. Of course, they were also writing them down inside the front cover of their desk diary as well by that time.