The
chance to win theatre tickets is enough to make people give away
their identity, reveals a survey.

Of
those taking part 92% revealed details such as mother's maiden name,
first school and birth date.

This
appears to be another one of the clever annual social engineering
surveys done for the Infosecurity
Europe
conferences. Earlier surveys had been done in London railway stations
and tried to get people to disclose their network passwords in
exchange for a pen or a candy piece. Maybe the
publicity for the earlier surveys led to a change in the tactics.
Perhaps people would be more ready for password questions in a
railway station. "Oh? You must be the people from the security
conference trying to get me to blurt out my password for some
trinket. I'm too smart for that..." 

One
interviewee said, "I am the CEO, I will not give you my password
- it could compromise my company's information".

A
good start, but then the company boss blew it. He later said that his
password was his daughter's name.

What
is your daughters name, the interviewer cheekily asked.

He
replied without thinking: "Tasmin".

Having
helped several friends and co-workers with "identity theft"
problems, I have seen how even the tech knowledgeable people can get
fooled at one time or another. One of the first steps in dealing with
social engineering is to realize that none of us is
totally immune from deception.

One of my favourite sites when I want a new desktop wallpaper is SpaceImaging.com's free image gallery.

I find various aerial and satellite photos fascinating. They give,
literally, a different perspective on the world. Among other things, I
find little surprises in how different the relative arrangement of
geographical or man-made features are compared to our view at ground
level.

Then, there is the sense of how close we are in the world. This was one
of the big impacts of the photos of Earth taken during the 1960s space
flights. “Spaceship Earth”

Some other great sites for geographical, aerial, and other images are:

• Ordnance Survey
  
  Maps of the UK, interesting 2-D "flyover animations", and spectacular scenes of the UK formatted as desktop wallpaper calendars.
  
  
• Keyhole.com (Google)
  
  Great high tech presentation. Has international coverage. Alas, it is a subscription service.
  
  


• Old Maps (UK)
  
  
  This won't have aerial photos or other modern imagery but old maps can give an idea of how locations changed over time.


• Terraserver
  
  An assortment of mapping and imagery resources. There
  is also a
  
  
  Terraserver at Microsoft.com that provide aerial images of the
  USA.

The BBC Web site reports:

A love song performed by an Israeli and a Palestinian
has been broadcast simultaneously on Israel Army Radio and Voice of
Palestine radio.

The bilingual duet, entitled In My Heart, was sung in Hebrew and Arabic by Israeli David Broza and Palestinian Wisam Murad.

There have been some starts and stops as reported by HaAretz.

Not likely to cause immediate end of strife and bloodshed but a song is
better than many other actions. Songs have a way of crossing borders,
of spanning cultures. The networked world mades the song's travel
faster and further.

An interesting, albeit fictional, glimpse of the power of songs across conflicts I saw when
watching the German language original version of Das Boot. There is a
moment which I beleive was lost in the English dubbed version. In one
scene, the WW2 German U-Boat crew, who had been speaking Auf Deutsch
all through the film, breaking into song. The song is "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" sung in English. The language contrast as well as the choice of song were amazing!

J.D. Abolins

"Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won't buy
the wag of his tail.."

-- Anonymous

A variant of "Money can't buy you love" (to which some will reply,
"But money can buy some spectacular imitations of love." <g>

J.D. Abolins

Richard Silverstein's Tikun HaOlam ("Mending the World") blog had a great posting
about the song. Besides providing pointers to the audio, Siverstein gives an insightful review and  a partial translation.

Hear the mp3 audio of the Hebrew version of the song B'Libi.

A man is a man
Time is a moment of time
Who builds his world
And blooms in his garden

In my heart,
In my body,
In my spirit,
In my bosom
Is our land
Our blood,
Our soul
Our lives.

The salt and the sea
?

The truth ?  laid bare
Or that all before my eyes, my emotions
You are my love

Shalom, Salaam

J.D. Abolins