I really should comment about the Michael Lynn – Cisco situation. I’ve been really quite interested in this since news first broke of it. In case you don’t know anything about it the basic situation is threefold. First, Michael Lynn found a vulnerability of some kind in Cisco’s routers, which make up a very large portion of all routers on the Internet. Second, Cisco decided that they didn’t want word of this to get out and took actions to prevent Michael from presenting his findings at a conference. Third, Michael decides to present anyhow, and all hell breaks loose.

My thoughts on this are pretty simple. Michael Lynn absolutely did the Right Thing ™ here. He’s coming through this pretty clean. Cisco is wasting time and money on trying to censor something that can’t and shouldn’t be censored. They are coming through this pretty dirty. Cisco needs to make absolutely sure that they address the technical issues Michael has discovered as quickly as possible. Already there are myriads of black hats out there, who never thought to attack a Cisco routers because of their reputation for highly secure code, that are now looking into the possibility.

Lastly, I think it’s super sad that one of the most basic tenets of computer security is still not easily understood by a major corporation. Obscurity is NOT security.

In other news, I’m really glad to see that Mike Modano is staying with Dallas. It’s nice to see some loyalty still exists. I know he probably could have gotten a slightly better offer somewhere else, particularly with the new salary cap for the NHL. Good to hear he chose to stick with the only team he’s ever played for. Also, it was nice that they were willing to make him a competitive offer to give him that choice. I think a lot of sports franchises simply give up with their free agents.

Slate.com has an interesting article on why Supreme Court Justices tend to become more liberal over time. Personally, I really subscribe to the theory that virtually all clerkships are given to freshly minted lawyers from rather liberal academic institutions with high reputations. It’s hard for anyone to remain the same when they are surrounded with liberal clerks for decades. Just my thoughts. I’m not a Supreme Court Justice, so I obviously don’t know for sure.

One last thing. I found a really cool flash card program written in Java. I’m using it to help study for the GRE and I’ll upload my wordlist when I get it completed.