By Bruce Schneier:
You know you’ve got a problem when you can’t tell a hostile attack by another nation from bored kids with an axe to grind.
Also, on a crypto related humour note - The Traveling Cryptographer’s Problem, via Bart. 
The OED has a spelling FAQ, so if you’re ever at a loss at whether it’s email, e-mail, Email or E-mail, then worry no more, the OED website says:
We recommend email, as this is now by far the most common form. If in doubt with other words, hyphenate - this is the most comprehensible form of such words.
That same section also has a page on how “ye” came about, and why it doesn’t mean “the”:
The use of ye for the, like the use of f for s, results from a misreading of old letter-forms, in this case the letter ‘thorn’ (for the sound ‘th’), which in its plain version looks like a p with the stem extended above the loop. ‘Thorn’ originated as a runic letter, and is still used in writing the Icelandic language.
Apparently it was mainly used to refer to more than one person as the subject of a sentence.
As part of Adobe’s OpenScreen project to get Flash onto more devices they have just openly published the Flash 9 specification, with what appear to be no restrictions on their part (that I can see). The OpenScreen site seems to confirm it, listing their moves as:
This is great news, suddenly Flash becomes an open standard and the projects to create open source viewers for it suddenly should have a lot of the information that they need. It doesn’t remove all the issues though, some of the codecs that can be employed are patented and can themselves attract licensing fees, but it does appear that they are not required (unlike OOXML, which requires MP3 for audio content for example). It also means that people wanting to implement open tools to create Flash content, or export to Flash, will have their job made a lot easier too.
Hats off to Adobe - better late than never!
Update: This also includes the FLV/F4V specification too!
Found via the ever excellent LWN..
CSIRO has developed a biodegradable plastic that’s made from wheat starch. They say:
The wheat starch plastic has similar properties to conventional plastic, but it will break down in the compost heap in 40 to 50 days.
They also claim that it won’t contaminate the food it holds, but I wonder if it is suitable for coeliacs given that wheat starch is known to contain residual gluten ?
(Hat tip to Jeremy for that).
At the ripe old age of 86 Humph has left the building.. 
The master of trumpets, wit and innuendo will no longer be hosting I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, leaving us ISIHAC addicts to ponder what will happen next ?
Perhaps the BBC will finally get around to publishing that final compendium of Mornington Crescent rules, which might finally bring together the warring standards bodies of the game in a mark of respect to its most notable (and knowledgeable) referee1.
Humph could be surreal, rude, funny and incisive all in the same sentence. His wit, humour and timing was second to none and he will be very much missed.
Here’s to you Humph, don’t get caught in the Dollis Hill Loop..
Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn’t even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it’s telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM’d content that it’s about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines. That means you need to authorize any songs you have on whatever machine you want — and that’s the only place they’ll be able to reside forever. And, of course, any upgrade to your operating system (say from XP to Vista) and you lose access to your music as well.
So now you find out that with DRM you don’t really own the music you bought, it can get taken away from you very easily, but you won’t get your money back I bet!
The Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA), the volunteer fire brigade that covers most of rural Australia and a lot of suburban Melbourne, now has an RSS feed for the incidents that they’re dealing with.
Very handy for keeping an eye on what’s going on. Be even nicer if you could get an RSS feed per CFA region, rather than just the entire state!
Back in 2006 Ross Anderson (Professor of Security Engineering at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory) announced on his blog that he had published the full contents of the first edition of his book “Security Engineering
Now the second edition of Security Engineering
Well, I asked for feedback on putting adverts on the previously and got all positive responses, so I’ve now activated Google AdSense text-only adverts using the excellent no-adverts-for-friends WordPress plugin.
So, if you don’t like adverts, just leave an appropriate comment somewhere and you won’t see them. Either that or use Firefox and the great Adblock Plus plugin!
If for some reason you want to see adverts after leaving a comment I’m afraid you’ll need to go and delete any cookies for www.csamuel.org from your browser first.
I’m considering putting some advertising onto the site using Google for older posts, using the “No Adverts for Friends” plugin which doesn’t display adverts to people who have commented, referred from various social bookmarking sites or on posts that are less than a month old.
But before I do that I’d like to hear readers views about whether or not they like the idea!
(Also remember that if you do leave feedback then you won’t see any adverts if I do put them up. )
Basically I’m hoping to use any income from this to help fund the virtual machine that hosts this site, along with Auties.org (a website promoting the abilities of people on the Autism spectrum).
Update 1: Just to clarify, Auties.org will NOT have any paid advertising on it! Just this blog..
Update 2: Russell Coker left a supportive post on his blog in response to this.
