Emergent Chaos

In my work blog: “Announcing Elevation of Privilege: The Threat Modeling Game.”

After RSA, I’ll have more to say about how it came about, how it helps you and how it helps more chaos emerge. But if you’re here, you should come get a deck at the Microsoft booth (1500 row).

Nasty psychiatrissstss! Hates them, my precious! They locks uss up in padded cell! They makes uss look at inkblotsss! Tricksy, sly inkblotsss! Nasty Elvish pills burnsss our throat!

…

Yesss We Hatesss themsss Evil oness yess my preciousss we hatess themsss

But They Helpsss us!

No they hurtsss usss, hurtsss usss sore!

NCBI ROFL: Did Gollum have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder? via Diagnosing Gollum.

There’s an elephant of a story over at the New York Times, “Musician Apologizes for Advertising Track That Upset the White Stripes.” It’s all about this guy who wrote a song that ended up sounding an awful lot like a song that this other guy had written. And how this other guy (that being Mr. White) took offense to the work of Mr. Kraft, a subcontractor to the folks who were producing a soundtrack for an ad being made for the US Air Force.

The whole thing’s a bomb, but the fact pattern keeps irritating something in my brain. It must be something subconscious.

We’re honored to be nominated for “Most Entertaining Security Blog” at this years “2010 Social Security Blogger Awards.” Now, in a fair fight, we have no hope against Hoff’s BJJ, Mike Rothman’s incitefulness, Jack Daniel’s cynicism, or Erin’s sociability.

But, really, there’s no reason for this to be a fair fight.

So we’re asking our readers to help us cheat. For the next month, whenever you see any of the judges (Mike Fratton, Bill Brenner, Kelly Jackson-Higgins and Larry Walsh) buy them a drink, mention how entertaining our story of the day was, and send us the bill.

We thank you. And remember, as you drink to our success, you’re making America stronger, strengthening your community, reducing taxes and fighting terrorism. Future generations will thank you.

Street with a View is an art project in Google Street View, with a variety of scenes enacted for the camera, either to be discovered in Street View, or discovered via the project web site.

via David Fraser.

That is all.

The back does explain that it’s 76% organic petite sirah, and 24% non-organic grapes. I just thought it was a pretty funny thing to put on the front label, and wonder which consumers are going to be more likely to buy it, knowing that it’s 76% organic.

I never heard of C Recursion till the day before I saw it for the first and– so far– last time. They told me the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about C Recursion. The shrewd-faced agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered.

“You could take that old bus, I suppose,” he said with a certain hesitation. “It runs through C Recursion, so the people don’t like it. I never seen more’n two or three people on it– nobody but them C folks.”

…

void Rlyeh
(int mene[], int wgah, int nagl) {
int Ia, fhtagn;
if (wgah>=nagl) return;
swap (mene,wgah,(wgah+nagl)/2);
fhtagn = wgah;
for (Ia=wgah+1; Ia<=nagl; Ia++)
if (mene[Ia]<mene[wgah])
swap (mene,++fhtagn,Ia);
swap (mene,wgah,fhtagn);
Rlyeh (mene,wgah,fhtagn-1);
Rlyeh (mene,fhtagn+1,nagl);
} // PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULHU!

You might want to read entirety of the C Programming Language, by Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft. (I am told that the only extant copy is in the library at Arkham, but excerpts, god only knows why anyone would copy such a thing, can be found in shadowy corners.)

USA Today informs us that:

Despite surveillance cameras and heavy security, vandals in a small Swedish town have burned down a giant Yuletide straw goat for the 24th time since 1966, the Associated Press reports.

Here at Emergent Chaos, we’re deeply concerned that the goat ended up with neither privacy nor even temporary safety.

Photo: AP Photo/Pernilla Wahlman

Precision blogging gets the scoop:

You’re probably talking about this terrible security disaster already: the largest database leak ever. Arweena, a spokes-elf for Santa Claus, admitted a few hours ago that the database posted at WikiLeaks yesterday is indeed the comprehensive 2009 list of which kids have been naughty, and which were nice. The source of the leak is unclear. It may have come from a renegade reindeer, or it could be the work of a clever programmer in the Ukraine. Either way, it’s a terrible black eye for Santa. Arweena promised that in the future, access to this database would be restricted on a “need to know” basis. And you know who that means!

Let’s see if customers really change their behavior. I know which way I’m betting.