Blog Heap of Links for the day 22 March 2009

President Barack Obama has dropped a proposal to bill veterans' private health insurance for combat-related injuries... [How very... white of him... (sorry, couldn't resist)]

A former Children's Hospital Boston pediatrician and best-selling author accused of sexually abusing as many as 50 boys will never practice medicine again, according to an agreement he signed yesterday with the medical board in North Carolina....

The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths.... evidence of more than 125 control systems breaches involving systems in nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, water utilities, the oil industry and agribusiness.... a June 1999 gasoline pipeline rupture near Bellingham, Washington. That rupture spilled more than 200,000 gallons of gasoline into two creeks, which ignited and killed three people. Investigators found several problems that contributed to the rupture, but Weiss has identified a computer failure in the pipeline's central control room as part of the problem. ... It could take the U.S. a long time to dig out from coordinated attacks on infrastructure using control systems.... The industrial control system industry is years behind the IT industry in protecting cybersecurity, and some of the techniques used in IT security would damage control systems...

The government is working on a new Smart Grid that would use computer technologies to make the country's energy infrastructure more efficient. But the government's plans for increased technology research and a smart electric grid could be compromised if cybersecurity is not improved.... "Unfortunately, if the new smart meters are not secure, they can be hacked, taken over by attackers and used to disrupt the delivery of electricity.... If the smart grid is built to existing standards, however, it will not be secure. ... The real risk lies in the long-term damage to our economic competitiveness and our technological leadership...."

Earlier this week, the social networking site Twitter was rocked by a brief Tweet exchange which stirred up feelings all over the web. The widely reported on story is of a woman, Connor Riley, who Tweeted the following: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Shortly thereafter a Cisco employee spotted the Tweet and responded with: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." The exchange launched what really seemed to be the entire Internet into an uproar.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them. Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

a British parody of American sitcoms of the 1950s. That seems normal enough, right? It featured a husband and wife dealing with domestic hijinks such as not getting along with the neighbors. So why would such a show fail so quickly? Oh, one more thing: the husband and wife? Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. ... aired precisely once on Britain's Galaxy satellite channel... Hitler's neighbors are Jewish... To be fair, the show's creators knew they were courting controversy and that many people would find the concept to be in very poor taste. I think they just underestimated. A lot.

Confronted with orbiting junk again, NASA ordered the astronauts aboard the linked space station and shuttle Discovery to move out of the way of a piece of debris Sunday. Discovery's pilots fired their ship's thrusters to reorient the two spacecraft and thereby avoid a small piece from a 10-year-old Chinese satellite rocket motor that was due to pass uncomfortably close during Monday's planned spacewalk.

FAYETTEVILLE — At the start of every school day, administrators at Fayetteville Christian School will impound every student's cell phone beginning Tuesday. A local newspaper reports the policy came to fruition after teachers caught students texting test answers twice this year

The tool is mainly aimed at IT professionals working in a corporate environment who still need test the new browser with internal applications and sites, although individuals may use it as well.