Non-running news from the homefront

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When 17 days of security is an 'Olympian' task
I interviewed the guy in charge of the Olympics' IT infrastructure to find out how his team of 2,500 managed to handle 3.1 million "events" daily without a single breach. Turns out any activity outside the norm was met with swift action: disconnection from the network. I guess insomniacs never stood a chance.

Scam artists flocking to MySpace
I wasn't the least surprised that MySpace.com is now a major breeding lab for ID theft and fraud. Dating services like Match.com and eHarmony are also susceptible to abuse, placing paying customers in a tough situation: lie to protect your real identity and be labeled a fraud; or tell the truth and risk being the victim of fraud. What really got me -- and I mean literally -- was learning many music lyric sites are stuffed with spyware. Yikes! I've looked up lyrics before and now understand why my machine suddenly slowed thereafter. Next time, I'll just mumble my way through a song.

Students arrested in bottle bombing
And, finally, a big scandal in the Ranch: the arrests of some prominent young people for pulling a dangerous prank on a high school administrator. Just goes to show that very smart people sometimes do very stupid things.

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