Kids in Mass. no longer allowed to play tag at recess.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where the nanny-state and escalating lawsuit culture is taking us. An elementary school in Attleboro, Mass. has issued a decree banning tag and other “unsupervised chase games” during recess.

Just pathetic, is what this is.

Hat Tip: Power Line

Security breach: 30% of users write their passwords down

One of the things that’s been going around in the computing field since the movie War Games was shown has been the phenomenon of users writing down their passwords and leaving them in places they can be easily found. This simple act constitutes the most common form of security breach and, in most case, circumvents the entire security apparatus of a given company. A study released yesterday shows that common IT departmental techniques of requiring “stong passwords” (meaningless strings of numbers and letters) and requiring frequent password changes are rendered useless by this kind of action on the part of the users.

This kind of thing is what’s behind the push for biometrics in user authentication, either fingerprint scanning or retina scan. Triple-factor authentication is the strongest. It’s a matter of something you are (biometrics), something you have (a key or software token), and something you know (a password or phrase). Using this kind of system prevents someone from accessing the system just because a user wrote down or handed out their password. It’s also a bit more cumbersome and a lot more expensive.

Virus alert: video iPods carrying Windows virus

Some Apple video iPods apparently left the factory between 12 September and today carrying a Windows virus. Apple says it’s less than 1% of the total shipped and that iPod nano, shuffle, and their Mac OS X are unaffected. They also confirm that the video iPods now shipping are clear.

Make sure those anti-virus programs are running, kids, and be sure they’re updated.

Ohio’s Taft has made political environment toxic to GOP

I have family in Ohio and spent many years of my life there when I was *cough* years old. While I’ve been in Virginia for almost 2 decades now I’ve kept in touch with the local politics out there. The one, overriding thing I can say about the state’s politics out there is that Governor Bob Taft is almost uniformly seen as a corrupt crook and his affiliation with the GOP has poisoned the electorate against Republicans as a whole.

Are there exceptions? Sure. Federal-level offices are less affected but you have to take note of the public’s feelings on the matter. The latest polls found that 80% of Ohio voters think Taft is radioactive as a governor. Republican Ken Blackwell gets to deal with that fallout and it’s showing.

Democrat Ted Strickland has a nearly 2-1 lead over Republican Ken Blackwell with three weeks left in the race for governor, a poll released Wednesday shows.

The Quinnipiac University poll found 59 percent of likely Ohio voters favored Strickland, a Methodist minister and six-term congressman, while 32 percent backed Blackwell, Ohio’s conservative secretary of state and a favorite of the religious right.

Blackwell is also dealing with the residual ill will from Democrats in the state over his involvement in the 2004 elections. Blackwell quite correctly held to the standard there for the ballots to be used. Specifically, he refused to accept absentee ballots that had been photocopied – they had to be original printed documents. Democrats saw that as a sure sign of election manipulation and that perception has proven persistent regardless of the truth of it all.

The bottom line is that Taft and his antics have created an environment, politically, that’s toxic for Republicans. I am confident that the GOP can overcome the “6th year” curse of being the party in power at the federal level but I think there’s no way the Ohio governorship will remain in GOP hands. Voters there are going to have to live with a Democrat in charge for a few years to see the benefits of the GOP again.