In Pursuit Of Employment: April 2009

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Invitation to Russian Health Fair May 10, 2009

Screenshot: Russian Health Fair, Toronto, May 10, 2009
Credit: Russian Library and Community Information Centre

What a wonderful opportunity to get information about health care providers and to learn more about other health related services.

Everyone is welcome to come and get info on Services for Russian Speaking Community, Alternative Medicine, Home Care, Retirement Residences and much more...

Russian Health Fair

Sunday, May 10, 2009
10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Bernard Betel Centre
1003 Steeles Ave West (and Bathurst St.)
Toronto, Ontario M2R 3T6

Organizers: Health In Motion Rehabilitation, Canadian Hearing Society, Russian Library and Info Centre, CHATS (Community Home Assistance to Seniors)

Target group: Russian speaking adults and seniors

What: tables and booths with displays and info from different agencies that provide services to the Russian speaking Community, as well as other Health related services (with help of volunteer interpreters)

When: May 10, 2009, Sunday.
10:00 am opening – 3:00 pm closing. (9:30-set-up/2:30 clean up).

10 am -11 am: Opening Remarks and Exhibitors Introductions
11 am- 2 pm: Information tables in the Auditorium
2 pm - 3 pm: Panel Discussions: Back Pain, Arthritis, Chronicle Pains, Migraines, Osteopath, Chiropractor and Homeopath

It is free of charge for the public and everyone is welcome to attend. The event will be presented for the 2nd time in Toronto for the Russian speaking community. Ethnic Channels and Newspapers will cover the event. Snacks and drinks will be served.

For information please call (416) 928-2548

Hope to see you there!
Drop In – Free of Charge

Credit: Russian Library and Community Information Centre
http://www.russianlibrary.ca/rlib/content/may-10-2008-russian-health-fair

link:
Invitation to Russian Health Fair 2008

Saturday, April 11, 2009

mafiaboy @ it360: The Dark Side Has Learned

Screenshot: it360.ca: Opening Keynote: Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet
and Why It's Still Broken
By Michael Calce with Craig Silverman
Credit: it360.ca

I don't normally condone the lionising of crackers; it only encourages the little pests. (It's like calling graffiti vandals "artists".) Allowing a major exploit the foundation of a security career also strikes me as a perverse incentive. However, a suitably public recantation and credible evidence of reform should be accepted, so I was prepared to listen to the keynote dialogue between Craig Silverman and Michael Calce (Mafiaboy) at IT-360.

Like Torvalds, Calce was introduced to computers extremely young, and began to explore their internals very thoroughly. Unlike Linus, he had the misfortune to fall in with the wrong "community".

The famous exploit that took down Amazon and Yahoo was devised as a weapon for use in juvenile gang warfare on the Internet, but the damage it caused was not so much deliberately anti-social behaviour, more an example of "Sorcerer's Apprentice Syndrome". Like Robert Morris' 1988 worm, a combination of misapplied (and inadequately tested) skill and adolescent lack of foresight caused damage way beyond its instigator's intentions, and promptly terrified him with its consequences.

Although he still wants to be acknowledged for the technical skill, knowledge, and (perverse) creativity he clearly displayed, Calce seems to have acquired a moral compass as a result of his experiences, and aims to use those attributes in a positive way. What he had to say about the evolution of the Internet since 1998 wasn't really news to anyone who's been watching. (There was some novelty in his suggestion that the fuss over Conficker and April 1. was a diversionary tactic to conceal some other timing or target.)

The Dark Side has learned, and morphed from pointless and largely inconsequential, (to anyone else), tribal squabbling, to serious, financially-motivated crime, with large potential rewards. The threats are greatly enhanced by the multiplication of the bandwidth available to individuals for attacks like DDoS.

The forces of good, on the other hand, are still stuck with an architecture designed for a basically trustworthy environment. In particular, BIND and named are fundamentally broken. Unlike the bad guys, the commercial world appears not to have learnt very much, because it keeps enabling the same old exploits, (buffer overflows, memory corruption, &c), and enabling new ones (XSS &c.).

I'll attribute to youthful naivety his proposed solution of government-level certification of programs. Even if it were possible to restrict the code visible to the Internet, the demonstrated ineptness of government and law-enforcement in networking matters makes any idea of officially-inspired solutions a bad joke. (That's my opinion, not Calce's.)

Even if there were no world-class insights revealed, the event was sufficiently interesting that I might take the book out of the Library.

2009 © AR