It was an interesting discussion, with lots of disagreement, but ever-growing consensus. After evaluating several options, one approach was clear—and, I must admit, somewhat embarrassing to Paul.

DJB was right. All those years ago, Dan J. Bernstein was right: Source Port Randomization should be standard on every name server in production use.

There is a fantastic quote that guides a lot of the work I do: Luck is the residue of design. Dan Bernstein is a notably lucky programmer, and that's no accident. The professor lives and breathes systems engineering in a way that my hackish code aspires to one day experience. DJB got "lucky" here—he ended up defending himself against an attack he almost certainly never encountered.

Such is the mark of excellent design. Excellent design protects you against things you don't have any information about. And so we are deploying this excellent design to provide no information.

An Astonishing Collaboration

European Union legislators on Monday proposed ratcheting back an ambitious goal to raise Europe’s use of biofuels, signaling a significant retrenchment.

This is good news -- corn ethanol is assinine. We need to be throwing those resources at cellulosic ethanol research instead!

Europe Reconsiders Biofuel Goal - NYTimes.com

A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

Judge Rejects Bush’s View on Wiretaps - NYTimes.com

Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.

Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.

The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.

'Shroom' Study Reveals Benefits : Discovery News : Discovery Channel

Comparison of the prevalence of I.B.D. and surveys of worm-infestation rates revealed a telling pattern. About 10 years after improved hygiene and deworming efforts reduced worms in a given population, I.B.D. rates jumped. Weinstock had his hypothesis: after a long coevolution, the human immune system came to depend on the worms for proper functioning. When cleaner conditions and new medicines evicted the worms from our bodies, the immune system went out of kilter. “Hygiene has made our lives better,” says Weinstock, now at Tufts University. “But in the process of eliminating exposure to the 10 or 20 things that can make us sick, we’re also eliminating exposure to things that make us well.”

Idea Lab - The Worm Turns - Curing Diseases With Parasites? - Idea Lab - NYTimes.com

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin told a House Appropriations subcommittee March 5 that the U.S. inventory of plutonium-238 - the radioactive material essential for building long-lasting batteries known to the experts as radioisotope power systems - is running out quickly.

"Looking ahead, plutonium is in short supply," Griffin told lawmakers during the first of two days of hearings on the U.S. space agency's 2009 budget request.

It's really unfortunate they way manned exploration is sucking up all of the money at NASA. Project Prometheus which was to develop fission reactors for space probes got killed which would have completely obviated this problem.

SPACE.com -- Plutonium Shortage May Thwart Future NASA Missions to Outer Planets

Air travel is a total hassle, man, and marijuana advocates in Denver say everyone would find the normally excruciating process a lot more pleasant if they could enjoy a few bong hits before boarding. It might even help solve a few of the problems that airlines have been experiencing lately. The way they see it, if people can knock a few back before a flight, they should be able to spark one up. They're calling on airports nationwide to install marijuana lounges.

Stoners, Like, Totally Solve Nation's Air Travel Problems | Autopia from Wired.com

Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the United States, announced today that it has backed off a plan to monitor customers' Internet transmissions.

Cable Operator Backs Off Plan to Monitor Internet Use - washingtonpost.com

Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organization that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users.

The Information Card Foundation is an effort to create a single industrywide approach to managing identity online that promises to reduce drastically the use of passwords and create a system that is less vulnerable to fraud.

Technology Leaders Favor Online ID Card Over Passwords - NYTimes.com

Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?

That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values.

The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer - NYTimes.com