1. Put the lid of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.
2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.
3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close the lid. You may need to stand on the lid.
4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.
5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a "power-wash" and rinse".
6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.
7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift the lid.
8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off.
9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.

Computing.co.uk is reporting that the authors of the new book "Crap Jobs" took an unscientific email survey among people in the United Kingdom, asking them to list what they thought were the worst jobs in their homeland. IT jobs didn't fair well. Here's a sampling of the 100 worst jobs in the UK (#1 being worst):

1) Phone sex operator
2) Ferry cabin cleaner
3) IT Manager
...
13) Landfill Executive
14) Database Builder
...
71) Maggot Farmer
72) Internet Consultant

"Safe deposit boxes from a DBS Bank branch in Hong Kong were taken away and crushed as scrap metal, leaving customers shocked and angry at the loss of their most valued possessions." Umm, oops?. I guess the non-description option costs extra.

Who knew scientists had a sense of humor: the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam Images Hall of Fame.

The U.S. Postal Service has cancelled a brief experiment that allowed the public to create posting stamps using their own images. PhotoStamps was a partnership between the USPS and Stamps.com that started accepting orders in August. PhotoStamp's Terms & Conditions stated that the pictures used must not contain objectionable material or violate anyone's copyright. No other restrictions were imposed at the time.

The program's fate looked grim when two weeks into it CourtTV's The Smoking Gun tested Stamps.com's definition of "objectionable". The results? Stamps featuring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Monica Lewinsky's blue dress, Linda Tripp; Slobodan Milosevic, Jimmy Hoffa, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and high school and college yearbook photos of Ted Kaczynski. The image censors at Stamps.com rejected images of a grown-up Kazynski as well as mug shots of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.

Stamps.com amended their Terms & Conditions two weeks later and banned any images bearing the likeness of adults or teenagers. They then spelled out what types of images would be allowed:

• Babies or Children that appear to be pre-teenagers;
• Pets and Animals;
• Business and Charity logos or graphics;
• Landscape and Wildlife; and
• Vehicles

They then went on to ban material:

• that is obscene, offensive, blasphemous, pornographic, unlawful, deceptive, threatening, menacing, abusive, harmful, an invasion of privacy or publicity rights, supportive of unlawful action, defamatory, libelous, vulgar, illegal, or otherwise objectionable
• that contains or depicts nudity, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive material, rude or obscene material, graphic violence or illegal activities, celebrities or celebrity likenesses, regional, national or international leaders or politicians, current or former world leaders, convicted criminals, or newsworthy, notorious or infamous images and individuals
• that emulates any form of valid indicia or payment for postage
• that violates child pornography laws, child sexual exploitation laws and laws prohibiting the depiction of minors engaged in sexual conduct

When Stamps.com and the USPS announced this program, they said it would run through January, 2005 and they would evaluate the success of the program at that time. The stamps are expensive and there was some concern that the program might not be well received. Judging from the number of stamps ordered (100,000 sheets of 20 stamps) during the seven week program there's no doubt it was a hit with the public. I suspect the downfall came not because of some of the questionable stamps created, but because of the rather arbitrary way Stamps.com's censors reacted. When a flag is called objectionable, but a structure with that same flag on it is approved, it's clear they did not have the appropriate procedures in place to handle the approval process.

A Southern California man recently plead guilty to spamming people through unprotected wireless networks. The act searching for these open networks is known as wardriving and is an growing problem as more and more home users setup their own WiFi networks without giving a thought to security.

There are a number of steps the InfoSec and Hardware industries can do to improve the wireless world, but the recommendation put forth by the brain trust over at ZDNet UK is the most idiotic suggestion I've read to date. In their commentary How to Defeat the Wardriving Spamlords they recommend equipping policy cars with WiFi detectors that will pinpoint unsecured wireless access points. Tickets would then be issued for violators.

Now I've (half) jokingly suggested we need to license the public before they use the internet, but calling for the criminalization of unsecured networks is asinine. If anything the general public should be prohibited from purchasing such equipment. Rather than taking things to that extreme, though, why don't we just make the hardware and software easier to setup. Make it secure out of the box. Improve the encryption algorithms. Make changing the default passwords a required step in the activation of the equipment. There are dozens of things we can do to improve wireless networking. Criminalizing ignorance isn't one of them.

The government's cybersecurity chief has resigned after one year with the Ministry of Precrime, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency.