Free Tickets to Honkers Game!

ClubRochester.com and 106.9 KROC are proud to present "Singles Night" at the Rochester Honkers! Everyone is encouraged to print a FREE ticket to the Saturday, July 7th game versus the Duluth Huskies. The game starts at 7:05pm.

You do NOT have to be single to attend this event. However, a special section in the stands will be reserved just for singles to mingle. The Rochester Honkers are the 2006 Northwoods League Champions and their mascot has a really big head. How cool is that?

Launch: DowntownRochesterMN.com

CWS is pleased to announce the launch of Downtown Rochester MN.com, a new website developed for the Rochester Downtown Alliance. Occasionally, the complaint is heard that there's nothing to do in Rochester. In fact, the downtown district is quite active for those in the loop, and this website aims to substantially increase that number of individuals.

The site is intensely data-driven and represents a joint effort between the hardworking staffs of both RDA and the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau. The pool of information will be kept up to date constantly by these organizations and by downtown business owners themselves.

In addition to highlighting current and future activities in downtown Rochester, the site features information about new developments in the district and an itinerary planner that walks a visitor through the steps of planning a night out on the town. Information on parking downtown is integrated throughout the listings, so there's no excuse not to get out and explore.

Rochester offers a host of sights and sounds -- theatre, music, art, comedy, unique shopping, and excellent restaurants both old and new. Keep yourself up to date by subscribing to email updates or RSS feeds from the website. Have an idea for something you'd like to see happening downtown? There's a suggestion box for you.

Let us know what you think!

LiveLeak vs. YouTube

There's a new kid in town.

It's another video-based website like YouTube.com but it specializes in video that might not be popular with some folks. After a few clicks on some of the "recently made popular" videos I can understand why. Unlike Youtube, which bans violent content, LiveLeak allows controversial clips of war, conflict and death.

This means you can find disturbing videos of Iraqi insurgents throwing grenades at humvees, a baby playing with a cobra snake (below), or even a crazy person who throws herself at a car. In short, LiveLeak is reality TV at its best.


Baby plays with Cobra snake
As a father, I felt a knot in my stomach after watching the video of the King Cobra. However, after reading the comments I realized that the snake was most likely de-fanged, which renders it harmless. In America we let our children play with dogs, in India they play with Cobra snakes. Got it.

It will be intersting to see if this new website will gain momentum in the near future. According to CNN, it is a privately held company with little funding and most of the founders still work elsewhere during the day. Wait, that sounds a lot like YouTube just a couple years before it was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion.

How Security Problems Happen

As computers and web-based software have become deeply integrated into our daily lives, so has a consciousness of security issues and the vulnerability of digital information. Even in the past few months, a number of high-profile breaches of computer security have been widely reported.

How do attacks happen? Although specifics vary, a surprising number of security breaches come through the same pathways -- just as a large number of residential burglars enter through the front door.

A new report from the SANS Software Security Institute has just been released analyzing the top security vulnerabilities reported during 2006. The report identifies three main programming errors which were responsible for most breaches. Even non-programmers can learn something from this report.

Error 1: Accepting input from users without validating it. If you sell your car to a dealer, he's probably going to pop the hood and make sure the vehicle contains an engine before he writes you a check. In the same way, a web-based application needs to ensure that any data it receives is safe before it uses it. In a simple case, attackers (usually automated software rather than actual human beings) can manipulate an insecure contact form on your website into sending spam. More serious attacks could result in exposing an entire database of customer information to the world.

What can you do? If you're responsible for having a website or application developed, discuss the security implications with your programmers and be sure they have a good understanding of how to handle these issues.

Errors 2 and 3: Buffer and integer overflows. In plain English, a buffer is a bucket of computer memory that's intended to hold a certain amount of information. If an attacker force-feeds more data than expected into a buffer, he can sometimes manipulate the computer into executing additional code. Similar attacks can be made by forcing the value of an number to become larger than the software is equipped to handle. Most of these kinds of attacks occur on system-level software that the average user has little control over.

What can you do? Immediately apply software patches as soon as they're released. Don't ignore that Windows Update icon that says you have updates to install. Install antivirus software and keep it up to date.

These measures will not make your software invulnerable to attack. Even well-designed programs can fall prey to a determined attacker, just as a well-secured home may be burglarized. But you should still lock the front door.