Poor Red Hat Billing Security

My yearly subscription for my Red Hat workstation was due, but I no longer hold the card that I used to set it up, so the auto-renewal didn’t go through.  That’s all fine, and expected, but here’s what Red Hat wants me to do:

The credit card information is not going through. Please fax the following to XXX-XXX-XXXX so we can verify the credit card details:

- Cardholder
- Credit card number
- Expiration date
- Billing address (this must match the one on file with the credit card company)

Please reply if you have any questions and have a good day!

Uh, in the age of phishing, I’m not faxing(!) my credit card info to a random phone number that I got in my e-mail.  This message isn’t even PGP signed.  I replied back and told them I’d be happy to re-enter my info in an SSL-secured form available via their site, if they provide one, but there’s no way I’m faxing my credit card info anywhere.

Super Deluxe Monkey Balls

I can't wait for Super Monkey Ball Deluxe to come out for the Xbox. It's still three months away, but I want it now. In case you've never played it on either of the GameCube variations, here are some screenshots and an explanation of what makes it so much fun. The party games in it are great fun, and it supported 16:9 widescreens on the GameCube, so I'm guessing Sega will do the same on Xbox.

How to read a blog

I'm guessing most of my readers don't need this (with the possible exception of relatives), but John Dvorak has posted a guide to reading and understanding weblogs. [via Scoble]

Info Tech Specialist Position

UNI is now advertising to fill an Information Technology Specialist position at the Iowa Waste Reduction Center:

NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS: Bachelor's degree in management information systems, computer science, business, or related field plus at least one year of web-based database and networking experience required; virtual reality and programming experience preferred

802.1x no longer good enough

This article from George Ou is an alarming way to start the morning.  It details the new attacks on the WEP protocol, which is known to be broken, but was generally assumed to be “good enough” when rotated often.  Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, so we need to look at moving to the next generation of encryption on our Wireless LAN ASAP.  In an educational setting such as ours, however, this is a little trickier, I’ve got about 750 clients spread around campus, and I can’t get that many users to turn on a dime.  To make them even grumpier, this is going to “break” a lot of older wireless hardware which is sure to bring the college students out with their pitchforks and torches.  In other words, I’m already having a bad day…