Earth in the Balance — Watch This January 16, 2004January 21, 2017 GOOGLE TRICK Mike Hanlon: ‘Thought you might like this Google trick: Go to the Google home page and type in “elgoog” (that’s Google backwards). Then click the “I’m feeling lucky” button and watch what happens. Then . . . while still in that mode . . . try entering in the search box something else backwards – for example, ‘saibot werdna’. The coolest part of all this is in the developer’s FAQs: When China shut off access to Google a while back, a number of people worked around the ban by going to the site that generates this trick and accessing Google that way.’ ☞ I love this. TELLING WHETHER A WEB SITE IS BOGUS Brian Annis: ‘Sharon asks how to check on a web page’s veracity. Try searching the discussion lists at groups.google.com.’ James Redekop: ‘The web uses ‘SSL certificates’ to handle secure connections. One of the purposes of SSL certificates is to guarantee that the web site you are visiting is, in fact, who they claim to be. When you connect to a website with “https://” at the start of its address, your web browser asks the site for its SSL certificate and checks that the certificate was issued by a recognized Certificate Authority (of which Verisign is the largest). Encryption keys ensure that certificates can only be signed by the CAs that are claiming to sign them; you can’t forge a Verisign certificate without Verisign’s keys. In most web browsers, you can inspect a certificate yourself to see who issued it, to whom it was issued, and so on. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by going to the FILE / PROPERTIES menu item while on a secure page, and clicking on the “Certificates” button in the lower right-hand corner of the window that pops up. This will present you with a bunch of information about the certificate, including links to the issuer and so on. You can probably even call Verisign to verify that the certificate is legit, if you want.’ YOUR WEEKEND MOVIE Click here. You may not have voted for this guy; but the stunning pictures he shows are nonpartisan. It would mean a great deal to me – and ultimately, I think, to you – if you took the time to watch it all the way to the end and let me know your thoughts.