Now, this isn’t for the feint of heart. It requires command-line access and Perl and only works on OS X.

Millions of files consigned to paper shredders in the late days of the East German regime will be pieced together by computer. The massive job of reassembling this puzzle from the late Cold War was performed, until now, by hand.

It's been years in the making, but finally software designed to electronically piece together some 45 million shredded documents from the East German secret police went into service in Berlin on Wednesday. Now, a puzzle that would take 30 diligent Germans 600 to 800 years to finish by hand, according to one estimate, might be solved by computer in seven.

Last month Security Fix reported that Chris Soghoian -- the Indiana University doctoral student who created an online boarding pass generator to demonstrate security holes in the Transportation Security Administration's "no-fly" list -- had been cleared of any wrongdoing by the FBI and the Justice Department.

Well, turns out the guy isn't out of the woods yet.

On Wednesday afternoon, Soghoian received a letter from the TSA informing him that the agency is conducting its own investigation into the allegation that he "attempted to circumvent an established civil aviation security program established in the Transportation Security Regulations." If Soghoian is ultimately found to have attempted said circumvention, the TSA said, he could be subjected to civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. That could be a steep fine: Something like 35,000 people viewed and possibly used the boarding pass generator during the less than 72 hours that it was live on his site in November.

You can read a scanned copy of the TSA letter at Soghoian's site.

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.

When a story like this ran in 2003, it prompted more responses and controversy than we imagined. Although we try to be clear that the order of appearance in any given list indicates nothing about relative ranking or merit, that aspect of things provokes comment, as does the inclusion of some little-known credentials or the omission of better-known ones.

But given that there are more than 850 certifications and more than 200 certification programs in today’s IT certification landscape, we hope to help our readers distinguish good ones from mediocre or bad ones, winners from losers and up-and-comers from programs in their declining phase. So remember, you can go out and analyze the marketplace for yourself and plow through the numerous interest, salary and popularity surveys to try to figure out this stuff for yourself. While you’re at it, it’s also important to pay attention to what’s showing up in classified job ads and online postings to determine where the real action is.

As in the previous survey, we tried to develop a rough consensus about what’s hot and where the action appears to be in today’s highly fragmented IT job market. We can’t dispute that these lists draw heavily on the author’s knowledge, experience and observations, thus they must also reflect his preferences (and possibly even biases.) As in the previous collection of lists, each is labeled by category, along with a short discussion of what characteristics made credentials most suited for inclusion.

• The Blocker Toolkit will prevent machines from receiving Internet Explorer 7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates and the “Express” install option on the Windows Update and Microsoft Update sites. The Blocker Toolkit will not expire.
• The Blocker Toolkit will not prevent users from manually installing Internet Explorer 7 as a Recommended update from the Windows Update or Microsoft Update sites, from the Microsoft Download Center, or from external media.
• Organizations do not need to deploy the Blocker Toolkit in environments managed with an update management solution such as Windows Server Update Services or Systems Management Server 2003. Organizations can use those products to fully manage deployment of updates released through Windows Update and Microsoft Update, including Internet Explorer 7, within their environment.