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I'm not so sure... Japan has the highest internet speeds and a more computers than the UK and 60% less than the States (correcting for population). I'd have thought a Japanese login is as trustworthy as a UK or US one. I suppose its where the target normally gets its connection from.

I'm with you. With Compiz as your window manager, and an ordinary VT100 terminal emulator, or perhaps Emacs-GTK with a black background, you can make your computer look like a Hollywood movie hacker's computer, with it actually BEING a hacker's computer that can actually hack things.

Hollywood's way ahead of you.

Boing-Boing story on using a backhoe as a swimming pool toy, with short youtube video.

It's right here on google or here.

My argument wasn't that we should bow down to all this and censor ourselves at all. I was just pointing out that with incidents like the above, I see no hyperbole at all in GP's post. Giving these people a database like that IS just like giving a toddler a loaded gun with the hammer pulled back.

While that particular incident was in the U.K., there is plenty to go around, including the great Boston Light Bright scare.

http://boingboing.net/2011/03/15/my-weird-femur-print.html

Jürgen Prochnow as the prussian sabre scarred Zeppelin captain with a vast history and one last battle to prove! ...and i dunno...uh, John Malkovich as the psionically mentally linked Pterodactyl master - who, unlikely enough, has a past that overlaps Prochnow's ...yeah.

The TSA has repeatedly lied about these scanners in the past, why should they be believed now?

Maybe someone didn't get the memo -- after you build a NuPenny store you're not supposed to open the doors ;-)

You think they drive gold plated supercars now like common savages? They drive diamond-encrusted cars. That launch out of their mega-yachts.

The US federal government has awful, awful branding. It's just terrible. How could half of social program recipients believe that they have "not used a government social program"?

In Canada, the federal and provincial governments make sure you know what they're doing. Every advertisement/public service announcement from the feds has the Canada wordmark, a simple "logo" with the word "Canada" and a Canadian flag above the last "a" (on TV and radio ads someone always says "A message from the Government of Canada"). But it's not just media advertising -- movies and tv shows that get tax credits from the government show it, correspondence (taxes, welfare, etc.), worksites partially paid for by government funding, and it goes on and on.

That's not to say that the branding gets to politicians' heads: our stimulus had a massive amount of advertising that many thought was flagrant self-promotion of the current government's policy, as opposed to ads which are usually along the lines of "Don't bring things across the border you shouldn't" or "Here's how young people can get help finding a job" or "Come visit our national parks". The current government even made it such that anyone who accepted stimulus money had to purchase a sign at their own cost extolling the benefits of the stimulus and the plan, post it on-site and send two pictures (one wide shot, one close-up) back to the feds before getting the money.

But when I look south, I'm at a loss to figure out who's responsible. Is the national guard a state or federal program? Is the FDIC run by the banks, or is that freecreditreport.com site run by the government? Who funded that study I read online? And the US government's websites all look completely different, so you don't know if it's the government or some independent agency or someone else (.gov notwithstanding -- who looks at URLs anymore besides /. readers?). Maybe if people knew all the services provided by government they wouldn't hate it as much (or maybe they would hate it more, but at least they would better understand everything they want to cut). It also lets you judge information more easily based on its source (your choice whether that improves your opinion of the information or the opposite).

Up north, I see this great anti-speeding ad and the Quebec flag at the end of the word Quebec and I know where it's coming from. Or this anti-fraud ad. France has their wordmark/logo too.

77% of people interviewed in a 1999 survey reported seeing the Canada wordmark, 60% in the previous 12 months. Over 85% of them reporting seeing the wordmark made them have more confidence in the information and make them "feel proud to be Canadian". And they almost unanimously agreed that the wordmark should be on websites, publications, advertisements, worksites and buildings. The key is that this doesn't happen overnight; the FIP started in 1970, and this is what they were running 10 years later.

If you want people to know that the government does important things besides building roads and national defence, make sure that when you spend tons of money on an ad buy, people know who's spending it. Get some cohesion going, US government; it's in your interest.

If she had calmly stood her ground the worst that would have happened would be refusal to board the plane. Instead, she went all trailer park on them.

http://boingboing.net/2010/11/13/man-at-san-diego-air.html

A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you've got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites". The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title "Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?". The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others... "One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand," Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.

Source: http://boingboing.net/2010/04/28/music-industry-spoke.html

This is great news assuming that politicians will actually realize that the filter isn't working with child porn and therefore shouldn't be implemented anywhere else..

A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you've got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites". The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title "Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?". The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others... "One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand," Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.

Source: http://boingboing.net/2010/04/28/music-industry-spoke.html

Yeah, there are regulations concerning the rights to your own picture. That is beside the point, though - If I pulled the same thing right here, I wouldn't have my servers seized and I damn sure wouldn't have the secret service come after me. Worst that would happen would be a cease and desist letter from someone depicted that didn't like it.

That's a valid issue. We need to give these guys (and they're guys) in law enforcement some anti testosterone treatments (or just buy them some MacBooks, I suppose). Not everyone has a closet full of assault rifles and grenades. You don't need to deconstruct this guys hard drives at a molecular level.

Save you breath for truly important cases.

o'rielly publishers dropped drm on their ebooks and sales spiked a huge amount. http://boingboing.net/2010/01/22/oreilly-drops-ebook.html

I'm not saying it is. I'm giving credit where credit is due.

tftfy

This guy lugs his desktop around: How to publish a Hindu newspaper in Pakistan

Well okay its Pakistan, not Afghanistan, but I suspect the poorer parts of both countries have similar challenges.

This?

McCain(R) opposes ethanol subsidies, Palin(R) opposes ethanol subsidies, neither oppose Big Oil subsidies.

Q: "What about ending oil subsidies? Subsidies for oil companies. Where do you stand on that?"

Palin: .. "we're only talking about four billion dollars" [a year] .. link

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long a mouthpiece for the interests of the oil industry, has lashed out against the Democratic effort to roll back taxpayer subsidies for the Big Five oil companies .. The $21 billion in unneeded subsidies would go to reduce the federal deficit" link

You are missing something here. It is that oil companies pay much more in taxes than they receive in subsidies. What happens is that the government taxes the crap out of oil, not just as it's produced but at the pump as well. Then it gives a small portion back to the oil companies and then tells them what to do with it. If you eliminate the oil subsidies, you are actually going to lose some control over how oil companies operate. You will also increase the base price of fuel because the government is certainly not going to cut the taxes they charge for fuel.

McCain(R) opposes ethanol subsidies, Palin(R) opposes ethanol subsidies, neither oppose Big Oil subsidies.

Q: "What about ending oil subsidies? Subsidies for oil companies. Where do you stand on that?"

Palin: .. "we're only talking about four billion dollars" [a year] .. link

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long a mouthpiece for the interests of the oil industry, has lashed out against the Democratic effort to roll back taxpayer subsidies for the Big Five oil companies .. The $21 billion in unneeded subsidies would go to reduce the federal deficit" link

Many if not all video recording technology using CCDs is susceptible to being blinded by IR light. I'm frankly surprised that theaters don't already use a powerful strobbing, patterned IR lamp on their projectors or next to the screen to make sure that boolegers get a really screwed up images. Not something like an over-elaborate over-engineered in-video encoding but something as simple as some remote control LEDs taped to the walls. Might not work on expensive, shielded stuff but el cheapo cameras more likely to get snuck in by are certainly screwed up by it.

In the end though, I guess we'll just have to go back to bribing the projector operators with free beer for a really clean copy of whatever the movie house is playing that week.

And we all know audiophiles are experts when it comes to sound quality.
http://boingboing.net/2005/11/07/astronomically-overp.html

http://boingboing.net/2011/05/05/wall-street-journal-2.html - The WSJ site has (or had) basic security holes. These may now be fixed but with this degree of incompetence and the difficulty of writing truly secure web apps, there may well be other holes.

What the hell does this mean "go to prison for possession of certain comic books"

No, that was not an exaggeration:

http://boingboing.net/2009/05/27/manga-collector-face.html

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/

Did you think I was just making it up? Or were you not paying attention to the sorts of laws that have been passed in the United States?

Again I think you are leaving out a couple of facts with this beauty "Teenagers have been arrested for photographing themselves".

No, actually, I left nothing out; just ask these teenagers:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479803,00.html

Oh, sorry, that was a Fox News link. Here, something less fair and balanced:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/aclu-sues-da-ov/

Note that the three girls who took the photographs -- photographs of themselves -- were arrested, as were the boys who received them. Not one of the people arrested here was over the age of 16.

This "people who break the law should not have any doubt as to whether or not what they are doing is illegal" assertion says more about idiots committing the crime than it does about the law.

Oh yeah? Are you sure that you have never committed a felony? These people were pretty sure too:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/05/criminalizing-everyone/

Did you remember to check all the paperwork relating to your hobbies? Obviously importing orchids without doing so is something you can go to jail for, right?

This is extremely true. Even lawyers should get outside help when dealing with LEOs. Much like a doctor not treating his own family.

I don't much like watching videos in general. But absolutely everyone should take the time to watch this: Cop and law prof agree.

RSA two factor authentication. It would be a very good solution but RSA is still milking the enterprise and government cows with that so it will be years before something like that becomes a commodity service. What ever came of the RSA security breach a few months back?

Badness.

http://www.boingboing.net/assets_c/2011/06/RTR2N69U-39928.html

The TSA has done nothing to make us more secure. Every attempted airline incident has been stopped by passengers and/or air marshals.

You mean the Federal Air Marshals employed by the TSA, right?

Yeah. Those air marshals. Imagine if we were spending that money on, I don't know, something to make us safe from terrorists.

Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing thinks this conference is an attempt to push Sarkozy's agenda to control the Internet.

I'd go for a 26 episode anime "Sprawl Trilogy" series made by someone like Gainax under the supervision of someone like Shirow Masamune ... my final fantasy.

There is an excellent two part Radio adaption of Neuromancer made by the BBC in 2003, it's been updated to have email which jarred when I heard it, but is a faithful & well-written & produced radio adaptation.

If you like audio books you'll love it "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Oh yeah, best first line of a scifi novel EVER!

http://boingboing.net/2005/03/17/neuromancer-radio-pl.html

Here is the interview you are talking about:

http://boingboing.net/2010/05/04/tv-economics-101-why.html

You are an idiot. You sir, would qualify for a job at the TSA.

The point trying to be made is that since the TSA is almost totally ineffective (by all evidence so far) whether they include everyone or not in their searches is completely irrelevant to security.

Try this for size, the odds that your plane will be blown up by terrorists are estimate at 1:30million. The odds of getting cancer from the screening machine are also 1:30million. Its just the second option costs you a boat load of money and time and your privacy.

http://boingboing.net/2010/11/19/odds-of-cancer-from.html

turn in your nerd credentials for thinking that would work

additionally, flight data recorders do send out a ping for 30 days:

http://boingboing.net/2009/06/03/miles-obrien-bloggin.html

The submersible will be listening for the distinctive "pinging" noise that these boxes are designed to emit once they are submerged in water. They are supposed to "ping" for thirty days in water as deep as 20,000 feet. Sonar used by surface ships is only good to about a thousand feet of depth - so it is essential to send some "ears" deep beneath the sea in order to find the boxes. These sonar devices can be towed by ships or ply the deep on their own power.

Nokia may really not survive this caliber of a corporate psychopath

But it'll be good for him! As always.

That isn't the half of it: Handy Venn Diagram.

That isn't the problem.

Being a MediaCom customer I've played with this a few times in the past, complained when the opt out didn't work, and complained about it to people locally. Working for a company that make DPI appliances it was kinda fun to see it in action, but kinda scary to see it on the public internet. CenturyTel also does this exact same thing.

It scans all HTTP traffic looking for 404 errors. So if I go to http://boingboing.net/4in0in4 It will intercept the servers 404 page and redirect to to a mediacom portal site with my 404 URL as the search term and ads all over.

Good thing this happened in NZ. Apparently in the US it is acceptable for people who leave a store without paying to be shot on sight.

boingboing advocated this watch last december. it wasn't until I bought one and googled for the product manual that I found out that it was an al-qaeda favorite.

Schools already remotely watch students through their webcams on school issued computers.
http://boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/19/earlyshow/leisure/gamesgadgetsgizmos/main6223044.shtml

As well as in school bathrooms.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/perversion-is-fine-so-long-as-youre-in-a-position-of-authority.html

Believe it or not children are protected by the constitution just like us "grown ups". Well at least by the Bill of Rights. But schools violate these natural born rights, all the time, in the name of safety a security. And nothing happens to make it stop. Good old Ben Franklin said it best, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.".

V for Victory

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/12/japan-fukushima-oper.html

That states they were designed to withstand a 7.9. They came up with this number based on record-breaking quakes in the area, including an estimate of how powerful one could get that happened in 860-something AD. I can assure you that nobody saw a 9.0 coming. That's roughly 44x more powerful than what they planned for. Considering the circumstances, I don't think it did too bad. I guess next time they'll build taller sea walls.

Oh, I get it now:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html

"...But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers). "

Sure, we can make robots to clean up nuclear waste... but can we make break dancing robots???

This is the kind of 'thing' those who listen to talk radio think that they 'know'. Sad really.

Has Piers Anthony's novel Pornucopia been made into a film now? I have both the first edition hardcover and the first edition paperback, but I thought Piers sorta was keeping it an underground novel.

The hexayurt is an ultra-simple geodesic dome design ideal for mass production in an emergency - just straight cuts with a table saw across plywood, or hand cut insulation boards. They're all over Burning Man but ideal for serious work too

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/17/hexayurt.html (public domain, too)

Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps
http://files.howtolivewiki.com/Dealing%20in%20Security%20JULY%202010.pdf
is a CC-licensed infrastructure mapping tool which has been partially adopted by the US .mil community for teaching disaster response. Can be really useful for understanding what you actually need to prepare *for*.

This is not about the academic veracity of a creationist position, or prevention of others from denigrating and refuting such; this is about protecting the rights of such individuals against workplace discrimination in academia. It is a reaction to ideas such as this. Dawkins on workplace discrimination due to creationist beliefs. I disagree strongly with the ideas outlined in this article by Dawkins, as it is akin to suggesting "if you do not conform to the currently excepted norms of correct thinking; descrimination is acceptable". Indeed, descrimination against atheists has been similarly common in the not so distant past. We need tolerance for the humanity of man, even if their private beliefs appear foolish to us.

[states-centric ..apologies]
So what political will, or interest, is there in ending DST? Over my too many decades I've heard only "we really don't need this thing anymore" with only very faint and feeble "it's good because...". But since there's no money in getting rid of it (or is there...?) then our politicians get distracted by fighting to stay in power and it never gets addressed ( http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/21/obama-might-get-rid.html )

"People are out of work!" "People are starving!" "We're at WAR!" "The economy sucks!" "Corruption via lobbyists!" "Corruption via Koch brothers" "Tea-party!" "R(o|an)d Paul!" ....all true; and too distracting to worry about a tiny little really annoying slightly costly thing like daylight saving time shifting. -sigh-

Next up: shifting to the metric system.

The problem is, there's money in keeping it. Most people will go shopping after work, but not before. So having more daylight hours after working hours benefits retailers, and retailers lobby in favor if it. The disruption actually costs a good bit of money, all told, but the retailers and manufacturers/importers see a benefit.

"People are out of work!" "People are starving!" "We're at WAR!" "The economy sucks!" "Corruption via lobbyists!" "Corruption via Koch brothers" "Tea-party!" "R(o|an)d Paul!" ....all true; and too distracting to worry about a tiny little really annoying slightly costly thing like daylight saving time shifting. -sigh-

Next up: shifting to the metric system.

And Apple's even got their coalition of the willing. Take BoingBoing for example. They massively reported about the iPad 2 update. There were a lot of comments questioning this coverage. They got all removed and BB even closed the comments after cleaning.

One of the articles:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/02/ipad-2-hands-on-demo-3.html

Screenshot of some deleted comments:
http://i.imgur.com/QI3ZN.png

Some articles later they criticized Slashdot for censorship.

Here is a summary of NH law. It does seem pretty severe. According to this article only two states don't allow recording without consent when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. From link one, it looks like NH may be one of them.