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The last page of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano

Or maybe the last couplet of http://www.purelyrics.com/index.php?lyrics=lgatwosh

http://www.purelyrics.com/index.php?lyrics=utpmjhi o/

I thought it was in Hangar 18

is god a DJ? ... duh, of course he is!

Because you Can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being. But now, you can.

While there is little possibility that aliens have visited our planet, the god of spelling corrections has. Although one might thing that the god of spelling corrections also possess the powers of syntax and grammar checking, this responsibility must be left to one or more of the other gods. Who, you may ask, is this deity that is rude, brutal, and unbending beyond reason? I submit to you jkramer spelling Nazi extraordinaire.

Dear god,

Please accept my humble apologies and this rewrite of my previous post...

" What are the probabilities that if ETLF(s) were to visit the earth, that there is a single thing we could/should/would do about it? This argument is mute. This guy is just looking for some short lived publicity and even talks about it in the beginning of his article. His points are silly at best, and down right retarded in all cases. If I have to pick three points to prove aliens have never landed, all three that he used would be tied into one. While I appreciate the idea behind his article, it was weak, confusing, and misleading. "

BTW: Why didn't you point out that I used the word 'guys' when the correct word would have been 'guy'?

P.S. I'd like to give a big SMD, to the AC who stole the first reply to jkramer. I'm just glad you had the extra time one your hands to follow that up. The investigative reporting was awesome. I was really proud of the way you went back and reviewed my previous post. Did you check out my spelling error enriched journal?

P.S.S I've never been in a spelling bea, i dont no houe to speel.

Every time I see mention of evidence "from the Internet" or "from computer files" I wonder: how much evidence produced in court is actually genuine. We all know how impressed most people are with computer technology--and we all know how simple it is to create a simple text file. An email from Nicky Scarfo, Jr. admitting to loansharking? A trivial matter--just take any old email from Nicky, edit the text, and presto! "Direct" evidence that would impress 99 juries out of 99. While we're at it, why not have Nicky confess to financing the World Trade Center bombing?

This kind of thing isn't limited to email. Want to establish an alibi? If you have access to the database that stores key pass data (or E-Z Pass data) you can write a simple INSERT statement to add records necessary to prove you were on the Tappan Zee Bridge when the dirty deed was done (dirt cheap).

My point is that it is brutally easy to fabricate data--and I think the technologically unsophisticated are all too willing to accept anything that is presented as coming from "the computer".

A hypothetical example
Let's pretend that I'm a local police officer. I've been working a case for months--we've had several complaints about a man who might be a sex offender. But they're complaints of creepy behavior--nothing criminal. But I know--I know in my bones--that this guy is a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off. And--being devoted to protecting the children of my community--I want to stop this creep before he hurts any (more?) children.

I'm in Pennsylvania, where judges are elected. A local judge who's up for re-election is likely to err in my favor when it comes to search warrants on suspected child molesters--so I get a warrant, and I seize the perp's computer. And--damn. The creep is evidently aware of the danger of computer evidence, because there is not a single shred of incriminating evidence on his hard drive.

Or is there? I can copy a few choice files into his temp directory, and copy a few incriminating cookies while I'm at it. Maybe I copy more than a few. All it takes is a floppy disk of helpful evidence and a moment or two alone with the computer--and who's going to believe the creep when he claims he never saw those pictures?

The chain of evidence? (The "chain of evidence" is a legal requirement that prosecutors be able to identify a particular person responsible for a piece of evidence from the time it is seized until it is presented in court.) I gave the perp a receipt for his computer. There's nothing that requires me to provide the perp with a listing of all the files--and no court in the world would let the perp do anything to that computer (like listing his files) when I seize it. I've provided a receipt for his computer--but who's to say what's on the hard drive?

Could this happen?
A frequent element of police fiction--and perhaps police reality--is that police officers carry "throw down" guns; a throw down gun is a firearm with no identifying numbers that can be dropped at a crime scene when a police officer shoots a suspect: the cop asserts that the suspect pulled a gun, but the cop shot first. There's the gun--and the suspect a) has an arrest record, b) is dead, or c) both. Who's to say?

In the same way, an overzealous cop or prosecutor could easily use "throw down" data to "tighten up" a case. The "bad guy" gets what he deserves--the entirely theoretical child molester gets sent to prison.

When the police come with the warrant
I have a client who pays me a few bucks to co-locate a server--which technically makes me an ISP. Ed hosts a couple of mailing lists, and while I seriously doubt any of these lists will ever be the subject of a search warrant, if I'm ever served with one I'm going to be particularly careful to maintain copies of what I provided to the cops. Sure--I'm all in favor of law and order. But fabricating computer "evidence" is so easy that it must be a temptation that is very hard to resist.

(to continue the Talking Heads theme :)

(to continue the Talking Heads theme :)

Your sig should read "getthroughit", not "getwithit"