Domain: wired.com
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Comments · 12,699
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Coming?
Of course it's coming, we just have to win the lawsuits first.
Seriously, with all of the john-due suing that's apparently failed hard enough that the RIAA ends up paying attorney's fees, I'd be surprised if there's anything left to divvy up.
Of course, it goes without saying that the RIAA's board of directors get their yachts first, too. Can't even think about dividing up the money until those get paid off. -
Re:Quick correction
and you apparently only read far enough into the summary to see the 10 month old article that was put there for reference. The rest of the summary talks about how things are getting even more restrictive, and even provides a handy link
Here's just one of the many relevant pieces from the article:
The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. -
Understanding was ABSOLUTELY NOT the issue
Oh no, there was complete understanding of the issue, alright. In fact the judge understood so thoroughly how reprehensible things were, that he could not help but voice his opinion like a dumbass, ruining the entire case.
Ever hear of a criminal who got off because he was so clearly criminal that the judge couldn't bite his tongue? Well here is one. -
Ah, irony...
The article is posted on http://blog.wired.com/ and is therefore blocked by the filter it's complaining about.
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Dot Commers at it again
From this article, the question Why are so many of the leaders of the energy revolution the same folks who led the dotcom boom? is precisely why we're getting all of these claims. I'll believe it when I can buy it. Until then, it's bullsh*t.
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I-41
That should be the name for this. Model I-41.
That, or the obvious "WarCrimes Master 2020".
Or how about just "KillJoy-3000" -
Relevant reading
On a related note, this article by Neal Stephenson on laying submarine cables is an awesome (but dated) read.
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Re:Well, yes
Not to be redundant, because it's linked in the Wikipedia article you cite and probably elsewhere in this thread, but Slashdot readers may find this to be a particularly interesting read.
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Re:Airport security headache
Hmm...
Read Wired much?
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/02/10-uses-for-the.html -
Re:All geeks are the same
Well it's a strange coincidence, granted. And I don't really see a reasonable explanation either. On the other hand his wife's boyfriend confessed to killing 8 people. Obviosuly it may be possible that you date an eight times murderer, and then are murdered by someone else. But dating a murderer then being murdered is a slightly more strange coincidence than the one about the car seat, surely? http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/reiser
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WiReD, dead tree edition available free.
Too lazy to RTFL (link,) because I've already RTFDTA (dead-tree article.)
The DTA mentions that you can get the dead-tree edition of the mag for free by going to www.wired.com/free. First 10,000 only, though, so better get crackin'! -
Re:Unfixed exploits?
Nobody should be surprised by password issues anymore. That's like being surprised that some people cheat on their taxes; it's just a fundamental part of human nature.
Anyone remember these stories? Someone got an ATM manual off the web, learned the default password ... and walks up to an ATM, switches it to debug mode, makes it think the $20's were actually fives -- oh, and dispense everything in fives. And promptly makes off with hundreds of dollars by cleaning out (untraceable) prepaid debit cards.
One of the most telling points is that there's a year's difference between these two stories. Another is that the default passcode to some models of ATM is 123456. And this is for ATMs, where there's a very obvious and immediate impact to lax security (many thousands of dollars lost per incident since the reprogramming can go undetected for days). Considering this, it's not surprising that SQL server passwords don't get changed, for exactly the same reason: "I cut meat and I sell groceries. That's my job. I don't know anything about [securing] an ATM." is not all that far from "I'm just an application developer, I use SQL to get stuff done for the business. What do I know about security?"
Both are regrettable (they both have the same end result; pwnage) and they both flow from human nature. -
Re:All geeks are the same
Except he didn't pick them up.. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/witnesses-hans.html CTRL-F "Ellen Doren"
Which makes it all the more unusual. -
Prior Art: Sensors and EnvironmentThe use of communicating sensors has been broadly discussed for "commercial" agricultural applications, including:
- Irrigation management "WiFi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon" in Wired, 2005.
- Wireless water and temperature sensors in a survey of a city park "Baltimore Ecosystem Study in 2005 Jim Gray's paper "Life Under Your Feet: An End-to-End Soil Ecology Sensor Network, Database, Web Server, and Analysis Service", provides implementation detail.
Netting it out: wireless sensors have been important and become more important with communications clouds. Applications for agriculture generally, including vineyards (where microclimate sensing sorts out good from great) and organic production (where pest management and nitrogen fixing have play).
Other "stuff" includes aquatic studies, or smart environments where Acme Farm Roombas navigate fields automatically with, say, groundhog zapping water jets. An early test relied upon GPS and gyroscopes for locational awareness of "automated tractors which could not "detect all obstacles". Wireless sensors could improve efficacy. Calling Cyberdyne!
And those whiny Ficus can go back to state government lobbies where they belong.
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Re:I prefer instant blackout
Real snipers don't have to deal with respawns
;). They have however, other problems: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/darpa_countersn.html -
Re:It's theft of service
On Wired's site today is an article by Craig Anderson, titled "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business". http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
So I'm certainly not the only one following this line of thought. -
Re:LAST TIME - Pay Attention
It's wholesale data-mining. Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story Mark Klein = Patriot Former AT&T technician http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/kleininterview In room 641A at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California is a SPLITTER that duplicates ALL traffic and diverts it by the way of a proprietary black box to an unnamed acronymed agency. Mark Klein called it a "Big Brother Machine". It can't be more clear than that.
NarusInsight Intercept Suite(in room 641A) + Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation(aka.Sentient World Systems @ 'unnamed acronymed agency' aka.National Security Agency) = proprietary black box + system_capable_of_using_that_much_data -
Re:Oh God no....
Maxis may have gotten decapitated, but EA is still giving Will Wright their full support. We'll see the fruits of their labor when Spore finally comes out later this year.
And the real test to whether or not EA is going to stop screwing up their acquisitions will be the fate of Pandemic/BioWare. The jury's still out on that one.
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Re:CueCat!
Me too from my Wired Magazine subscription. I haven't figured out what todo with it for scanning barcodes.
:P -
LAST TIME - Pay Attention
LAST TIME - pay attention.
It's wholesale data-mining.
Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story
Mark Klein = Patriot
Former AT&T technician
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/kleininterview
In room 641A at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California is a SPLITTER that duplicates ALL traffic and diverts it by the way of a proprietary black box to an unnamed acronymed agency.
Mark Klein called it a "Big Brother Machine".
It can't be more clear than that.
For all the folks that still don't get IT, good God!, go back to sleep, and or, quit posting drivel. -
More information
A reasonable write up over at http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/b-2-crashes-on.html
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Re:What serious evidence is there against him?
If BDSM is not your piece of cake, fine, but do not put it at the same level as killing people because you simply do not understand it.
I think you missed the part about death yoga and confessing to killing eight people. Unless you also do those things, you have not been placed on the same level as Nina Reiser's ex-lover. -
Re:Desperate Twinkies
She had taken a job interview, was accepted for the job (after negotiating an extra few grand because she was now going to be a single mother - you don't bother negotiating if all you're doing is setting up a story line), etc. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/07/BAOFUTA27.DTL
(02-06) 12:48 PST OAKLAND --
Two days before she disappeared, Nina Reiser accepted a $50,000-a-year job with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to help Russian immigrants, the woman who hired her testified Wednesday.
Prosecutors hope Patricia Erwin's testimony will help persuade the jury in the murder trial of Reiser's estranged husband, Hans Reiser, that the missing woman didn't vanish voluntarily - a theory the defense has advanced.
Nina Reiser eagerly discussed the job, to help fellow Russian immigrants with their health concerns, during two interviews in August 2006 and accepted it Sept. 1, 2006, said Erwin, a project manager for the Public Health Department. Reiser was last seen two days after that, and never showed up for work at the San Francisco agency.
"She was very outgoing, friendly," Erwin said in Alameda County Superior Court. "She was easy to connect with. She seemed down-to-earth, and she also seemed very committed to working with us."
Echoing an opinion voiced by other witnesses at the trial, Erwin said the mother of two, then 31 years old, didn't seem to be the kind of person who would abandon her children. "My impression was they were a major part of her life," she said.
Prosecutors say Hans Reiser killed his wife after she dropped off their children at his Oakland hills home Sept. 3, 2006. Her body hasn't been found. The 44-year-old defendant has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have suggested that Nina Reiser is alive and hiding in Russia.
Also Wednesday, Richard Wilson of the TransUnion credit bureau testified that Hans Reiser was $90,000 in debt as of late last month. The figure includes $29,000 in unpaid child support, he said. Nina Reiser was about $30,000 in debt, Wilson said.
Other witnesses have testified that Hans Reiser complained that his wife was a financial burden to him.
In other testimony, Michael Caniglia, an employee of AT&T Mobility, said Hans Reiser's cell phone was dormant between Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, 2006, when his voice mail was checked at 5:02 p.m.
At 5:04 p.m. that day, an eight-second call was made on his cell phone to Nina Reiser's cell phone, the phone records showed.
Caniglia said Hans Reiser's cell phone received several incoming phone calls in the days after his wife disappeared. But the phone was either out of range, turned off or had its battery removed, he said.
Caniglia testified that the location of cell phones can be determined if they are on - even when no calls are being made - but not if they are turned off or the batteries are removed.
Prosecutor Paul Hora has told jurors that Hans Reiser's cell phone's battery was detached when police detained him several weeks after his wife disappeared and that her cell phone's battery was detached when police found the phone in her abandoned car.
Also, Nina wasn't a "mail-order bride".
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/hans-reiser-m-3.html
he 44-year-old popular Linux programmer has pleaded not guilty, claiming his wife abandoned their children, now 6 and 8, and left Oakland for Russia, where the couple met in 1998 while Hans Reiser was overseas developing software.
So let's recap:
- Hans owed Nina $$$ - $29k at that point. Nina was about $30k in debt - which balances pretty much with the $29k Hans owed her in child support.
- Nina had no need to leave the country - she had a job, custody of the kids, if
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Re:risky defense
You're making it sound as if that's the only defense they're using, when it's not. You're allowed to use as many defenses as you'd like.
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Re:All geeks are the same
Who the hell commits a crime with pair of books on crime in their vehicle, and then leave it all there for someone to find. Programmers know too much about allocation and management of objects to not destroy them when its detrimental they no longer exist.
So there's no such thing as a buffer overrun, or forgetting to mate every call to malloc() with a free()?
I don't buy the "programmer geek defense". It doesn't match up with the reality, which is that you don't have to be a programmer to be an asshole. They're orthogonic. Lets look at the excuses another way:
- The books - a "reverse psychology" ploy - figurng that he's so much smarter than everyone else, and that they'd buy into his "well, if I were guilty, why would I have such books? I'd be stupid!" Narcisssists are very much likely to think along such convoluted lines, and to believe that others will fall for their "explanations"
- The front seat - well, if it had blood on it, he had to dispose of it, since he wasn't smart enough to know that its possible to destroy the dna evidence (if he hadn't been into reading popular books about crime scene technology, and instead read up on the subject properly, he'd have known this). The last murder trial I sat on, the dna expert said he couldn't mention the techniques that could be used to destroy the evidence (you can buy the needed stuff at your local grocery store, btw), but that no such destruction had taken place.
- The $8k and passport. That doesn't need much of an explanation, and could be quite innocent. His wife had already grabbed $$$ from the bank account. Wouldn't YOU want to stay "liquid" in such a case? Passport - why leave it around for someone to grab when you're living in your car?
Do I believe he did it? I can't say - I'm not on the jury. However, I definitely don't buy into the defense tactic of 'geek nerds are "special" and "hard to understand"' as a "get out of jail" card.
Reiser's lawyer is making a big mistake. Sure, he's playing the "this guy is a creep" card to the jury - but he's also insulting the jury's intelligence by thinking that they won't see it for what it is - a ploy, and not evidence one way or the other. Not trusting a jury can come back and bite you - look at what happened with Jamie Thomas and the $222,000 copyright infringement award. The jurors were pissed that she lied to them, and made it known both inside and outside the courtroom.
"She's a liar. We wanted to send a message. I don't know what the fuck she was thinking."
Better to not take the stand, and let people suspect you're an idiot, than to take it, and prove them right.
Then there's the danger that the jurors will think - "If they really expect us to buy into this bs, they must think we just fell off a turnip truck. Sounds like what I'd expect a guilty know-it-all to do."
At the very least, the choice of tactics shows that the lawyer doesn't believe his client is innocent. Based on that, I'd say the jury will probably convict.
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What serious evidence is there against him?
Sean Sturgeon confessed to killing eight people. If I were the homicide detective, you damn well better believe I'd be urging the prosecutor to dismiss the charges without prejudice so that the scope of the investigation could be brought to bear on HIM, now. The guy is into "death yoga," serious BDSM and confessed to killing eight people. The guy is a total loon based on what has come out, and he'd probably score very dangerously high on a sociopath scale. Hans might be the killer, but if I were a cop, I'd have spat my coffee out all over the report in shock when I read that Nina had gotten herself involved with a guy who sounds like a real nutjob who probably killed her.
Unless they found Nina's blood all over Reiser's car, they don't have much to go on. Even then, it's not unrealistic to think that Sturgeon might have tried to frame Reiser.
The details of this case are very sordid. I wouldn't put it past the prosecutors to be ignoring sturgeon's high probability of guilt out of pride because they "have their man." This is one of the reasons why I unabashedly support making it impossible to give a life sentence or execution without a minimum of two credible witnesses, and serious penalties (that can include execution in murder cases) for those who commit perjury.
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The Chinese shoot-down was quite different
...China doing the EXACT same thing... Nonsense.According to MIT space security expert Geoffrey Forden, "China's debris will be in orbit for thousands of years (and I mean that literally).
... [The US shoot-down] would create a debris field but no where near the sort of debris catastrophe that China created last year."The two shoot-downs are not equivalent, which of course doesn't prevent overheated, agenda-driven comparisons...
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The coming space war doesn't favor the ChiComs
At least, not according to this physicist: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/inside-the-chin.html
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Try Pfizer, for one
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Re:Jesus Fucking ChristFinally, individual teachers have a lot of leeway in what they teach; science teachers will teach evolution with the certainty that they feel it's due, no matter what guidelines have been set down. Not if they want to keep their jobs they won't. With school boards and school administrators unsympathetic to the teaching of evolution, while the teaching of evolution is not banned, parent complaints will give them a reason to find some other convenient excuse to fire the teacher. For example, a Texas science director was canned because of her pro-evolution stance. The official reason: insubordination because she used her work email to forward a federal court judgment on evolution to friends and some online communites. Every teacher has done something similar and having a pro-evolution viewpoint will give the school administrators an excuse to find anything incriminating.
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Re:Seems we need a wistle-blower at the NSA
There already was one (or maybe it was just an incompetent agent, malice vs incompetence and all that jazz), the ACLU just backed the wrong horse in this race.
This guy got his own transcript in the mail. So there's at least one person out there that can prove that they do, in fact, have standing to sue.
Of course, as soon as they sued, the government took the transcript back and won't let anyone look at it. How long until the government uses that exact same tactic to start arresting citizens it doesn't like for completely made up crimes? "Well, we have proof that you did these terrible, terrible illegal things but nobody is allowed to see the evidence that these things happened or that you did it, the jury will just have to take our word for it." -
Re:Good coverageWait...I'm looking for the sarcasm mod...no, I guess you were serious.
Nothing useful in terms of spy gear is going to make it through re-entry. What might make it through re-entry is a large, resilient fuel tank containing high-toxic, probably carcinogenic, fuel. You seriously think a government as naive as that of the United States - one that's spent a fortune on a war based on its own lies, that is uninterested in the health care of it's general population except as a brief distraction a couple summers ago (notice how they stopped talking about it), that refused to acknowledge any human contribution to global warming, that supports the storage of nuclear waste in it's own backyard - an administration that has spent the past six years using any opportunity for military posturing, unilateralism (unless multilateral means, "y'all do it our way") and the protection of "state secrets" by way of executive privilege - that has no fear of reprisal over the abuse of human rights or dignity, and has offered little excuse for the death of thousands both military and civilian - you actually think that government is afraid of a little hydrazine giving a few dozen people cancer?
Logic dictates that if there was really something classified on the satellite that they didn't want to survive re-entry they simply would have designed it to not survive re-entry or they would have installed a self-destruct. Shooting it down at this point for the reason you're implying doesn't make sense.
Besides, if it's the gear (rather than the fuel) that concerns them then why haven't they bothered shooting down other de-orbiting sats in the past? From the BBC:
An out-of-control [emphasis mine] US spy satellite - possibly the size of small bus - is believed to be plummeting out of its orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on the planet within weeks. ... Normally, when US spy satellites reach the end of their lives, they are disposed of through a controlled re-entry and dumped in the Pacific Ocean, so that no-one can learn their secrets. And finally, a few notes about hydrazine.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright cast the threat from the satellite in much less dire terms. Even if the hydrazine were released, he noted, the effects would likely be mild -- akin to chlorine gas poisoning, which can cause burning in the lungs, and elsewhere. The area affected would be "roughly the size of two football fields [where you might] incur something that would make you go to the doctor." ... Especially when you consider that several other hydrazine-filled object have come crashing down to Earth. Not only did the space shuttle Columbia have a similar tank, which survived re-entry, with no toxic gas cloud. Several other hydrazine-laced objects have also crashed into the atmosphere, with no ill effects. Space researcher Ed Kyle notes that there were 42 major reentry objects for 2007, including 9 satellites -- at least one of which contained a form of hydrazine, UMDH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine). Look, I don't put it beyond the American government (and especially this American government) to spend "$60 million...to make sure that some fuel doesn't contaminate an acre or so of land" as the previous poster stated, but the notion that this is about contamination or saving lives (I'm trying to remember the last person known to die from falling spacing debris) is just bull. -
Re:Room to shape personal brand
But there's another gravy train pulling up right behind: reputation management companies that clean up the messes left behind by data breaches. Maybet hat's the real "synergy" the grandparent was talking about?
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N2H2: Weapon of Mass Destruction, or delicious?Actually, the classified hardware/software will burn up on reentry. Their more concerned about the full tank of hydrazine that would survive a normal reentry and create a hazardous materials nightmare near a populated area.
That's certainly believable if you can take Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey at his word:Yesterday, Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey said the satellite's tank full of hydrazine rocket propellant was the main reason the military was planning to blast the orbiter. There's a small but real risk that the hydrazine tank could rupture, releasing a "toxic gas" over a "populated area," causing a "risk to human life."
Apparently man-made objects containing hydrazine propellant frequently rain down from the sky without incident, according to rocket scientists and space security experts who "scoff" at this rationale. And Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright doesn't seem too impressed either. But surely our Deputy National Security Advisor knows something about hydrazine that we don't.
Now who is this man James Jeffrey, you may ask?It took more than two months, but the White House has finally found a new deputy national security adviser. And in the end, the administration didn't have to look very far.
Source: Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2007, four months before the information in the Iran NIE would be exposed, having been known to the White House since 2006.
President Bush will appoint Ambassador James Jeffrey, a high-level State Department official who coordinates its Iran policy, according to people familiar with the matter. Jeffrey's appointment will be made later today, these people said.
In his new post, Jeffrey will be National Security Adviser Steve Hadley's No. 2 and run most of the day-to-day operations of the National Security Council. The administration's new war czar, Deputy National Security Adviser Army Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, will take part in regular deputy's meetings chaired by Jeffrey.
Jeffrey, a blunt-spoken and often-profane diplomat, will replace J.D. Crouch, an architect of the administration's controversial Iraq surge who resigned in May. Jeffrey has spent more time in Iraq than any other senior administration official. Prior to assuming his State Department post, he was the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from June 2004 to March 2005, and as U.S. charge d'affaires to Iraq from March to June 2005.
A colleague of Jeffrey's said that the White House would likely prove to be a better fit than the State Department had been. The colleague noted that Jeffrey is a staunch neoconservative, which left him often sharply at odds with other high-level State Department officials. Most of the neocons who once populated the administration left their posts in recent years as the Iraq war went off the skids. At the White House, though, Jeffrey will be able to work closely with two of the other surviving neocons: Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams and David Wurmser, one of Vice President Dick Cheney's top foreign policy staffers.
This guy sounds totally not full of shit at all! -
Bong?
Ladies and gentalmen, I give you the worlds most advanced bong...
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Re:SLAC is great, but...
125 staff members at SLAC have been let go this year (so far), and 200 projected layoffs at Fermilab by the end of the summer. Wired has the fuller scoop.
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Re:Stealth Satellites?
The fact that you can spot the satellite with binoculars proves my argument.
The fact that you can spot a spy satellite with binoculars proves that the government it belongs to isn't trying to hide it? Is that really what you're trying to say?
Here's some more reading for you.
And from an intel standpoint, this is one piece of a puzzle to knowing what the satellites are sued for but I'd rather have the Chinese or whoever have to pay for it themselves.
Um, I already exposed your contention that the Chinese are relying on American hobbyists with binoculars to locate spy satellites as a Straw Man argument. Please stop embarrassing yourself.
But go ahead, go report to your communist friends. It's your right.
Honestly...if you can't even be bothered to accept the most elementary facts of the situation, you're not worth responding to.
Good day, sir. -
Re:Dear Prince
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/13/trent-reznor-to-chin.html
I'm not really sure why you included Trent Reznor in there, but just for the record, he's actually been pretty vocal about endorsing downloading of music in some cases. I'd be very surprised if he turned around and sued people over it.
Reznor also openly admitted to being pretty active on the bittorrent site Oink before it got shutdown.
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/10/trent-reznor-on.html -
Re:The power to destroy a planet...
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Re:Trust the FBI?
What can you expect from overzealous left-wingers who scream "Impeach Bush" louder than anyone and refuse to read original articles like that one, and just adlib and pretend to have read them?
It was a mistake by the ISP, not the FBI. The FBI noticed the mistake and told the ISP how they had errored.
I mean if they really want to get upset, get mad at Bill Clinton for approving that Carnivore project instead of vetoing it for the FBI so ISPs can keep track of email and send copies to the FBI in the first place. That is what started the whole warrentless wiretapping of emails and Internet surfing in the first place and lead to the commercial version of Carnivore which is what we call spyware now. -
Maps
This one looks like a great map for Unreal Tournament !
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Re:Well...
There is some credence to this, or at least some history. 2 examples come to mind:
Larry Craig's accidental disclosure
FBI accidentally gives suspect evidence that they are illegaly wiretapping him, then asks for it back -
Re:War on America
Ten years ago I would have considered your several posts in this thread to be calmly level headed, but now they seem a bit blind. Even with the AT&T case you mention, when the rules don't suit our out of control political elites they just change the rules. You want things to be fixable within the system we have in place, but the checks and balances are broken and the ballot box offers no real hope. There is no vote I can cast that is a vote against marijuana prohibition. There is no vote I can cast that against the vastly increased use in SWAT teams. Despite theoretically changing the balance of power in Congress in 2006, there has been no change in the direction of ever growing federal government and increasing internal security.
Yes you are right that it is the breakdown of the rules that is the source of the problem, but it is how that breakdown manifests that is going to be doing the damage to our freedoms. Which in turn make it harder to correct the original problem. Cameras in the sky are not a new thing, but always on cameras with a searchable history are a new thing. Ultimately it is the fact that our government is treating it's own people as the threat that is the new and troubling problem. -
Re:Good ones are expensive
Hit up a local flea market, or find some out-of-the way store. There's a local guy at a flea market here in GA who sells them - the patent or something expired in Japan, and there's a couple of companies making systems that will play old cartridges.
Check http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/ces-2008-retro.htmlhere for what I'm talking about. -
China's debris to remain for thousands of years...The satellite the Chinese shot down was in a much higher orbit, and that debris is likely to stay up for *hundreds* of years... It's worse than that -- according to MIT space security expert Geoffrey Forden, "China's debris will be in orbit for thousands of years (and I mean that literally).
... [The US shoot-down] would create a debris field but no where near the sort of debris catastrophe that China created last year."The two shoot-downs are not equivalent, which of course won't prevent agenda-driven comparisons...
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Re:All we need now
Actually, the accepted norm is something like 30% more energy then put in (1.3 times what is required to make it). But that is sorely discounting new processes that get something along the lines of 700%(7 to 7.7 times) or better. And these newer processes can use anything besides corn too, grass clippings, most trash, any organic compounds, and so on with relatively the same efficiency or better.
Turn in your geek card if your going to rail in something like a politician and not pay attention to recent advances. -
Ok, Time to Talk MacBook Air...
Ok, Time to Talk MacBook Air...
Yes it is cute, but it is very limited in speed and graphics.
1) People forget the Sony Laptops that have been around for almost 10 yearss, that are 'technically' smaller than the Mac Air.
2) The same people cheering the Mac Air, are the same people here that dumped about the UMPC concept of a moving between a laptop and a PDA. And 13" with tiny keyboard is NOT much differnt than the 10" screen with tiny keyboards, especially when the UMPC have full TabletPC capabilities so you can just use a pen.
So if we are going to see all the 'compare' to air articles, then we need to go back and compare Air to all the Sony's and the UMPCs as well.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/macbook-air-rel.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/02/12/fanboy-reviewer-problems
For people in the Mac only world, the MacBook Air is great, but for people in the 'rest' of the computer industry, it is nothing new or unique. -
Re:Oblig.
Only if they can use the images without a search warrant.
Didn't you hear? The 4th amendment has been repealed. -
Re:Explosives on Soviet space satellites
Thanks!
Evidently, the US sats lack a self-destruct charge. It would be useful in case something large and unwieldy is heading toward Earth, and, as luck would have it, might very well end up in Russian or Chinese hands with several critical components in good enough shape to be reverse-engineered. I wonder how many megabytes of classified algorithms those embedded EEPROMs would reveal.
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My House of the Future
Popsci has another take on the Home of the the Future.
My house wouldn't be built around gimmicky crap like auto moodlighting or suggesting recipies. Mine would be more practical innovation. Bathrooms and kitchens coated in titanium dioxide treated to dissapate dirt and mildew. It'll have a 3D fabrication Printer to print out dishes or maybe even chair parts when we have extra company. Automated machines to cut the grass (if I don't go with bio-engineered no-mow grass.) The construction itself will be steel framed and built using modular panels but build to be reconfigurable (relativly.) Replacing drywall with bolted or snap-in-place steel-backed panels (the exposed surface side could be bare steel, have wood glued on, wallpapered, etc.) allowing for me to access the interior portions of the wall with ease. My particular aesthetic would be bare steel panels, with cables run along the outside in bundles, but it would be easy to reconfigure it to appear 'classical' with the wires hidden behind the now covered panels. I want my home of the future to be flexable, low(er) maintenance, and something that will last.