"In the US, this type of behavior in other circumstances is regarded as network intrusion and is considered illegal hacking. What makes this legal? The target also engaging in illegal activity?"
I suppose you missed that Pirate Pay is based in Russia?
Anyway, nice to see that if a Corporation can't buy it's way through government intrusion (read "law"), it simply creates a little spawnling Microsoft somewhere else where the rules are more easily ignored/don't exist/are written by Vladimir Putin's cat.
"I agree. Let the free market decide. If a company builds a ship with only enough life boats for half the people then the half of the people that die won't use that company again thereby correcting the problem."
Dude, that's up there with achieving 100% market share by killing 100% of your competition's customers.
"I suppose I could hit the "secure".onion site but I see nothing to indicate there's code there."
For the second time today, I heard a little voice in the back of my head telling me "You don't really want to click that link..." leaving me wondering where the hell that came from. Both times intuition instantly took the helm and I browsed off on another tangent.
The first time was an article link on the main page of CNN's home page titled "How to hide from face-detection". In hindsight, what better way to find out who is interested in avoiding being tracked by face-recognition software then to place an article about the subject and watch who clicks. Add 'em to the database! Now, I'm not saying all of this went through my head when I saw the article, but rather intuition simply steered me away.
The second time this happened was when my mouse cursor was just now hovering over that very same button you just mentioned--The "Secure Website" button. This time around, intuition just said to me " I TOLD you so!". Again, in hindsight, what better way to find out who is interested in censorship (and by extension, circumventing it) then by dropping a link that claims to offer insight into the inner workings of censorship, and simply tracking the hits?
Now take the results of BOTH of those link traces. Anyone that now shows up at both goes one notch up the list of people to keep an eye on. Do this long enough, with enough crafted honeypots, and you end up with lists of people that are ranked by threat levels based on interest. This is essentially what the librarians have been warning us about. This link, the "Secure Website", didn't even work for me--standard Firefox "Server Not Found" error. Nothing of value was even offered by the website, that I can tell. Same goes with the CNN article--it's the same article, rehashed, that has been going around the web for a few months now (even here on/.).
OK, my sig has started to tell me to shut up now...
From the article: "High levels of ionizing radiation from accidents or from radiotherapy have been linked with increased risk of some childhood cancers."
I guess that since the TSA are intentionally irradiating children, and not doing so by accident or by providing radiotherapy, this might not apply.
Seriously, who decides what is "acceptable" behavior? Valve? Players acting as moderators? GROUPS of players acting as moderators? PAID GROUPS? (see where I'm going with this?)
The moment you start applying anything other then peer pressure is the moment where distrust SHOULD come into play. Some people should never be allowed such control over others, in-game or out. Sure, some people are dicks, but handing out baseball bats (excuse me, Ban-Hammers) to the disgruntled is not the solution.
"The Disgruntled Ones is now recruiting for Scalper positions, as well as Guild Attorney. Must have Moderation Points!"
Three Networks for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Network to rule them all, One Network to find them, One Network to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
I just went to that website, as well as every single link from the main page. At each page I used the find function to search each page for a single word. I did not find it....anywhere. That being said, maybe they simply overlooked the concept.
"(Hmmm portray Martin as a young boy and Zimmerman as a racist (via doctored 911 call audio), and tried REALLY hard to portray Zimmerman as white, when he is Hispanic... Why would they do that?)"
Ask Charles Manson--he's played the same game before.
""In the first 40 days of President Barack Obama's administration, the White House email system was down 23% of time, according to White House CIO Brook Colangelo, the person who also delivered the 'first presidential Blackberry.' The White House IT systems inherited by the new administration were in bad shape. Over 82% of the White House's technology had reached its end of life. Desktops, for instance, still had floppy disk drives, including the one Colangelo delivered to Rahm Emanuel, Obama's then chief of staff and now Mayor of Chicago. There were no redundant email servers.""
So......I'm guessing no Crysis 2 then? Geez. I can run it with everything cranked.
The only source known today that makes reference to hobbits in any sort of historical context is the Denham Tracts by Michael Aislabie Denham. More specifically, it appears in the Denham Tracts, edited by James Hardy, (London: Folklore Society, 1895), vol. 2, the second part of a two-volume set compiled from Denham's publications between 1846 and 1859.
The text contains a long list of sprites and bogies, based on an older list, the Discovery of Witchcraft, dated 1584, with many additions and a few repetitions. The term hobbit is listed in the context of
In the December 2003 Oxford English Dictionary newsletter, in the "Words of Choice" section, the following appears:
4. hobbit â" J. R. R. Tolkien modestly claimed not to have coined this word, although the Supplement to the OED credited him with the invention of it in the absence of further evidence. It seems, however, that Tolkien was right to be cautious. It has since turned up in one of those 19th-century folklore journals, in a list of long-forgotten words for fairy-folk or little people. It seems likely that Tolkien, with his interest in folklore, read this and subconsciously registered the name, reviving it many years later in his most famous character. [Editor's note: although revision of the OED's entry for hobbit will of course take this evidence for earlier use into account, it does not yet appear in the online version of the entry.] "
"If/when this drug is discovered to be doing something bad, who's responsible? This mindless manufacturer? I'm betting not. The Indian governement? HAHAHA. Bayer is the one at the end of the barrel and they won't have any 'excessive profits' to pay damages with. Woohoo!"
Let's not forget that India is also side-stepping the costs associated with the regulation of drug development, costs that we American tax-payers cover in the form of our Food and Drug Administration budgeting. They are not just sticking Bayer with the costs of drug development but also sticking us tax-payers with the cost of making sure Bayer is doing it safely.
Granted, we would have spent that money anyways, and I suppose that in itself is enough reason to not be concerned about the fact that we are essentially subsidizing another country's healthcare system, but when you combine that with the fact that WE don't get these kind of cost savings from our own "healthcare system", it starts to grate the nerves.
"...but if enough stink is made he'll be a less effective mouthpiece."
Better yet, he'll become the political equivalent of tainted meat, fit for not save the rendering tub. He will be effectively removed from circulation, and that is a win, plain and simple.
When he is reduced to scraps from the tables of the corrupt, then it is time to focus on the next corrupt politician/lobbyist. Maybe a regular petition campaign, that draws attention to specific examples of corruption, would be picked up by more media (independent, I'm guessing) and this might have some real, positive benefit/results. The White House took a stand against SOPA/PIPA--signing this petition is a way of backing them up on that decision, of standing behind the President. I suppose that the President could interpret every petition signature as a vote next election, and I am guessing he would be correct in that assumption, especially if he takes action in response to that petition.
I'm refreshing that petition in my browser, and see people signing it at about one signature every 4-5 seconds, less time then it takes to read the petition, yet when I Google "Chris Dodd", there are only a couple of news articles that relate to the comments he made (although I am watching that change quickly. Snowball effect?), so I think it safe to say that people are not reacting to something in mainstream media, but the content of the petition itself. Yay. Perhaps those signatures will come in faster then the dollars from lobbyists.
Email a link to a friend or family. We all have a stake in this. Maybe it will get enough signatures that the mainstream media can no longer ignore it.
"Resiliency is great, but the cost is that instead of a single action to retrieve the torrent file, you put out queries to your peers, who ask their peers, and so on, performing thousands or even millions of queries between peers in order to retrieve the torrent file."
This idea (magnet links instead of.torrent files) might backfire.
ISPs are already overloaded/oversold and have been bitching about P2P since inception. When all the added bandwidth of all these millions of handshakes starts to add up, the ISPs might finally have enough evidence to convince our Congress Clowns that it is, indeed, time to draw the curtain on P2P and thepiratebay.org in a manner far more damaging to the Internet then SOPA/PIPA combined.
As many have stated already, once magnet links are the norm, there is no way to shut them down, that is except for shutting down the Internet, or severely neutering it. Imagine what would have happened if Bradley Manning had simply uploaded all those diplomatic cables in the form of a torrent--the US government would have been taking an entirely different stance towards P2P. Such a leak would be unstoppable if everyone was using magnet links. So what does everyone think would happen if such a scenario presents itself--the government knows a huge leak is being disseminated and the only way to stop it is to shut down the Internet--what course would our current government take in a situation like that?
"Basically, they would have to be broadcasting a massively powerful signal capable of killing off lifeforms from the raw energy in the wave before we could detect it at our distance."
True, but do not discount the use of a remote "repeater" that essentially sends the message from a distant, but safe, location. I am sure (at least I hope) that SETI took this into account, otherwise, without some sort of repeater, we'd not only be getting a message from a civilization far, far in the past, but also from a civilization that was extinct. Boo.
Perhaps we humans could do something similar right now. We have the technology--nuclear weapons. We could set a bunch of them up on the far side of the moon, or a distant orbit far out in the solar system, then set them off timed to send a message--a sort of Morse code in radiation bursts of megaton energy levels. I propose we name the resulting mess the "Anachragnome Radiation Belt".
"I think they buried the lead here... 100mph, sans seat-belt, and he walked away?"
When I was 18, I crashed a 1970 Plymouth Belvedere (Police package) at 105 mph. I know that I was going this fast because I was barely passing a big-rig and was trying to determine how fast the crazy fucker was going on I-10 in Arizona (two trailers!). I was looking at the speedometer when left front tire blew just after I passed the truck. The steel wheel cut into 130F+ asphalt and instantly yanked the car 90 degrees to the left, sending it hurtling off the road--straight into a 6 ft-high pile of boulders the DOT piled along the median. I had almost zero chance of reacting in time to correct before I was in soft shoulder dirt. I almost walked away.
Here is where things got really crazy. According to the driver of the truck I had just passed (it was all a jumbled blur to me), my car impacted the boulders in the highway median, launching upwards. The rear of the car impacted the boulders (tearing open the fuel tank) sending it into a cartwheel/spin. The truck driver claimed the car did at least two complete somersaults before impacting HARD on it's roof and sliding back into the roadway upside down.
I, AND my two friends in the backseat, were NOT wearing seat-belts. All four door windows were rolled down because of the desert heat.
Looking to see if my friends were hurt, my attention was immediately drawn to the rear window, amazingly intact--a waterfall of fuel was sheeting across the glass. At that point, my only thought was to get out of the car. One of my friends was already on the way out one window and I shoved the other out another window and onto the hot desert asphalt, quickly following her myself. Once out, I tried to stand up and failed completely as my left leg was bent at a 90 degree angle about 3 inches above the ankle. That was the only injury I sustained, and, to this day, I have a 7-inch steel plate and 7 screws in my leg (it looks like the Docs went to Ace Hardware for parts in the x-rays). BOTH of my friends were completely uninjured.
Laying there on the ground, with melted asphalt sealer sticking to me, I saw what I thought was glass scattered around me and reached out to pick a piece off my arm--it was cold. I realized that it wasn't glass and looked back at the car--not a single broken window in the car. Fucking amazing. What I thought was glass turned out to be the ice from our cooler that had exploded after being ejected from the car. This cooler was as large as a human in the fetal position. It very easily could have been one of us that was ejected.
As it turns out, the landing on the roof was what broke my leg--the first impact had jammed me forward, my leg wedging under the brake pedal, and the landing slammed me against the inside of the roof...while my leg remained under the pedal. Snap. I didn't feel a thing until later.
The truck driver pulled his rig across the road (preventing anyone from running us over) and ran to help. He and one of my friends helped me to the side of the road to some shade under a large creosote bush, and went back to help my other friend who was still laying, stunned, in the middle of the road. Going into shock (the heat waves from the road appeared to fill my entire vision--weird visual, to be sure), I heard a loud rattle just behind me. I shit you not--they had lain me down almost directly on top of a rattle snake. The last thing I remember is yelling "SNAKE!!!". The friend that had lain me there was a fellow crew-member of mine on a wildland fire-fighting crew and knew exactly what "SNAKE!!" meant. Apparently he killed the snake with a rock while I was passed out. Being snake-bit while already in shock probably would have killed me considering the ambulance took over 40 minutes to arrive.
Several things I have drawn from this event. One, the 1970 Plymouth Belvedere (Police package) was the sturdiest automobile I ever owned. Two, seat-belts are a good thing, but only when worn. Had I been wearing mine, I wouldn't have suffered the bro
From that article: "Niue purported to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China on December 12, 2007.[17] However, in light of its Constitution it is uncertain whether Niue had the capacity to enter diplomatic relations with any country. Traditionally, Niue's foreign relations and defence have been regarded as the responsibility of New Zealand, which has full diplomatic relations with China. Furthermore the Joint Communique signed by Niue and China is different in its treatment of the Taiwan question from that agreed by New Zealand and China. New Zealand "acknowledged" China's position on Taiwan but has never expressly agreed with it, but Niue "recognizes that there is only one China in the world, the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of China."
Interesting.
A little more searching and I find this article that discusses the tax-haven aspects of Niue in terms of Chinese businessmen...
The closing statement from that article... "Niue's trust laws resemble the laws of offshore centers that are, or sometime were, British colonies. The important factor here is that, due to its location, Niue has become a financial center for wealthy Chinese who want to use the financial figure of offshore trusts. This means, Niue has a good prospective given the flourishing of the Chinese economy."
Indeed, the Chinese have been trying to buy their way into residency status on Niue (in effect giving them New Zealand residency status)...
Considering that the USCOC is a Conservative/Republican cesspool of manipulation, I sincerely hope that the hackers are simply stockpiling information to use AGAINST these asshats.
I eagerly await the Wikileaks release of information gleaned from these "investigations", but I would accept a more public, strategic release of information that torpedoes any chances of Conservatives/Republicans gaining further benefit from the USCOC.
What I'd like to see is both Mark's called into court to testify, only to have the two lose it altogether on the steps of the courthouse where the entire world will get to see Mark Zuckerberg kick the snot out of Mark Zuckerberg. Fucker deserves it.
(Slashdot Auto-correct for "Zuckerberg": Rubbernecker)
"So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, blah, blah"
For your information, Mr. Smarty pants, there were no cows 4 billion years ago. As a matter of fact, there wasn't anything around that long ago that was doing much farting, so where do you think the methane is going to come from? Huh?
Slashdot Mirror
"In the US, this type of behavior in other circumstances is regarded as network intrusion and is considered illegal hacking. What makes this legal? The target also engaging in illegal activity?"
I suppose you missed that Pirate Pay is based in Russia?
Anyway, nice to see that if a Corporation can't buy it's way through government intrusion (read "law"), it simply creates a little spawnling Microsoft somewhere else where the rules are more easily ignored/don't exist/are written by Vladimir Putin's cat.
I want to strangle some of these bean counters.
We don't need another MMO to replicate Skyrim--We just need MULTIPLAYER.
(and by multiplayer, I mean IP to IP connections that don't rely on your fucking servers)
"I agree. Let the free market decide. If a company builds a ship with only enough life boats for half the people then the half of the people that die won't use that company again thereby correcting the problem."
Dude, that's up there with achieving 100% market share by killing 100% of your competition's customers.
"I suppose I could hit the "secure" .onion site but I see nothing to indicate there's code there."
For the second time today, I heard a little voice in the back of my head telling me "You don't really want to click that link..." leaving me wondering where the hell that came from. Both times intuition instantly took the helm and I browsed off on another tangent.
The first time was an article link on the main page of CNN's home page titled "How to hide from face-detection". In hindsight, what better way to find out who is interested in avoiding being tracked by face-recognition software then to place an article about the subject and watch who clicks. Add 'em to the database! Now, I'm not saying all of this went through my head when I saw the article, but rather intuition simply steered me away.
The second time this happened was when my mouse cursor was just now hovering over that very same button you just mentioned--The "Secure Website" button. This time around, intuition just said to me " I TOLD you so!". Again, in hindsight, what better way to find out who is interested in censorship (and by extension, circumventing it) then by dropping a link that claims to offer insight into the inner workings of censorship, and simply tracking the hits?
Now take the results of BOTH of those link traces. Anyone that now shows up at both goes one notch up the list of people to keep an eye on. Do this long enough, with enough crafted honeypots, and you end up with lists of people that are ranked by threat levels based on interest. This is essentially what the librarians have been warning us about. This link, the "Secure Website", didn't even work for me--standard Firefox "Server Not Found" error. Nothing of value was even offered by the website, that I can tell. Same goes with the CNN article--it's the same article, rehashed, that has been going around the web for a few months now (even here on /.).
OK, my sig has started to tell me to shut up now...
"Those of us who will still fly will appreciate the extra room on the planes and the lower fares."
Care to elaborate on the lower fares? Fewer customers means lower fares?
"If all the cancer paranoia were true, we'd all have cancer by age 10!"
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood
From the article:
"High levels of ionizing radiation from accidents or from radiotherapy have been linked with increased risk of some childhood cancers."
I guess that since the TSA are intentionally irradiating children, and not doing so by accident or by providing radiotherapy, this might not apply.
Mind Control!
Seriously, who decides what is "acceptable" behavior? Valve? Players acting as moderators? GROUPS of players acting as moderators? PAID GROUPS? (see where I'm going with this?)
The moment you start applying anything other then peer pressure is the moment where distrust SHOULD come into play. Some people should never be allowed such control over others, in-game or out. Sure, some people are dicks, but handing out baseball bats (excuse me, Ban-Hammers) to the disgruntled is not the solution.
"The Disgruntled Ones is now recruiting for Scalper positions, as well as Guild Attorney. Must have Moderation Points!"
Three Networks for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Network to rule them all, One Network to find them,
One Network to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
"During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap."
Why is it that tax-payer money and radioactive/toxic waste always seem to be dumped in the same place?
I wonder what kind of car the employees at the Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly Plant are driving this month...
"It's tagged as rackspace. http://www.rackspace.com/"
I just went to that website, as well as every single link from the main page. At each page I used the find function to search each page for a single word. I did not find it....anywhere. That being said, maybe they simply overlooked the concept.
The word I searched for?.........."SECURITY".
"(Hmmm portray Martin as a young boy and Zimmerman as a racist (via doctored 911 call audio), and tried REALLY hard to portray Zimmerman as white, when he is Hispanic... Why would they do that?)"
Ask Charles Manson--he's played the same game before.
""In the first 40 days of President Barack Obama's administration, the White House email system was down 23% of time, according to White House CIO Brook Colangelo, the person who also delivered the 'first presidential Blackberry.' The White House IT systems inherited by the new administration were in bad shape. Over 82% of the White House's technology had reached its end of life. Desktops, for instance, still had floppy disk drives, including the one Colangelo delivered to Rahm Emanuel, Obama's then chief of staff and now Mayor of Chicago. There were no redundant email servers.""
So......I'm guessing no Crysis 2 then? Geez. I can run it with everything cranked.
AGAIN with the prior art!
From Wikipedia on "Hobbit":(debate away!)
"Evidence of earlier use
The only source known today that makes reference to hobbits in any sort of historical context is the Denham Tracts by Michael Aislabie Denham. More specifically, it appears in the Denham Tracts, edited by James Hardy, (London: Folklore Society, 1895), vol. 2, the second part of a two-volume set compiled from Denham's publications between 1846 and 1859.
The text contains a long list of sprites and bogies, based on an older list, the Discovery of Witchcraft, dated 1584, with many additions and a few repetitions. The term hobbit is listed in the context of
boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies
In the December 2003 Oxford English Dictionary newsletter, in the "Words of Choice" section, the following appears:
4. hobbit â" J. R. R. Tolkien modestly claimed not to have coined this word, although the Supplement to the OED credited him with the invention of it in the absence of further evidence. It seems, however, that Tolkien was right to be cautious. It has since turned up in one of those 19th-century folklore journals, in a list of long-forgotten words for fairy-folk or little people. It seems likely that Tolkien, with his interest in folklore, read this and subconsciously registered the name, reviving it many years later in his most famous character. [Editor's note: although revision of the OED's entry for hobbit will of course take this evidence for earlier use into account, it does not yet appear in the online version of the entry.] "
"If/when this drug is discovered to be doing something bad, who's responsible? This mindless manufacturer? I'm betting not. The Indian governement? HAHAHA. Bayer is the one at the end of the barrel and they won't have any 'excessive profits' to pay damages with. Woohoo!"
Let's not forget that India is also side-stepping the costs associated with the regulation of drug development, costs that we American tax-payers cover in the form of our Food and Drug Administration budgeting. They are not just sticking Bayer with the costs of drug development but also sticking us tax-payers with the cost of making sure Bayer is doing it safely.
Granted, we would have spent that money anyways, and I suppose that in itself is enough reason to not be concerned about the fact that we are essentially subsidizing another country's healthcare system, but when you combine that with the fact that WE don't get these kind of cost savings from our own "healthcare system", it starts to grate the nerves.
And it was all for nothing....
http://ninjavideo.co/
"...but if enough stink is made he'll be a less effective mouthpiece."
Better yet, he'll become the political equivalent of tainted meat, fit for not save the rendering tub. He will be effectively removed from circulation, and that is a win, plain and simple.
When he is reduced to scraps from the tables of the corrupt, then it is time to focus on the next corrupt politician/lobbyist. Maybe a regular petition campaign, that draws attention to specific examples of corruption, would be picked up by more media (independent, I'm guessing) and this might have some real, positive benefit/results. The White House took a stand against SOPA/PIPA--signing this petition is a way of backing them up on that decision, of standing behind the President. I suppose that the President could interpret every petition signature as a vote next election, and I am guessing he would be correct in that assumption, especially if he takes action in response to that petition.
I'm refreshing that petition in my browser, and see people signing it at about one signature every 4-5 seconds, less time then it takes to read the petition, yet when I Google "Chris Dodd", there are only a couple of news articles that relate to the comments he made (although I am watching that change quickly. Snowball effect?), so I think it safe to say that people are not reacting to something in mainstream media, but the content of the petition itself. Yay. Perhaps those signatures will come in faster then the dollars from lobbyists.
Email a link to a friend or family. We all have a stake in this. Maybe it will get enough signatures that the mainstream media can no longer ignore it.
"Resiliency is great, but the cost is that instead of a single action to retrieve the torrent file, you put out queries to your peers, who ask their peers, and so on, performing thousands or even millions of queries between peers in order to retrieve the torrent file."
This idea (magnet links instead of .torrent files) might backfire.
ISPs are already overloaded/oversold and have been bitching about P2P since inception. When all the added bandwidth of all these millions of handshakes starts to add up, the ISPs might finally have enough evidence to convince our Congress Clowns that it is, indeed, time to draw the curtain on P2P and thepiratebay.org in a manner far more damaging to the Internet then SOPA/PIPA combined.
As many have stated already, once magnet links are the norm, there is no way to shut them down, that is except for shutting down the Internet, or severely neutering it. Imagine what would have happened if Bradley Manning had simply uploaded all those diplomatic cables in the form of a torrent--the US government would have been taking an entirely different stance towards P2P. Such a leak would be unstoppable if everyone was using magnet links. So what does everyone think would happen if such a scenario presents itself--the government knows a huge leak is being disseminated and the only way to stop it is to shut down the Internet--what course would our current government take in a situation like that?
"Basically, they would have to be broadcasting a massively powerful signal capable of killing off lifeforms from the raw energy in the wave before we could detect it at our distance."
True, but do not discount the use of a remote "repeater" that essentially sends the message from a distant, but safe, location. I am sure (at least I hope) that SETI took this into account, otherwise, without some sort of repeater, we'd not only be getting a message from a civilization far, far in the past, but also from a civilization that was extinct. Boo.
Perhaps we humans could do something similar right now. We have the technology--nuclear weapons. We could set a bunch of them up on the far side of the moon, or a distant orbit far out in the solar system, then set them off timed to send a message--a sort of Morse code in radiation bursts of megaton energy levels. I propose we name the resulting mess the "Anachragnome Radiation Belt".
"I think they buried the lead here... 100mph, sans seat-belt, and he walked away?"
When I was 18, I crashed a 1970 Plymouth Belvedere (Police package) at 105 mph. I know that I was going this fast because I was barely passing a big-rig and was trying to determine how fast the crazy fucker was going on I-10 in Arizona (two trailers!). I was looking at the speedometer when left front tire blew just after I passed the truck. The steel wheel cut into 130F+ asphalt and instantly yanked the car 90 degrees to the left, sending it hurtling off the road--straight into a 6 ft-high pile of boulders the DOT piled along the median. I had almost zero chance of reacting in time to correct before I was in soft shoulder dirt. I almost walked away.
Here is where things got really crazy. According to the driver of the truck I had just passed (it was all a jumbled blur to me), my car impacted the boulders in the highway median, launching upwards. The rear of the car impacted the boulders (tearing open the fuel tank) sending it into a cartwheel/spin. The truck driver claimed the car did at least two complete somersaults before impacting HARD on it's roof and sliding back into the roadway upside down.
I, AND my two friends in the backseat, were NOT wearing seat-belts. All four door windows were rolled down because of the desert heat.
Looking to see if my friends were hurt, my attention was immediately drawn to the rear window, amazingly intact--a waterfall of fuel was sheeting across the glass. At that point, my only thought was to get out of the car. One of my friends was already on the way out one window and I shoved the other out another window and onto the hot desert asphalt, quickly following her myself. Once out, I tried to stand up and failed completely as my left leg was bent at a 90 degree angle about 3 inches above the ankle. That was the only injury I sustained, and, to this day, I have a 7-inch steel plate and 7 screws in my leg (it looks like the Docs went to Ace Hardware for parts in the x-rays). BOTH of my friends were completely uninjured.
Laying there on the ground, with melted asphalt sealer sticking to me, I saw what I thought was glass scattered around me and reached out to pick a piece off my arm--it was cold. I realized that it wasn't glass and looked back at the car--not a single broken window in the car. Fucking amazing. What I thought was glass turned out to be the ice from our cooler that had exploded after being ejected from the car. This cooler was as large as a human in the fetal position. It very easily could have been one of us that was ejected.
As it turns out, the landing on the roof was what broke my leg--the first impact had jammed me forward, my leg wedging under the brake pedal, and the landing slammed me against the inside of the roof...while my leg remained under the pedal. Snap. I didn't feel a thing until later.
The truck driver pulled his rig across the road (preventing anyone from running us over) and ran to help. He and one of my friends helped me to the side of the road to some shade under a large creosote bush, and went back to help my other friend who was still laying, stunned, in the middle of the road. Going into shock (the heat waves from the road appeared to fill my entire vision--weird visual, to be sure), I heard a loud rattle just behind me. I shit you not--they had lain me down almost directly on top of a rattle snake. The last thing I remember is yelling "SNAKE!!!". The friend that had lain me there was a fellow crew-member of mine on a wildland fire-fighting crew and knew exactly what "SNAKE!!" meant. Apparently he killed the snake with a rock while I was passed out. Being snake-bit while already in shock probably would have killed me considering the ambulance took over 40 minutes to arrive.
Several things I have drawn from this event. One, the 1970 Plymouth Belvedere (Police package) was the sturdiest automobile I ever owned. Two, seat-belts are a good thing, but only when worn. Had I been wearing mine, I wouldn't have suffered the bro
I actually had to look up .nu, as I've never encountered it before.
From AegisLab Security blog in regards to this attack:
"The detailed attacking paths are as follows:
[script] hxxp://lilupophilupop.com/sl.php
[hop] hxxp://doutl31inesst.rr.nu/n.php?h=1&s=sl
[hop] hxxp://www3.simplerfnetwork.rr.nu
[hop] hxxp://www1.smartscanerjkm.rr.nu
[download] hxxp://www1.smartscanerjkm.rr.nu "
A little Googling and some interesting reading led me to the small South Pacific island country of Niue. Never heard of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niue
From that article:
"Niue purported to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China on December 12, 2007.[17] However, in light of its Constitution it is uncertain whether Niue had the capacity to enter diplomatic relations with any country. Traditionally, Niue's foreign relations and defence have been regarded as the responsibility of New Zealand, which has full diplomatic relations with China. Furthermore the Joint Communique signed by Niue and China is different in its treatment of the Taiwan question from that agreed by New Zealand and China. New Zealand "acknowledged" China's position on Taiwan but has never expressly agreed with it, but Niue "recognizes that there is only one China in the world, the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of China."
Interesting.
A little more searching and I find this article that discusses the tax-haven aspects of Niue in terms of Chinese businessmen...
http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?s=latestnews&id=2447
The closing statement from that article...
"Niue's trust laws resemble the laws of offshore centers that are, or sometime were, British colonies. The important factor here is that, due to its location, Niue has become a financial center for wealthy Chinese who want to use the financial figure of offshore trusts. This means, Niue has a good prospective given the flourishing of the Chinese economy."
Indeed, the Chinese have been trying to buy their way into residency status on Niue (in effect giving them New Zealand residency status)...
http://www.niueconfidential.com/2011/03/immigration-rort-may-liquidate-company.html
I know it is a leap, but is it possible the Chinese are using Niue as a "Cyberwar base of operations"?
Good Hackers?
Considering that the USCOC is a Conservative/Republican cesspool of manipulation, I sincerely hope that the hackers are simply stockpiling information to use AGAINST these asshats.
I eagerly await the Wikileaks release of information gleaned from these "investigations", but I would accept a more public, strategic release of information that torpedoes any chances of Conservatives/Republicans gaining further benefit from the USCOC.
What I'd like to see is both Mark's called into court to testify, only to have the two lose it altogether on the steps of the courthouse where the entire world will get to see Mark Zuckerberg kick the snot out of Mark Zuckerberg. Fucker deserves it.
(Slashdot Auto-correct for "Zuckerberg": Rubbernecker)
It was a fucking joke. At least you noticed it was stupid.
"So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, blah, blah"
For your information, Mr. Smarty pants, there were no cows 4 billion years ago. As a matter of fact, there wasn't anything around that long ago that was doing much farting, so where do you think the methane is going to come from? Huh?
Thought so...Big guy thinks he's so smart.
Uhhh...this is stupid.
So now, the newscasts will simply be much louder then all the other content.
Hey, what's that over there!?