It's my understanding that there are several communications systems that use ciphers that are considered by the NSA to be better and/or stronger than AES. The agency has been known to approve the use of ciphers which are not as strong as the ones that they have in the vaults when they deem that wider dissemination of those secret ciphers could put them in unacceptable danger of compromise.
The NSA is still holding onto documents transmitted by the Soviets back in the 1950s in hopes of eventually decrypting them and translating them, because doing so would give them a look at the encryption techniques used at the time, which could give them insights into what followed, making it easier to break current codes.
When the Germans kept Enigma a secret, they did nothing more or less common than anyone else was doing, or still does for the most part. National governments by and large do not leave their communications to AES, but instead use (what they at least perceive to be) more secure methods. NSA still keeps our codes secret, Russia's FSB keeps its codes secret, and the UK's GCHQ keeps its codes secret.
One of the advantages to this is that the limited distribution of a given code can (but does not always) limit the number of attacks against it. Whereas a commercial cipher may result in millions or even billions of ciphertexts to analyze, a government cipher may result in only thousands to work with, and it may be more difficult to determine plaintext aspects of a given document for comparative analysis. It's also generally difficult to get the actual cryptographic hardware without paying someone (either from inside or outside) to steal one.
This doesn't work well at all for the kinds of things that the FCC covers, however. I can generate billions of ciphertexts with known plaintexts for some new wireless system, and I can also do analysis against the electronics involved to look for side-channel attacks. Hiding things for commercial items intended for the general public is fairly pointless.
Side note: I'd not heard of the Robin Hood & Friar Tuck trick. That was some very fun reading. Thanks for brightening my morning a bit.:)
Consider it a localized experiment. If it works in Massachusetts -- and I'm skeptical that it will -- then it may provide a model elsewhere. California is also pursuing such an idea, though it seems to be less well-considered than what Massachusetts has. What concerns me, similar to you, is the possibility that it will send more poor people to the system than middle-income or wealthy people, and the systems will be drained faster than they can be filled, regardless of how many companies do or do not relocate.
It's not FUD. I know Canada sends patients to the US when its own systems are overloaded, and I believe I have read that some UK patients have been flown over as well. This isn't for common issues -- Canadians don't see a US doctor for pneumonia -- but some procedures that are common in the US are rare elsewhere (Interleukin-2, for example), and it gives the patient faster treatment under certain conditions to send them south.
A pardon does not expunge the record. It is an official forgiveness, and requires that the person being pardoned admit to and express remorse for the crime.
(1) Riots, repression, and rationing may lead to Ahmadinejad's replacement, either in the next election or, vaguely possibly, sooner. While I don't think the ayatollahs will remove him, they may not back him in the next poll. The fact that many of his own supporters are now turning on him is an example of how sanctions are intended to work. Note that the rationing was put into effect under threat of a specific sanction (gasoline importation). Had Ahmadinejad decided to build more oil refineries instead of a nuclear program, it wouldn't have to worry about such sanctions.
(2) Iran is fully justified in developing a nuclear cycle, building nuclear power plants, and generally expanding its use of peaceful nuclear power, and I support any nation that wants to do this within the framework of the NPT. However, Iran's refusal to allow international inspectors to see everything that it has, and to turn over complete documentation, is a violation of the NPT, and is what is concerning the IAEA and the UN. The concerns also have to do with the type of reactor(s) being built (heavy water vs. light water), the ability of heavy water reactors to produce plutonium, and what Iran will be doing with the plutonium. Comments made by Ahmadinejad about wiping Israel off the map -- something Iran can't risk right now because of Israel's nuclear arsenal -- can only be seriously backed up by a nuclear arsenal. The coming of a nuclear holocaust probably does not worry him right now, because he expects the coming of the Mehdi, whom he believes will establish a universal and just Muslim kingdom before the Day of Resurrection.
What I was talking about does not call for any kind of Gestapo. It becomes completely voluntary. No one is checking papers for the random person on the street. Anyone who wants to go home may do so simply by getting on a train. Most of them carry ID from their home country, which allows easy verification of where they need to go. They're allowed on bus, train, or boat as soon as they've signed their waiver, and sent on the trip to wherever they need to go, be that Mexico, Guatemala, China, Poland, or Ireland.
Many of them make periodic treks home, anyway, risking getting caught coming back. Some of them do get caught and are returned to their home countries, where they start over again. This gives them an incentive to do it right the next time, and in the meantime, maybe try to improve their own neighborhoods.
Also, Intel can't buy AMD (I think they actually tried once, many years ago) due to anti-trust legislation.
PlugPlover never said anything about Intel buying AMD. He suggested that IBM buy AMD, which would be more natural as IBM has collaborated with AMD on numerous aspects that advanced the CPU world, such as SOI and copper interconnects.
You don't have to deport them. You just make it impossible (or nearly so) for them to find work. They'll leave on their own, because they simply can't afford to stay.
There will always be illegal immigration, as someone will always be willing to risk it, and someone will always be willing to hire at least some of them. But if hiring practices are cleaned up such that it becomes far more difficult to fill in a random SSN, and if enough people actually hiring those here illegally are not just warned or fined but instead sent to prison, as the law allows, the market for them would dry up. How many people are going to be willing to pay $10,000 and spend up to ten years in prison for each illegal immigrant hired?
I'd even consider supporting providing buses, trains, or boats to help them get back home. They sign a waiver saying that they are leaving voluntarily and will not attempt to return in any way for two years, and after that, they can stand in line like everyone else, instead of being forcibly deported and permanently banned from returning to the country. Sure, it will cost a few billion up front, but the long-term savings would be enormous, and once all of the voluntaries have left after a couple of years, new plans could be considered on how to deal with any worker shortages that may be present -- if they even exist.
The demand was that the suspects be turned over for trial in a fair court. This happened, and the appeals process is an extension of that. Just because one was acquitted and one can appeal does not mean that the efforts were wasted.
You also ignore the complete removal of Libya's nuclear and chemical weapons programs, which were turned over to nations in the Security Council, and all of the facilities opened without exception to UN inspectors. That's an even more significant accomplishment.
The trade embargo with Cuba is US-specific, and the nearly-complete embargoes (such as those with Iran and Syria) are often also US-specific. Europe and Canada trade fairly freely with the island nation, and Russia sells plenty of military gear to both Iran and Syria.
There are places where economic embargoes, or the threat thereof, may have significant benefit. Libya's acquiesence to UN demands regarding the Lockerbie suspects and checmical and nuclear programs probably came about in part due to economic pressures that prevented foreign companies from investing significantly in its oil fields. And Iran instituted fuel rationing a couple of days ago in response to threat of embargo of gasoline trade into the country in an attempt to build up reserves in anticipation of trade sanctions. Iran has extremely limited refining capabilities, and so imports around a third of its gasoline, and then subsidizes it to 20% of its market price. The response was the destruction of several fuel stations, some small riots, and a very divided and irritated parliament taking up the issue.
However, in order for trade embargoes to really work, they usually have to be nearly universal, though even then there is no guarantee. North Korea is a prime example here, where the leaders keep such a tight lid on the people that they don't fear uprisings, while they live in comfort that their people can barely even dream about. However, recent targeting of leadership assets overseas has brought pressure there that tangible results (a scheduled shutdown of DPRK's reactor in July) may be coming about.
Their planning begins years ahead of time, often working on systems three generations beyond the ones that they're currently installing. Problems with designs can push power usage for a given system much higher than planned, and it can take time to get the power systems in place. NSA is a naturally paranoid agency; they take all of their information sources and know that someone else is looking at exactly those to analyze them, so they don't want anyone to know exactly how much power they're using because that may provide a clue as to the computing capacity that they have. A sudden increase in power draw from local utilities may be seen and passed on to potential enemies, as might the construction of a new, on-site plant, whose capacity may be figured out by an experienced engineer.
While the NSA certainly has undertaken problematic programs here and there, they still do a lot of SIGINT against other nations, keeping tabs on what's happening. Russia, China, North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, and even Israel, as well as groups like Hezbollah, are certainly constant targets of intercepts because of past or current untrustworthiness. Knowing what's happening around the world is still their primary goal, and where the majority of their efforts are located.
Because of the overhead, a single 54Mbps wireless connection, if on.11a or.11g only, can get as high as about 30Mbps. If there's a.11b device in range and a.11g AP is set for compatibility mode, it can knock the rate down to 10-15Mbps.
Under.11n, the theoretical rate actually maxes out at about 250Mbps. Factoring in the overhead, this allows, without compatibility mode, perhaps 150Mbps. However, the presence of any pre-.11n device knocks the channel width down to 20MHz from 40MHz, and then compatibility mode with.11a/b/g can knock it down even lower. Chances are that the actual bitrate with a relatively clean signal will be ~125Mbps, and the actual throughput will be somewhere around 70-75Mbps.
One thing to keep in mind in all of this is that in many cases, the uplink on a switch to the rest of the network is only 100Mbps, so the final throughput from what people are used to isn't going to decrease all that much. Factor in several APs with a balanced channel setup with a gigabit uplink, and the experience shouldn't be all that different from what the wired people are experiencing.
The word 'blog' annoys me, as does 'voip' when it's said as a word (they pronounce it voyp) and not an acronym.
Dealing with wireless vendors for an enterprise-wide deployment, I can't get one meeting without someone bringing up "VoFi" (VoIP over wireless, for the slow ones), despite mention at the beginning that we don't allow VoIP to begin with.
Then how about I quote Wikipedia where it states that more (and more) dictionaries and reference books are considering it an accepted form?
That won't stop us from fighting the good fight, much like I try to get people to stop using the word 'blog.' I don't like it because it's a lazy shortcut of weblog, and it has a clumsy and abrupt sound to it that I find displeasing.
This is true. If I calculate correctly, at 6000mph and 20 miles altitude, given a window of 30 degrees, the dwell time would have to be at most ~6.3 seconds, not including time to acquire the target and aim, though this perhaps would be possible before the firing window opens. The laser being developed is a 100kW variant; would six seconds of dwell time be long enough to kill an unprotected human? How powerful would a laser need to be to go through light armor in six seconds?
There's work being done on lasers that are eventually intended for mounting under the F-35, so it may not be that much of a stretch to see one or two of those mounted in something like this. I don't know how badly 20 miles of atmosphere would attenuate the beam, but if it's for surgical strikes against soft targets (where a soft target could even be relatively heavily armored, but not under 30 feet of reinforced concrete), such a pinpoint ability could be exceedingly valuable in hitting targets in urban areas without the collateral damage of even the Small-Diameter Bomb (which still weighs in at 250 pounds).
You don't usually see surcharges because it's bad for business. I have on a few occasions in the last couple of years had to pay a surcharge of about 2%-3% on credit card transactions (most recently when paying for a vacation home rental by card instead of check because I couldn't find my checkbook). I still sometimes find gas stations out in the boonies that have a surcharge for credit card transactions. However, in most cases, there's enough profit left over after the surcharge to get by, and enough competition locally that is willing to waive the surcharge, that it's simply no longer done.
It's a matter of perspective. You see Bush issuing a veto as refusing to pay for the troops; others see a refusal of Congress to pass a bill that the president will sign a refusal to pay for the troops. This is like the mess that Republicans tried (somewhat successfully) to pin on Kerry in 2004, when they called his nay vote on a defense spending bill an attempt to cancel funding for numerous weapons systems. The truth was his vote was nothing of the kind -- he voted against the bill because he thought that it was inappropriate in some aspect, and so could not support its passage. He may have supported 99% of the text, but he found one small piece of it distasteful enough to vote against it. Bush got just about everything that he wanted -- and the Democrats got a lot of their own, unrelated items -- but disagreed with the withdrawal provision strongly enough that he would not sign it into law. In the end, he got not a year's worth of funding, but only several months of funding, with a renewal of debate on the issue at the end of summer.
On a side note, I was pleased with many of the incoming majority's plans for Congress, including five-day work-weeks, more transparent processes, and more open debates. I have seen none of these come to fruition, and when Republicans have taken them to task on it, they simply say that the Republicans were no better. This is true, but it's beside the point. Justifying one's own broken promises on the basis of someone else's hypocrisy is itself disingenuous. I'd call for the lot of them to be fired and new ones brought in, but we tried that in California, and got an even worse legislative body.
The Democrats control both houses and would have already done this if they didn't think it would get them kicked out of office at the next election.
No, that's a balance of power issue. Pulling the troops won't hurt the Democrats in the next elections -- not as a whole, anyway -- but Bush will veto any bill that contains a deadline, and Congress doesn't have a veto-proof majority on the topic. What ends up happening (theoretically) is that the troops eventually don't get supplies, and due to that the Democrats get hurt. The president simply has the upper hand on this issue, regardless of the feeling of the populace or the majority party in Congress.
ZDNet appears to be forwarding referred clicks (possibly just from Slashdot) to the.comnull address. It works fine if you just paste in the link and press Enter.
They sure as hell created massive tension in the last 5 minutes with all the cuts between the family at the table, the guy at the counter, meadow trying to parallel park, the other customers in the diner.
My roommate had the idea that perhaps, for just a few minutes, we were living in Tony's world, where almost everyone and everything is a threat, and so he's always watching things -- which is how he stays alive -- and where the appearance of a loved one is an enormous relief. If that's true, then it's a very unpleasant experience, and it's no wonder that he finds the escapes that he does.
Mikhail Kalashnikov is still alive, and while he gets a small pension from his military days, he has also licensed his name to numerous products of late, so while he's not rich, he doesn't seem to be living in squalor, either.
When did I call it a memory leak? The only time that I mentioned a leak in this thread was when I was referring to another poster's mention of a leak in NoScript (which someone else said had been fixed).
I referred here to the way that Firefox handles memory, which may include leaks but also may include unnecessarily holding onto memory long after it's practically needed. There's little reason to hold onto the last ten tabs closed per window, plus their entire contents. Even if that's seen as a necessary feature, at that point it's best not to hold onto cached information, and it should simply be a list of links, which even with expanded information shouldn't hold cost more than a megabyte. Disabling holding onto that memory should not require an extension or an about:config change; I should be able to find it in the Options dialog box, which AFAICT does not have any such options.
I have no problem with a browser holding onto memory in the currently open tabs. That's behavior I expect in all browsers to a certain extent.
Slashdot Mirror
It's my understanding that there are several communications systems that use ciphers that are considered by the NSA to be better and/or stronger than AES. The agency has been known to approve the use of ciphers which are not as strong as the ones that they have in the vaults when they deem that wider dissemination of those secret ciphers could put them in unacceptable danger of compromise.
The NSA is still holding onto documents transmitted by the Soviets back in the 1950s in hopes of eventually decrypting them and translating them, because doing so would give them a look at the encryption techniques used at the time, which could give them insights into what followed, making it easier to break current codes.
When the Germans kept Enigma a secret, they did nothing more or less common than anyone else was doing, or still does for the most part. National governments by and large do not leave their communications to AES, but instead use (what they at least perceive to be) more secure methods. NSA still keeps our codes secret, Russia's FSB keeps its codes secret, and the UK's GCHQ keeps its codes secret.
:)
One of the advantages to this is that the limited distribution of a given code can (but does not always) limit the number of attacks against it. Whereas a commercial cipher may result in millions or even billions of ciphertexts to analyze, a government cipher may result in only thousands to work with, and it may be more difficult to determine plaintext aspects of a given document for comparative analysis. It's also generally difficult to get the actual cryptographic hardware without paying someone (either from inside or outside) to steal one.
This doesn't work well at all for the kinds of things that the FCC covers, however. I can generate billions of ciphertexts with known plaintexts for some new wireless system, and I can also do analysis against the electronics involved to look for side-channel attacks. Hiding things for commercial items intended for the general public is fairly pointless.
Side note: I'd not heard of the Robin Hood & Friar Tuck trick. That was some very fun reading. Thanks for brightening my morning a bit.
Consider it a localized experiment. If it works in Massachusetts -- and I'm skeptical that it will -- then it may provide a model elsewhere. California is also pursuing such an idea, though it seems to be less well-considered than what Massachusetts has. What concerns me, similar to you, is the possibility that it will send more poor people to the system than middle-income or wealthy people, and the systems will be drained faster than they can be filled, regardless of how many companies do or do not relocate.
It's not FUD. I know Canada sends patients to the US when its own systems are overloaded, and I believe I have read that some UK patients have been flown over as well. This isn't for common issues -- Canadians don't see a US doctor for pneumonia -- but some procedures that are common in the US are rare elsewhere (Interleukin-2, for example), and it gives the patient faster treatment under certain conditions to send them south.
This is why some people refuse pardons -- they want to be found innocent, not simply set free.
A pardon does not expunge the record. It is an official forgiveness, and requires that the person being pardoned admit to and express remorse for the crime.
(1) Riots, repression, and rationing may lead to Ahmadinejad's replacement, either in the next election or, vaguely possibly, sooner. While I don't think the ayatollahs will remove him, they may not back him in the next poll. The fact that many of his own supporters are now turning on him is an example of how sanctions are intended to work. Note that the rationing was put into effect under threat of a specific sanction (gasoline importation). Had Ahmadinejad decided to build more oil refineries instead of a nuclear program, it wouldn't have to worry about such sanctions.
(2) Iran is fully justified in developing a nuclear cycle, building nuclear power plants, and generally expanding its use of peaceful nuclear power, and I support any nation that wants to do this within the framework of the NPT. However, Iran's refusal to allow international inspectors to see everything that it has, and to turn over complete documentation, is a violation of the NPT, and is what is concerning the IAEA and the UN. The concerns also have to do with the type of reactor(s) being built (heavy water vs. light water), the ability of heavy water reactors to produce plutonium, and what Iran will be doing with the plutonium. Comments made by Ahmadinejad about wiping Israel off the map -- something Iran can't risk right now because of Israel's nuclear arsenal -- can only be seriously backed up by a nuclear arsenal. The coming of a nuclear holocaust probably does not worry him right now, because he expects the coming of the Mehdi, whom he believes will establish a universal and just Muslim kingdom before the Day of Resurrection.
What I was talking about does not call for any kind of Gestapo. It becomes completely voluntary. No one is checking papers for the random person on the street. Anyone who wants to go home may do so simply by getting on a train. Most of them carry ID from their home country, which allows easy verification of where they need to go. They're allowed on bus, train, or boat as soon as they've signed their waiver, and sent on the trip to wherever they need to go, be that Mexico, Guatemala, China, Poland, or Ireland.
Many of them make periodic treks home, anyway, risking getting caught coming back. Some of them do get caught and are returned to their home countries, where they start over again. This gives them an incentive to do it right the next time, and in the meantime, maybe try to improve their own neighborhoods.
Also, Intel can't buy AMD (I think they actually tried once, many years ago) due to anti-trust legislation.
PlugPlover never said anything about Intel buying AMD. He suggested that IBM buy AMD, which would be more natural as IBM has collaborated with AMD on numerous aspects that advanced the CPU world, such as SOI and copper interconnects.
You don't have to deport them. You just make it impossible (or nearly so) for them to find work. They'll leave on their own, because they simply can't afford to stay.
There will always be illegal immigration, as someone will always be willing to risk it, and someone will always be willing to hire at least some of them. But if hiring practices are cleaned up such that it becomes far more difficult to fill in a random SSN, and if enough people actually hiring those here illegally are not just warned or fined but instead sent to prison, as the law allows, the market for them would dry up. How many people are going to be willing to pay $10,000 and spend up to ten years in prison for each illegal immigrant hired?
I'd even consider supporting providing buses, trains, or boats to help them get back home. They sign a waiver saying that they are leaving voluntarily and will not attempt to return in any way for two years, and after that, they can stand in line like everyone else, instead of being forcibly deported and permanently banned from returning to the country. Sure, it will cost a few billion up front, but the long-term savings would be enormous, and once all of the voluntaries have left after a couple of years, new plans could be considered on how to deal with any worker shortages that may be present -- if they even exist.
The demand was that the suspects be turned over for trial in a fair court. This happened, and the appeals process is an extension of that. Just because one was acquitted and one can appeal does not mean that the efforts were wasted.
You also ignore the complete removal of Libya's nuclear and chemical weapons programs, which were turned over to nations in the Security Council, and all of the facilities opened without exception to UN inspectors. That's an even more significant accomplishment.
The trade embargo with Cuba is US-specific, and the nearly-complete embargoes (such as those with Iran and Syria) are often also US-specific. Europe and Canada trade fairly freely with the island nation, and Russia sells plenty of military gear to both Iran and Syria.
There are places where economic embargoes, or the threat thereof, may have significant benefit. Libya's acquiesence to UN demands regarding the Lockerbie suspects and checmical and nuclear programs probably came about in part due to economic pressures that prevented foreign companies from investing significantly in its oil fields. And Iran instituted fuel rationing a couple of days ago in response to threat of embargo of gasoline trade into the country in an attempt to build up reserves in anticipation of trade sanctions. Iran has extremely limited refining capabilities, and so imports around a third of its gasoline, and then subsidizes it to 20% of its market price. The response was the destruction of several fuel stations, some small riots, and a very divided and irritated parliament taking up the issue.
However, in order for trade embargoes to really work, they usually have to be nearly universal, though even then there is no guarantee. North Korea is a prime example here, where the leaders keep such a tight lid on the people that they don't fear uprisings, while they live in comfort that their people can barely even dream about. However, recent targeting of leadership assets overseas has brought pressure there that tangible results (a scheduled shutdown of DPRK's reactor in July) may be coming about.
Their planning begins years ahead of time, often working on systems three generations beyond the ones that they're currently installing. Problems with designs can push power usage for a given system much higher than planned, and it can take time to get the power systems in place. NSA is a naturally paranoid agency; they take all of their information sources and know that someone else is looking at exactly those to analyze them, so they don't want anyone to know exactly how much power they're using because that may provide a clue as to the computing capacity that they have. A sudden increase in power draw from local utilities may be seen and passed on to potential enemies, as might the construction of a new, on-site plant, whose capacity may be figured out by an experienced engineer.
While the NSA certainly has undertaken problematic programs here and there, they still do a lot of SIGINT against other nations, keeping tabs on what's happening. Russia, China, North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, and even Israel, as well as groups like Hezbollah, are certainly constant targets of intercepts because of past or current untrustworthiness. Knowing what's happening around the world is still their primary goal, and where the majority of their efforts are located.
Because of the overhead, a single 54Mbps wireless connection, if on .11a or .11g only, can get as high as about 30Mbps. If there's a .11b device in range and a .11g AP is set for compatibility mode, it can knock the rate down to 10-15Mbps.
.11n, the theoretical rate actually maxes out at about 250Mbps. Factoring in the overhead, this allows, without compatibility mode, perhaps 150Mbps. However, the presence of any pre-.11n device knocks the channel width down to 20MHz from 40MHz, and then compatibility mode with .11a/b/g can knock it down even lower. Chances are that the actual bitrate with a relatively clean signal will be ~125Mbps, and the actual throughput will be somewhere around 70-75Mbps.
Under
One thing to keep in mind in all of this is that in many cases, the uplink on a switch to the rest of the network is only 100Mbps, so the final throughput from what people are used to isn't going to decrease all that much. Factor in several APs with a balanced channel setup with a gigabit uplink, and the experience shouldn't be all that different from what the wired people are experiencing.
The word 'blog' annoys me, as does 'voip' when it's said as a word (they pronounce it voyp) and not an acronym.
Dealing with wireless vendors for an enterprise-wide deployment, I can't get one meeting without someone bringing up "VoFi" (VoIP over wireless, for the slow ones), despite mention at the beginning that we don't allow VoIP to begin with.
Then how about I quote Wikipedia where it states that more (and more) dictionaries and reference books are considering it an accepted form?
That won't stop us from fighting the good fight, much like I try to get people to stop using the word 'blog.' I don't like it because it's a lazy shortcut of weblog, and it has a clumsy and abrupt sound to it that I find displeasing.
This is true. If I calculate correctly, at 6000mph and 20 miles altitude, given a window of 30 degrees, the dwell time would have to be at most ~6.3 seconds, not including time to acquire the target and aim, though this perhaps would be possible before the firing window opens. The laser being developed is a 100kW variant; would six seconds of dwell time be long enough to kill an unprotected human? How powerful would a laser need to be to go through light armor in six seconds?
There's work being done on lasers that are eventually intended for mounting under the F-35, so it may not be that much of a stretch to see one or two of those mounted in something like this. I don't know how badly 20 miles of atmosphere would attenuate the beam, but if it's for surgical strikes against soft targets (where a soft target could even be relatively heavily armored, but not under 30 feet of reinforced concrete), such a pinpoint ability could be exceedingly valuable in hitting targets in urban areas without the collateral damage of even the Small-Diameter Bomb (which still weighs in at 250 pounds).
You don't usually see surcharges because it's bad for business. I have on a few occasions in the last couple of years had to pay a surcharge of about 2%-3% on credit card transactions (most recently when paying for a vacation home rental by card instead of check because I couldn't find my checkbook). I still sometimes find gas stations out in the boonies that have a surcharge for credit card transactions. However, in most cases, there's enough profit left over after the surcharge to get by, and enough competition locally that is willing to waive the surcharge, that it's simply no longer done.
It's a matter of perspective. You see Bush issuing a veto as refusing to pay for the troops; others see a refusal of Congress to pass a bill that the president will sign a refusal to pay for the troops. This is like the mess that Republicans tried (somewhat successfully) to pin on Kerry in 2004, when they called his nay vote on a defense spending bill an attempt to cancel funding for numerous weapons systems. The truth was his vote was nothing of the kind -- he voted against the bill because he thought that it was inappropriate in some aspect, and so could not support its passage. He may have supported 99% of the text, but he found one small piece of it distasteful enough to vote against it. Bush got just about everything that he wanted -- and the Democrats got a lot of their own, unrelated items -- but disagreed with the withdrawal provision strongly enough that he would not sign it into law. In the end, he got not a year's worth of funding, but only several months of funding, with a renewal of debate on the issue at the end of summer.
On a side note, I was pleased with many of the incoming majority's plans for Congress, including five-day work-weeks, more transparent processes, and more open debates. I have seen none of these come to fruition, and when Republicans have taken them to task on it, they simply say that the Republicans were no better. This is true, but it's beside the point. Justifying one's own broken promises on the basis of someone else's hypocrisy is itself disingenuous. I'd call for the lot of them to be fired and new ones brought in, but we tried that in California, and got an even worse legislative body.
The Democrats control both houses and would have already done this if they didn't think it would get them kicked out of office at the next election.
No, that's a balance of power issue. Pulling the troops won't hurt the Democrats in the next elections -- not as a whole, anyway -- but Bush will veto any bill that contains a deadline, and Congress doesn't have a veto-proof majority on the topic. What ends up happening (theoretically) is that the troops eventually don't get supplies, and due to that the Democrats get hurt. The president simply has the upper hand on this issue, regardless of the feeling of the populace or the majority party in Congress.
ZDNet appears to be forwarding referred clicks (possibly just from Slashdot) to the .comnull address. It works fine if you just paste in the link and press Enter.
My roommate had the idea that perhaps, for just a few minutes, we were living in Tony's world, where almost everyone and everything is a threat, and so he's always watching things -- which is how he stays alive -- and where the appearance of a loved one is an enormous relief. If that's true, then it's a very unpleasant experience, and it's no wonder that he finds the escapes that he does.
Mikhail Kalashnikov is still alive, and while he gets a small pension from his military days, he has also licensed his name to numerous products of late, so while he's not rich, he doesn't seem to be living in squalor, either.
When did I call it a memory leak? The only time that I mentioned a leak in this thread was when I was referring to another poster's mention of a leak in NoScript (which someone else said had been fixed).
I referred here to the way that Firefox handles memory, which may include leaks but also may include unnecessarily holding onto memory long after it's practically needed. There's little reason to hold onto the last ten tabs closed per window, plus their entire contents. Even if that's seen as a necessary feature, at that point it's best not to hold onto cached information, and it should simply be a list of links, which even with expanded information shouldn't hold cost more than a megabyte. Disabling holding onto that memory should not require an extension or an about:config change; I should be able to find it in the Options dialog box, which AFAICT does not have any such options.
I have no problem with a browser holding onto memory in the currently open tabs. That's behavior I expect in all browsers to a certain extent.