No, they're very much alike. Assuming Stapel was a vegan with an agenda, it's all about faking stuff in order for the conclusion to be as desired, i.e. flattering to someone, furthering an agenda etc. - the end justifying the means.
Actually stuff bordering on this happens all the time. It's exceedingly rare that any and all data confirms whatever conclusion you want to make (contrived or actually based on your interpretation of the data) so data is adapted, adjusted or thrown away in order for the conclusion to appear clear and unmistakable. It is this exact phenomena that drives part of the global warming skeptics that yell "fake data!"
I don't know if you have to 'tweak' data in order to publish at all, but to someone who has the basic training in the 'scientific method' but never has done true research it seems like it's pure bad science. Is it really necessary to manipulate data to fit the theory?
The genetic solution to fighting the malaria mosquitoes?
If I remember correctly, one focused on making the mosquito deadly to malaria (thus stopping the transmission), the other on simply wiping out the mosquito without harming other insect life.
The most efficient solution so far has been to blanket ponds and similar with DDT... Killed everything, including the mosquitoes. Tiny side-effect there though...
These 'pirates' should be prosecuted for having no taste at all in music. The damage people like them do to the industry is far greater than any number of pirates.
First of all: If you don't want to be fined, obey the speed limits. No ifs, whens and buts - just do it.
Now, I'm sure most of us agree that a lot of traffic regulations are made by people who clearly don't get out much. If you have a stretch of road where everybody drives faster than the limit, it's quite obvious that the road is made for a higher speed than what's posted. Now, there's two basic reasons for a certain speed limit: Standards and special reasons. Standard rules should not be. They should be a guideline when determining the limit, not the generic one-size-fits-all limit. The special reasons usually include school zones and residential areas. But that's the easy, cheap and incorrect way of 'protecting the children'.
The right way is traffic lights, fences, pedestrian bridges or tunnels. Because a child should never occur on a busy thoroughfare. Running a child down going 35 or even just 20 mph is still going to hurt it. Reducing the speed limit instead of doing it the right way is a bad way to save a buck. Children will still be run over and the occasional speeder will most likely kill someone.
I don't remember who originally suggested it (back in the 60s-70s I think), but this idea is still very good: All long distance roads should be in tunnels when intersecting any form of settlement. These roads should facilitate auto-driving so the drivers can relax while packing the traffic optimally. The surface roads within settlements are 10 mph max and you shouldn't have have to drive more than ½ mile from surfacing from the tunnels to get to your destination. Most people would have underground parking, either a simple private garage (like we have on the surface today, just underground) or some shared parking as many businesses in downtown areas already have today. This way, the children are safe to play outside, even on the streets, and we don't have to fill every square inch between homes with roads and fast moving cars that will hurt children at some point.
I've always said that the best way to solve the gang issue would be to round up all suspected members of gangs and place them om a deserted island. On that island there's insane amounts of weapons and ammo all over the place, clearly marked. Now let them fight it out until nobody is left standing. Problem solved and everybody can say they went down fighting for the gang. No innocent bystanders are affected and the gangs won't take up space in the prisons. There won't be any left to recruit new members so the gang rebuild will be dead slow. You could even televise the whole thing using automated cameras and make money selling the footage.
The idea of flooding the data collectors with valid but irrelevant information is clever and good, but it may backfire. Any gaps will be painfully obvious and if you have one at the exact time something goes down, it makes you even more of a suspect because - if you document everything EXCEPT at this particular time... well, then you probably were doing something you shouldn't...
The classic information flood is the inclusion of certain words in phonecalls, emails and so on - just mess with Echelon and similar automated bugging and surveillance systems. They will waste a lot of resources analyzing countless of innocent calls and emails, thus seriously hampering the usefulness of the system.
I live in Denmark and I don't mind paying for music, tv-series and movies. My 6.000+ CDs and 3.000+ DVDs and blu-rays should testify to that. But I absolutely refuse to wait for someone to 'buy rights' or whatever here in my country before I can watch new stuff. If I can't get it legally, I'll have to get it illegally. I have the money in my hand. I want to pay for it. But I can't. Get with the program! - Put your stuff up for sale before someone steals it and gives it away for free!
There's countless of VPN services that basically live on two stupidities:
- Geo-discrimination. If you live the wrong place, there's something you'll have to wait for (maybe forever), that others have already got. - Suing your customers. The copyright owners spend a lot of effort tracking down 'violators' of their rights and sue them.
VPN allows you to both hide and pretend you're somewhere that you're not.
he next generation of free wi-fi is going to track exactly when you log in, which websites you visit and what Google searches you make. They will do all they can to link this to your identity and then use the information to market to you. I've seen the codes; this information is all quite trivial to collect. Most of the work is just organizing it effectively.
Your best bet is probably to go somewhere nobody expects consumer Internet: make an Amazon EC2 instance and VPN to it all the time, or something like that.
VPN is exactly why this won't happen. More and more people are becoming aware of just how invasive various entities are. Some track you and sell that information. Some abuse lobbying power to gain access to powers normally reserved for law enforcement in order to track down 'offenders' that violate copyrights or similar, and everybody completely disregarding the fact that an IP in no way uniquely identifies a specific person, nor a person that might be able to uniquely identify the real person actually using the IP for the 'offense'.
The best defense is to hide your IP all the time, preferably using a random IP VPN provider. The setup process is mind-boggling simple, both for PPTP and various SSL VPN solutions, and the use automated. The latter ones use regular SSL, which means that it is hard to detect and block, unless you block all SSL (port 443) and that's not an option. I predict that in the near future people would use this almost without thinking simply because everything else is becoming more and more riddled with surveillance and unwanted tracking, not to mention harassment from organizations that claim that you do something they have paid for the right to control and prevent you from doing.
I know this also makes it hard to track down people making threats and similar, but that is an unfortunate side-effect from this 'arms race'. But the troll is out of the box now and the technology is out there. It could have been avoided but greed and megalomania makes people act without thinking (or caring) about the bigger picture.
Instead of using the personal names, addresses etc. of the listed police officers, use badge numbers or similar. That way you avoid getting too personal while still being able to accurately identify each officer. Providing personal info is getting too close in a very unconstructive way, a way that just asks for morons to send bullets in the mail and similar.
Now document every accusation. If you want to accuse a certain officer of brutality or other misconduct, document it using video or similar. Then it can and must be taken seriously.
The purpose of the site must be to make itself obsolete.i.e. to have each and ever police officer behave in a way that's beyond reproach whenever they're doing their job. "Everything that's worth doing is worth doing right" - That should apply to all law enforcement officers around the world. There's never any reason to cross that line. If you can't control your actions, you don't belong in the police - or at least not in any public part of the police. There's always the desk jobs...
I'm not kidding. Any law enforcement officer that abuses power in any way, shape or form must be prosecuted and if convicted summarily fired without benefits in addition to any punishment that's part of the conviction. Only that way can the law enforcement community regain respect in the community which includes their 'clients'.
Hope you like the stink of dead rodents in your walls...
Poison is just a band-aid, fix however they are getting into the house.
Correct... and not. If a rat eats something that kills him on the spot, you'll have dead robents everywhere (near where you put the poison), but if you use something like a vitamin overdose, the stricken rat will have time to return to the group (rats are social animals that prefer the company of others when they're not feeling well) and die there. The other rats will then most likely eat the dead one so it won't get a chance to stink.
But yes, it's far smarter to prevent them getting in to begin with. That's actually fairly easy as all you need is solid well-maintained walls, windows and doors, and a rat-proofed drain/sewer. The rats are smart - if your house is inaccessible and the neighbors isn't, guess what happens. No, the rats don't spend all their life trying to get into yours... they choose the easy way.
Back in 2006 a number of scandals surfaced during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. The initial incident was later nicknamed "Reutersgate" because one very obviously photoshopped picture distributed through Reuters that landed on front pages all over the world led to an investigation by Reuters that revealed almost a thousand similar pictures from a number of "well-reputed" freelance photographers, and they were subsequently 'fired' by Reuters and their contributions removed from the archives.
Then the scandal spread. Additional pictures from Reuters were brought into question, as well as pictures from other agencies, especially Associated Post. Not only were these pictures fairly obviously staged; they were staged Hollywood-style, complete with fake blood, staged ruins, actors and so on. Characters like "The World's Unluckiest Mom", "The Dead Son", "The Omnipresent Victim" and most legendary of all: "Green Helmet Guy" filled pictures reputedly from various places all over Lebanon (but in reality shot in more or less the same place). We saw the same grieving mother with or near a dead-looking child (also often the same) again and again, the same wounded civilians, the same burned-out cars, and always the same rescue party prominently featuring the legendary Green Helmet Guy. Then a series of pictures, obviously not meant for public distribution surfaced, showing the characters having a lunch break in the shade of a building. We see the 'dead child' play and later drink a soda.We see Green Helmet Guy in conversation with The Omnipresent Victim (obviously unharmed of course) and so on. Assuming all pictures featuring these characters are faked/staged, this fauxtography scandal involved thousands of pictures. Later extremely well-reputed photographers from BBC also appears to have engaged in this fakery.
Googling pictures with these tags will yield you hundreds of samples of these staged pictures, all with the obvious intent of showing how cruel and evil Israel were. As Hizbollah in Lebanon (thought to be behind this little troupe of actors) found a need for this, it is obvious that reality didn't offer anything similar so it had to be staged for the proper effect on the world audience.
As it stands, the middle class in America will be all but completely wiped out in the next generation. There is not anything that Ron Paul, or anyone else can do about it. The dynamics of the world have shifted. The American standard of living will only decline from here on out.
Bullshit. The ones that are going to suffer most are the people with the lowest qualifications. When their work place goes under, another company gets the chance to fill the void, and that's usually a company in a place with even lower wages (3rd world). People in the middle class usually have qualifications to fill many kinds of jobs so they should bounce back faster.
Depends... In Denmark for instance, courts have upheld that public access changes the nature of private property. Basically the mall cops can ask someone to leave for whatever reason, but that's that.
The rules of photography are the same as on a public street - if you can see it (legally) without special aids (ladders, mirrors etc.) you can photograph it. Using or publishing the pictures are a whole different ballgame... Generic shots can be used freely, but identifiable persons need to give their permission, preferably in writing. Photographs showing 'private situations' (kissing, breastfeeding, sex etc.) cannot be used unless they have 'significant news value' and the entity that does the publicizing is a recognized news outlet.
Violations often gets punished severely. Once a tabloid was convicted to pay both a hefty restitution and a fine equal to the complete revenue from selling the issue with the offending images (which was the cover story).
Sometimes it's just too easy... Like the fact that until recently you could divert mail here in Denmark by simply filling out a form at the post office. No checks were performed and no notification were given at the old address. Fraudsters used this to intercept any mails the target shouldn't see while forwarding manually all other mail. This way the target never missed any mail and thus didn't suspect anything.
The postal service initially refused to accept that it could be a problem despite several cases using this trick, but has now updated procedures, so valid photo ID (drivers license, passport) is required to set up diversion, and the old address is notified. Credit card companies and banks now use fairly simple and logical steps to verify the identity of people ordering new credit cards. Some cards you can only have one of, some cards are not issued unless the (future) card holder confirm the card order using the phone number registered with the bank, and some require picture ID and a visit to a branch. Some require all of the above.
Same thing with loans, mobile phone subscriptions etc. - they require a drivers license or a passport to even start setting things up. Identity thieves will have fairly big problems obtaining such false documents, and due to the nature of these documents, getting caught with your hand in *that* cookie jar will net you a pretty severe punishment, much more than the fraud itself...
I explains EXACTLY why some people actually prefer pirated versions. And while it is possible to skip most of the junk on DVDs, Blu-rays is significantly more locked in. I've seen blu-rays where you can't do anything at all when playback starts - you can't skip previews, you can't fast-forward, jump to the menu or anything. You just have to sit and watch 11 mins of previews, warnings and so on. I returned that blu-ray. Another release of the same title from another country in the same region had different extras so I checked that out. It had two previews, both were skippable and you could jump directly to the menu (to start watching the movie) anywhere. Much better.
But the core is value for money. Sure previews are nice, but a year later they're obsolete and a pain to watch. So simply do this: When the disc loads, go directly to the menu. Make the first choice to watch the movie with previews, the next to watch it directly, then setup, then extras. That way people that want a cinema-like experience they can have that, and people that just want to watch the movie can do that.
Actually in most countries the politicians in parliament have immunity, but will take a vote on removing it on a case by case basis. This means that the immunity is more or less symbolic in these cases, but if you do like the Italians do and never vote on it, the immunity becomes very real. Berlusconi had a law added that makes it impossible to remove the immunity on the prime minister (himself) or a former such (again himself), but this law might be eliminated when he loses power.
You can think that Berlusconi is dirty and corrupt and abuses his power to avoid prosecution, but the other side of the coin is that his enemies fight equally dirty and use every means to impeach, accuse and obstruct, and any leader needs some form of protection against things like this or we end up with mob rule and chaos.
Italy is a very polarized country. They have a decent sized Communist Party (one of the last in Europe) and at least two extreme-right fascist parties, one of which is the very one that was aligned with Hitler and which is headed by the granddaughter of the very man that partnered with Hitler: Benito Mussolini. Her name is Alessandra Mussolini. The polarization is only surpassed by the amount of corruption as Italy is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Perhaps that's why a civil war hasn't broken out yet - people haven't been bribed enough to take up arms...;)
Couldn't help but read on the separate story about rogue admins, and my first impression is... All the cases used in the article features some truly stupid admins.
They're not just stupid from what they did, but also how they did it. I mean logging on to systems directly from your home IP, not deleting incriminating logs and so on. But maybe the more clever rogue admins are clever enough not to have been found out?
In any case, I'm nothing special but I can easily devise methods of accessing systems completely without leaving any trace, provided I have time to prepare before losing legitimate access. Creating a custom rootkit for some central gateway server is one way. Custom in order not to be detected by standard tools. If the server can be configured to not log your access, not show your files and to lie to tripwire and similar IDS about file checksums, you can use it freely. Have two separate watchdog systems running, one better hidden than the other. If one sees the other go away, wipe the system completely. This will prevent them from using your own system to trap you. Oh, and always access indirectly, never from anything that can be linked to your person.
Most system monitoring is designed to watch for intrusions from the outside or elsewhere in the company. They're not designed to monitor the very admins running it, nor could they. Take logging for instance. We send syslogs to a special syslog server so even if a hacker deletes the local logs on the server, we have a copy of everything elsewhere. But if an admin want to remove logs, he can easily remove them from the syslog server as well, thus covering his tracks.
I just don't get why so many parent think it's a smart thing to shield their kids (and young adults) completely from the real world. The culture shock when they suddenly find themselves in the middle of it is so much greater, complete with greater potential of it overwhelming the kids to such a degree that they get seriously hurt (and even lead to suicide).
Okay, so some of the parents really are stupid but most should know better. Their kids doesn't become homosexual from reading about it, nor do they become racists from reading the Color Purple, Tom Sawyer or similar, or vampires/pagans from reading Twilight or similar. But they're "shielding" the kids, probably with the best of intentions, but unavoidably cause more harm than good. We - as a society - simply shouldn't let them censor what's available for the kids to read.
Perhaps the parents simply fear their kids becoming smarter than the parents on an intellectual level., perhaps even questioning some of the dogmas in the family and their views on the world. A generation of kids that are able to think for themselves and thus most likely questioning what the parents believe... Scary!
Economy class will see some luxury additions, with a bar, female-only lavatories and Panasonic entertainment on demand for every passenger.
Female-only lavatories? - How can that be a good thing - in general that is. There are at least 50% men on a flight, and unless they also add some men-only toilets, they actually reduce the number of toilets available to more than half the passengers. The women can use them all but the men can't. That's neither fair nor a good thing. Besides, unless it is done for purely androphobic reasons, they won't benefit much. Women can just as easily make a mess, throw up or whatever as men. The pee on the floor issue can easily be prevented by installing sensors that pick up if you pee on the floor and if triggered locks the door and summons a flight attendant. She'll let you out and you'll then be given the choice of cleaning up yourself or be billed for it.
Something completely different... I just watched the first episode of the new show "Pan Am" and really enjoyed the amazing recreation of the time period and its technology. What really struck me was the beautiful experience it seems to have been to fly back then. People dressed nice (both the passengers and the crew) and were treated with respect all the way, both at the airport and on the plane.
We so badly need that these days. It's a disaster that a few stupid terrorists have made us accept to be treated like 2nd grade cattle. After all, none of the security measures currently in place (the security theater) at the airports really work (they miss like 60-80% of test items) and the highly invasive porn scanners or the equally invasive grope-search doesn't change much. Security shouldn't be a last minute thing at the airport; potential terrorists should be stopped long before they even get near an airport. I mean, currently nothing prevents a suicide bomber from lining up in the security queue and then detonate his bomb at the checkpoint. He'll still kill a lot of people who are packed there exactly because morons like him should be deterred from trying to get the bomb on the plane. If we didn't search people there, but stopped the moron while he was assembling his bomb instead, only the bomber would be a casualty if he detonated early.
Mandrake (now Mandriva) made my switch a breeze, even though others were screaming at me to use Red Hat or Debian (both of which I tried, and both of which almost soured me to Linux entirely).
I started out using Mandrake but quickly tired of the Red Hat family. The thing that really killed it for me was an update where the RPM's couldn't be installed because the RPM program needed an update. Okay, so I grabbed the new version of that, only to find out that it too required the new version to unpack. I had to install a new machine on some additional hardware and copy the binary RPM-manager over to do the upgrade. So incredibly stupid.
I then switched to Debian (potato-distribution was current back then) and never looked back since. Only issue with the distribution was the switch between woody and sarge where the sarge distribution was so crappy that an upgrade to what basically was a server with 100+ LAMP-sites resulted in hours of cleanup because tons of stuff was either removed and not re-installed, installed in incorrect configurations or simply left half-un-installed. Also most configured configurations was overwritten with defaults.
When etch came around I upgraded another similar server from woody to etch in one jump with zero issues. I've even had a customer upgrading directly from woody to squeeze (skipping sarge, etch and lenny) without any problems. Impressive.
I'd unconditionally recommend Debian - or its 'bastard child' ubuntu...;) They both share the same superior package system.
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No, they're very much alike. Assuming Stapel was a vegan with an agenda, it's all about faking stuff in order for the conclusion to be as desired, i.e. flattering to someone, furthering an agenda etc. - the end justifying the means.
Actually stuff bordering on this happens all the time. It's exceedingly rare that any and all data confirms whatever conclusion you want to make (contrived or actually based on your interpretation of the data) so data is adapted, adjusted or thrown away in order for the conclusion to appear clear and unmistakable. It is this exact phenomena that drives part of the global warming skeptics that yell "fake data!"
I don't know if you have to 'tweak' data in order to publish at all, but to someone who has the basic training in the 'scientific method' but never has done true research it seems like it's pure bad science. Is it really necessary to manipulate data to fit the theory?
Well, if he was a vegan with an agenda, it's obvious that NOT eating meat can seriously harm your judgement. Just look at the loons in PETA...
I also use both. I tend to use vi or vim on servers that are under heavy load and emacs for general editing.
Now, the real question is... csh, ksh, zsh or bash?
The genetic solution to fighting the malaria mosquitoes?
If I remember correctly, one focused on making the mosquito deadly to malaria (thus stopping the transmission), the other on simply wiping out the mosquito without harming other insect life.
The most efficient solution so far has been to blanket ponds and similar with DDT... Killed everything, including the mosquitoes. Tiny side-effect there though...
You beat me to that comment...
These 'pirates' should be prosecuted for having no taste at all in music. The damage people like them do to the industry is far greater than any number of pirates.
First of all: If you don't want to be fined, obey the speed limits. No ifs, whens and buts - just do it.
Now, I'm sure most of us agree that a lot of traffic regulations are made by people who clearly don't get out much. If you have a stretch of road where everybody drives faster than the limit, it's quite obvious that the road is made for a higher speed than what's posted. Now, there's two basic reasons for a certain speed limit: Standards and special reasons. Standard rules should not be. They should be a guideline when determining the limit, not the generic one-size-fits-all limit. The special reasons usually include school zones and residential areas. But that's the easy, cheap and incorrect way of 'protecting the children'.
The right way is traffic lights, fences, pedestrian bridges or tunnels. Because a child should never occur on a busy thoroughfare. Running a child down going 35 or even just 20 mph is still going to hurt it. Reducing the speed limit instead of doing it the right way is a bad way to save a buck. Children will still be run over and the occasional speeder will most likely kill someone.
I don't remember who originally suggested it (back in the 60s-70s I think), but this idea is still very good: All long distance roads should be in tunnels when intersecting any form of settlement. These roads should facilitate auto-driving so the drivers can relax while packing the traffic optimally. The surface roads within settlements are 10 mph max and you shouldn't have have to drive more than ½ mile from surfacing from the tunnels to get to your destination. Most people would have underground parking, either a simple private garage (like we have on the surface today, just underground) or some shared parking as many businesses in downtown areas already have today. This way, the children are safe to play outside, even on the streets, and we don't have to fill every square inch between homes with roads and fast moving cars that will hurt children at some point.
If we're taking about gangs fighting each other.
I've always said that the best way to solve the gang issue would be to round up all suspected members of gangs and place them om a deserted island. On that island there's insane amounts of weapons and ammo all over the place, clearly marked. Now let them fight it out until nobody is left standing. Problem solved and everybody can say they went down fighting for the gang. No innocent bystanders are affected and the gangs won't take up space in the prisons. There won't be any left to recruit new members so the gang rebuild will be dead slow. You could even televise the whole thing using automated cameras and make money selling the footage.
The idea of flooding the data collectors with valid but irrelevant information is clever and good, but it may backfire. Any gaps will be painfully obvious and if you have one at the exact time something goes down, it makes you even more of a suspect because - if you document everything EXCEPT at this particular time... well, then you probably were doing something you shouldn't...
The classic information flood is the inclusion of certain words in phonecalls, emails and so on - just mess with Echelon and similar automated bugging and surveillance systems. They will waste a lot of resources analyzing countless of innocent calls and emails, thus seriously hampering the usefulness of the system.
Couldn't agree more!
I live in Denmark and I don't mind paying for music, tv-series and movies. My 6.000+ CDs and 3.000+ DVDs and blu-rays should testify to that. But I absolutely refuse to wait for someone to 'buy rights' or whatever here in my country before I can watch new stuff. If I can't get it legally, I'll have to get it illegally. I have the money in my hand. I want to pay for it. But I can't. Get with the program! - Put your stuff up for sale before someone steals it and gives it away for free!
There's countless of VPN services that basically live on two stupidities:
- Geo-discrimination. If you live the wrong place, there's something you'll have to wait for (maybe forever), that others have already got.
- Suing your customers. The copyright owners spend a lot of effort tracking down 'violators' of their rights and sue them.
VPN allows you to both hide and pretend you're somewhere that you're not.
he next generation of free wi-fi is going to track exactly when you log in, which websites you visit and what Google searches you make. They will do all they can to link this to your identity and then use the information to market to you. I've seen the codes; this information is all quite trivial to collect. Most of the work is just organizing it effectively.
Your best bet is probably to go somewhere nobody expects consumer Internet: make an Amazon EC2 instance and VPN to it all the time, or something like that.
VPN is exactly why this won't happen. More and more people are becoming aware of just how invasive various entities are. Some track you and sell that information. Some abuse lobbying power to gain access to powers normally reserved for law enforcement in order to track down 'offenders' that violate copyrights or similar, and everybody completely disregarding the fact that an IP in no way uniquely identifies a specific person, nor a person that might be able to uniquely identify the real person actually using the IP for the 'offense'.
The best defense is to hide your IP all the time, preferably using a random IP VPN provider. The setup process is mind-boggling simple, both for PPTP and various SSL VPN solutions, and the use automated. The latter ones use regular SSL, which means that it is hard to detect and block, unless you block all SSL (port 443) and that's not an option. I predict that in the near future people would use this almost without thinking simply because everything else is becoming more and more riddled with surveillance and unwanted tracking, not to mention harassment from organizations that claim that you do something they have paid for the right to control and prevent you from doing.
I know this also makes it hard to track down people making threats and similar, but that is an unfortunate side-effect from this 'arms race'. But the troll is out of the box now and the technology is out there. It could have been avoided but greed and megalomania makes people act without thinking (or caring) about the bigger picture.
Instead of using the personal names, addresses etc. of the listed police officers, use badge numbers or similar. That way you avoid getting too personal while still being able to accurately identify each officer. Providing personal info is getting too close in a very unconstructive way, a way that just asks for morons to send bullets in the mail and similar.
Now document every accusation. If you want to accuse a certain officer of brutality or other misconduct, document it using video or similar. Then it can and must be taken seriously.
The purpose of the site must be to make itself obsolete.i.e. to have each and ever police officer behave in a way that's beyond reproach whenever they're doing their job. "Everything that's worth doing is worth doing right" - That should apply to all law enforcement officers around the world. There's never any reason to cross that line. If you can't control your actions, you don't belong in the police - or at least not in any public part of the police. There's always the desk jobs...
I'm not kidding. Any law enforcement officer that abuses power in any way, shape or form must be prosecuted and if convicted summarily fired without benefits in addition to any punishment that's part of the conviction. Only that way can the law enforcement community regain respect in the community which includes their 'clients'.
Have the same settings on my HTC Sensation... Dunno if it is what frisket seeks?
Actually they're not annoyed at the system; they're just annoyed that it isn't them that's rich... Egotism at its finest.
Hope you like the stink of dead rodents in your walls...
Poison is just a band-aid, fix however they are getting into the house.
Correct... and not. If a rat eats something that kills him on the spot, you'll have dead robents everywhere (near where you put the poison), but if you use something like a vitamin overdose, the stricken rat will have time to return to the group (rats are social animals that prefer the company of others when they're not feeling well) and die there. The other rats will then most likely eat the dead one so it won't get a chance to stink.
But yes, it's far smarter to prevent them getting in to begin with. That's actually fairly easy as all you need is solid well-maintained walls, windows and doors, and a rat-proofed drain/sewer. The rats are smart - if your house is inaccessible and the neighbors isn't, guess what happens. No, the rats don't spend all their life trying to get into yours... they choose the easy way.
Back in 2006 a number of scandals surfaced during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. The initial incident was later nicknamed "Reutersgate" because one very obviously photoshopped picture distributed through Reuters that landed on front pages all over the world led to an investigation by Reuters that revealed almost a thousand similar pictures from a number of "well-reputed" freelance photographers, and they were subsequently 'fired' by Reuters and their contributions removed from the archives.
Then the scandal spread. Additional pictures from Reuters were brought into question, as well as pictures from other agencies, especially Associated Post. Not only were these pictures fairly obviously staged; they were staged Hollywood-style, complete with fake blood, staged ruins, actors and so on. Characters like "The World's Unluckiest Mom", "The Dead Son", "The Omnipresent Victim" and most legendary of all: "Green Helmet Guy" filled pictures reputedly from various places all over Lebanon (but in reality shot in more or less the same place). We saw the same grieving mother with or near a dead-looking child (also often the same) again and again, the same wounded civilians, the same burned-out cars, and always the same rescue party prominently featuring the legendary Green Helmet Guy. Then a series of pictures, obviously not meant for public distribution surfaced, showing the characters having a lunch break in the shade of a building. We see the 'dead child' play and later drink a soda.We see Green Helmet Guy in conversation with The Omnipresent Victim (obviously unharmed of course) and so on. Assuming all pictures featuring these characters are faked/staged, this fauxtography scandal involved thousands of pictures. Later extremely well-reputed photographers from BBC also appears to have engaged in this fakery.
Googling pictures with these tags will yield you hundreds of samples of these staged pictures, all with the obvious intent of showing how cruel and evil Israel were. As Hizbollah in Lebanon (thought to be behind this little troupe of actors) found a need for this, it is obvious that reality didn't offer anything similar so it had to be staged for the proper effect on the world audience.
As it stands, the middle class in America will be all but completely wiped out in the next generation. There is not anything that Ron Paul, or anyone else can do about it. The dynamics of the world have shifted. The American standard of living will only decline from here on out.
Bullshit. The ones that are going to suffer most are the people with the lowest qualifications. When their work place goes under, another company gets the chance to fill the void, and that's usually a company in a place with even lower wages (3rd world). People in the middle class usually have qualifications to fill many kinds of jobs so they should bounce back faster.
Depends... In Denmark for instance, courts have upheld that public access changes the nature of private property. Basically the mall cops can ask someone to leave for whatever reason, but that's that.
The rules of photography are the same as on a public street - if you can see it (legally) without special aids (ladders, mirrors etc.) you can photograph it. Using or publishing the pictures are a whole different ballgame... Generic shots can be used freely, but identifiable persons need to give their permission, preferably in writing. Photographs showing 'private situations' (kissing, breastfeeding, sex etc.) cannot be used unless they have 'significant news value' and the entity that does the publicizing is a recognized news outlet.
Violations often gets punished severely. Once a tabloid was convicted to pay both a hefty restitution and a fine equal to the complete revenue from selling the issue with the offending images (which was the cover story).
Sometimes it's just too easy... Like the fact that until recently you could divert mail here in Denmark by simply filling out a form at the post office. No checks were performed and no notification were given at the old address. Fraudsters used this to intercept any mails the target shouldn't see while forwarding manually all other mail. This way the target never missed any mail and thus didn't suspect anything.
The postal service initially refused to accept that it could be a problem despite several cases using this trick, but has now updated procedures, so valid photo ID (drivers license, passport) is required to set up diversion, and the old address is notified. Credit card companies and banks now use fairly simple and logical steps to verify the identity of people ordering new credit cards. Some cards you can only have one of, some cards are not issued unless the (future) card holder confirm the card order using the phone number registered with the bank, and some require picture ID and a visit to a branch. Some require all of the above.
Same thing with loans, mobile phone subscriptions etc. - they require a drivers license or a passport to even start setting things up. Identity thieves will have fairly big problems obtaining such false documents, and due to the nature of these documents, getting caught with your hand in *that* cookie jar will net you a pretty severe punishment, much more than the fraud itself...
I keep thinking about this graphic: http://xandermol.com/blog/media/1/20100724-GxzeV.jpg
I explains EXACTLY why some people actually prefer pirated versions. And while it is possible to skip most of the junk on DVDs, Blu-rays is significantly more locked in. I've seen blu-rays where you can't do anything at all when playback starts - you can't skip previews, you can't fast-forward, jump to the menu or anything. You just have to sit and watch 11 mins of previews, warnings and so on. I returned that blu-ray. Another release of the same title from another country in the same region had different extras so I checked that out. It had two previews, both were skippable and you could jump directly to the menu (to start watching the movie) anywhere. Much better.
But the core is value for money. Sure previews are nice, but a year later they're obsolete and a pain to watch. So simply do this: When the disc loads, go directly to the menu. Make the first choice to watch the movie with previews, the next to watch it directly, then setup, then extras. That way people that want a cinema-like experience they can have that, and people that just want to watch the movie can do that.
And it will open and close at the touch of a button... THE button... The only one.
Actually in most countries the politicians in parliament have immunity, but will take a vote on removing it on a case by case basis. This means that the immunity is more or less symbolic in these cases, but if you do like the Italians do and never vote on it, the immunity becomes very real. Berlusconi had a law added that makes it impossible to remove the immunity on the prime minister (himself) or a former such (again himself), but this law might be eliminated when he loses power.
You can think that Berlusconi is dirty and corrupt and abuses his power to avoid prosecution, but the other side of the coin is that his enemies fight equally dirty and use every means to impeach, accuse and obstruct, and any leader needs some form of protection against things like this or we end up with mob rule and chaos.
Italy is a very polarized country. They have a decent sized Communist Party (one of the last in Europe) and at least two extreme-right fascist parties, one of which is the very one that was aligned with Hitler and which is headed by the granddaughter of the very man that partnered with Hitler: Benito Mussolini. Her name is Alessandra Mussolini. The polarization is only surpassed by the amount of corruption as Italy is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Perhaps that's why a civil war hasn't broken out yet - people haven't been bribed enough to take up arms... ;)
Couldn't help but read on the separate story about rogue admins, and my first impression is... All the cases used in the article features some truly stupid admins.
They're not just stupid from what they did, but also how they did it. I mean logging on to systems directly from your home IP, not deleting incriminating logs and so on. But maybe the more clever rogue admins are clever enough not to have been found out?
In any case, I'm nothing special but I can easily devise methods of accessing systems completely without leaving any trace, provided I have time to prepare before losing legitimate access. Creating a custom rootkit for some central gateway server is one way. Custom in order not to be detected by standard tools. If the server can be configured to not log your access, not show your files and to lie to tripwire and similar IDS about file checksums, you can use it freely. Have two separate watchdog systems running, one better hidden than the other. If one sees the other go away, wipe the system completely. This will prevent them from using your own system to trap you. Oh, and always access indirectly, never from anything that can be linked to your person.
Most system monitoring is designed to watch for intrusions from the outside or elsewhere in the company. They're not designed to monitor the very admins running it, nor could they. Take logging for instance. We send syslogs to a special syslog server so even if a hacker deletes the local logs on the server, we have a copy of everything elsewhere. But if an admin want to remove logs, he can easily remove them from the syslog server as well, thus covering his tracks.
I just don't get why so many parent think it's a smart thing to shield their kids (and young adults) completely from the real world. The culture shock when they suddenly find themselves in the middle of it is so much greater, complete with greater potential of it overwhelming the kids to such a degree that they get seriously hurt (and even lead to suicide).
Okay, so some of the parents really are stupid but most should know better. Their kids doesn't become homosexual from reading about it, nor do they become racists from reading the Color Purple, Tom Sawyer or similar, or vampires/pagans from reading Twilight or similar. But they're "shielding" the kids, probably with the best of intentions, but unavoidably cause more harm than good. We - as a society - simply shouldn't let them censor what's available for the kids to read.
Perhaps the parents simply fear their kids becoming smarter than the parents on an intellectual level., perhaps even questioning some of the dogmas in the family and their views on the world. A generation of kids that are able to think for themselves and thus most likely questioning what the parents believe... Scary!
From TFA:
Economy class will see some luxury additions, with a bar, female-only lavatories and Panasonic entertainment on demand for every passenger.
Female-only lavatories? - How can that be a good thing - in general that is. There are at least 50% men on a flight, and unless they also add some men-only toilets, they actually reduce the number of toilets available to more than half the passengers. The women can use them all but the men can't. That's neither fair nor a good thing. Besides, unless it is done for purely androphobic reasons, they won't benefit much. Women can just as easily make a mess, throw up or whatever as men. The pee on the floor issue can easily be prevented by installing sensors that pick up if you pee on the floor and if triggered locks the door and summons a flight attendant. She'll let you out and you'll then be given the choice of cleaning up yourself or be billed for it.
Something completely different... I just watched the first episode of the new show "Pan Am" and really enjoyed the amazing recreation of the time period and its technology. What really struck me was the beautiful experience it seems to have been to fly back then. People dressed nice (both the passengers and the crew) and were treated with respect all the way, both at the airport and on the plane.
We so badly need that these days. It's a disaster that a few stupid terrorists have made us accept to be treated like 2nd grade cattle. After all, none of the security measures currently in place (the security theater) at the airports really work (they miss like 60-80% of test items) and the highly invasive porn scanners or the equally invasive grope-search doesn't change much. Security shouldn't be a last minute thing at the airport; potential terrorists should be stopped long before they even get near an airport. I mean, currently nothing prevents a suicide bomber from lining up in the security queue and then detonate his bomb at the checkpoint. He'll still kill a lot of people who are packed there exactly because morons like him should be deterred from trying to get the bomb on the plane. If we didn't search people there, but stopped the moron while he was assembling his bomb instead, only the bomber would be a casualty if he detonated early.
Mandrake (now Mandriva) made my switch a breeze, even though others were screaming at me to use Red Hat or Debian (both of which I tried, and both of which almost soured me to Linux entirely).
I started out using Mandrake but quickly tired of the Red Hat family. The thing that really killed it for me was an update where the RPM's couldn't be installed because the RPM program needed an update. Okay, so I grabbed the new version of that, only to find out that it too required the new version to unpack. I had to install a new machine on some additional hardware and copy the binary RPM-manager over to do the upgrade. So incredibly stupid.
I then switched to Debian (potato-distribution was current back then) and never looked back since. Only issue with the distribution was the switch between woody and sarge where the sarge distribution was so crappy that an upgrade to what basically was a server with 100+ LAMP-sites resulted in hours of cleanup because tons of stuff was either removed and not re-installed, installed in incorrect configurations or simply left half-un-installed. Also most configured configurations was overwritten with defaults.
When etch came around I upgraded another similar server from woody to etch in one jump with zero issues. I've even had a customer upgrading directly from woody to squeeze (skipping sarge, etch and lenny) without any problems. Impressive.
I'd unconditionally recommend Debian - or its 'bastard child' ubuntu... ;) They both share the same superior package system.