People have been drawing pictures of Mohammad throughout the ages but for some (stupid and illogical) reason it was a page of cartoons in the danish newspaper Jyllandsposten that really got them worked up.
Now, Denmark is a small country (pop. 5 mill) and the newspaper in question is only written in danish, and is extremely unlikely to be found in shops outside the western hemisphere. Nobody in the Muslim world would have known about those cartoons if it was for an expedition of imams from Denmark that travelled around the middle east with a collection of drawings and other artworks, of which several had no connection with Muhammad, like a photo from a french farmers festival featuring a man with a pig snout. The intension was to create headlines and incite a response. It worked and ever since certain regions have been way overly sensitive about drawing Muhammad. The only way to combat that is to keep on drawing Muhammad again and again and again until they figure out that a drawing is just that - a drawing. Nothing to be worked up about.
Generally falling from a great height works just as well, although somewhat messy. The long fall is quiet (except for wind noise) and serene, and the landing at terminal velocity is so swift and destructive that the brain simply doesn't have time to process it.
I got the idea from an expert commenting on The Falling Man and other jumpers from the doomed WTC towers. He stated that this man - falling head first from the top floors - would hit at terminal velocity and the nerve impulses from the impact would not even have left the nerves when the brain was destroyed. And as there's zero pain nerves in the brain itself, death would be completely painless.
I use a lot of extensions but only a few are really critical.
One of these (FoxyTunes) is still not FF 6.* compatible and the usual tricks (bumping the version etc.) doesn't work. It was made 5.* compatible two weeks before 6.0 was released and now it's broken again. I also use some mass downloaders (downThemAll+AntiContainer) a lot.
Chrome then... Well, none of the above exist for Chrome so that's a moot point. Another is gestures. The lack of decent support for extensions in Chrome results in pages where gestures doesn't work so that's rather useless. The mass downloader extensions don't exist for Chrome so that's another nail in that coffin. Finally I really like the stuff that the WorldIP extension for FF provides, but such an extension isn't possible in Chrome because info about the current page isn't available to extensions or so I'm told. Another nail for me.
So I'm stuck with FF and extensions that keep on breaking. I'm not looking forward to them breaking faster.
Do you trust such companies with unfettered access to the entire GPS history of your vehicle?
No, I trust nobody with something like that.
Not only are they making profit from something deeply private, but the data can easily be abused in a number of ways. It might be that you happened to be in an area where something bad happened, and right away you're a suspect just because you were in the area. You stand out because someone can document that you were there. They're not documenting that you did something wrong but the very thing that you were there, makes you a suspect.in particular compared to others who were also there but whose location wasn't documented.
We already see a similar issue with DNA profiles. The initial (quick) profile only uses a handful markers and they're not all that unique. A typical crime scene sample will yield dozens of partial matches, also due to it like being slightly contaminated which lowers the match probability. You then have to seek out all the partial matches and review them, probably interview them and perhaps detain one or two. And you still have the very likely possibility that the perpetrator isn't in the register at all.
After a few weeks the full profile is available and you'll most likely either have the perpetrator or realize that you don't. Now, having spent weeks in jail, suspected of some evil crime, you might get completely exonerated and probably financially compensated, but you'll carry that branding of 'criminal' forever, and that can never be removed. Usually there's nothing to suspect you other than the DNA matching, but DNA is such a strong piece of evidence that it in itself usually is enough to get you thrown in jail.
Those 'starter kits'... they've already killed several children but I guess PETA doesn't care about people one way or the other. Just look up "Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas" and you'll see. The trial of these two (they got life without parole for starving their baby to death through a strict vegan diet) ended with the judge strongly condemning (among others) PETA for not clearly advising parents NOT to make their infant follow a vegan diet. A child have to be 5-6 years old before you can even try, and then you still need protein supplements. But last time I checked PETA still claims that EVERYBODY can become a vegan and recommend starting as early as possible. That's incitement to murder, nothing less.
They're stated numerous times that to them animals are more important that people. Their 'leder' have repeatedly stated that she doesn't care how many people get hurt as long as just one animal is saved. Humiliating women is nothing - they've tried killing people to further their agenda (firebombing animal testing labs with the researchers still inside) so they really don't care.
Would you want to work for a company that discriminate against your political views, sexual preferences or similar completely irrelevant things?
Hiding and faking things won't work in the long run and if you get caught later, the consequences are worse. Not only will you most likely get fired (either due to the screening matters itself or to the fact that your lied and hid it), but if your next employer screens you in relation to your previous employer they'll also know both your 'quirks' and that your tried to hide it by lying etc. - not too smart.
Several people have already told the virtues of this, which I won't repeat. I do add a little twist because I run my own spamtrap and DNS RBL which I update whenever one of the addresses yields unsolicited newsletters and similar spam. Then that company 's mailservers are blacklisted more or less forever. Basically it works like this:
Each address on the disposable list initially is an alias of my real email address. If one gets compromised, it is switched to being an alias of the spamtrap instead and every mailserver delivering mail to the spamtrap gets immidiately blacklisted, no matter what.
Mails to the spamtrap bypasses the RBL checks, but mails to regular addresses are checked against my own RBL and a few more, and is refused upfront if listed. The result is close to zero spam. Before this, I got 10-20 spam each day that made it past the regular RBLs and spamassassin.
I know that you can combine wind, solar and so on, but claiming that wind can do it alone is plain wrong. Well, if you put gigantic windmills all over the place, including in the streets in major cities and in all the agricultural fields, you might just get near, but the demand rises and will rise a lot more as the third world gets civilized, and then it's not enough. Now, assuming that the mills don't get significantly for effective or more quiet, and that we still need to eat, we can start removing possible locations. So no mills in the cities and in the densely farmed areas. Mills can be placed along the coasts, not too close (noise, visual pollution) and not too far out (too deep, too severe weather) and in desolate places, but that's about it. That amount of mills cannot deliver anywhere near a significant contribution to the 'energy pool' so they can help, but not do it on their own.
The best prospect when it comes to renewable energy is geothermal. Not the old form as used on Iceland and similar where hot water from the underground is used directly, but a newer variation where the temperature differential between the surface and several miles down is used. It can be used almost everywhere, not just in hot spots. It is still in the development stages but the potential is gigantic. The power is unlimited (the core heat comes from long term radioactive decay and geological stresses from the tidal effect) and so abundant that even if we globally use a million times what we do know, the effect on the core heat would still be unmeasurable. The plants generate no noise or vibration when the deep drilling is done, and pose no danger of any kind when running. There's no waste, no major traffic and the plants can even be placed underground and thus inside major cities if needed. The output is continuous and unaffected by weather (wind and solar are greatly affected by weather) and thus reliable. Oh, and it produces no CO2 is case you care about that.
The previous authority (FAA) also failed miserably in detecting threats...
Will they ever learn that
- Technology is not the solution. Scanners have an 80%+ failure rate on average. - Groping is not the solution.
None of the scanners, nor grope scanning, would have caught well-hidden carbon fiber box-cutters equivalent to what the 9/11 hijackers used.
Simple baseline profiling would have caught at least 18 of the 9/11 hijackers, probably all of them. It would also have caught both the 'shoe-bomber' and the 'underwear-bomber', both of which known to frequent radical mosques.
Go back to the old metal scanners and none of the shoe removal, liquid in plastic bag circus - which will catch a gun or a knife (it will catch 'last minute desperadoes'), and rely on profiling for the rest (terror). This will both be a lot more effective and a lot less intrusive for the passengers.
You know: I'd think there was a lot more to climate change denial if the facts presented by climate deniers weren't almost always wrong.
You know, there's be much more credibility to the ramblings of the Climate Change Cult if they didn't have to 'tweak' and 'adjust' the data in order to produce results supporting their claims...;)
The worst claim so far is the words from the conclusion in one of IPCC's reports: "The Sun has no significant effect on the changes in global temperature" (not the exact phrase). That's so obviously incorrect it puts the credibility of the whole IPCC in question. The Sun has EVERYTHING to do with the global temperature on Earth. More radiation from the Sun will result in a temperature increase, less in a decrease. The mechanism is extremely complex in details but the overall effect is extremely simple and obvious.
Now, given that we've seem rather significant chances in global temperature over the years (both in historical time and in geological time), and these times were without 'the usual suspects' - significant human population, major volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts etc. - so the culprit has to be something else, like the Sun. But without knowing what, how and why, it should be the focus as the culprit of any change we see today as it is much more likely that it's the same thing again than it's something new, like human activity. But the Cult jumps the gun and throw all common sense out the window, and are having so much influence that politicians everywhere are rushing to dismantle civilization on this flimsy and unlikely theory. That's just stupid IMHO.
Now, trolling takes many forms, of which cyberbullying is just one (small one actually). Most trolling is harmless and fun - FTA's example of Apple-bashing in an Apple forum is typical. It harms nobody except filling up the forum with off-topic messages. Good moderators can curb this quickly and no harm is done.
Going after people though... Doesn't have to be cyberbullying and when it isn't, it also can be fun and mostly harmless. But the border between deeply hurtful and just fun is rather thin, and some trolls cross without realizing it. I'm actually fairly convinced that Sean Duffy didn't intend to make what happened happen. It was just fun going too far. I think prison is too harsh here. He should just be punished financially by being forced to pay an insane restitution to the victims family - at least in the two-digit millions. Then he could go to prison for failing to pay, but that's a different thing.
The IP is ABSOLUTELY USELESS is a unique identifier of the person actually using the connection.
First there's other cabled devices in the household. Then there's wireless devices, both in and outside the household, which again includes both neighbors and random 'wardrivers'. Lastly, there's malware on any of the above devices.
In order to find the correct individual just about every device in the world needs to be searched, which is of course completely absurd.
Oh, and I also remember a case where someone without wireless turned out to be sharing his connection with the neighbor wirelessly. The neighbor had actually broken in and connected a hidden access point to the network of the unsuspecting victim. This way he could use the connection without any chance of discovery (and if the access point was found. nothing would point back to him, except through analysis of the network traffic). His idea was based on a story he had read about a similar setup using a hidden cordless phone and long distance calls. So even though you don't use wireless technology, your resources might still be abused wirelessly.
Actually, I've also heard about cabled abuse, mostly concerning electricity. It isn't exactly uncommon - especially in apartment complexes - to see 'creative' ways to circumvent the meter, from manipulations around the meter itself to 'secret' cables through walls and to utilities like street lights, powered junction boxes etc. Most of these gets found out due to the drop in their bills, not through discovery of the illegal cabling.
One thing is that I would love a costless distributed solution like the one Marlinspike suggests. I'd much rather trust a large group of peers than a company whose security practices may be questionable. Sure, the peers might be much less secure individually but as a group it's extremely hard to force something onto everybody thus causing manipulative results. If the network both rates the certificates and each other, it's next to impossible to introduce corruption on a level that matters.
Now, given what we have today, the solution is easy:
Regardless of importance - any CA caught being the source of fraudulent certs should be immediately blacklisted so that all certs issued by this CA are rendered useless. It should not even be possible to accept the risk and visits sites using certs from this CA. This will in turn result in massive lawsuits against the CA (just imagine the loss from a company like Amazon being unable to process payments) and thus most likely the complete financial destruction of the CA. The mere prospect of this should make the CA's take their security seriously. I mean if a semi-talented wannabe like this Comodo-hacker can cause this much damage, and perhaps even have gained access to several CA's, their security must be next to non-existent, and that is more than unacceptable.
Reminds me of this super-stupid dude who went to the police to report his 'stash' stolen. He knew who did it and the police went with the dude to the home of the thief, and bingo - there was a big bag of weed. The police then asked him to identify it, and he confirmed "yeah, that is mine!". Presto, the police arrested him for possession and the guy that took it for theft and possession... Stupid...
Descent II was good! - Much better 3D than Doom II which was the concurrent 3D game out there at that time!
You can actually find a modern engine (D2X-XL) that allow you to play Decent II on modern hardware, but in order to play the official levels you need to own the game or at least have the data files (DESCENT2.HOG etc.) handy.
About 2 years ago I did just that - re-played the entire Descent II game and it was still fun as hell (no pun intended).
Why in the world would they need location data for that? - Whatever crime happened on the phone lines.
If they wanted to know whether the suspect physically visited a certain location (the source of the calls perhaps?), they could ask for a list of times the suspect was in that area. This way his privacy isn't violated outside what is part of the investigation itself. Law enforcement cannot reasonably expect to be able to (ab)use location data to lead them to any co-conspirators; that would be making the telco part of the investigative process which is a violation of several laws. They just need to show the suspect being somewhere at a certain time in order to punch holes in an alibi. Well, and show that his phone was with him and not just left in a car driven by someone else, but that's a different matter...
Religion is yet another way for evolution to eliminate those with deficiencies compared to others.
For some reason those that are religious seem to be too stupid to follow common sense and basic medical advice. They believe faith can heal contagious diseases (thus infecting more during prayer sessions). They help spread sexually transmitted diseases due to resistance against contraception (no, married people are if anything more likely to sleep around) and similar. The Muslims have their Ramadan where they starve themselves and drink too little, thus weakening their bodies and make them more susceptible to catching something, or to be unfocused and dehydrated during the day where many also drive cars and thus are more likely to be involved in accidents.
Okay, so the fact that some see it as a duty to produce babies, they tend to make up for the extra loss of life in the long run...
For some reason the great majority of religious people have more or less strict rules to live by, rules directly or indirectly given to them by their God(s). But these rules always seem to be stupid in some way. Praying five times a day? - Waste of what could have been important time. Only eating certain food? - Can cause malnutrition or deficiencies. Fighting scientific research because 'it offends God' or similar? - Well, obvious. They could miss finding an important cure or similar.
Abortion is of course a tricky question. The upcoming child could become someone important that find an important cure or make some important discovery, but after all that is fairly unlikely. It is much more likely that an unwanted child both get substandard care and education and it may threaten the economy of the mother/family, thus endangering additional individuals. In nature an unwanted offspring would simply be left left to die or be eaten by predators, but humans can't do that which is one of the reasons people want an abortion in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
People have been drawing pictures of Mohammad throughout the ages but for some (stupid and illogical) reason it was a page of cartoons in the danish newspaper Jyllandsposten that really got them worked up.
Now, Denmark is a small country (pop. 5 mill) and the newspaper in question is only written in danish, and is extremely unlikely to be found in shops outside the western hemisphere. Nobody in the Muslim world would have known about those cartoons if it was for an expedition of imams from Denmark that travelled around the middle east with a collection of drawings and other artworks, of which several had no connection with Muhammad, like a photo from a french farmers festival featuring a man with a pig snout. The intension was to create headlines and incite a response. It worked and ever since certain regions have been way overly sensitive about drawing Muhammad. The only way to combat that is to keep on drawing Muhammad again and again and again until they figure out that a drawing is just that - a drawing. Nothing to be worked up about.
For a rather complete collection of Muhammad images through the ages, including the infamous Muhammad Cartoons, go here: http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
Generally falling from a great height works just as well, although somewhat messy. The long fall is quiet (except for wind noise) and serene, and the landing at terminal velocity is so swift and destructive that the brain simply doesn't have time to process it.
I got the idea from an expert commenting on The Falling Man and other jumpers from the doomed WTC towers. He stated that this man - falling head first from the top floors - would hit at terminal velocity and the nerve impulses from the impact would not even have left the nerves when the brain was destroyed. And as there's zero pain nerves in the brain itself, death would be completely painless.
...of coaster fan clubs... They'll all want to try it ("I bet it beats Matterhorn!") and if it works as advertised... no more coaster fans.
I use a lot of extensions but only a few are really critical.
One of these (FoxyTunes) is still not FF 6.* compatible and the usual tricks (bumping the version etc.) doesn't work. It was made 5.* compatible two weeks before 6.0 was released and now it's broken again. I also use some mass downloaders (downThemAll+AntiContainer) a lot.
Chrome then... Well, none of the above exist for Chrome so that's a moot point. Another is gestures. The lack of decent support for extensions in Chrome results in pages where gestures doesn't work so that's rather useless. The mass downloader extensions don't exist for Chrome so that's another nail in that coffin. Finally I really like the stuff that the WorldIP extension for FF provides, but such an extension isn't possible in Chrome because info about the current page isn't available to extensions or so I'm told. Another nail for me.
So I'm stuck with FF and extensions that keep on breaking. I'm not looking forward to them breaking faster.
Do you trust such companies with unfettered access to the entire GPS history of your vehicle?
No, I trust nobody with something like that.
Not only are they making profit from something deeply private, but the data can easily be abused in a number of ways. It might be that you happened to be in an area where something bad happened, and right away you're a suspect just because you were in the area. You stand out because someone can document that you were there. They're not documenting that you did something wrong but the very thing that you were there, makes you a suspect.in particular compared to others who were also there but whose location wasn't documented.
We already see a similar issue with DNA profiles. The initial (quick) profile only uses a handful markers and they're not all that unique. A typical crime scene sample will yield dozens of partial matches, also due to it like being slightly contaminated which lowers the match probability. You then have to seek out all the partial matches and review them, probably interview them and perhaps detain one or two. And you still have the very likely possibility that the perpetrator isn't in the register at all.
After a few weeks the full profile is available and you'll most likely either have the perpetrator or realize that you don't. Now, having spent weeks in jail, suspected of some evil crime, you might get completely exonerated and probably financially compensated, but you'll carry that branding of 'criminal' forever, and that can never be removed. Usually there's nothing to suspect you other than the DNA matching, but DNA is such a strong piece of evidence that it in itself usually is enough to get you thrown in jail.
Those 'starter kits'... they've already killed several children but I guess PETA doesn't care about people one way or the other. Just look up "Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas" and you'll see. The trial of these two (they got life without parole for starving their baby to death through a strict vegan diet) ended with the judge strongly condemning (among others) PETA for not clearly advising parents NOT to make their infant follow a vegan diet. A child have to be 5-6 years old before you can even try, and then you still need protein supplements. But last time I checked PETA still claims that EVERYBODY can become a vegan and recommend starting as early as possible. That's incitement to murder, nothing less.
That is right up their alley...
They're stated numerous times that to them animals are more important that people. Their 'leder' have repeatedly stated that she doesn't care how many people get hurt as long as just one animal is saved. Humiliating women is nothing - they've tried killing people to further their agenda (firebombing animal testing labs with the researchers still inside) so they really don't care.
Well, they do REALLY love their dogs...
They haven't derived "insalin" from Canines in ages. I'm sure their "leder" is using the modern brands of insulin.
Which are produced by genetically altered bacteria if I remember correctly. She can be vegetarian but not vegan.
Would you want to work for a company that discriminate against your political views, sexual preferences or similar completely irrelevant things?
Hiding and faking things won't work in the long run and if you get caught later, the consequences are worse. Not only will you most likely get fired (either due to the screening matters itself or to the fact that your lied and hid it), but if your next employer screens you in relation to your previous employer they'll also know both your 'quirks' and that your tried to hide it by lying etc. - not too smart.
Because your personal data is a bunch of facts, not an expressive work. Facts are not copyrightable.
Turn your facts into a song or similar... Presto! - You have copyright for a few centuries (because they'll keep on extended it).
This is the way to go.
Several people have already told the virtues of this, which I won't repeat. I do add a little twist because I run my own spamtrap and DNS RBL which I update whenever one of the addresses yields unsolicited newsletters and similar spam. Then that company 's mailservers are blacklisted more or less forever. Basically it works like this:
Each address on the disposable list initially is an alias of my real email address.
If one gets compromised, it is switched to being an alias of the spamtrap instead and every mailserver delivering mail to the spamtrap gets immidiately blacklisted, no matter what.
Mails to the spamtrap bypasses the RBL checks, but mails to regular addresses are checked against my own RBL and a few more, and is refused upfront if listed. The result is close to zero spam. Before this, I got 10-20 spam each day that made it past the regular RBLs and spamassassin.
Not correct.
I know that you can combine wind, solar and so on, but claiming that wind can do it alone is plain wrong. Well, if you put gigantic windmills all over the place, including in the streets in major cities and in all the agricultural fields, you might just get near, but the demand rises and will rise a lot more as the third world gets civilized, and then it's not enough. Now, assuming that the mills don't get significantly for effective or more quiet, and that we still need to eat, we can start removing possible locations. So no mills in the cities and in the densely farmed areas. Mills can be placed along the coasts, not too close (noise, visual pollution) and not too far out (too deep, too severe weather) and in desolate places, but that's about it. That amount of mills cannot deliver anywhere near a significant contribution to the 'energy pool' so they can help, but not do it on their own.
The best prospect when it comes to renewable energy is geothermal. Not the old form as used on Iceland and similar where hot water from the underground is used directly, but a newer variation where the temperature differential between the surface and several miles down is used. It can be used almost everywhere, not just in hot spots. It is still in the development stages but the potential is gigantic. The power is unlimited (the core heat comes from long term radioactive decay and geological stresses from the tidal effect) and so abundant that even if we globally use a million times what we do know, the effect on the core heat would still be unmeasurable. The plants generate no noise or vibration when the deep drilling is done, and pose no danger of any kind when running. There's no waste, no major traffic and the plants can even be placed underground and thus inside major cities if needed. The output is continuous and unaffected by weather (wind and solar are greatly affected by weather) and thus reliable. Oh, and it produces no CO2 is case you care about that.
The previous authority (FAA) also failed miserably in detecting threats...
Will they ever learn that
- Technology is not the solution. Scanners have an 80%+ failure rate on average.
- Groping is not the solution.
None of the scanners, nor grope scanning, would have caught well-hidden carbon fiber box-cutters equivalent to what the 9/11 hijackers used.
Simple baseline profiling would have caught at least 18 of the 9/11 hijackers, probably all of them. It would also have caught both the 'shoe-bomber' and the 'underwear-bomber', both of which known to frequent radical mosques.
Go back to the old metal scanners and none of the shoe removal, liquid in plastic bag circus - which will catch a gun or a knife (it will catch 'last minute desperadoes'), and rely on profiling for the rest (terror). This will both be a lot more effective and a lot less intrusive for the passengers.
You know: I'd think there was a lot more to climate change denial if the facts presented by climate deniers weren't almost always wrong.
You know, there's be much more credibility to the ramblings of the Climate Change Cult if they didn't have to 'tweak' and 'adjust' the data in order to produce results supporting their claims... ;)
The worst claim so far is the words from the conclusion in one of IPCC's reports: "The Sun has no significant effect on the changes in global temperature" (not the exact phrase). That's so obviously incorrect it puts the credibility of the whole IPCC in question. The Sun has EVERYTHING to do with the global temperature on Earth. More radiation from the Sun will result in a temperature increase, less in a decrease. The mechanism is extremely complex in details but the overall effect is extremely simple and obvious.
Now, given that we've seem rather significant chances in global temperature over the years (both in historical time and in geological time), and these times were without 'the usual suspects' - significant human population, major volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts etc. - so the culprit has to be something else, like the Sun. But without knowing what, how and why, it should be the focus as the culprit of any change we see today as it is much more likely that it's the same thing again than it's something new, like human activity. But the Cult jumps the gun and throw all common sense out the window, and are having so much influence that politicians everywhere are rushing to dismantle civilization on this flimsy and unlikely theory. That's just stupid IMHO.
Prison time for trolling?
Now, trolling takes many forms, of which cyberbullying is just one (small one actually). Most trolling is harmless and fun - FTA's example of Apple-bashing in an Apple forum is typical. It harms nobody except filling up the forum with off-topic messages. Good moderators can curb this quickly and no harm is done.
Going after people though... Doesn't have to be cyberbullying and when it isn't, it also can be fun and mostly harmless. But the border between deeply hurtful and just fun is rather thin, and some trolls cross without realizing it. I'm actually fairly convinced that Sean Duffy didn't intend to make what happened happen. It was just fun going too far. I think prison is too harsh here. He should just be punished financially by being forced to pay an insane restitution to the victims family - at least in the two-digit millions. Then he could go to prison for failing to pay, but that's a different thing.
This is not really news.
The IP is ABSOLUTELY USELESS is a unique identifier of the person actually using the connection.
First there's other cabled devices in the household.
Then there's wireless devices, both in and outside the household, which again includes both neighbors and random 'wardrivers'.
Lastly, there's malware on any of the above devices.
In order to find the correct individual just about every device in the world needs to be searched, which is of course completely absurd.
Oh, and I also remember a case where someone without wireless turned out to be sharing his connection with the neighbor wirelessly. The neighbor had actually broken in and connected a hidden access point to the network of the unsuspecting victim. This way he could use the connection without any chance of discovery (and if the access point was found. nothing would point back to him, except through analysis of the network traffic). His idea was based on a story he had read about a similar setup using a hidden cordless phone and long distance calls. So even though you don't use wireless technology, your resources might still be abused wirelessly.
Actually, I've also heard about cabled abuse, mostly concerning electricity. It isn't exactly uncommon - especially in apartment complexes - to see 'creative' ways to circumvent the meter, from manipulations around the meter itself to 'secret' cables through walls and to utilities like street lights, powered junction boxes etc. Most of these gets found out due to the drop in their bills, not through discovery of the illegal cabling.
One thing is that I would love a costless distributed solution like the one Marlinspike suggests. I'd much rather trust a large group of peers than a company whose security practices may be questionable. Sure, the peers might be much less secure individually but as a group it's extremely hard to force something onto everybody thus causing manipulative results. If the network both rates the certificates and each other, it's next to impossible to introduce corruption on a level that matters.
Now, given what we have today, the solution is easy:
Regardless of importance - any CA caught being the source of fraudulent certs should be immediately blacklisted so that all certs issued by this CA are rendered useless. It should not even be possible to accept the risk and visits sites using certs from this CA. This will in turn result in massive lawsuits against the CA (just imagine the loss from a company like Amazon being unable to process payments) and thus most likely the complete financial destruction of the CA. The mere prospect of this should make the CA's take their security seriously. I mean if a semi-talented wannabe like this Comodo-hacker can cause this much damage, and perhaps even have gained access to several CA's, their security must be next to non-existent, and that is more than unacceptable.
Reminds me of this super-stupid dude who went to the police to report his 'stash' stolen. He knew who did it and the police went with the dude to the home of the thief, and bingo - there was a big bag of weed. The police then asked him to identify it, and he confirmed "yeah, that is mine!". Presto, the police arrested him for possession and the guy that took it for theft and possession... Stupid...
Descent II was good! - Much better 3D than Doom II which was the concurrent 3D game out there at that time!
You can actually find a modern engine (D2X-XL) that allow you to play Decent II on modern hardware, but in order to play the official levels you need to own the game or at least have the data files (DESCENT2.HOG etc.) handy.
About 2 years ago I did just that - re-played the entire Descent II game and it was still fun as hell (no pun intended).
1) CNN showing the idiots surfing at Wrightsville Beach, NC. Why encourage it?
Darwin Award nominees, eh?
Just let them have their fun! - Hopefully they'll go out with a big smile on their face!
If you cannot restore your backups without an Internet connection, you do not have backups.
That's not true. You have useless backups.
But if your business depends on Internet access, it doesn't matter whether you have backups or not... no Internet means no business, backups or not.
Unless you are in a war zone, like the middle east. Concrete is bullet-proof.
Depends on the size of the 'bullet'... Nothing is 'bullet-proof' if you use a big enough bullet.
Telemarketing?
Why in the world would they need location data for that? - Whatever crime happened on the phone lines.
If they wanted to know whether the suspect physically visited a certain location (the source of the calls perhaps?), they could ask for a list of times the suspect was in that area. This way his privacy isn't violated outside what is part of the investigation itself. Law enforcement cannot reasonably expect to be able to (ab)use location data to lead them to any co-conspirators; that would be making the telco part of the investigative process which is a violation of several laws. They just need to show the suspect being somewhere at a certain time in order to punch holes in an alibi. Well, and show that his phone was with him and not just left in a car driven by someone else, but that's a different matter...
Religion is yet another way for evolution to eliminate those with deficiencies compared to others.
For some reason those that are religious seem to be too stupid to follow common sense and basic medical advice. They believe faith can heal contagious diseases (thus infecting more during prayer sessions). They help spread sexually transmitted diseases due to resistance against contraception (no, married people are if anything more likely to sleep around) and similar. The Muslims have their Ramadan where they starve themselves and drink too little, thus weakening their bodies and make them more susceptible to catching something, or to be unfocused and dehydrated during the day where many also drive cars and thus are more likely to be involved in accidents.
Okay, so the fact that some see it as a duty to produce babies, they tend to make up for the extra loss of life in the long run...
For some reason the great majority of religious people have more or less strict rules to live by, rules directly or indirectly given to them by their God(s). But these rules always seem to be stupid in some way. Praying five times a day? - Waste of what could have been important time. Only eating certain food? - Can cause malnutrition or deficiencies. Fighting scientific research because 'it offends God' or similar? - Well, obvious. They could miss finding an important cure or similar.
Abortion is of course a tricky question. The upcoming child could become someone important that find an important cure or make some important discovery, but after all that is fairly unlikely. It is much more likely that an unwanted child both get substandard care and education and it may threaten the economy of the mother/family, thus endangering additional individuals. In nature an unwanted offspring would simply be left left to die or be eaten by predators, but humans can't do that which is one of the reasons people want an abortion in the first place.