My reaction is all the more stupid considering that I feel, quite strongly, that the US and Europe should be strong allies, and definitely not rivals. We have lots of common goals, and there are lots of areas where we agree.
That is one of the central theme's in Timothy Garten Ash's Free World. Definitely worth a read for anyone that wants a refreshing and positive look on the worlds affairs.
Man, that's great. Of course that only works if at least of those three contains an operational toner cartridge. I always hate abandoning electronic stuff, my mobile phone is literally duct-taped together. But I did toss my Old Laserwtiter 4/600 out when it was leaking toner all over the place. I couldn't figure out if the problem was the toner cartridge or the printer itself, and did not want to spend EUR100 on a new catridge when the problem might be the printer. So I got a EUR200 Brother now, inclusie a new 10.000 page toner catridge.
I think this is a pretty nifty idea, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done before.
Well, it has been done before. I graduated from the Academy of Arts in Rottterdam in 1996 with some fonts that changed their shape depending on how you typed. Inspiration fo these fonts was exactly this technique, which I had heard about, on some big IT show, at least 5 years before.
A JAVA version of one of the fonts (Typschrift-B, a rather crude version but my JAVA-knowledge is kind of non-existent) is the only thing that is still on line of the whole project.
So why not just get the insurance, then get tested. If preventative care is cheaper for the insurance company, then the company should be willing to provide for it, since you are now their problem.
This will only work if that is the only insurance company you will deal with in your entire life. But your health risk and life expectancy get inspected on a lot of financial products (for instance loans an mortgages, disability insurance), not just on medical insurance.
Six years ago I found out that my mother was bearing a gene that would cut down ones life expectancy with 20 years, mainly because of the increased risk of colon cancer (and man, does that feel unjust: living healthy and then to have the same life expectancy as a smoker!). All relatives that might bear the gene were tested, all but me and one nephew. We were the only untested ones, because we both had business of our own and were not able to bear the financial consequences of being tested positive. Mind you, this is in the Netherlands, were at least there is still a basic health care system for everyone - it is all the other insurances that make the difference, especially when you are self-employed.
Still, I found it kind of sick: to lower the financial risks for my wife and kids, I had to raise the change of actually getting a terminal illness (being diagnosed with the gene would shuttle me into a regular check-up program).
Anyway, a couple of years ago I terminated my self employment and got myself into all these umbrella insurances for the sector I am working in. And I got myself tested: negative, great.
Here is a perfect example of the utter and complete failure of the American free-market mantra. A select few people raising bees were made richer with no economic consideration for the risk to the food production chain by adopting a bee mono-culture.
Now what?
Well, build your own.
Doesn't work only for software you know. Just google for mason bee housing and build your own genetic diversity tool from that old piece of wood you've got laying around anyway. And save the planet.
This is far superior to the "miss-to-kill" technology they were employing in previous models.
In separate news, the Dutch institute of technology just announced a fishing net made of superfibre to protect troops in *stan against RPGs. Does this fall under low tech (it is a regular fishing net producer that makes these things) or high tech (it is still a superfibre)?
Who is even dumb enough to make their purchases based on spam mail. I mean, surely everyone must know what spam is by now? How can one be so dense as to trust a completely random, badly worded, illarticulated e-mail full of spelling mistakes from someone you don't know to make informed decisions about what stock they should buy?
Well, a lot of it just has to do with the psychological wiring of homo sapiens. We have to think that our actions are meaningful, that our victories are entirely our doing and that our failures are caused by bad luck. Failure to think this way will make you feel very very depressed.
So, in the case of these stock options scams, there's a lot of people that *know* it is a scam, but, if they're quick enough, they might profit as well from the clueless hordes that will buy the stock later on. My bet is that the largest stake of these stock buyers thinks along theses lines. People might try that a couple of time before they realize they loose every time - and by that time new clueless humans come along.
Then, there's that pitfall of familiarity. We tend to like things we already know. This is what advertising is based on. Show me 10 advertisements for 'Toothpaste Brand A' and none for 'Toothpaste Brand B' and when I'm in a shop, I will pick brand A (even if I very consciously know that that preference is based solely on advertising). A lot of people will think along the lines "It can't be that bad if they offer it to me this often - it must be the real thing" I once read an interview with a women that suffered severe dental problems after buying teeth whitener form a tell-sell channel, and she literally said "I thought: they advertise so much for it, it must be a good product".
And then there's just basic greed: "This offer is so good, I don't want to spoil it with disbelief."
And shame: "I can't ask Viagra to my doctor, this might be a rip off, but it might also be the right thing. I won't know until I try it".
And the-only-change: "They don't sell penis enlargment kits in my pharmacy, I know it is shady, but I can't get it anywhere else"
And the list goes on... We are o so great in fooling ourselves.
Democracy doesn't limit you to the channels it offers, it is also a nice app to download all the movies from a given webpage. Just add the page's URL as a channel - Democracy will complain about the rotten format, but it will download all the clips. Much easier IMHO than downloading and opening in VLC - at least Democracy automatically expires the files on your HD, I am lousy at that myself.
I'm genuinely interested in discussing this and I think this is a subject where my opinions outweigh my knowledge.
You might like to read Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion'. The book is a bit of a mixed bag - partly strict reasoning, partly purely rhetoric. But it does cover a lot of subjects surrounding religion - religion as a meme, the roots of morality, ethics, the meaning of life - which makes it quite an interesting read.
Your friend had child porn on his computer, was busted, and is probably on probation. I hope he gets professional help before he ends up in prison.
Typical AC: write first, think later. He got his computer back with the remark that they did not find anything on it. It just took them so long to investigate because it was a Mac, and they had no expertise in examining the content of a Mac, just PCs. And when they returned it, they also told him the reason they had confiscated it in the first place.
And yes, I must agree on you with this one: the sex offender wasn't smart. Because signing up with someone else's e-mail account doesn't work.
Another record, from Adelaide to Darwin (3000km) is held by the dutch solar car Nuna 3, which averaged 103km/h. This would have been higher if not for speed limits on the Australian roads. The speed record for solar cars (without any imposed limits) on normal roads has been more or less maxed out.
The Delft University of Technology will be participating in this race with the Nuna 4. This is the team - also a student team! - that won the race in 2001, 2003 and 2005. There's a brief explanation of the new rules on their site:
New this year for the competition class are regulations requiring a full motor vehicle specification lighting package, a normal seating angle for the driver, and a scaling back of the maximum solar panel area from 8.9 square meters to 6 square meters. Saftey concerns have also prompted the regulators to require a roll bar in the vehicle, and an exterior body that can handle four times the weight of the vehicle itself.
The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, which has been a major force in getting and keeping this project going, meanwhile has found an even higher goal for the next student project: the design of a Blended Wing Body Aircraft. If the success with their solar power car is anything to go by, we will see some serious innovation in aircraft design in the time to come.
Someone steals your number, buys kiddie porn, and now you're the suspect.
A friend of mine had his computer confiscated for three months because somebody tried to sign up to a Yahoo! mailing list (where kiddie porn had been discussed) using his stolen or guessed or just randomly typed e-mail address. They are not the brightest of the block, these German cybercrimefighters.
Type spam map into google image search to see how blatently obvious it is to see where the spam comes from.
Since you were modded 'interesting', I did exactly like you told and found this page: http://mailinator.com/mailinator/map.html.
Refreshed it 3 times now, and every time at least 4 balloons are pointing at the US, one at Canada and 2 or 3 at European countries. Interesting indeed.
Personally, I suspect that less polution would be produced if everyone "down-sized" their car to better suit their needs ( SUV -> Minivan -> Wagon -> Full Sized -> Mid Size -> Compact -> Sub-Compact -> Smart Car -> Scooter -> Bicycle )
If that is sorted on pollution, then the scooter should be at the point where 'Mid Size' is. Scooters and mopeds do not use a lot of fuel, but they do not combust very well as well, and have no filtering whatsoever. They emit a lot of NOx and fine dust.
Here's my set-up (old-style Postfix config). No false positives in five years, so these are pretty reliable (and from the comment the I must have written myself, ordb has been of my list for quite a while):
# Not enough hits to justify keeping them in the list
# relays.ordb.org # opm.blitzed.org
Also, for RBL's that might not be 100% reliable, there is a simple to way to add them to your spamassassin setup (/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf), as I have done for PSBL:
# http://psbl.surriel.com/howto/
header RCVD_IN_PSBL eval:check_rbl('psbl', 'psbl.surriel.com.') describe RCVD_IN_PSBL Received via a relay in PSBL tflags RCVD_IN_PSBL net score RCVD_IN_PSBL 0 1.00 0 1.00
Why bother when you're allowed to torture people?
Given enough time, you get these guys to say anything you want.
Why waste all that effort to find the guilty, when you can just pick someone and beat them until they admit their guilt or agree to testify to someone else's guilt?
There was an article in the science section of NRC Handelsblad a couple of weeks ago on interrogation techniques. The article was written because the whole torture discussion so far is about the morality of torture, not about the effectiveness.
What research done so far on interrogation techniques shows, is that the more pressure you put on people, the more they say the things they think the interrogator wants to hear. Which might or might not be the truth. So if you want that people to confirm the image you have in your mind, go ahead and put them under pressure, or even torture them when you are morally challenged. You will hear a lot, but most of it will be noise, not useful information. Hard interrogation techniques quite plainly cannot be used for truth finding.
On the other hand, if you want information, you have to make use of humans natural weakness: we all like to chat. If people feel comfortable, they start talking, and will sooner or later tell more than they planned to. Which is of course, I must admit, a difficult strategy to follow with suspects that do not speak your language, do not share your cultural values, and might have planted a bomb somewhere that could kill your friends any time.
The scary thing is that these so-called intelligence agencies have gathered tons and tons of noise over the past years, and that this noise will be used to base our domestic and foreign policies on. This won't be the last scaremonging incident that will have a lasting impact on our lives.
A house built with ICF has superior insulating properties (and does a fair job of blocking wifi signals too;)
Indeed, just yesterday there was an article about this in the Dutch papers. More and more people are complaining about dropped GSM reception and no digital TV reception after there houses have been renovated. Where the most striking case is the appartment block where they used aluminium panelling to cover the outer walls.
Indeed, today's commentary in the newspaper was more or less like this:
Either
(a) The Russian state did it, and so our energy supply is in the hands of raving lunatics with nuclear missiles that will stop for nothing
or
(b) Some rogue Russian elements did it, and so our energy supply is in the hands of a government with nuclear missiles that cannot control its raving lunatics that will stop for nothing
Both options suck, and they are both outside our reach. As the old Chinese curse goes, May you live in interesting times.
Yes, it is a software thing. A similicar case popped up in a Dutch case involving a corrupt high-ranking police officer a couple of months ago. During the proces it became quite clear that he had been monitored using his own phone. But how exactly the software on his phone was modified wasn't told.
The technique that was used (by best guess), is a a variant of setting the phone to 'silent answer' and 'pickup automatically'. This has already been used with phones that were just dropped on an appropriate location. Of course, if you drop the phones they can be found and disabled. The more advanced technique (that was probably used in the police officer case) just lets the phone 'silent answer' and 'pickup automatically' to one pre-defined number. So the phone will be functioning normally for all incoming and outgoing calls, but will eavesdrop when special agent X calls.
The question remains of course, if physical access to the phone is needed to plant the software. For if your enemies have physical acces to your phone, eavesdropping is not the only possibility, as "the Engineer" can not testify.
Slashdot Mirror
That is one of the central theme's in Timothy Garten Ash's Free World. Definitely worth a read for anyone that wants a refreshing and positive look on the worlds affairs.
Yes, why switch to something new when we have a well-tested system, blood donations, that is totally free of long term side effects, and has always been 100% safe.
Man, that's great. Of course that only works if at least of those three contains an operational toner cartridge. I always hate abandoning electronic stuff, my mobile phone is literally duct-taped together. But I did toss my Old Laserwtiter 4/600 out when it was leaking toner all over the place. I couldn't figure out if the problem was the toner cartridge or the printer itself, and did not want to spend EUR100 on a new catridge when the problem might be the printer. So I got a EUR200 Brother now, inclusie a new 10.000 page toner catridge.
Well, it has been done before. I graduated from the Academy of Arts in Rottterdam in 1996 with some fonts that changed their shape depending on how you typed. Inspiration fo these fonts was exactly this technique, which I had heard about, on some big IT show, at least 5 years before.
A JAVA version of one of the fonts (Typschrift-B, a rather crude version but my JAVA-knowledge is kind of non-existent) is the only thing that is still on line of the whole project.
Ivan Illich, is that you?
This will only work if that is the only insurance company you will deal with in your entire life. But your health risk and life expectancy get inspected on a lot of financial products (for instance loans an mortgages, disability insurance), not just on medical insurance.
Six years ago I found out that my mother was bearing a gene that would cut down ones life expectancy with 20 years, mainly because of the increased risk of colon cancer (and man, does that feel unjust: living healthy and then to have the same life expectancy as a smoker!). All relatives that might bear the gene were tested, all but me and one nephew. We were the only untested ones, because we both had business of our own and were not able to bear the financial consequences of being tested positive. Mind you, this is in the Netherlands, were at least there is still a basic health care system for everyone - it is all the other insurances that make the difference, especially when you are self-employed.
Still, I found it kind of sick: to lower the financial risks for my wife and kids, I had to raise the change of actually getting a terminal illness (being diagnosed with the gene would shuttle me into a regular check-up program).
Anyway, a couple of years ago I terminated my self employment and got myself into all these umbrella insurances for the sector I am working in. And I got myself tested: negative, great.
Well, build your own.
Doesn't work only for software you know. Just google for mason bee housing and build your own genetic diversity tool from that old piece of wood you've got laying around anyway. And save the planet.
In separate news, the Dutch institute of technology just announced a fishing net made of superfibre to protect troops in *stan against RPGs. Does this fall under low tech (it is a regular fishing net producer that makes these things) or high tech (it is still a superfibre)?
Babelfish translation here: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=nl_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant. nl%2Fwetenschap%2Farticle392325.ece%2FVisnet_van_s upervezel_smoort_antitankgranaat
But that will need some extra translation:
visnet = fishing net
granaatwurger = grenade strangler
wachttorens = guard towers
Well, a lot of it just has to do with the psychological wiring of homo sapiens. We have to think that our actions are meaningful, that our victories are entirely our doing and that our failures are caused by bad luck. Failure to think this way will make you feel very very depressed.
So, in the case of these stock options scams, there's a lot of people that *know* it is a scam, but, if they're quick enough, they might profit as well from the clueless hordes that will buy the stock later on. My bet is that the largest stake of these stock buyers thinks along theses lines. People might try that a couple of time before they realize they loose every time - and by that time new clueless humans come along.
Then, there's that pitfall of familiarity. We tend to like things we already know. This is what advertising is based on. Show me 10 advertisements for 'Toothpaste Brand A' and none for 'Toothpaste Brand B' and when I'm in a shop, I will pick brand A (even if I very consciously know that that preference is based solely on advertising). A lot of people will think along the lines "It can't be that bad if they offer it to me this often - it must be the real thing" I once read an interview with a women that suffered severe dental problems after buying teeth whitener form a tell-sell channel, and she literally said "I thought: they advertise so much for it, it must be a good product".
And then there's just basic greed: "This offer is so good, I don't want to spoil it with disbelief."
And shame: "I can't ask Viagra to my doctor, this might be a rip off, but it might also be the right thing. I won't know until I try it".
And the-only-change: "They don't sell penis enlargment kits in my pharmacy, I know it is shady, but I can't get it anywhere else"
And the list goes on... We are o so great in fooling ourselves.
Democracy doesn't limit you to the channels it offers, it is also a nice app to download all the movies from a given webpage. Just add the page's URL as a channel - Democracy will complain about the rotten format, but it will download all the clips. Much easier IMHO than downloading and opening in VLC - at least Democracy automatically expires the files on your HD, I am lousy at that myself.
Indeed. Twice the playing time on half the tape. Unfortunately 4 years late to the market.
Typical AC: write first, think later. He got his computer back with the remark that they did not find anything on it. It just took them so long to investigate because it was a Mac, and they had no expertise in examining the content of a Mac, just PCs. And when they returned it, they also told him the reason they had confiscated it in the first place.
And yes, I must agree on you with this one: the sex offender wasn't smart. Because signing up with someone else's e-mail account doesn't work.
The Delft University of Technology will be participating in this race with the Nuna 4. This is the team - also a student team! - that won the race in 2001, 2003 and 2005. There's a brief explanation of the new rules on their site:
The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, which has been a major force in getting and keeping this project going, meanwhile has found an even higher goal for the next student project: the design of a Blended Wing Body Aircraft. If the success with their solar power car is anything to go by, we will see some serious innovation in aircraft design in the time to come.
There was an article in the science section of NRC Handelsblad a couple of weeks ago on interrogation techniques. The article was written because the whole torture discussion so far is about the morality of torture, not about the effectiveness.
What research done so far on interrogation techniques shows, is that the more pressure you put on people, the more they say the things they think the interrogator wants to hear. Which might or might not be the truth. So if you want that people to confirm the image you have in your mind, go ahead and put them under pressure, or even torture them when you are morally challenged. You will hear a lot, but most of it will be noise, not useful information. Hard interrogation techniques quite plainly cannot be used for truth finding.
On the other hand, if you want information, you have to make use of humans natural weakness: we all like to chat. If people feel comfortable, they start talking, and will sooner or later tell more than they planned to. Which is of course, I must admit, a difficult strategy to follow with suspects that do not speak your language, do not share your cultural values, and might have planted a bomb somewhere that could kill your friends any time.
The scary thing is that these so-called intelligence agencies have gathered tons and tons of noise over the past years, and that this noise will be used to base our domestic and foreign policies on. This won't be the last scaremonging incident that will have a lasting impact on our lives.
Indeed, just yesterday there was an article about this in the Dutch papers. More and more people are complaining about dropped GSM reception and no digital TV reception after there houses have been renovated. Where the most striking case is the appartment block where they used aluminium panelling to cover the outer walls.
Attachments will always be used in ways not imagened by the manufacturer, as the Rez trance pack proofed. Not wii, not wireless, but fully functional.
Indeed, today's commentary in the newspaper was more or less like this:
Either
(a) The Russian state did it, and so our energy supply is in the hands of raving lunatics with nuclear missiles that will stop for nothing
or
(b) Some rogue Russian elements did it, and so our energy supply is in the hands of a government with nuclear missiles that cannot control its raving lunatics that will stop for nothing
Both options suck, and they are both outside our reach. As the old Chinese curse goes, May you live in interesting times.
Yes, it is a software thing. A similicar case popped up in a Dutch case involving a corrupt high-ranking police officer a couple of months ago. During the proces it became quite clear that he had been monitored using his own phone. But how exactly the software on his phone was modified wasn't told.
The technique that was used (by best guess), is a a variant of setting the phone to 'silent answer' and 'pickup automatically'. This has already been used with phones that were just dropped on an appropriate location. Of course, if you drop the phones they can be found and disabled.
The more advanced technique (that was probably used in the police officer case) just lets the phone 'silent answer' and 'pickup automatically' to one pre-defined number. So the phone will be functioning normally for all incoming and outgoing calls, but will eavesdrop when special agent X calls.
The question remains of course, if physical access to the phone is needed to plant the software. For if your enemies have physical acces to your phone, eavesdropping is not the only possibility, as "the Engineer" can not testify.