Norway was one of the wierd ones. While in western Europe it did not follow the UN ICAO passport rules. It did have to switch over to machine readable format in order to sign off on the Schengen Agreement.
Kind of true.
The hijackers, all but one, used authentice state issued identification in order to hide thier nationalities. However they did use fake passports to obtain that autentic ID. The one who did not used this actual passport, again authentic. It should be noted that a passport was not needed for the flights they were on(all internal to the US) but they needed some form of ID to prove who they were when at check in.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Not es.htm
I don't want to sound trollish, but the major force behind biometric passports worldwide is Homeland Security in USA: "You want visa free entrance to US? Make biometric passports!".
Not really the plans for the electronic passport started in the 1990 by the UN's ICAO, the first set of written/approved plans came in early 2002, it was agreed to by the member of ICAO in 2004. In the agreement they said they would implement and require its use. The US got the members to move up the time table, and implement it, not really being strong armed about it.
Now before the RFI system you did have the machine readable bar code. This was implmented in the early 80s, then around 1986 28 countries standarded on the ICAO format and opened up thier borders to fellow members with no visa. In 2004 the US did start requiring(along with a few other countries) that they would only accept the passport of fellow members of the visa waiver program that had the bar code in them, so thoses people with passports around 25 years old would need to get new passports.
The US is not completly free of the bulllying, in thier passports they are making the encryption harder then the one used by the ICAO and used in these UK passports and because of that some contries are having to purchase different equipment then originally planned.
That is way misleading, would say lie but from your sources you probably don't know the truth.
The truth is we don't know how much oil is avialable up in the alaskan reserve, that is why various people have been pushing for laws that would allow for testing of the amounts of oil. That 2-3 years based on smaller sites and based on exploration science that is some of the smaller sites, the same way that you get the up numbers of 20-100 years worth in that they take the amount actually tested apply the exploration science results and go from there. Until actually full testing takes places it is worthless make statements such as only 2-3 years of oil are up there.
Why go the long messy way, there is a simple way to implement this that would work.
First part is to ensure that all countries keep up military spending and personnel at the same level; this is to ensure that some aggressive force can be handled. Now the second and most important part is to put all theses forces under my direct and ultimate control.
No more discussions, wasting time on what should be done, and no worries about little countries being taken over(why would I need too).
Like the main competitors of Diebold having members of the Democrate Party as vice presidents and being major supports of the Democrate party in money and time?
How about the first admendment freedom of association?
If the guy did anything to program the machines to change the votes lets have the evidence, otherwise it is just political sour grapes.
And if there was any truth to the election tampering conspiracies do you think the Democrates would of kept quiet up to now. Not talking about the various main stream democrates blog that talk about electronic tampering and how Bush planted explosives to blow up the towers in NYC, but the ones in congress.
What you will see, and some of the Democrates have said is they will be bring out thier enemies list and going after thoses just for show.
They are called solar stills.
While easy in design they are rather expensive, require huge areas of land to produce sizable quantities of water and weather dependant. Also you cannot have moving water since it needs time to heat up so that steam is produced
Actually bush was the first president to approve federal funding for human stem cell research. He did veto one but it was for a change of a Clinton law,The Dickey Amendment, that would of allowed the destruction of huamn embryoinic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells does not equal stem cells in discussion they are different both politics and in science.
I'm upset because of the late release because I want a toy to play with at work.
Like most companies don't push out all the new microsoft stuff but this will cause us to start upgrading abunch of new server and software (aka toys) just because microsoft is now starting to remove support for older stuff.
Wow already with the name calling. While it is not complicated there was/is alot of rumors and guesses that were floating around and are still accepted as facts.
Under Posse Comitatus Act the president can't use the national guard for law enforcement absent congressional directive or if requested by a governor he president can invoke the Insurrection Act and Katrina was no rebellion or insurrection. Law enforcement was what the Blanco and Nagin wanted from the National Guard. So unless there was some unknown congressional directive or Blanco was calling the the hurricane a insurrectionist the President had no way of limiting or calling out the National Guard. All the stuff about the National Guard requiring federal approval is wrong.
Please remember that EMAC is not a federal agency.
Since no help could come from the Federal government the Governor needed to use outside agreements mainly the EMAC. So she went out and requested help. So now you need to transport all theses people and supplies into the area and that is where the Pentagon comes in, the Pentagon is allowed to fill out the paperwork and transport the national guard. The majority of the false stories of the delays say that it was here that the pentagon, on bush's orders, caused the delayed of sending in the troops. However the Pentagon cannot transport people until they have orders on where they are needed, caring about thier welfare,etc which was suppose to be supplied by the EMAC coming from the governor, it took time to get that paperwork and some coordination from EMAC. Troops using thier own transportation, such a New Mexico, made it with no transportion delays be some once in the areas got delayed because know one knew where to send them.
Or in the words of General Blum,Chief, National Guard Bureau,
GEN. BLUM: It was not foreseen. When they put the original EMAC together it was really for disaster response. Law enforcement was not envisioned. So it has to be handled as a separate process. The governors may get together and modify their EMAC in the future so that it is all-inclusive, but this fills that gap and it makes the activity of the National Guard in this regard totally legally sufficient and supportable.
Q: Does that explain why it took several days to get to this point?
GEN. BLUM: No, there was no delay. The fortunate thing is with modern technology they faxed the agreement back and forth, the two governors signed it. It was a matter of moments. That was not the delay.
The delay was in, if you want to call it a delay. I really don't call it a delay, I'll be honest about that. When we first went in there law enforcement was not the highest priority, saving lives was. You have to remember how this thing started. Before the hurricane hit there were 5,000 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and 5,000 National Guardsmen -- excuse me. Let me correct the record. There were 2,500 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and almost 4,000 National Guardsmen in Louisiana that were sheltered and taken out of the affected area so as soon as the storm passed they could immediately go into the area and start their search and lifesaving work, and stand up their command and control apparatus, and start standing up the vital functions that would be required such as providing food, water, shelter and security for the people of the town. So it was phased in. There was no delay.
How is evidence about the.xxx domain bad for the US governance?
It was a stupid idea since they were not requiring XXX sites to use it. All it would of done was to require every company to purchase the.xxx version of thier name (www.disney.xxx going to a porn site????).
If you want to find porn it is not a problem the problem is that the porn site using similar names and tring to trick people to come to thier site something a.xxx as wanted would not of fixed.
If anything this proves it is better to have the US controlling the names, if the.xxx had been handled by something like the UN we would of had 10 months of meetings and decided to implement it just to make sure someone is not upset.
So the governor of New Mexico and West Virginia, both Democrates, are all under the control of Bush and Rove and lieing to protect him.
Wait that would also include the governor of Louisiana since if goto the New Mexico state site you find a letter from her thanking them for thier quick response and help.
There is no truth to what you heard.
According the governor of New Mexico they had people leaving for Lousiana the night that Gov. Blanco asked for them.. There were a few delays but they were caused by EMAC.
There were a few delays in getting help from other states which according to the Gov of West Virginia were also caused by EMAC/NEMA and paperwork from the the states needing help. EMAC is a state run pact for requesting and supplying help, NEMA is organization of state emergency organizers who run and approve EMAC requests. The only time the federal government comes in is if FEMA makes an active request and the paperwork has been signed by the local governor that make FEMA the centralized controlling organization for managing support.
You also had problem with medical support caused by the Mississippi and lousiana governors not approving help for outside source, so some early medical helper had to work under the good samaritan laws. As a medical worker that just starts working in a different state during an emergency you can be sued and are libel. However if the governor signes the EMAC paperwork the state assumes all liability, this is what took some time. Because of the legal liability the states are assuming they do now have some additional training you have to take if you want to help with theses emergencies; this has caused some non-trained people to be turned away.
Please educate yourself on the very basics on people who are arrested for "providing material support to a terrorist organization".
First it does not take any declaration by the president, it is a ffederal crime signed into law in 1996, so anyone who has the authority to make federal arrests can do it.
You are not sent to Gitmo, side topic but also learn who is being help there, you are will be sent though the standard criminal court process, complete with a chance of bail. There are a few people who where given bail, fled the country and have been located in hezbollah and other terrorist controlled areas.
You can contribute to the defense fund with no fear, provided that the money is not actually being funneled away from the defense and you know about it, aleast in the US that is case other countries may vary. The guy is not doing anything remotly close to what would get him charged by this 1996 law, he is being charged under a different law.
The smell of most fruits is caused by rot, same as fish and meat; just that fruits smell pleasing to the nose. Since most supermarkets need to transport from a distance and sell for more then 2 days they are picked unripe.
For some fruits you can speed up the rotting and create a really nice smelling and better tasting(usually caused by have the sugars concentrated or other substances being turned into sugars) product.
The other option would be to skip the large supermarkets and get fruits from your local farmers market. You will get fresher products but the selection will be alot less.
If you find the "The revolution will not be televised" you should also go watch this one done by a couple of Venezuelan engineers which shows the background of what was happening and what was actually going on.
English subtitles.
Google has long history of removing sites it considers different from what the majority of its workers think. Since it is a non-US government entitiy it sure has the right to do that; and yes censorship is not the correct word for this subject.
Since google does it already, when its works want to promote a certain way of thinking, what is really wrong with its customers trying to force them, ie protest, that they think the company should do something they want, and if they can get enough support probably force the company to do so?
There are a couple of different ones.
the most common older one is the one you talk about where they set off a small explosion and then have sensors that detect how long it takes from the vibration to travel. since it takes different times depending on the material you can get an idea if something is there and the general shape.
The fairly newer kind is an actual ground radar system which you have to drag around, it sends signals into the ground they bounce back and you get an idea what is down there.
The plane based one is same basic idea but is no good for small sites and I don't think it goes down that deep. So far it has detected old roads, ground has been compacted so much you get a different signal, and from that they have found the remains of old cities.
The way most grave robbers work is the same way most archeologist do and that is to make a guess of where the logical location of where something would be and go from there. the robbers have the benifit in that they don't have to get official approval. You do get the very rare event when someone stubbles on to a new place but that is not very likly to happen.
I guess it depends on what your definition of "nefarious" is. If nefarious does not means that certian APIs exsist for use by other microsoft products(non-OS), or very close outside companies, or allow thier products to operate faster then using the documented APIs then you are right. Most devs would not call it nefarious if it was something microsoft was not using internally, the documentation was wrong comparied to implementation or was clearing marked as for testing and somehow made it through to the final version(but was not actually used anywhere).
Look at cases of the AARD code(more of an interface), the loadhi API, the XMS 3.0 spec, EMM Import spec. Also various lead devs at microsoft have admitted that they had undocumented API done in the OS and used in office for communication. Also look at various lawsuits as New York vs Microsoft or Caledra vs microsoft also grab copies of the older books of undocumented APIs
Microsoft has gotten alot better in this in the last few releases and has gotten to the point where it is not really an issue any more
The funny thing is that as an American living in Europe all that stuff you describe has been going on in Europe for ages. For safty purposes the company even has procedures in place so we could jump the border get a plane and get back to the US and they would then start work on tring to get our stuff back to us. This happened after one person who was in lawsuit with the government was raided during the middle of the night with moving trucks and he was arrested; and that was for a tax problem.
Lets not even get into all the paperwork that has to be filled out and carried with me or the police checks I get when I check in to hotels.
It is all a matter of how close you are to it and how it effects you. Over here in Europe we hear all this stuff really out of proportion and think it is a major hassel but in reality you live under similar rules already in place.
As an other example a while ago there was this big set of messages of how the US was turning into a fascist state, bush=hitler, etc because it was harder for forgieners to get a bank account in the US. The change was that instead of just calling up a bank and opening an account you now had to fax/email them a copy of the picture page in your passport and you had to be from one of the countries the US has banking relationships with. Now compare this to the problems for opening an account in Europe, here I need both a residence permit, just a matter of time waiting for the signatures and then standing in multiple lines for the photos, etc and then I need to show my work permits. As a Europian all that work and residence permits are probably considered nothing but from what is heard over here if the US were to come even close to these requirements it would be seen as if the US had just branded all people entering its borders.
Do aggree with the planes over here, I no longer even consider taking a plane unless the train trip would be 10-12+ hours all the new requirements they have put up make it a major hassle.
For the record I am not a coffee drinker, don't like the taste, just someone who recognizes that the case a "shining beacon of the spurious nature of litigation "
McDonald's executives testified they KNEW their coffee was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns (burn occur over 130 degree, McDonalds was brewing their coffee as high as 205).
Your average home coffee machine keeps coffee in the 140 range. Starbucks brews in the 190 range and if you check with any coffee lovers group you will find that they recommend brewing in the 200-220 range for best tasting coffee.
Also the mcdonalds which was doing it at 205 was not the one where the lady spilled coffee on herself and then sat in it for over 90 seconds. McDonald's ignored advice to post warnings about the possibility of burns as well has ignore the warnings given to fast food industry as a whole that they were brewing their coffee too hot. If you keep it close to your skin long enough almost anything above your body temperature is going to cause burns. That advice that to post signs was given by lawyers because there are a large amount of trail lawyers that find people to sue restaurants for serving hot coffee hot. Hardly a need to curb Mcdonalds for thier excessive want of serving a product that people want. The evidence showed McDonald's coffee was consistently 20 degrees hotter than the industry average.
That "industry average" was found by checking 18 other stores in the local area for the temperature they served it at, and as shown above it that is just a bad coffee and below the average that you find in your house or the recommendations of coffee maker manufacturers, major coffee sellers, and people who like the stuff enough to make FAQ on the subject.
While the judge and jury found mcdonalds guilty it was still an example of how bad trail lawyers are for America. That mcdonalds still gets close to a 1000 of theses law suits a year, and how many must starbucks or your local mom and pop coffee hut get must be even more, points even more to a system that needs to be reformed.
For the past 8 years I have been a contractor working for a large company who farms me out, focusing on database admin and developement(primarily web) and switch jobs a few times. Based on job descriptions you saw the following requests: pre-98 no cert needed. 99-2001 large amount of certs being asked for primarily mcse few in database and development. 2003 wide spread for databasse some developement; primary system admin needing it. 2006 far fewer requests for certification or very generic.
That said I have an MCP, an old Oracle dba cert, a Rational RUP cert, a security cert and 2 in computer languages I never want to see again. Most paid for by employeer. I do plan to get a current Oracle admin and the new basic microsoft one in the next few months.
The reason is very simple I am hired by people who are not techies. I spell out most of the certification and advoid the initials so they see microsoft certified professional, Oracle DBA Certified Associate, etc and that stops alot of them right there and for alot of non-techies makes it alot easier for them to approve me. They don't understand all the various ones, most of them have just heard of mcse and if they ask I have to explain how that is for system administration and does not deal with databases.
As for which certs are actually worth it I would say the high end Cisco and high end Oracle ones. Thoses actually require you to know your stuff and provide it. For instance the Oracle one is a 2 day test where you have to sit a computer with Oracle database and documentation installed. They then go and break something(s), based on actual operational problems, and you are required to fix it and bring your database upto a fully operational and open database. The cisco one is similar. The other certs are just resume stuffers.
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Norway was one of the wierd ones. While in western Europe it did not follow the UN ICAO passport rules. It did have to switch over to machine readable format in order to sign off on the Schengen Agreement.
Kind of true.t es.htm
The hijackers, all but one, used authentice state issued identification in order to hide thier nationalities. However they did use fake passports to obtain that autentic ID.
The one who did not used this actual passport, again authentic.
It should be noted that a passport was not needed for the flights they were on(all internal to the US) but they needed some form of ID to prove who they were when at check in.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_No
I don't want to sound trollish, but the major force behind biometric passports worldwide is Homeland Security in USA: "You want visa free entrance to US? Make biometric passports!".
Not really the plans for the electronic passport started in the 1990 by the UN's ICAO, the first set of written/approved plans came in early 2002, it was agreed to by the member of ICAO in 2004. In the agreement they said they would implement and require its use. The US got the members to move up the time table, and implement it, not really being strong armed about it.
Now before the RFI system you did have the machine readable bar code. This was implmented in the early 80s, then around 1986 28 countries standarded on the ICAO format and opened up thier borders to fellow members with no visa. In 2004 the US did start requiring(along with a few other countries) that they would only accept the passport of fellow members of the visa waiver program that had the bar code in them, so thoses people with passports around 25 years old would need to get new passports.
The US is not completly free of the bulllying, in thier passports they are making the encryption harder then the one used by the ICAO and used in these UK passports and because of that some contries are having to purchase different equipment then originally planned.
That is way misleading, would say lie but from your sources you probably don't know the truth.
The truth is we don't know how much oil is avialable up in the alaskan reserve, that is why various people have been pushing for laws that would allow for testing of the amounts of oil. That 2-3 years based on smaller sites and based on exploration science that is some of the smaller sites, the same way that you get the up numbers of 20-100 years worth in that they take the amount actually tested apply the exploration science results and go from there. Until actually full testing takes places it is worthless make statements such as only 2-3 years of oil are up there.
Why go the long messy way, there is a simple way to implement this that would work.
First part is to ensure that all countries keep up military spending and personnel at the same level; this is to ensure that some aggressive force can be handled. Now the second and most important part is to put all theses forces under my direct and ultimate control.
No more discussions, wasting time on what should be done, and no worries about little countries being taken over(why would I need too).
Like the main competitors of Diebold having members of the Democrate Party as vice presidents and being major supports of the Democrate party in money and time?
How about the first admendment freedom of association?
If the guy did anything to program the machines to change the votes lets have the evidence, otherwise it is just political sour grapes.
And if there was any truth to the election tampering conspiracies do you think the Democrates would of kept quiet up to now. Not talking about the various main stream democrates blog that talk about electronic tampering and how Bush planted explosives to blow up the towers in NYC, but the ones in congress.
What you will see, and some of the Democrates have said is they will be bring out thier enemies list and going after thoses just for show.
They are called solar stills.
While easy in design they are rather expensive, require huge areas of land to produce sizable quantities of water and weather dependant. Also you cannot have moving water since it needs time to heat up so that steam is produced
Huh???
The federal government funds stems cell research, last year in the $600 Million range.
Actually bush was the first president to approve federal funding for human stem cell research. He did veto one but it was for a change of a Clinton law,The Dickey Amendment, that would of allowed the destruction of huamn embryoinic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells does not equal stem cells in discussion they are different both politics and in science.
I'm upset because of the late release because I want a toy to play with at work.
Like most companies don't push out all the new microsoft stuff but this will cause us to start upgrading abunch of new server and software (aka toys) just because microsoft is now starting to remove support for older stuff.
Wow already with the name calling. While it is not complicated there was/is alot of rumors and guesses that were floating around and are still accepted as facts.
Under Posse Comitatus Act the president can't use the national guard for law enforcement absent congressional directive or if requested by a governor he president can invoke the Insurrection Act and Katrina was no rebellion or insurrection. Law enforcement was what the Blanco and Nagin wanted from the National Guard. So unless there was some unknown congressional directive or Blanco was calling the the hurricane a insurrectionist the President had no way of limiting or calling out the National Guard. All the stuff about the National Guard requiring federal approval is wrong.
Please remember that EMAC is not a federal agency.
Since no help could come from the Federal government the Governor needed to use outside agreements mainly the EMAC. So she went out and requested help. So now you need to transport all theses people and supplies into the area and that is where the Pentagon comes in, the Pentagon is allowed to fill out the paperwork and transport the national guard. The majority of the false stories of the delays say that it was here that the pentagon, on bush's orders, caused the delayed of sending in the troops. However the Pentagon cannot transport people until they have orders on where they are needed, caring about thier welfare,etc which was suppose to be supplied by the EMAC coming from the governor, it took time to get that paperwork and some coordination from EMAC. Troops using thier own transportation, such a New Mexico, made it with no transportion delays be some once in the areas got delayed because know one knew where to send them.
Or in the words of General Blum,Chief, National Guard Bureau,
GEN. BLUM: It was not foreseen. When they put the original EMAC together it was really for disaster response. Law enforcement was not envisioned. So it has to be handled as a separate process. The governors may get together and modify their EMAC in the future so that it is all-inclusive, but this fills that gap and it makes the activity of the National Guard in this regard totally legally sufficient and supportable.
Q: Does that explain why it took several days to get to this point?
GEN. BLUM: No, there was no delay. The fortunate thing is with modern technology they faxed the agreement back and forth, the two governors signed it. It was a matter of moments. That was not the delay.
The delay was in, if you want to call it a delay. I really don't call it a delay, I'll be honest about that. When we first went in there law enforcement was not the highest priority, saving lives was. You have to remember how this thing started. Before the hurricane hit there were 5,000 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and 5,000 National Guardsmen -- excuse me. Let me correct the record. There were 2,500 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and almost 4,000 National Guardsmen in Louisiana that were sheltered and taken out of the affected area so as soon as the storm passed they could immediately go into the area and start their search and lifesaving work, and stand up their command and control apparatus, and start standing up the vital functions that would be required such as providing food, water, shelter and security for the people of the town. So it was phased in. There was no delay.
Why do you think it is the federal government responsibility to handle the health care of NYC employees especially since NYC is already doing it?
How is evidence about the .xxx domain bad for the US governance? .xxx version of thier name (www.disney.xxx going to a porn site????). .xxx as wanted would not of fixed. .xxx had been handled by something like the UN we would of had 10 months of meetings and decided to implement it just to make sure someone is not upset.
It was a stupid idea since they were not requiring XXX sites to use it. All it would of done was to require every company to purchase the
If you want to find porn it is not a problem the problem is that the porn site using similar names and tring to trick people to come to thier site something a
If anything this proves it is better to have the US controlling the names, if the
So the governor of New Mexico and West Virginia, both Democrates, are all under the control of Bush and Rove and lieing to protect him.
Wait that would also include the governor of Louisiana since if goto the New Mexico state site you find a letter from her thanking them for thier quick response and help.
There is no truth to what you heard.
According the governor of New Mexico they had people leaving for Lousiana the night that Gov. Blanco asked for them.. There were a few delays but they were caused by EMAC.
There were a few delays in getting help from other states which according to the Gov of West Virginia were also caused by EMAC/NEMA and paperwork from the the states needing help. EMAC is a state run pact for requesting and supplying help, NEMA is organization of state emergency organizers who run and approve EMAC requests. The only time the federal government comes in is if FEMA makes an active request and the paperwork has been signed by the local governor that make FEMA the centralized controlling organization for managing support.
You also had problem with medical support caused by the Mississippi and lousiana governors not approving help for outside source, so some early medical helper had to work under the good samaritan laws. As a medical worker that just starts working in a different state during an emergency you can be sued and are libel. However if the governor signes the EMAC paperwork the state assumes all liability, this is what took some time. Because of the legal liability the states are assuming they do now have some additional training you have to take if you want to help with theses emergencies; this has caused some non-trained people to be turned away.
Please educate yourself on the very basics on people who are arrested for "providing material support to a terrorist organization".
First it does not take any declaration by the president, it is a ffederal crime signed into law in 1996, so anyone who has the authority to make federal arrests can do it.
You are not sent to Gitmo, side topic but also learn who is being help there, you are will be sent though the standard criminal court process, complete with a chance of bail. There are a few people who where given bail, fled the country and have been located in hezbollah and other terrorist controlled areas.
You can contribute to the defense fund with no fear, provided that the money is not actually being funneled away from the defense and you know about it, aleast in the US that is case other countries may vary. The guy is not doing anything remotly close to what would get him charged by this 1996 law, he is being charged under a different law.
The smell of most fruits is caused by rot, same as fish and meat; just that fruits smell pleasing to the nose. Since most supermarkets need to transport from a distance and sell for more then 2 days they are picked unripe.
For some fruits you can speed up the rotting and create a really nice smelling and better tasting(usually caused by have the sugars concentrated or other substances being turned into sugars) product.
The other option would be to skip the large supermarkets and get fruits from your local farmers market. You will get fresher products but the selection will be alot less.
If you find the "The revolution will not be televised" you should also go watch this one done by a couple of Venezuelan engineers which shows the background of what was happening and what was actually going on. English subtitles.
Google has long history of removing sites it considers different from what the majority of its workers think. Since it is a non-US government entitiy it sure has the right to do that; and yes censorship is not the correct word for this subject.
Since google does it already, when its works want to promote a certain way of thinking, what is really wrong with its customers trying to force them, ie protest, that they think the company should do something they want, and if they can get enough support probably force the company to do so?
There are a couple of different ones.
the most common older one is the one you talk about where they set off a small explosion and then have sensors that detect how long it takes from the vibration to travel. since it takes different times depending on the material you can get an idea if something is there and the general shape.
The fairly newer kind is an actual ground radar system which you have to drag around, it sends signals into the ground they bounce back and you get an idea what is down there.
The plane based one is same basic idea but is no good for small sites and I don't think it goes down that deep. So far it has detected old roads, ground has been compacted so much you get a different signal, and from that they have found the remains of old cities.
The way most grave robbers work is the same way most archeologist do and that is to make a guess of where the logical location of where something would be and go from there. the robbers have the benifit in that they don't have to get official approval. You do get the very rare event when someone stubbles on to a new place but that is not very likly to happen.
I guess it depends on what your definition of "nefarious" is. If nefarious does not means that certian APIs exsist for use by other microsoft products(non-OS), or very close outside companies, or allow thier products to operate faster then using the documented APIs then you are right. Most devs would not call it nefarious if it was something microsoft was not using internally, the documentation was wrong comparied to implementation or was clearing marked as for testing and somehow made it through to the final version(but was not actually used anywhere).
Look at cases of the AARD code(more of an interface), the loadhi API, the XMS 3.0 spec, EMM Import spec. Also various lead devs at microsoft have admitted that they had undocumented API done in the OS and used in office for communication. Also look at various lawsuits as New York vs Microsoft or Caledra vs microsoft also grab copies of the older books of undocumented APIs
Microsoft has gotten alot better in this in the last few releases and has gotten to the point where it is not really an issue any more
The funny thing is that as an American living in Europe all that stuff you describe has been going on in Europe for ages. For safty purposes the company even has procedures in place so we could jump the border get a plane and get back to the US and they would then start work on tring to get our stuff back to us. This happened after one person who was in lawsuit with the government was raided during the middle of the night with moving trucks and he was arrested; and that was for a tax problem.
Lets not even get into all the paperwork that has to be filled out and carried with me or the police checks I get when I check in to hotels.
It is all a matter of how close you are to it and how it effects you. Over here in Europe we hear all this stuff really out of proportion and think it is a major hassel but in reality you live under similar rules already in place.
As an other example a while ago there was this big set of messages of how the US was turning into a fascist state, bush=hitler, etc because it was harder for forgieners to get a bank account in the US. The change was that instead of just calling up a bank and opening an account you now had to fax/email them a copy of the picture page in your passport and you had to be from one of the countries the US has banking relationships with. Now compare this to the problems for opening an account in Europe, here I need both a residence permit, just a matter of time waiting for the signatures and then standing in multiple lines for the photos, etc and then I need to show my work permits. As a Europian all that work and residence permits are probably considered nothing but from what is heard over here if the US were to come even close to these requirements it would be seen as if the US had just branded all people entering its borders.
Do aggree with the planes over here, I no longer even consider taking a plane unless the train trip would be 10-12+ hours all the new requirements they have put up make it a major hassle.
For the record I am not a coffee drinker, don't like the taste, just someone who recognizes that the case a "shining beacon of the spurious nature of litigation "
McDonald's executives testified they KNEW their coffee was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns (burn occur over 130 degree, McDonalds was brewing their coffee as high as 205).
Your average home coffee machine keeps coffee in the 140 range. Starbucks brews in the 190 range and if you check with any coffee lovers group you will find that they recommend brewing in the 200-220 range for best tasting coffee.
Also the mcdonalds which was doing it at 205 was not the one where the lady spilled coffee on herself and then sat in it for over 90 seconds.
McDonald's ignored advice to post warnings about the possibility of burns as well has ignore the warnings given to fast food industry as a whole that they were brewing their coffee too hot.
If you keep it close to your skin long enough almost anything above your body temperature is going to cause burns. That advice that to post signs was given by lawyers because there are a large amount of trail lawyers that find people to sue restaurants for serving hot coffee hot. Hardly a need to curb Mcdonalds for thier excessive want of serving a product that people want.
The evidence showed McDonald's coffee was consistently 20 degrees hotter than the industry average.
That "industry average" was found by checking 18 other stores in the local area for the temperature they served it at, and as shown above it that is just a bad coffee and below the average that you find in your house or the recommendations of coffee maker manufacturers, major coffee sellers, and people who like the stuff enough to make FAQ on the subject.
While the judge and jury found mcdonalds guilty it was still an example of how bad trail lawyers are for America. That mcdonalds still gets close to a 1000 of theses law suits a year, and how many must starbucks or your local mom and pop coffee hut get must be even more, points even more to a system that needs to be reformed.
For the past 8 years I have been a contractor working for a large company who farms me out, focusing on database admin and developement(primarily web) and switch jobs a few times. Based on job descriptions you saw the following requests: pre-98 no cert needed. 99-2001 large amount of certs being asked for primarily mcse few in database and development. 2003 wide spread for databasse some developement; primary system admin needing it. 2006 far fewer requests for certification or very generic.
That said I have an MCP, an old Oracle dba cert, a Rational RUP cert, a security cert and 2 in computer languages I never want to see again. Most paid for by employeer. I do plan to get a current Oracle admin and the new basic microsoft one in the next few months.
The reason is very simple I am hired by people who are not techies. I spell out most of the certification and advoid the initials so they see microsoft certified professional, Oracle DBA Certified Associate, etc and that stops alot of them right there and for alot of non-techies makes it alot easier for them to approve me. They don't understand all the various ones, most of them have just heard of mcse and if they ask I have to explain how that is for system administration and does not deal with databases.
As for which certs are actually worth it I would say the high end Cisco and high end Oracle ones. Thoses actually require you to know your stuff and provide it. For instance the Oracle one is a 2 day test where you have to sit a computer with Oracle database and documentation installed. They then go and break something(s), based on actual operational problems, and you are required to fix it and bring your database upto a fully operational and open database. The cisco one is similar. The other certs are just resume stuffers.