When I was in college I switched my keyboard to Dvorak and trained myself to use it. I rapidly discovered two issues that led to my giving up on it:
1. While typing letters on a Dvorak keyboard is arguably more efficient, all of the Windows shortcut keys have been developed for a qwerty keyboard layout. For instance on qwerty, ctrl-c ctrl-v are done with your left hand. On Dvorak you have to take your hand off the mouse to hit ctrl-v. I'm sure I could have remapped all of my shortcuts as well, but it wasn't worth it to me.
2. Every time I went to a class or a computer lab I'd have to fight against my new training to use the qwerty layout again. I was constantly messing up one way or the other whenever I switched, and it just got too painful.
If it were *just* policy differences we can talk, but it's not. It's the people in the highest positions of power in our country intentionally being as racist and misogynistic as possible.
How can he be sure the moon is actually there? I mean, all Trump has is the word of scientists! There are Americans here who believe the Earth is flat and what we experience as gravity is caused by the Earth constantly accelerating through space! Don't we need to hear all sides of this debate?
We can't even trust those scientists to figure out if the Earth is warming up or not! How can we trust them to stick God-loving Americans on the front of a rocket, shoot them into space, and land them on the @#$% moon?
Epson makes an EcoTank printer which supposedly just has a "tank" of ink that you refill *gasp* from a bottle. They charge you more for the printer because they're not recouping costs by jacking you on ink, but once you buy it you can put in whatever ink you want.
And in six months buying a $25,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $12/hr... And in a year buying a $15,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $9/hr...
They're going to replace employees with robots anyhow, I don't buy that increasing the minimum wage to whatever has anything to do with it.
I actually think this could be pretty cool if Comcast would offer customers *something* in exchange for them hosting a public hotspot out of their house.
How about a free modem, instead of charging them $3/mo to rent one?
I own my modem outright, so have negative incentive to upgrade. But if they were to offer me a free basic IP phone line, or a free upgrade to the next speed tier, or free access to this service I'm hosting, or *anything*, I'd certainly consider it.
But otherwise, yeah, it seems like they're forcing everyone to pay for their network electricity as a requirement of getting their own internet, with no added benefit in return.
"Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide."
The corollary to the "you shouldn't worry if you don't have anything to hide" argument apparently is "you'd better not ever have anything to hide or the government will use it against you".
God no! Never lose the helmet. Never, ever. When on a bike, at any point, no matter how safe you are, you're about a half-second from smashing your forehead into the pavement. Never forget that.
I love bike commuting, and would love to do it if I didn't have a 30-mile commute over the hills. As a paranoid driver though, I've noticed I have some technical problems with bike lanes.
In Portland, many streets have bike lanes along the right side of the road, between traffic and the sidewalk. All in all, I think this is preferable to forcing cyclists to ride in traffic. However, it puts me in the position of, if I want to make a right turn, effectively having to turn right across a lane of a traffic, which would be otherwise illegal if that were a lane of cars and not a lane of bikes.
If I'm in a car stopped at an intersection next to a bike lane, and want to turn right, I have to do the following: Look left for oncoming traffic Look ahead for oncoming traffic turning left (my right) Look at the far-right corner for pedestrians Look at the near-right corner for pedestrians Look to the right of me to see if there are any cyclists also waiting Look in my right-mirror to see if there are any cyclists approaching from behind Look over my shoulder to double-check my blind spot
By the time I've done that, enough time has passed that I want to look left again.
There are also places where, in order to turn right, you have to move to a new lane on the other side of the bike lane (which is now marked with dotted lines). This makes me paranoid to no end. It puts me in the position of effectively merging to change across an entire lane of traffic, which again would be otherwise illegal. Bicyclists generally go slower than cars and don't maintain the same spacings, so it is harder to judge at a glance how many cyclists there are and how fast they're going (one may have been passing another) to make sure they're all out of your blind spot before you quickly barrel across their lane.
I don't know if there are better solutions aside from creating entire bike-only roads and bridges, but I think there are technical problems with bike lanes that are likely to result in accidents that are not entirely the fault of either party. I do my best as a driver to be paranoid, and still constantly worry I'm going to not manage to spot a cyclist just that one time.
If you're not familiar with The Long Now Foundation you should check them out. They have a project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years (about as long again as there's been civilization on earth), and are making progress constructing it in a cave in a mountain in Nevada.
Of course, the next questions are things like "well, who is going to be around to read it?" and "how will they read it?", and "how do we maintain a level of civilization where people can create replacement parts for it?"
Neal Stephenson consulted with them for his book Anathem, which I highly recommend, which is based around these sorts of questions.
Mother Jones recently published an article America's Real Criminal Element: Lead, detailing the correlation between decrease in environmental lead levels (mostly due to unleaded gasoline laws) and the decrease in crime rates (with a 20-year delay). The numbers are impressive, and they've correlated across areas of the country that enacted lead control laws at different times. The research is thorough and they make bold claims: "Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century." I highly recommend giving it a thorough read.
No, this is awesome! I want the feature available so we can all charge people money to send us messages. Then everyone can just put on their business card and e-mail footer how much it costs to talk to them, and then nobody has to ever talk to anyone who isn't willing to pay (or can't afford) to talk to them.
You know, this started out as snark, but then I realized that that's actually how the real world works ($1000/plate political dinners, lobbyists, conventions), and just got depressed.
NSA can intercept millions of domestic communications and store them in a data center like Bluffdale and still be able to say it has not “intercepted” any domestic communications. This is because of its definition of the word. “Intercept,” in NSA’s lexicon, only takes place when the communications are “processed” “into an intelligible form intended for human inspection,” not as they pass through NSA listening posts and transferred to data warehouses.
So, the short, accurate answer to Wyden's question would be "We're spying on everyone. Literally. It would take too much work to even calculate the number of people we're spying on. Go away."
Right. Because historically, the kids buying video games are the ones out there beating up other kids and stealing their lunch money. Why don't we leverage a 1% tax on footballs and jerseys as well, or maybe weight-lifting equipment?
What a great message. "If you buy this video game, someone may come along and kick your ass, so we're going to charge you extra so the government can try to prevent that."
Right. Giving Verizon incentive to slow down your traffic in the middle of your Skype call so you'll pay them more money? Doesn't sound like a good idea. I'm pretty sure that would be a deal-breaker for me.
Every time I see your name mentioned in an article written by Kevin Poulsen, I wonder how many people reading it know the connection. Do you have any interesting stories of crossing paths with someone your knew from your "ghost in the wire" days, or unexpected relationships you've developed or continued with people who either impacted your life, or were impacted by your actions back then?
@KennethColePR: "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!" #KennethColeTweets @KennethColePR: Jeffrey Dahmer would have eaten up our spring collection! #KennethColeTweets And many more...
I had the OSX version of surveillancesaver installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.
Then I found out that the guys who wrote the original went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to the screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.
A while back I ran across the SurveillanceSaver project - a simple screen saver which contained a small list of webcams it would cycle through. I had the OSX version installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.
Then I found out that the guys who wrote it went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to their screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.
While I understand your point, there are two current news items that I could see as possibly generating some desire to search Americans before letting them on a plane.
That being said, I think the only security changes that have done any real good since 9/11 are: 1. Strengthening cockpit doors. 2. Scanning checked baggage. 3. The fact that passengers on a plane don't take for granted anymore that people just want to hijack a plane and land it somewhere safely, and will likely tear anyone limb from limb who tries to take one over, or die trying.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in college I switched my keyboard to Dvorak and trained myself to use it. I rapidly discovered two issues that led to my giving up on it:
1. While typing letters on a Dvorak keyboard is arguably more efficient, all of the Windows shortcut keys have been developed for a qwerty keyboard layout. For instance on qwerty, ctrl-c ctrl-v are done with your left hand. On Dvorak you have to take your hand off the mouse to hit ctrl-v. I'm sure I could have remapped all of my shortcuts as well, but it wasn't worth it to me.
2. Every time I went to a class or a computer lab I'd have to fight against my new training to use the qwerty layout again. I was constantly messing up one way or the other whenever I switched, and it just got too painful.
You have to be careful.
The president of the United States intentionally hired a guy into the White House as his Chief Strategist who said this:
"Let them call you racists, let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor."
And bookended his political career running a "news" website that hosts articles like these:
The Solution To Online 'Harassment' Is Simple: Women Should Log Off - Breitbart
How To Make Women Happy: Uninvent The Washing Machine And The Pill - Breitbart
Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy - Breitbart
If it were *just* policy differences we can talk, but it's not. It's the people in the highest positions of power in our country intentionally being as racist and misogynistic as possible.
How can he be sure the moon is actually there? I mean, all Trump has is the word of scientists! There are Americans here who believe the Earth is flat and what we experience as gravity is caused by the Earth constantly accelerating through space! Don't we need to hear all sides of this debate?
We can't even trust those scientists to figure out if the Earth is warming up or not! How can we trust them to stick God-loving Americans on the front of a rocket, shoot them into space, and land them on the @#$% moon?
Epson makes an EcoTank printer which supposedly just has a "tank" of ink that you refill *gasp* from a bottle. They charge you more for the printer because they're not recouping costs by jacking you on ink, but once you buy it you can put in whatever ink you want.
And in six months buying a $25,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $12/hr...
And in a year buying a $15,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $9/hr...
They're going to replace employees with robots anyhow, I don't buy that increasing the minimum wage to whatever has anything to do with it.
I actually think this could be pretty cool if Comcast would offer customers *something* in exchange for them hosting a public hotspot out of their house.
How about a free modem, instead of charging them $3/mo to rent one?
I own my modem outright, so have negative incentive to upgrade. But if they were to offer me a free basic IP phone line, or a free upgrade to the next speed tier, or free access to this service I'm hosting, or *anything*, I'd certainly consider it.
But otherwise, yeah, it seems like they're forcing everyone to pay for their network electricity as a requirement of getting their own internet, with no added benefit in return.
"Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide."
From the NY Times Article
The corollary to the "you shouldn't worry if you don't have anything to hide" argument apparently is "you'd better not ever have anything to hide or the government will use it against you".
God no! Never lose the helmet. Never, ever. When on a bike, at any point, no matter how safe you are, you're about a half-second from smashing your forehead into the pavement. Never forget that.
I love bike commuting, and would love to do it if I didn't have a 30-mile commute over the hills. As a paranoid driver though, I've noticed I have some technical problems with bike lanes.
In Portland, many streets have bike lanes along the right side of the road, between traffic and the sidewalk. All in all, I think this is preferable to forcing cyclists to ride in traffic. However, it puts me in the position of, if I want to make a right turn, effectively having to turn right across a lane of a traffic, which would be otherwise illegal if that were a lane of cars and not a lane of bikes.
If I'm in a car stopped at an intersection next to a bike lane, and want to turn right, I have to do the following:
Look left for oncoming traffic
Look ahead for oncoming traffic turning left (my right)
Look at the far-right corner for pedestrians
Look at the near-right corner for pedestrians
Look to the right of me to see if there are any cyclists also waiting
Look in my right-mirror to see if there are any cyclists approaching from behind
Look over my shoulder to double-check my blind spot
By the time I've done that, enough time has passed that I want to look left again.
There are also places where, in order to turn right, you have to move to a new lane on the other side of the bike lane (which is now marked with dotted lines). This makes me paranoid to no end. It puts me in the position of effectively merging to change across an entire lane of traffic, which again would be otherwise illegal. Bicyclists generally go slower than cars and don't maintain the same spacings, so it is harder to judge at a glance how many cyclists there are and how fast they're going (one may have been passing another) to make sure they're all out of your blind spot before you quickly barrel across their lane.
I don't know if there are better solutions aside from creating entire bike-only roads and bridges, but I think there are technical problems with bike lanes that are likely to result in accidents that are not entirely the fault of either party. I do my best as a driver to be paranoid, and still constantly worry I'm going to not manage to spot a cyclist just that one time.
If you're not familiar with The Long Now Foundation you should check them out. They have a project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years (about as long again as there's been civilization on earth), and are making progress constructing it in a cave in a mountain in Nevada.
Of course, the next questions are things like "well, who is going to be around to read it?" and "how will they read it?", and "how do we maintain a level of civilization where people can create replacement parts for it?"
Neal Stephenson consulted with them for his book Anathem, which I highly recommend, which is based around these sorts of questions.
Mother Jones recently published an article America's Real Criminal Element: Lead, detailing the correlation between decrease in environmental lead levels (mostly due to unleaded gasoline laws) and the decrease in crime rates (with a 20-year delay). The numbers are impressive, and they've correlated across areas of the country that enacted lead control laws at different times. The research is thorough and they make bold claims: "Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century." I highly recommend giving it a thorough read.
Right, there's no immediate threat to the environment. That's why they keep trapping radioactive wildlife.
Or like this: http://goo.gl/t3rGM
No, this is awesome! I want the feature available so we can all charge people money to send us messages. Then everyone can just put on their business card and e-mail footer how much it costs to talk to them, and then nobody has to ever talk to anyone who isn't willing to pay (or can't afford) to talk to them.
You know, this started out as snark, but then I realized that that's actually how the real world works ($1000/plate political dinners, lobbyists, conventions), and just got depressed.
It'll be interesting to watch the dip in Google's search traffic as half the web searches instantly move over to this site.
Similarly, is there any statistically significant weight difference between people who drink beer from cans vs. glass bottles?
That sounds frighteningly accurate.
From a different Wired article: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/nsa-whistleblower/
NSA can intercept millions of domestic communications and store them in a data center like Bluffdale and still be able to say it has not “intercepted” any domestic communications. This is because of its definition of the word. “Intercept,” in NSA’s lexicon, only takes place when the communications are “processed” “into an intelligible form intended for human inspection,” not as they pass through NSA listening posts and transferred to data warehouses.
So, the short, accurate answer to Wyden's question would be "We're spying on everyone. Literally. It would take too much work to even calculate the number of people we're spying on. Go away."
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/best-of-2600-emmanuel-goldstein/1102658944?ean=9780470294192
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2600-magazine-2600-magazine/1104039139?ean=2940014186568
Guess I can't tell that joke about a solar-powered flashlight anymore.
Right. Because historically, the kids buying video games are the ones out there beating up other kids and stealing their lunch money. Why don't we leverage a 1% tax on footballs and jerseys as well, or maybe weight-lifting equipment?
What a great message. "If you buy this video game, someone may come along and kick your ass, so we're going to charge you extra so the government can try to prevent that."
Right. Giving Verizon incentive to slow down your traffic in the middle of your Skype call so you'll pay them more money? Doesn't sound like a good idea. I'm pretty sure that would be a deal-breaker for me.
Kevin,
Every time I see your name mentioned in an article written by Kevin Poulsen, I wonder how many people reading it know the connection. Do you have any interesting stories of crossing paths with someone your knew from your "ghost in the wire" days, or unexpected relationships you've developed or continued with people who either impacted your life, or were impacted by your actions back then?
The more amusing footnotes to this story are the #kennethcoletweets tweets that everyone is making up now:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23kennethcoletweets
@KennethColePR: "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!" #KennethColeTweets
@KennethColePR: Jeffrey Dahmer would have eaten up our spring collection! #KennethColeTweets
And many more...
I had the OSX version of surveillancesaver installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.
Then I found out that the guys who wrote the original went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to the screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.
I recently created a Google Code space for it, it's available here: http://code.google.com/p/surveillancesaverosx [google.com]
It still has some bugs, if there are any "expert" Quartz developers out there, I'd love to get some pointers.
A while back I ran across the SurveillanceSaver project - a simple screen saver which contained a small list of webcams it would cycle through. I had the OSX version installed on my mac, but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard it quit working. Found out it was written in Quartz, so I re-compiled it with the new version, and got it working again.
Then I found out that the guys who wrote it went on to found the Public Viewpoint Project, which searches for publicly available webcams and creates an RSS feed. I can't find their web site anymore, but the RSS feed is still up. I added to their screen saver the ability to connect to their RSS feed, d/l camera URLs and test them out before showing them.
I recently created a Google Code space for it, it's available here: http://code.google.com/p/surveillancesaverosx
It still has some bugs, if there are any "expert" Quartz developers out there, I'd love to get some pointers.
While I understand your point, there are two current news items that I could see as possibly generating some desire to search Americans before letting them on a plane.
First, the attempted bombing of the Christmas tree lighting here in Portland, OR. (Although you could argue he wasn't born in America)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heQPp2NpOwvN6VdSOuy2LexQ4vXg?docId=fe013ab41f744f9899844b7e3164e48b
Second, the discovery of a house in California so laden with explosives that they have to try and burn it in place:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iz-NoJ-t4_P-of2SabmaoRq0tD-w?docId=fd581bf34cf841e5a767fddc4a11993e
That being said, I think the only security changes that have done any real good since 9/11 are:
1. Strengthening cockpit doors.
2. Scanning checked baggage.
3. The fact that passengers on a plane don't take for granted anymore that people just want to hijack a plane and land it somewhere safely, and will likely tear anyone limb from limb who tries to take one over, or die trying.