I wonder how many people would be willing to be a prostitute in space? Aside from living in zero-g, putting "Space prostitute" on your tax forms would be fun.
I can see it now... "So, Miss Buxom, it says here on your application to live on our new space station that you are a prostitute... tell us, exactly how do you see that benefitting the station?"
Do we really need this crap other than to keep people in a state of panic?
Well, it does keep LEtterman and Leno in material...
Seriously, I think it's safe to say there's only one terror level, and it hasn't changed, ever. Before 9/11, the Twin Towers were bombed in '93, Tim McVeigh took out the Murrah Federal Building in OK City in '95, and there was of course the Unabomber. Just look at events like the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the Iranian Hostage crisis, the Munich Olympics massacre, Pearl Harbor -- the list goes on and on.
The fact is that violence against, toward, and within this country is nothing new. We don't need some color-coded system invented by a Sesame Street writer cast-off to tell us how safe we feel; on the other hand, we as a nation do need to start taking things more seriously as far as our personal safety is concerned. I'd rather call in a suspicious package to some hotline and get some idiot's briefcase blown into tiny bits that miss a bomb or anything else. We have to be more vigilant and we have to find a way to do it that doesn't make us look ridiculous but that everyone can take seriously.
Look out at the stars. You're seeing them as they appeared several million or billion years ago. The light that you now see from the sun is 8 minutes old, for comparison. All the data we collect from outer space is historical information--how the universe was in the past.
However, if physical constants such a the speed of light are variable, based on the expansion of the universe and the distance from the initial point of expansion, then the light from those quasars has perhaps sped up or slowed down since being released. While we may be looking into the past, a variable speed of light would mean we don't know how far into the past. This brings up the question of relativity, since not only would an observer see something different at one point A, than another would see at point B, but now neither observer could be sure if what the other is seeing is invariant compared to what they have seen. Both might use the same formula to calculate mass increase as a function of velocity, but inherent to that equation is "c" and if both observers have different local values for "c", then their answers will not be the same and they will not be seeing exactly the same thing. It makes for interesting nightmares.
And at a state agency? Either it's something like what you're speculating and the interviewer was lying or joking or this whole sketchy story is just bogus. I'm guessing the latter.
It could be, if it were a state version of the Department of Homeland Security.
Did they ask: "I see here you like heavy metal music, are you in league with the devil?". I mean, jeeze, its mostly private time stuff.
Would-be Cardinal: Thank you your eminence, for considering me.
Pope Benedict: Not at all, my son. We just have a couple of questions.
Would-be Cardinal: I am at your disposal.
Pope Benedict (looking at some papers): Now, I see here by your Facebook profile that you like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. Son, are you in league with Satan?
Would-be Cardinal: But that information is supposed to be private!
Pope Benedict: Nothing is private to the Lord , my son.
It's one thing to pay for the infrastructure out of tax dollars. It's quite another to then have no choice of who uses that publically-financed infrastructure.
Which is why my contention has been all along to nationalize the communications infrastructure of the country, mark it a national resource, then force the telecoms (or anyone else) to play by one set of rules. Mind you, I know this means letting the Federal Government run the nation's communication systems, but despite partisan politics and big money, the government does manage to keep the country together and running. It just doesn't run as smoothly sometimes as it does at others. Frankly, given my tax dollars helped pay for the infrastructure, the telcos should be paying me back.
Well, the government can't allow just anyone to use the Internet's "tubes" now can they? They might put yucky things like real news and detailed information about the behind-the-scenes fleecing of American citizens by Congress in the "tubes" and then where would we be?
Discussing politics is fine, but whats the point in discussing national politics? All of these issues are local, REALLY local.
Politics is truly local in scope, but the Internet is global in scope. Of course, you know what they say about global variables... [programming reference thrown in for obfuscatory purposes only]
I don't think the solution to Internet regulation is inherently a local issue, exept maybe where access is concerned. It will take local groups uniting to apply sufficient pressure to Congress to cause any meaningful regulation, and even then deep pockets may keep the issue from being resolved equitably.
Are all the computer companies having trouble keeping up with the demand for new mice? Seems like a damned inefficient way to manufacture 'em if you ask me.
Given the current state of the law, it is really dangerous to contact a site owner and tell him that his site is insecure. It is quite likely that you will be prosecuted for "unauthorised access" to the site.
Much better to just add the site to your personal list of things to avoid, and then forget about it.
Which doesn't help the rest of us. And why should a site owner get all bent out of shape if you tell them something they didn't happen to know? They must not be in direct control of the site or are pretty lazy if they are allowing this malware to pile up. And they won't be popular for very long if people catch on that the site is infecting them.
Great. More useless legislation from our elected officials. Must be election year.
To paraphrase the song, "it's always an election year somewhere..." And even if it isn't, there will be one coming up. This is just an attempt by some politicians to look like they are doing something useful that ultimately harms only a small portion of the US population, so they don't have to risk their voter base.
How stupid does a company have to be to devise a marketing practice that almost every customer who tries, hates and then continue to use it for what, decades?
Stupid? Are you kidding, it was brilliant! They want to hold onto their money as long as possible, but at the same time want to offer the customer a price they can't refuse. So they offer a rebate; they get to keep their money in the bank for up to three months while the customer tries in vain to send in the rebate information and get their few dollars back. In the meantime the company gets to pad their profit report with the money they've raked in, and given that so many people don't even send in the rebate or send it in but don't qualify to get it back, the company gets to hold on to more cash.
Hooray for OfficeMax, to break the cycle and force companies to play fair.
Friendster has never been profitable, but it is now on that track, Mr. Lindstrom said. The company makes money from ad sales in the United States and SMS in Asia, where users can subscribe to pay for phone alerts when their friends update their profiles.
Of course it's on that track... the lawyers are warming up in the bullpen. Expect a spate of lawsuits within the next 6 months, trying to milk money out of anyone and everyone who might even be thought to be violating the patent. As usual, the USPTO has totally overlooked how generic the patent is and once more a software patnet threatens to gum up the works. Two words: patent reform.
The problem is that no one will boycott ABC over something like this. They will still watch their favorite shows on the network.
Or they will wait till their favorite show comes out on DVD. Or they willl download them off the Internet, where someone will have posted them after ripping out the commercials. Or people will give up watching ABC and switch to another network or abandon network TV altogether. The number of responses that would hurt ABC is so large, that if they do this, it spells their doom. It won't be long before one of the major broadcast networks dies, and I guess ABC is trying to be the first.
At least if my password is compromised I can change it; not so with my thumbprint.
Which is why you can't rely on one biometric system alone. I would think a combination of maybe retinal, fingerprint, and voice recognition would make it much harder to impersonate someone to gain access.
They organized the first data banks of fingerprints in the nation and developed laboratories for processing crime scene material that were the forerunners of today's crime scene investigation units. They have had to stay one step ahead of criminals, but in recent decades seem to have lost their edge, perhaps from becoming too beaureauracritized. The 9/11 Commission certainly took them to task for their failure to communicate vital information, but then again, a lot of people dropped the ball then, not just the FBI.
Lesson #2: Don't use stupid password expiration periods, which force users to come up with new yet easy-to-remember (=> crackable) passwords. If passwords never expire, your users are bound to pick a more secure password in the first place since they know that they don't have to change it every full moon. Make the passwords never expire and just run a dictionary attack against your users - if you get through, THEN start harassing your user about proper security.
Or better yet, use a biometric system. It's amazing to think that the FBI, which was always on the cutting edge of technology back from its inception in order to better get ahead of the bad guys, is now foundering in the Internet age. Is it any wonder data sharing and coordination is such a problem?
The consultant, Joseph Thomas Colon, claims he used the passwords to avoid bureaucratic obstacles, and that his actions were condoned by the FBI agents he was working with at the agency.
See what happens when you don't give a consultant the access he needs? He goes out and gets it himself!
Note to FBI: maybe outsourcing some things is not such a good idea.
And why not? When a guy thinks with his other head, he tends to make rash and usually flawed decisions. So you let him do the thinking with that and voila, gravy train. Come on, should this be a shock?
Couldn't read the article (I don't subscribe to the NY Crimes [and I was calling it that long before Congress got into the act]) but did they do a breakdown by gender, because of course all the porno spam seems to be aimed at men, so I would think that they would be affected 20 times as much as women. Perhaps there's a new, untapped spam market: porno for women.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see it now... "So, Miss Buxom, it says here on your application to live on our new space station that you are a prostitute... tell us, exactly how do you see that benefitting the station?"
...will have somehwere to go for "recreration"... *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
Well, it does keep LEtterman and Leno in material...
Seriously, I think it's safe to say there's only one terror level, and it hasn't changed, ever. Before 9/11, the Twin Towers were bombed in '93, Tim McVeigh took out the Murrah Federal Building in OK City in '95, and there was of course the Unabomber. Just look at events like the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the Iranian Hostage crisis, the Munich Olympics massacre, Pearl Harbor -- the list goes on and on.
The fact is that violence against, toward, and within this country is nothing new. We don't need some color-coded system invented by a Sesame Street writer cast-off to tell us how safe we feel; on the other hand, we as a nation do need to start taking things more seriously as far as our personal safety is concerned. I'd rather call in a suspicious package to some hotline and get some idiot's briefcase blown into tiny bits that miss a bomb or anything else. We have to be more vigilant and we have to find a way to do it that doesn't make us look ridiculous but that everyone can take seriously.
However, if physical constants such a the speed of light are variable, based on the expansion of the universe and the distance from the initial point of expansion, then the light from those quasars has perhaps sped up or slowed down since being released. While we may be looking into the past, a variable speed of light would mean we don't know how far into the past. This brings up the question of relativity, since not only would an observer see something different at one point A, than another would see at point B, but now neither observer could be sure if what the other is seeing is invariant compared to what they have seen. Both might use the same formula to calculate mass increase as a function of velocity, but inherent to that equation is "c" and if both observers have different local values for "c", then their answers will not be the same and they will not be seeing exactly the same thing. It makes for interesting nightmares.
Never thought I'd see the day when "Ohm's Law" and "interesting" would be used in the same sentence.
It could be, if it were a state version of the Department of Homeland Security.
Would-be Cardinal: Thank you your eminence, for considering me.
Pope Benedict: Not at all, my son. We just have a couple of questions.
Would-be Cardinal: I am at your disposal.
Pope Benedict (looking at some papers): Now, I see here by your Facebook profile that you like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. Son, are you in league with Satan?
Would-be Cardinal: But that information is supposed to be private!
Pope Benedict: Nothing is private to the Lord , my son.
Which is why my contention has been all along to nationalize the communications infrastructure of the country, mark it a national resource, then force the telecoms (or anyone else) to play by one set of rules. Mind you, I know this means letting the Federal Government run the nation's communication systems, but despite partisan politics and big money, the government does manage to keep the country together and running. It just doesn't run as smoothly sometimes as it does at others. Frankly, given my tax dollars helped pay for the infrastructure, the telcos should be paying me back.
Well, the government can't allow just anyone to use the Internet's "tubes" now can they? They might put yucky things like real news and detailed information about the behind-the-scenes fleecing of American citizens by Congress in the "tubes" and then where would we be?
Politics is truly local in scope, but the Internet is global in scope. Of course, you know what they say about global variables... [programming reference thrown in for obfuscatory purposes only]
I don't think the solution to Internet regulation is inherently a local issue, exept maybe where access is concerned. It will take local groups uniting to apply sufficient pressure to Congress to cause any meaningful regulation, and even then deep pockets may keep the issue from being resolved equitably.
One word: pretzel
Are all the computer companies having trouble keeping up with the demand for new mice? Seems like a damned inefficient way to manufacture 'em if you ask me.
Which doesn't help the rest of us. And why should a site owner get all bent out of shape if you tell them something they didn't happen to know? They must not be in direct control of the site or are pretty lazy if they are allowing this malware to pile up. And they won't be popular for very long if people catch on that the site is infecting them.
To paraphrase the song, "it's always an election year somewhere..." And even if it isn't, there will be one coming up. This is just an attempt by some politicians to look like they are doing something useful that ultimately harms only a small portion of the US population, so they don't have to risk their voter base.
I predict the Commodore 64 will rise again, although this time, it will be 64 Gig!
Tada! Two sentances. I imagine, were I a perl coder, I could have done it in half of one, but there you go.
Speaking as a Perl coder, I strongly obj...
Stupid? Are you kidding, it was brilliant! They want to hold onto their money as long as possible, but at the same time want to offer the customer a price they can't refuse. So they offer a rebate; they get to keep their money in the bank for up to three months while the customer tries in vain to send in the rebate information and get their few dollars back. In the meantime the company gets to pad their profit report with the money they've raked in, and given that so many people don't even send in the rebate or send it in but don't qualify to get it back, the company gets to hold on to more cash.
Hooray for OfficeMax, to break the cycle and force companies to play fair.
Of course it's on that track... the lawyers are warming up in the bullpen. Expect a spate of lawsuits within the next 6 months, trying to milk money out of anyone and everyone who might even be thought to be violating the patent. As usual, the USPTO has totally overlooked how generic the patent is and once more a software patnet threatens to gum up the works. Two words: patent reform.
Or they will wait till their favorite show comes out on DVD. Or they willl download them off the Internet, where someone will have posted them after ripping out the commercials. Or people will give up watching ABC and switch to another network or abandon network TV altogether. The number of responses that would hurt ABC is so large, that if they do this, it spells their doom. It won't be long before one of the major broadcast networks dies, and I guess ABC is trying to be the first.
At least if my password is compromised I can change it; not so with my thumbprint.
Which is why you can't rely on one biometric system alone. I would think a combination of maybe retinal, fingerprint, and voice recognition would make it much harder to impersonate someone to gain access.
They organized the first data banks of fingerprints in the nation and developed laboratories for processing crime scene material that were the forerunners of today's crime scene investigation units. They have had to stay one step ahead of criminals, but in recent decades seem to have lost their edge, perhaps from becoming too beaureauracritized. The 9/11 Commission certainly took them to task for their failure to communicate vital information, but then again, a lot of people dropped the ball then, not just the FBI.
Or better yet, use a biometric system. It's amazing to think that the FBI, which was always on the cutting edge of technology back from its inception in order to better get ahead of the bad guys, is now foundering in the Internet age. Is it any wonder data sharing and coordination is such a problem?
See what happens when you don't give a consultant the access he needs? He goes out and gets it himself!
Note to FBI: maybe outsourcing some things is not such a good idea.
Could be worse -- he could be a "new fragrance for men"...
And why not? When a guy thinks with his other head, he tends to make rash and usually flawed decisions. So you let him do the thinking with that and voila, gravy train. Come on, should this be a shock?
Couldn't read the article (I don't subscribe to the NY Crimes [and I was calling it that long before Congress got into the act]) but did they do a breakdown by gender, because of course all the porno spam seems to be aimed at men, so I would think that they would be affected 20 times as much as women. Perhaps there's a new, untapped spam market: porno for women.