First post so I can get a flavor of MemeStreams. And I thought this link, given the Holiday (and upcoming tax) season, was as generic and harmless as a recommendation could get. Cheers, -Pk

Charity Navigator... 'your guide to intelligent giving'

] Family Values
]
]
] Yesterday:
]
] Bush introduced Mike and Sharla Hintz, a couple from
] Clive, whom he said benefited from his tax plan.
]
] Last year, because of the enhanced the child tax
] credit, they received an extra $1,600 in their tax
] refund, Bush said. With other tax cuts in the bill, they
] saved $2,800 on their income taxes.
]
] They used the money to buy a wood-burning stove to
] more efficiently heat their home, made some home
] improvements and went on a vacation to Minnesota, the
] president said.
]
] "Next year, maybe they'll want to come to Texas,"
] Bush quipped.
]
] Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor,
] said the tax cuts also gave him additional money to use
] for health care.
]
] He said he supports Bush's values.
]
] "The American people are starting to see what kind of
] leader President Bush is. People know where he stands,"
] he said.
]
] "Where we are in this world, with not just the war on
] terror, but with the war with our culture that's going
] on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the
] White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by
] what he believes.
]
]
] and today...
]
] A Des Moines youth pastor is charged with the sexual
] exploitation of a child.
]
] KCCI learned that the married father of four recently
] turned himself in to Johnston police.
]
] Rev. Mike Hintz was fired from the First Assembly of
] God Church, located at 2725 Merle Hay Road, on Oct. 30.
] Hintz was the youth pastor there for three years.
]
] Police said he started an affair with a 17-year-old
] in the church youth group this spring.

[ This has nothing to do with Bush, in the sense that I'm not so unreasonable as to pin the Reverend's actions on anyone but himself. I bring it up to point out a contrast I see all too frequently between moralist statements, and actual behavior.

On the right, "culture war" is code for "homosexual agenda", it's built into that frame. Something tells me the threat to Rev. Hintz' marriage was not homosexuality, but Adultery. Adultery with a youth over whom he could assert control, and authority.

I don't think hypocracy is necessarily as horrible as many of my generation do, but when you get up on stage with the president and decry the state of our values, you better be pretty clean yourself. -k]

Thats so awesome.

Moral values... (from atrios)

] LOS ANGELES (AP) -- All too often, the ring of Debi
] Faris-Cifelli's cell phone means there is another
] abandoned newborn at the morgue, another forsaken child
] for her to name and bury in a shoebox-size coffin under a
] white cross in the California desert.
]
] The money could not come at a better time for
] Faris-Cifelli and her Garden of Angels, the tiny cemetery
] in the town of Calimesa where she has buried dozens of
] tiny children whose mothers didn't hear -- or didn't care
] -- about California's safe-haven law.
]
] Under the 2001 law, parents have three days to abandon
] infants without fear of prosecution. California is one of
] 46 states with such a law.
]
] Faris-Cifelli helped win passage of the law and has made
] it her life's work to spread the word that scared and
] confused parents should drop their newborns at firehouses
] and hospitals -- not in trash cans and alleys. She
] lobbies in states without such laws, talks to teens and
] police and has attended 12 trials of mothers accused of
] abandoning their infants. She also lays the dead to rest.

This story is really amazing. I had no idea that that kind of charity still existed or that there were laws like that in existence. The money certainly couldn't have gone to a more deserving person.

The cause, too, is worthwhile, however I can't help but wonder how much more/less effective a campaign for birth control methods (and NOT, thank you Bush, archaic abstinence) would be.

-janelane

CNN.com - Baby rescuer hits $27 million lottery - Dec 7, 2004

] Southeast Cybercrime Summit 2005 March 1-4, 2005

Potentially of interest...

Computer Forensics - Internet Cop Con in Atlanta in March

] The micro-claymore is a small device designed to deliver
] a short-ranged, dispersed payload from a concealed
] location. The mine is created from commonly available
] office materials.

Justice. Office Style Justice.

Office Bricolage: Micro-Claymore

] Biometrics, an automated way to authenticate a person's
] identity, is being used from airports to grocery stores
] for both security and convenience.

NO! Damn it! Why do people always get this wrong. Biometrics do not in anyway authenticate a persons Identity. Why is it when conversations turn to security, some half-educated jackass says "just use biometrics."

Biometrics are _NOT_ security. A Biometric is a method of tying a physical person to some form of information. It does _NOT_ prove that information is correct. Which is why these biometric passports are retarded. Sure this passport's encoded biometric matches my thumb print/iris/etc, but the information on the password is completely false. I sold someone's SSN, I fake a birth certificate, whatever. The problem is now for some reason people "trust" this passport more, because its "better" with a biometric. Classic Privledge escalation. Unless your tests for the information you seal with a biometric is extensive or complete, the biometric is completely worthless.

Biometrics: NO!

Well, I guess it was worth it. I worked with a team of 4 people and in 6 weeks worked to wrote 14,791 line multiple player Real Time Strategy game in Java. The project was 20% of my final grade in the class, and we nailed it. Wiht all the bouns features we did (4 players, extra units, researching technologies, Battle.net-like hosting system, awesome graphics), we got 147 points out of a possible 100 points, and basically assured myself an A in the class.

UML is teh sux0r (sic).

Thats is how long I have been at GT. I haven't been home, I've hardly slept, and I've only been in 3 different buildings. I'm wear the clothes I put on Wednesday around noon. I've been too jittery to eat much of anything. I just saw the File server I'm franticly trying to upload my final tarball to hit a load of 23, as 300 Plus students hammer NFS/SSH.

Graduation, if only you were a semester sooner.

] James Tobin, 44, of Bangor, Maine, the former regional
] director of the Republican National Committee in New
] England, faces charges of conspiracy to commit telephone
] harassment and aiding and abetting telephone harassment.
] He face a jail sentence of up to five years if convicted.
]
] Tobin allegedly took part in a conspiracy to jam five
] telephone numbers run by the New Hampshire Democratic
] Party, and one associated with a local Professional
] Firefighters Association, in an attempt to stop
] opponents' "get-out-the-vote" efforts. More than 800
] hang-up calls jammed the phone lines for about 90 minutes
] on election day, AP reports.

Wait. Didn't I see this in a 80s movie where some kids used a ?keyboard? to autodial a radiostation to get concert tickets for somekind of save the Homeless/Whales/Africa benefit? You know, the one with the chick who had the legs and the hair, and the annoying kid who said something corny and the movie closes with everyone
laughing?

Man how the the 80s did rule.

Senior Republican charged in phone jamming plot

I'm sure I saw this when it came out, but its a good hack. The glow from your monitor can probably be seen out of your window. If you slowed things down really slow it wouldn't appear as a glow, but rather a strobe, as the electron gun in your monitor sweeps across rows of phosphorus. If you recorded the flashes, and knew the rate at which the gun was sweeping, you could reproduce the image displayed on the screen. Nice...

Optical Emission Security FAQ