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

County by county 3d breakdown with Y axis showing margins.

Does a good job showing how liberals tend to live in the cities

Best Election Data visualization yet

] On the WOT:
]
] Iraq will slowly become an Islamic fundamentalist state. The
] U.S. will be largely out of there within a year and on to
] Pakistan. We'll get Bin Laden, but Islamic Fundamentalism will
] continue to fester and will rear it's head again in a decade
] or so. Bush will be seen as having won the WoT in the short
] term.

I disagree. Iraq will become a fundamentalist state, but it will remain in state of civil war for quite some time. You have 2 Islamic sects, the minority one repressed the majority one for decades. Sunni's don't want free or fair elections, because they will not have enough representitives to prevent rather nasty laws against them from being passed. I'm talking Jews in 1930's Germany style laws. The only hope for the Sunni's is to have the ratio of people in the gov't representing them be disproportional to their % of the population. But the Shiits are not going to let them having anything close to power again. Listen very closely: Popular elections, with the number of representatives for different ethic/religous group being proportional to actual populations of those groups will not happen. There is too much hostility between the groups, and we are stupid if we think 2 years has cured it.

None of this even mentions the Kurds, which have basically had their own country for the last decade or so, and aren't really liked by anyone. They sure as hell are not going to disarm and follow the laws being passed in Baghdad. They will resist, with lethal force.

Bush is kind of screwed on Iraq. The only way Iraq will be able to have any type of stable peace in the near term (next decade) is a) A new dictator, or extremely pro-Shiite anti-Sunni government. It will not be anything close to the "island of democrasy" Bush promised. b) A large, non-Iraqi military force staying there basically locking down the country, and enforcing the will of the government composed of equal Shiites and Sunnis (and maybe Kurds, but most likely not). It can't be an Iraqi force, because the Iraqi government would use to against the Sunnis and/or Kurds. The problem for Bush is, thanks to his extreme foreign policy, Non-Iraqi basically means US, unless Bush manages to get a multinational force from different Arab countries instead (he won't).

He pulls out, Iraq collapses, into something maybe slightly than Saddam's government, and Bush has to explain what our sons and daughters were dying for. He stays, and our troops will continue to be killed off one by one, because the people will not view the government as a legitiment representation of the people (because it isn't).

RE: Iraq Predictions

] Violent crime in cities dropped 3.9 percent compared with
] 2002 and 3.7 percent in less metropolitan areas.

The funny part is this:

] Excluding traffic stops, law enforcement agencies made
] 13.6 million arrests in 2003, or about 4,695 arrests for
] every 100,000 Americans. In 2003, those agencies solved
] about 46 percent of violent crimes, including about 62
] percent of murders.

The funny thing is that they are arresting more people per 100,000 then there were crimes per 100,000. Given that criminals often commit more then one crime, the cops are busting way more people then there are criminals. And as they are only "solving" about half the cases.... you get the picture...

FBI says violent crime down 3% last year | ajc.com

biochik007 wrote:
] w1ld wrote:
] ] mp3 of Kerry support both sides of many issues.
]
] That rox! sad but true, sad but funny...

Actually, its not true. Its standard issue political dishonesty, and the people who buy into it are the problem with this country. I mean it.

Political issues are complex. The way that politicians manipulate you is by pretending that they are not. This works as follows:

1. Say you are going to do A. (Example: Save the children.)
2. Demonstrate that A is good. (The children are at risk!)
3. Ask people if they support A. (Don't you want to save the children?!)
4. Once people have expressed support for A, propose legislation that includes both A and B (Section A says we want to save the children. Section B proposes doing do by disposing of toxic waste by turning into candy and distributing it on Halloween.)
5. When people vote against your legislation because of section B, accuse them of opposing section A. (How dare you suggest that we shouldn't save the children! Don't you want to save the children!?)
6. If all else fails, accuse your opponent of being inconsistent. (First, you said you wanted to save the children. Now you say you don't.)
7. Never actually discuss part B.

Everyone will go along with it, because they are too fucking stupid to bother to actually read the legislation in question. It works every time.

In this case:
1. Say that you are going to disarm Saddam Hussein.
2. Publish intelligence information of questionable value (in one case ripped verbatim from a college student's class report) supporting the idea that Saddam is an imminent threat. No one can question this information because you control the intelligence services and they sign off on the intel.
3. Ask Congress to pass a resolution supporting your effort to disarm Saddam Hussein.
4. Once the resolution has passed, blow off the international allies who typically provide the financing for such military adventures and launch a pre-emptive war that significantly undermines established international law concerning military conflicts (only as a last resort, only in self defense).
5. When people oppose you because of part 4, accuse them of opposing the idea of disarming Saddam Hussein. Make sure you completely confuse the concepts of what was done and how it was done.
6. If all else fails, accuse your opponent of flip-flopping (First, you said you wanted the war, now you say you oppose it.)
7. Don't talk about how we're going to pay for this. When it turns out that there is no WMD, claim we are there to support democracy, while simultaneously stating that you are fine with an Islamic Fundamentalist state in Iraq if thats what the people there want.

This is how politicians fuck you. Bend over. You are being fucked.

RE: Audio mp3 of Kerry doing the Flip Flop

The 30 minute video here is not to be missed.

Great Q&A as well. Can't wait to watch the video

America's Secret War - George Friedman - Author interviews

A photo of a hand made origami dragon!

Origami Dragon

I cohost Binary Revolution Radio tuesday night at 9:30PM. The show has actually already been recorded. I hope it turned out well. We shall see. I spend a lot of time talking about memes and MemeStreams. Let me know what you think. If you aren't able to catch it live, they will have MP3s available on the website for download at any time.

Decius is on Binrev right now talking about Memestreams

MemeStreams on BinRev Radio

] We have found that by sending specially crafted packets
] to the client during the authentication process, an
] attacker is able to compromise and execute arbitrary code
] on the machine running PuTTY or PSCP.

CoreLabs: Vulnerability in PuTTY

] However, instead of thanking Adam for his promotion of
] their product, officials at MGM and the MPAA have chosen
] to pressure the FBI into pursuing criminal charges. Adam
] was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI
] raided his and his fiancee's apartment in May of 2002 and
] seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment.
] Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in
] support of the search warrant, and was shocked to
] discover that this document, prepared by the FBI,
] contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading
] information. For example, two social security numbers
] were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References
] were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA
] to an email address that did not exist. His online
] friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was
] portrayed as an international conspiracy against the
] MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later
] revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA
] Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. The
] FBI's abuse of its powers did not stop there. When they
] seized Adam's computer equipment, he was given written
] documentation stating that it would be returned within 60
] days. The equipment that they did return did not arrive
] until more than 8 months later, and only then after much
] prodding from his lawyer. Much of it was damaged beyond
] repair - one laptop had a shattered LCD screen, an empty
] tape backup drive was ripped apart for no apparent
] reason, his fiancee's iBook was badly damaged when it was
] pried apart with a screwdriver.

1. Welcome to the new world of criminal copyright prosecutions. This reminds me of operation Sun Devil. The FBI is usually far more professional then this. Apparently they've assigned a bunch of idiots to their copyright sqaud, which is reasonable at first glance in that its not very important, but ultimately a mistake because this issue is too controversial and too visible to be handled by thugs. These guys aren't going to stop behaving this way until a judge throws the book at them (as occured to the Chicago Secret Service agents who raided Steve Jackson Games). Therefore, I suggesting holding on to your seats. There will be a bunch more stories where this came from, and as the net is a hell of a lot louder then it was in 1991 you can expect the FBI to feel some very serious pressure over the issue as the horrors mount up.

2. The seizure of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, the destruction of said equipment, and then the choice of legal venue meant to maximize the financial costs associated with trial... This has all the earmarks of an investigation that is intended to be punative in and of itself. Punative investigations are unconstitutional.

3. This is why copyright issues need to remain in civil courts and not criminal courts. We don't need our security forces out smashing computers for the MPAA. There is absolutely no reason why the MPAA couldn't have filed a civil motion in this case in the jurisdiction the actual website was in.

It seems clear that a properly delivered cease and desist letter would have solved the problem here. No fuss, no muss. Handling crimes like this in this manner is extremely expensive for taxpayers and tends to disrupt and destroy innocent people's lives when they accidentally become the target of it.

Moving copyright cases into the criminal justice system was bad, bad, bad law. It seems like we're going to get a stiff lesson in why.

Stargate Information Archive - Federal Charges Filed Against SG-1 Archive