I am a hacker and you are afraid and that makes you more dangerous than I ever could be.
Wind Turbine in Grant Park
Topic: Local Information
5:42 pm EDT, Oct 9, 2007
The 49-year-old residential developer is remodeling his 1920s house to be more environmentally friendly, including installation of a 45-foot-tall wind turbine in his front yard. "It's really none of their business how I spend my money," Mann said.
The towering turbine, which overlooks majestic trees and Victorian rooftops, pits preservationists in Atlanta's Grant Park Historic District against a property owner and his individual rights.
"It's unattractive and it's a nuisance," said Scott Herzinger, whose home is three doors down. Mann "invaded the public view ... when he put that tower up."
At a cost of $15,000, Mann said the turbine will shave at least $20 per month off his power bill -- hardly a windfall. A proposed federal tax credit would bring Mann $3,000. Acknowledging it could be decades before his investment pays off, Mann said, "even if it was a 50-year payback, at least we've done something to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels."
Herzinger blames Atlanta, which "let us down miserably" when zoning officials sided with Mann.
Said Mann, "If regulations for historic preservation don't address modern-day issues, then they're not very sound."
But Herzinger, 48, who shares Mann's support for wind power, said Mann could have considered many alternatives which would have helped the environment more than the turbine. "After looking at the facts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think of Mann's wind turbine as eco-bling."
It is Mann's property and its not against building regulations. And who cares whether it is cost effective or not or if you think Mann could have done alternatives or not. He decided to build a wind turbine. It highly visible and serves as a catalyst for discussion about engery policy in a way that filling his home with compact fluorescents won't do.
Good for Mann. Booo on cranky Atlanta home owners.
The following is your Speaker's practical guide for Black Hat Japan. Attached you will also find a PDF with helpful instructions regarding your arrival in Japan. If you have any questions, never hesitate to Ask. Thank you.
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Plan on speaking at about one third your normal pace.
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Talk style and difference of language structure Japanese sentence structure is different than English. English is Subject-Verb-Object, but Japanese is Subject-Object-Verb. This means the translator needs to hear the complete sentence before they can translate it.
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If they never get a chance to breathe, you are talking too fast. With these reasons, especially "Machine gun Talk" or "Elevator Pitch" type of talk style will fail completely.
Wow. This is going to be tough.
[At Bluehat, during Jeff Forristal's presentation] Caleb: Thats' how fast you talk Me: Really? Are you kidding me? Caleb: Yep, that fast. And with hand gestures. Lots of hand gestures
When you give a chef a recipe, you have certain assumptions. Sure there might not be resources to fully bake the cake, but you assume that their oven and mixer are working.
How can you ever hope to cook a cake successfully when your oven isn't even working?
[sigh]...
If only I were talking about cake. At least with under-cooked cake you can eat the batter.
Meanwhile, the methodology the military is using to gauge violence in Baghdad has come under fire.
"By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working," said the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, addressing a Washington think tank last week.
Durbin's criticism was echoed by David Walker, head of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, who also raised questions about how the statistics were compiled.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday, Walker said he is not comfortable with the methodology used to track the death toll driven by sectarian violence.
For instance, he said, a body found with a gunshot to the front of the head is classified as an ordinary crime, while a body with a gunshot to the back of the head is attributed to sectarian violence.
Walker said he would expect such a methodology to reflect a reduction in sectarian violence.
One of these things is not like the other. One is a uniform women were required to wear by a company to be employed. The other is a college student who is a little trampy, as really we all are from time to time :-)
I really don't think Southwest has a well tanned and well toned leg to stand on here.
Whether long range weapon or suicide bomber Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction Whether you're Soaraway Sun or BBC 1 Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruct You coulda Caucasian or a poor Asian Racism is a weapon of mass destruction Whether inflation or globalization Fear is a weapon of mass destruction Whether Halliburton, Enron or anyone Greed is a weapon of mass destruction We need to find courage, overcome Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction
This song rocks. I love the rhyming, especially in the second verse.
And you ain't going to nirvana or far-vana, you're coming right back here to live out your karma. With even more drama than previously, seriously. Just how many centuries have we been waiting for someone else to make us free? And we refuse to see that people overseas suffer just like we: Bad leadership and ego's unfettered and free Who feed on the people they're supposed to lead
In case you missed the memo (or the stares in Junior high...)
Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.
I like beautiful AND brainy!
The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.
Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.
The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them"
Now we get to AjaxWorld West 2007 and there are 5 presentations about security and all of them look great. Brian Chess from Fortify, Joe Stagner from Microsoft, Byran and I from SPI/HP, Danny Allen from Watchfire/IBM, and Pothiraj Selvaraj from CGE. I am absolutely floored by the turn out. And its not just more security speakers at Ajax conferences. There are other indications thats people are accepting Ajax Security. We are seeing a number of books on Ajax Security come out. Ajax frameworks are starting implement security features natively. In some cases framework developers are reaching out directly to the web security companies that seem to get it. For example SPI has been to Redmond multiple times this year working with the ASP.NET and Atlas teams. We see security vendors and consultants who were in denial about Ajax have toned down the rhetoric. Now vendors from the scanner and source code analysis spaces are joining SPI on stage this year on AjaxWorld. We've gone from a 20 something with long hair talking about Ajax security to CTOs and CEOs, and VPs spreading the message. And that is extremely satisfying.
I suppose if anything, AjaxWorld 2007 is a nice breath of fresh air. A cause SPI has been championing for nearly 2 years now is becoming more mainstream and finding acceptance in the Security and Development communities. I welcome my friendly competitors to the party, even if they were a little late and got lost along the way. :-) Because at the end of the day, more smart people working on tough problems helps everyone.
A new technique shows resizing of images while keeping the important features of the image undistorted, also allows you to protect or remove part of the image with anything removed being automagically and seamlessly filled in.
