A scuffle broke out Thursday between saffron-robed monks and anti-war demonstrators at peace rally in Sri Lankan capital.

About six or seven monks from a right-wing Buddhist faction had stormed the stage during a peace rally attended by about 1,000 people in the capital, Colombo, shouting pro-war slogans, an AP reporter at the scene said.

... how does that work? "Fight this war now or we burn ourselves alive?

Maybe Jello, being in India, knows a little more about the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Pro-war Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka?

"I met my wife on your captcha!!!" -- Steve, from New York

Captcha that makes you pick the hottest person to confirm you are not a robot. Very cool.

Captcha Mashup

In the U.S. only 40 per cent of adults believe whole-heartedly in evolution, while 39 per cent called it “absolutely false” in the 2005 survey...

The study's authors say that after decades of debate it seems the American public is more confused than ever on the issue of evolution. Over the past 20 years, the number of Americans unsure about their stand on evolution has tripled from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent in 2005.

Jon Miller, the professor who authored the study, said religious fundamentalism in the United States has fuelled skepticism in evolution.

“When you compare the U.S. to Europe, it's clear we're way out in right field by ourselves,” said Mr. Miller. “There is a different protestant movement in this country, one that often rejects science. It's different than that of Europe and certainly of Canada.”

“The Republicans have been taken over by religious conservatives,” he said. “Partly because of the fundamentalism, we have a more ideological politics than ever before. Now more than ever we're seeing the politicization of this issue and others like stem cells, the morning after pill and global warming. Republicans do it because it works.”

Mr. Miller said the results of the study are concerning and paint a grim portrait of American science education.

“It doesn't say anything very good about education here,” he said. “The findings should be of substantial concern to science educators in the United States because we've spent billions of dollars, we have a high percentage of young people going to college and taking science courses and yet we have a very ambivalent attitude on a subject that's a closed book almost everywhere in the world.”

Simply Shocking.

In evolution, Americans are big non-believers

Please revisit this site. Just clikc around.

[waits]

Meaningful browsing is utterly impossible. This person should be ashamed of themselves.

JavaScript take destroys meaningful browsing

Ajax books are crappy. They are all targeted at novices, give horrible advice, and contain little or no security information. Maybe this is why it's more web two point own ya than web 2.0?

Shouldn't someone who knows web security actually write an Ajax security book? Why yes, yes one should. Lets hope Addison-Wesley agrees as I'm talking to their acquisitions editor tomorrow morning.

'The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,' Grunwald told wired.com. 'From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.'

Grunwald says it took just two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip, and cost him $200. He tested the attack on a new European Union German passport, but the method would work on any country's e-passport, since all of them will be adhering to the same ICAO standard.

Authorities say the chip, which is digitally signed by the issuing country, will help them distinguish between official documents and forged ones. Since March, all passports issued in the UK have contained RFID chips with physical identification information.

I really have no idea why everyone thinks RFID is a technology that should be used with passports. The one advantage of RFID is that it is contactless and can be read from a distance. This requirement makes no sense for a passport. In all situations where someone would be using a passport, they are going to be interacting with a customs offical. By its every nature, this is a slow process. There is no need for a quick, distance-readable passport solution.

There are many technologies that can meet the requirement of being machine readable and storing lots of data that cannot be modified. A digitally signed 2D barcode come to mind.

A 2D barcode also has the added benefit of not triggering a bomb thats scanning for the emissions of American passports

Biometric passports cracked

Unbelievable. AOL released a file containing the search engine queries of over 500,000 users during a three month period. It's being mirrored all over.

Here is a screenshot of the download page before it was taken down, complete with a spelling error.. "ananomized"

Link to AOL data release

Could you write a good image recognizer for a 100 MHz mobile phone processor with 1 MB heap, 320x240 image, on a poorly-optimized Java stack? It needs to locate and read two-dimensional barcodes made up of square modules which might be no more than a few pixels in size. We had to do that in order to establish Semacode, a local start up company that makes a software barcode reader for cell phones.

God Damn It!

Semacode - Image recognition on mobile camera phones

Tom: Basically the Supreme Court rules that 4th ammendment doesn't apply to searches that a custom offical does when you come back to the US, because you aren't in the US yet.

Me: So where am I?

Tom:... want do you mean?

Me: If I'm not in the US yet, then I have to be "somewhere." What is that somewhere? Are there laws? There obviously aren't US laws, becase the Courts ruled I'm not in the US yet. Can I just punch the customs offical in the face?

Tom:... I don't recommend punching the customs offical in the face unless you want to be handcuffed to a hospital bed for 3 days getting a chemical enema.

Me: Maybe this whole time everyone thinks there's order in the duty free zones, but its really anarcy. It's like a collective hallucination.

Tom: Thats a good point, what's to keep me going into the duty free store and start stealing stuff?

Conclusion: The customs office is a Temporary Autonomous Zone

Decius wrote:
Furthermore, the contents of one's laptop are the closest physical thing to the contents of one's head.

All my research notes, thoughts, and ideas are in my laptop. I encrypt it now for good reason. If I lost it at BH, that would be very very bad. But I shouldn't have to hide it as well.

As soon as you have to start hiding things because the government shouldn't have the right to look at them instead of the government simply respecting and understanding that they shouldn't have to look at them, we have lost something fundamental. And thats just so fucking sad.

RE: Yes they ARE doing random laptop searches at borders