We've all heard of the Great Firewall of China. These guys found a clever way around it:

The Great Firewall of China is an important tool for the Chinese Government in their efforts to censor the Internet. It works, in part, by inspecting web traffic to determine whether or not particular words are present.
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It turns out [caveat: in the specific cases we’ve closely examined, YMMV] that the keyword detection is not actually being done in large routers on the borders of the Chinese networks, but in nearby subsidiary machines. When these machines detect the keyword, they do not actually prevent the packet containing the keyword from passing through the main router (this would be horribly complicated to achieve and still allow the router to run at the necessary speed). Instead, these subsiduary machines generate a series of TCP reset packets, which are sent to each end of the connection. When the resets arrive, the end-points assume they are genuine requests from the other end to close the connection — and obey. Hence the censorship occurs.

However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall’s reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered! We’ve done some real experiments on this — and it works just fine!! Think of it as the Harry Potter approach to the Great Firewall — just shut your eyes and walk onto Platform 9¾.

Ignoring the Great Firewall of China

Elite special forces troops being dropped behind enemy lines on covert missions are to ditch their traditional parachutes in favour of strap-on stealth wings.

The lightweight carbon fibre mono-wings will allow them to jump from high altitudes and then glide 120 miles or more before landing - making them almost impossible to spot, as their aircraft can avoid flying anywhere near the target.

Special forces to use strap-on 'Batwings' | the Daily Mail

This webpage has the mosquito ring tones that are theoretically only audible by young people, which were previously discussed on MemeStreams. I can hear up to 17,000hz, but it might be my speakers.

Mosquito Tones

In JPod, the little brothers and sisters of Generation X slave away at a thinly-disguised EA Games in Vancouver, where marketdroids reward their slavish labor by heaping menial tasks on them, and perverting the games they make so that they're not even cool. None of these people will be a software millionaire. They are people who work sweatshop hours for lousy wages, burn out young, and go nowhere. They use Google and eBay to scour the globe for anything to make their lives meaningful. They don't find it.

Boing Boing: Coupland's JPod: the Anti-Microserfs

Canadian police said on Saturday they had halted a "real and serious" terror threat in and around Toronto. Twelve men and five youths said to have been inspired by al Qaeda were arrested in the operation involving hundreds of officers, authorities said.

Another data point for the Al' Queda is a scene meme.

CNN.com - Toronto terror plot foiled -- Canada - Jun 3, 2006

For six plaintiffs to demand that the elected government cease a needed surveillance program is the epitome of undemocratic action.

For the Conservatives to claim that they can ignore Constitutional restrictions on Government action because they won the Presidential election by 3 million votes is also the epitome of undemocratic action, as it takes far more then a simple majority to change the Constitution.

The Truth About Secrets

They may sport love handles and Ivy League degrees, but every two weeks, some Silicon Valley techies turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club.

Um, dude, it was a metaphore.

CNN.com - Computer techs turn to fisticuffs for fun - May 29, 2006

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea rebuffed that criticism. "The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."

Its not the reading of the blogs that is an invasion of privacy, its the extension of your responsibility for keeping an orderly learning environment into areas of students lives which have nothing to do with their education that is an invasion of privacy. What a fucking moron.

Libertyville seems to produce a lot of people who are really pissed off at the world. I wonder why...

School District to Monitor Student Blogs - Yahoo! News

A federal judge yesterday threw out the case of a German citizen who says he was wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA, ruling that Khaled al-Masri’s lawsuit poses a “grave risk” of damage to national security by exposing government secrets.

OK, I'm linking to this instead of the link I posted earlier, because it contains a link to the actual decision, which is worth reading if you are interested in the subject. The judge is quite comfortable with the idea that you cannot litigate matters relating to state secrets and that only political remedies are available when there is a perception that a crime has been committed. The EFF's case seems likely to get the boot.

On the subject of State Secrets

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

If you're really looking for blogistan entertainment you should click through to the guy's blog where he tries to defend this comment by claiming to be a Libertarian and calling everyone else an idiot. Yes, its indeed possible to remove 12 million people from a country. The Germans did it. We've done it before (Trail of tears anyone?). It occured in Isreal although the circumstances are a matter of factual dispute.

These were, of course, all bad moments in history that have left permanent scars on the affected populations. There isn't an example of a happy time when 12 million people were removed from a country. The Holocaust is obviously the worst, and so why choose that as your example? Its obviously not going to look like that here, but there really is no example that is acceptable, which is exactly why this is an insane, and evil idea.

The Republicans have got a real problem here. They've had their pundits out sturring the pots on this for several years now. Their authoritarian base wants to see action and won't be satisfied with any compromises. They aren't interested in anything less then getting to watch a large scale human catasrophy go down here and they'll be smiling about it the whole time. The Republicans cannot actually deliver this nightmare, both because its not really in their economic interest, and because they aren't really that evil.

So we've got 6,000 national guard going down there. Its intended to look tough, but its not, and their base knows it, and it has the additional benefit of taking resources away from the GWOT. They can't make their base happy on this, and unlike most civil liberties issues their base is furious about they can't blame this one on the Supreme Court.

This is going to either split the party in two, ensuring the Democrats control, or its going to futher radicalize it. For moderate Conservatives there is no way to win here unless the subject can be changed. Right now the other topical matter is, ehm, wiretapping.

WorldNetDaily: Against a fence