Category — General

Would you like bytes with that?: “”Hi, I’m [Catspaw] from the OpenNet Initiative. Prior to the election, I checked the geor…”

(Via Catspaw’s Guide to the Inevitably Insane.)

——

Apparently KAT! is up to some good again….. i wonder why they wouldn’t answer the question… of course, they never really answer questions….

retroCRUSH: The barely legal pleasure palace: “One of the great things about toys from a while back was that they were made with one thing in mind, playability.  Sure, they may have had lead paint, or would blow up in a kid’s face, but they sure were fun.  Once the Consumer Products Safety Commission got their mitts on everything, it all went downhill.  Toy guns were spray-painted orange, and the sharp edges of everything have been rounded down to safe boring nubs.  ”

(Via .)

great stuff. i always wanted one of those helicopters.

Ubu Roi Day!: “Great Stories, People, Books & Events in Literary History “On this day in 1896, Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde play, Ubu Roi, opened and closed in Paris. When Ubu came on stage with a large target drawn on his belly, a toilet-brush…”

(Via Words – big ones and little ones….)

wooo hoooo! pataphysics lives….

Today is Human Rights Day: “December 10 is Human Rights Day, so named by the United Nations in recognition of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Some thoughts: Don’t forget Darfur. Or Tibet. In Pakistan:…”

(Via TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime.)

happy human rights day, don’t be surprised if your government considers ova or sperm to be human and not full grown adult humans…..

WSJ.com – Trying to Remember
New Passwords Isn’t
As Easy as ABC123: “Before joining Fortinet, Mr. Kwan spent 15 years as an internal techie for three Silicon Valley companies. There, he repeatedly saw human nature defeat well-intentioned computer-security rules. When he was called to work on a computer and the regular user wasn’t there, Mr. Kwan would pick up the keyboard. It was a good bet that he would find a password scribbled underneath. “We found a lot of bizarre passwords being taped all over the place,” he says.

The Sarbanes-Oxley law doesn’t mandate periodic password changes. Nor do the Securities and Exchange Commission rules implementing the law. Nor does the “guidance” issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the nonprofit corporation that Sarbanes-Oxley created to regulate audit firms. Nonetheless, password changes have become a standard feature of management strategies to demonstrate compliance with the law.

One impetus appears to be the IT Governance Institute, a Rolling Meadows, Ill., nonprofit that brings together tech executives from big companies with representatives of major audit firms. The institute’s “control objectives” for Sarbanes-Oxley list regular password changes as an “illustrative control” to prevent tampering with corporate financial systems.”

(Via .)

===

you get workers put in near impossible positions. too many passwords ruins security on the human scale and does not increase security at all.

: “”It’s our job to investigate issues like these and explain them to our readers, many of whom have family members serving in the military,” Moore said. “We hope Fort Carson officials reconsider their ban of The Denver Post. If they don’t, we will appeal to senior military officers at Fort Carson and in Washington, and through any other legal or congressional channels that are available to us.”"

———

if reporters don’t get in there and stop this nonsense, the ’secrecy’ will become pervasive. freedom of the press needs to be preserved for the u.s. to be considered a democratic state. don’t these generals and governors read the founders of our country?

Completely random shit: ” 1. Saw my therapist today: she made a strong case for me just quitting this job at the end of the year and moving home, replacement job or no. Best line: “you won the prize and got the job and now you’re taking anti-depressants. Obviously something’s wrong, right?”

(Via Bitch. Ph.D..)

actually, lots of academics have depression after they finish their dissertation and/or start their new position. i posit it is because people think they’ve managed to make progress to the top wrung of the ladder only to realize, there is no top wrung at all, just more wrungs.

i’ve heard of everything from the ‘life change’, ‘giving up academia’, and my university even had a suicide due to depression related to post-dissertation. it’s a harsh world. there may be identifiable issues here that need some looking into, or even a recognizable diagnosis like post-ph.d. depression.

Course / Beverages / Punch Recipes: “”

(Via .)

punch recipes… did someone say punch recipes?

and no one is citing William Juniper’s ‘the true drunkards delight’?

mortal sins….

he lists

Tovey’s Punch
Whisky Punch
Glasgow Punch

Halo Punch

Rum Punch

Oxford Punch

Milk Punch

Homemade camera kicks gigapixel ass: “Xeni Jardin:

Interesting piece in the NYT about inventor Clifford Ross, and an analog camera he developed which is capable of capturing astounding detail from great distances.

[The camera was] unusual enough to capture the attention of serious scientists, including the kinds who work for the government, experimenting with nuclear fusion, space travel and spy systems. What grabbed them were photographs Mr. Ross took that allowed them to see with astonishing clarity a tiny footpath on the top of a Colorado mountain seven miles from the camera.

Link to story. Image: A photo of Mount Sopris in Colorado, taken by Clifford Ross with his camera invention. (thanks, Susannah)”

(Via Boing Boing.)

——–

sweet camera!

Jon Udell on the passive-aggressive Semantic Web: “

He doesn’t call it that, but his column in InfoWorld, “Bootstrapping the Semantic Web” makes a fascinating point. At a site that aggregates info about people

… I show up as executive editor of Byte Magazine and contributor to Linux Magazine. And while those were once accurate descriptions of me, I have never been a member of Blue Titan’s board of advisors, and I am not the inventor of RSS.

…

Semantic-Web naysayers think people and organizations can’t be bothered to assert machine-readable facts about themselves. And, today, that is undoubtedly true. But when others assert facts about you — as they increasingly will — the tide could begin to turn. Individual acts of self-defense may ultimately combine to bootstrap the semantic Web.

“

(Via Joho the Blog.)

——-

self-defense may drive it… i agree, or i suspect that some people will be overly aggressive and get sued, mire the whole thing a huge ball of crap and that will be the end of many assertions.