August 27, 2012
Directv HD-PVR has removed the 'autotune' feature and added an ethernet jack. This manual:
//www.directv.com/learn/pdf/System_Manuals/DIRECTV/DIRECTV_HD_H21andAbove.pdf
gives examples of sending commands to the Directv receiver via LAN.

This is an unholy kludge to restore autotune.

script:
#!/bin/sh
#/root/tv/8pm.sh
/usr/bin/links http://10.0.0.58:8080/tv/tune?major=360 ;
sleep 30 ;
/bin/kill `/sbin/pidof /usr/bin/links`

crontab:
50 19 26 * * /root/tv/8pm.sh

(Yes, netcat with at would be a better solution. It could also be done on Windows 
with Scheduled Tasks.)

Words of wisdom for 2012:

"Corruptisima republica plurimae leges." 
("The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.") 
- Tacitus , The Annals of Imperial Rome 

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will 
plow for those who do not."
--Thomas Jefferson

"...It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless 
minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." 
- Samuel Adams

"Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in 
an almost imperceptible manner, by the depreciation of their circulating 
currency, through excessive quantity." 
- Nicolaus Copernicus

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in 
Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those 
who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it 
goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government 
from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government 
results from too much government."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and 
bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas 
which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake 
off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a 
most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right 
confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise 
it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of 
the territory as they inhabit."
 - Abraham Lincoln, in an address before Congress, January 1848. 

November 11, 2011

"Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were."

February 24, 1803
Marbury v. Madison:
The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the 
constitution is written . To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to 
writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction, between 
a government with limited and unlimited powers, is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom 
they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. 

It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that 
the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act. Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The 
constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary 
legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. 

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter 
part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power, in its own 
nature illimitable. 

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and 
paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of 
the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
     --Chief Justice John Marshall

September 29, 2011


The current six rate brackets of 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35% will be replaced by five 
new brackets with the higher rates of 15%, 28%, 31%, 36% and 39.6%  

Note that the lowest bracket tax rate goes from 10% to 15%, or a 50% increase in 
their taxes.  The highest bracket goes from 35 to 36.9%, or 5.4%.  The lowest income 
people will be hit the hardest. 

The share of tax liability went up for the top quintile, and down for all of the others under the Bush cuts.

source

"The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden." 
- From the treatise "Unrestricted Warfare" by Col. Qiao Liang and Col. Wang Xiangsui, People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China

September 05, 2011
Government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in 
almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot 
enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people 
are armed."
- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787

May 22, 2011



//www.shadowstats.com/article/hyperinflation-special-report-2011

June 12, 1816

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual 
debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we 
run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and 
our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of 
England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the 
earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth 
being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have
no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence 
by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."
-Thomas Jefferson

April 28, 2011
//finance.yahoo.com/news/Exxon-earns-nearly-11-billion-apf-479576777.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=">EXXON earns nearly $11B in profit...


//www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2011/04/27/gas-prices-and-industry-earnings-a-few-things-to-think-about/">Paid nearly $10 billion in 2010 taxes...

Profits 'a little more than 2 cents per gallon'...

April 11, 2011
//www.newsweek.com/2011/02/13/inside-the-killing-machine.html
The CIA and Assassinations
The former CIA general counsel, John A. Rizzo, talks about his agency's assassination 
program, which has increased dramatically under the Obama administration.

April 06, 2011
//www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1373055/Why-iPhone-users-look-rich-usually-poor.html
One in five iPhone owners 'is constantly overdrawn'

With their expensive taste in gadgets, iPhone users may 
appear to have ample disposable income.

But almost one in five owners of the must-have phone 
admit that their main bank account is always overdrawn. 

This is around double the national average, with one in ten 
Britons admitting to being constantly in the red.

In comparison, 54 per cent of those who own a phone that 
uses the rival Android operating system and half of BlackBerry 
owners say they are never overdrawn.

//www.neowin.net/news/mlb-says-iphone-users-more-likely-to-buy-apps-than-android-users
In an interview between All Things Digital and Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball's 
Advanced Media division, Bowman says that, 'the Android user typically is less likely to buy, and 
therefore the ROI on developing for Android is different than it is for Apple.' The interviewer 
asked why, but Mr. Bowman didn't give a concrete reason, saying only that, 'the iPhone and iPad user 
is interested in buying content; that's one of the reasons they bought the device.'

April 06, 2011
//www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12964360
Surgeons say patients in some parts of England have spent months waiting in pain 
because of delayed operations or new restrictions on who qualifies for treatment. 

In several areas routine surgery was put on hold for months, while in many 
others new thresholds for hip and knee replacements have been introduced. 



//www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-136377/US-v-UK-The-breast-cancer-survival-stakes.html
An American woman's chances of developing breast cancer are slightly higher than 
her British counterpart - but she is far more likely to survive.
One U.S. woman in eight can expect to have the disease at some point in her 
life, compared with one in nine in Britain.
But five-year survival rates for all forms of the disease - including the most 
advanced - stand at 85 per cent in the U.S and just under 74 per cent in 
the UK. If the cancer is caught early - at what doctors call stage 1 - the differences 
in survival are even more shocking.
An American woman has a 97 per cent chance of being alive five years after diagnosis.
In Britain, this figure is only 78 per cent.

March 12, 2011
http://siwild.si.edu/index.cfm?state=gallery 

The Smithsonian has collected over 200,000 images from wildlife researchers 
around the world in a new publicly accessible collection.

Faced with shy and elusive creatures in the field, scientists use camera traps to 
observe their subjects. These traps, hidden cameras triggered by motion sensors, offer 
scientists the chance to observe animals without disturbing them and without 
having to spend 24 hours a day perched up a tree.

February 7, 2011

Protecting Your Information On the Go

//www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d1d2742d-d4ef-44e6-b492-b843b98d1ddf
Brochure with guidance on protecting private information on mobile phones and 
devices, public computers, and public Wi-Fi.

February 6, 2011
http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/63674
State Library of Kansas Releases State History Database

Researchers will be able to access materials relating to Kansas history from 1854, when it became 
an official territory, through 1865. Kansas entered the Union on Jan. 29, 1861.
The materials include personal narratives, memoirs, pamphlets, political speeches, sermons and 
songs from the period. The database contains 197 documents and 20,000 pages of text, photos and maps.

January 10, 2011
"Rules for Writerers:" 1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
"Rules for Writerers:" 2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
"Rules for Writerers:" 3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
"Rules for Writerers:" 4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
"Rules for Writerers:" 5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
"Rules for Writerers:" 6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
"Rules for Writerers:" 7. Be more or less specific.
"Rules for Writerers:" 8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
"Rules for Writerers:" 9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
"Rules for Writerers:" 10. No sentence fragments.
"Rules for Writerers:" 11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
"Rules for Writerers:" 12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
"Rules for Writerers:" 13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
"Rules for Writerers:" 14. One should NEVER generalize.
"Rules for Writerers:" 15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
"Rules for Writerers:" 16. Don't use no double negatives.
"Rules for Writerers:" 17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
"Rules for Writerers:" 18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
"Rules for Writerers:" 19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
"Rules for Writerers:" 20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
"Rules for Writerers:" 21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
"Rules for Writerers:" 22. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.
"Rules for Writerers:" 23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
"Rules for Writerers:" 24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
"Rules for Writerers:" 25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
"Rules for Writerers:" 26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
"Rules for Writerers:" 27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
"Rules for Writerers:" 28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
"Rules for Writerers:" 29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
"Rules for Writerers:" 30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
"Rules for Writerers:" 31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
"Rules for Writerers:" 32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
"Rules for Writerers:" 33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
"Rules for Writerers:" 34. Avoid"buzz-words"; such integrated transitional scenarios complicate simplistic matters.
"Rules for Writerers:" 35. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

January 01, 2011
Happy New Year!


"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and 
shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, this is the sum of good government."
-Thomas Jefferson

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take away everything you have."
-Thomas Jefferson 

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.
-H. L. Mencken

December 31, 2010

Ten Commandments For Buying Gold & Silver :
I. Always take delivery
II. Never buy premium if you can avoid it.
III. Buy bullion for business, numismatics for fun.
IV. Buy silver first, then gold.
V. Buy small gold first, then large.
VI. Never buy exotic coins or modern rarities or anything you don't understand.
VII. Know your dealer.
VIII. What governments can't find, they can't steal.
IX. Never swap bullion coins for U.S. $20 gold pieces.
X. Never break the law. 

http://coins.about.com/od/worldcoins/ig/Chinese-Counterfeiting-Ring/

Paper money has had the effect in your State that it ever 
will have, to ruin commerce--oppress the honest, and 
open a door to every species of fraud and injustice.
-George Washington
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1787/bowen.html

December 29, 2010
http://askbobrankin.com/alternatives_to_lifelock.html

https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp
https://annualcreditreport.transunion.com/fa/securityFreeze/indexProcess
https://www.experian.com/consumer/cac/InvalidateSession.do?code=FREEZE

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index

December 03, 2010
//www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/cell-site-warrants

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Obama administration's contention that the 
government is never required to get a court warrant to obtain cell-site information that mobile-phone 
carriers retain on their customers.

The Obama administration urged the appellate court to reconsider its 
position, an offer the court declined Wednesday without commenting on the merits.

The administration has also asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to 
reverse its August ruling requiring court warrants to affix GPS devices to vehicles to track their 
every move. The administration said Americans should expect no privacy "in the totality of his or 
her movements in public places."

December 03, 2010
//www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.b97f22024bc6db2a202c8cbfa569513d.101&show_article=1

Voyager Spacecraft Nears Exit Of Solar System
The US space agency's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached the outer edge of the solar system where wind from 
the Sun is no longer blowing outward, but sideways, NASA said. 
NASA noticed that the solar wind's outward speed had slowed to zero back in June, but wanted to 
look at readings from Voyager 1 over the next four months to be sure. 
"When I realized that we were getting solid zeroes, I was amazed," said Rob Decker, a Voyager 
Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator and senior scientist at Johns Hopkins University. 
"Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse for 33 years, showing 
us something completely new again." 

December 03, 2010
//www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,732684,00.html

"The US is increasingly using drones for air strikes in Pakistan's border area, with 
the CIA controlling the unmanned aircraft from the US. Drone attacks against 
insurgent targets form a key part of US President Barack Obama's anti-terror 
strategy, and are estimated to have killed over 500 people in 2010 alone. The 
approach has been criticized by some human rights experts as violating international 
law, given that Pakistan is not a war zone..."

December 03, 2010
//www.icasualties.org/oef/

December 03, 2010
//www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/realtime/

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time 
using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court 
order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains 
how so-called ?Hotwatch? orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a 
criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling 
cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little 
more light on the Justice Department?s increasing power and willingness to 
surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight.


//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/02/AR2010120206052.html

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the 
surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to previously secret internal documents 
obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union. 

In releasing 900 pages of documents, U.S. government agencies refused to 
say how many Americans' telephone, e-mail or other communications have 
been intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - or FISA - Amendments Act 
of 2008, or to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said. Most of the documents were 
heavily redacted. 

November 30, 2010

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/breakingorbit/2010/09/pluto-gets-14-new-neighbors.html">

 alt="TNOs tend to orbit at significant angle to the ecliptic, compared to our eight planets, so there could be 
hundreds of the icy bodies waiting to be found in Hubble pictures aimed even farther above and below the plane..."

November 19, 2010
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/technology/17wiretap.html
http://searchengineland.com/report-fbi-talks-to-google-facebook-about-wiretapping-56374

The New York Times is reporting that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller met this week with 
executives from several tech firms, including Google and Facebook, to talk about a plan to 
make Internet wiretapping easier.

The Times says the US government is looking to expand a 1994 law, the 
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, to include online communications. The 
law currently requires network access providers, like phone and cable companies, to be 
able to respond immediately to court-ordered wiretapping. 

Law enforcement officials want the 1994 law to also cover Internet companies because 
people increasingly communicate online. An interagency task force of Obama 
administration officials is trying to develop legislation for the plan, and submit it 
to Congress early next year.

October 27, 2010
//www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/firesheep.html
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/25/firesheep/
Firesheep is a new Firefox plugin that makes it easy for you to hijack other people's social 
network connections. Basically, Facebook authenticates clients with cookies. If someone is 
using a public WiFi connection, the cookies are sniffable. Firesheep uses wincap to capture 
and display the authentication information for accounts it sees, allowing you to hijack the connection.
Protect yourself by forcing the authentication to happen over TLS. Or stop logging in 
to Facebook from public networks. 

October 24, 2010
//www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/21/car_jammer_vehicle_theft_scam/

Inspector Richard Haycock told local newspapers that the possible use of the car lock jammers 
would help explain a recent spate of thefts from vehicles that have occurred without leaving any 
signs of forced entry. 

"We do get quite a lot of car crime in the borough where there's no sign of a break-in and items 
have been taken from an owner's car," Inspector Haycock said. "It is a possibility that central locking 
jamming is being used," he added.

Devices that block the frequency used by a car owner's key fob might be used to thwart an owner's 
attempts to lock a car, leaving it open for waiting thieves. A quick search of the internet shows that 
devices offering to jam car locks are easily available for around $100. Effectiveness at up to 100m is claimed.

October 1, 2010
//www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?_r=1

"...officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications 
including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites 
like Facebook and software that allows direct peer to peer messaging like Skype
to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order..."

"Obama isn't the first U.S. president to seek expanded digital eavesdropping. The 1994 CALEA law 
required phone companies to build ways to better facilitate FBI eavesdropping into their digital phone switches."

September 25, 2010

//www.ksbw.com/news/25004943/detail.html" rel="nofollow">Truck Carrying Squid Crashes In Broccoli Field

September 16, 2010

Any Misstatement To A Federal Officer Can Result In Your Arrest

If a federal officer claims you lied to him, you can be arrested and charged with the crime of making 
false statements. You do not have to make the statements under oath (which would be the different 
charge of perjury).

This statute (http:////www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1001.html is the reason 
why Martha Stewart has a Bureau of Prisons number, and the conviction of  I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Wait, you ask, what about telling the truth? Doesn't work. If, in the course of your 
conversation, you mis-remember something or speak inarticulately, you can now be 
arrested. Innocent mistake? Prove it in court after being jailed, charged, tried and 
paying for a lawyer.

Cardinal Richelieu is alleged to have said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of 
men, I will find something in them which will hang him." That's also how the false statement charge works. Any 
cop or prosecutor can concoct a lie from your statements.

The only way to protect yourself from a false statement charge is to refuse to speak to 
federal law enforcement officers.

http://knifetricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/10-brief-responses-to-700-comments.html

September 02, 2010



 Insert derisive comment here

August 27, 2010


Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying 
employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign 
committees in 2008, according to an analysis by washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-Democrats-got-88-percent-of-TV-network-employee-campaign-contributions-101668063.html" 
The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television 
networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign 
committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

August 24, 2010
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/

".. courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren't the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is 
being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling 
out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and 
foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can 
be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents.."

9:05 AM Thursday, August 05, 2010

"If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and 
use Artificial Intelligence, we can predict where 
you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we 
can identify who you are."
Google CEO Eric Schmidt


//www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-is-to-get-right-up-to-the-creepy-line-and-not-cross-it-2010-10
"...There is what I call the creepy line. The Google policy on a lot of things is 
to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it..."
Google CEO Eric Schmidt


//www.benedelman.org/hardcoding/
"...I present categories of searches for which available evidence indicates Google 
has "hard-coded" its own links to appear at the top of algorithmic search 
results, and I offer a methodology for detecting certain kinds of tampering 
by comparing Google results for similar searches...."

"[O]ur crawl process is completely automated; we don't ... manipulate search results by 
hand." --Google Web Search Help

"'Don't be evil' [means] providing our users unbiased access to information." --Google Code of 
Conduct as provided to investors (first paragraph)

"cherish public credit ... use it as sparingly as possible ... avoiding likewise the 
accumulation of debt ... bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts 
there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no 
taxes can be devised, which are not ... inconvenient and unpleasant ... ."
George Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_of_Olives

12:26 PM Tuesday, July 06, 2010

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/jf1003539
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/scienceshot-this-beer-knows-wher.html
...
 In a study published in the current issue of The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 
researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably 
traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks 
down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make 
hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person's travels.
...

"...the main genetic selection criteria these days is not skill, intelligence, or 
any of the usual virtues. It's entertainment value. Have that, and everything 
else will come to you."
--Charles Sheffield, 'The Dalmation of Faust', 1978

2:57 PM Monday, June 07, 2010
//www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/05/obama-backing-deal-lift-global-ban-commercial-whaling/

"That moratorium on commercial whaling was the greatest conservation victory
 of the 20th century. And in 2010 to be waving the white flag or bowing to the 
stubbornness of the last three countries engaged in the practice is a 
mind-numbingly dumb idea," Patrick Ramage, the whaling director at 
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told FoxNews.com.

3:05 PM Saturday, June 05, 2010

//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965.html

"...
The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone 
attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine 
of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week. 

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely 
discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as 
Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too 
much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in 
Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations 
in Yemen, provide politically useful tools. 

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the 
previous administration did not." 
..."

4:05 PM Thursday, May 20, 2010

//www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqcur.htm#2

Is U.S. currency legal tender for all debts?
According to the "Legal Tender Statute" (section 5103 of title 31 of the U.S. Code), "United 
States coins and currency (including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal 
Reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, 
and dues." This means that all U.S. money, as identified above, when tendered to a 
creditor legally satisfies a debt to the extent of the amount (face value) tendered.

However, no federal law mandates that a person or an organization must accept currency 
or coins as payment for goods or services not yet provided. For example, a bus line may 
prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills.

Some movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations as a matter of policy may 
refuse to accept currency of a large denomination, such as notes above $20, and as long 
as notice is posted and a transaction giving rise to a debt has not already been completed, 
these organizations have not violated the legal tender law.

3:14 PM Tuesday, May 18, 2010

//www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp

2:55 PM Tuesday, May 18, 2010
//www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/outsourcing_to.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8677486.stm

"
Authorities in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are planning to set up an outsourcing unit in a jail. 
The unit will employ 200 educated convicts who will handle back office operations like data entry, and process 
and transmit information.

The unit, which is expected to undertake back-office work for banks, will work round the clock with three 
shifts of 70 staff each.

Working in the unit will also be financially rewarding for the prisoners.
"

11:46 AM Tuesday, May 11, 2010
//www.google.com/help/places/partners/sba/index.html

1:25 PM Saturday, April 24, 2010

//www.sophos.com/security/best-practice/facebook/
//www.techspot.com/guides/280-manage-facebook-privacy/
http://gigaom.com/2010/04/22/your-moms-guide-to-those-facebook-changes-and-how-to-block-them/
//www.neowin.net/news/facebook039s-new-features-can-secretly-add-apps
//www.neowin.net/news/facebook-security-flaw-lets-you-see-friends039-chats

https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php?ref=mb&drop&__a=4
...at the bottom, and click 'deactivate.'

If you want to actually delete it, you have to go here:
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Turn off instant personalization: Uncheck the box at the bottom of this page. This will 
prevent Facebook from allowing Pandora and Docs.com and Yelp to show 
you customized content based on your Facebook details:
//www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy#!/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=applications

You can control which applications are allowed to share your data, as well as what 
your friends can share about you, on this page:
//www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=applications

All of your privacy settings, such as what turns up when people search for you, who 
you have blocked, and so on, can be controlled on this page:
//www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=applications#!/settings/?tab=privacy

----------------------------

U.S. senators raise Facebook privacy concerns
//www.neowin.net/news/us-senators-raise-facebook-privacy-concerns
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100427/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_facebook_privacy_concerns
"Four Democratic senators have raised concerns over Facebook's privacy controls in a letter due 
to be sent to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg..."

12:06 PM Thursday, April 22, 2010

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-122/sp800-122.pdf

12:46 PM Wednesday, April 21, 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_von_Luckner

12:56 PM Tuesday, April 20, 2010

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/title-2/
//www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/the_effectivene_1.html

He goes on to discuss Obama's authorization of the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American living 
in Yemen. He speculates on whether or not this is illegal, but spends more time musing about the 
effectiveness of assassination, referring to a 2009 paper from Security Studies: "When Heads Roll: 
Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation": "She studied 298 attempts, from 1945 through 
2004, to weaken or eliminate terrorist groups through 'leadership decapitation' -- eliminating people in 
senior positions."
From the paper's conclusion:
The data presented in this paper show that decapitation is not an effective counterterrorism strategy. 
While decapitation is effective in 17 percent of all cases, when compared to the overall rate of 
organizational decline, decapitated groups have a lower rate of decline than groups that have not had 
their leaders removed. The findings show that decapitation is more likely to have counterproductive 
effects in larger, older, religious, and separatist organizations. In these cases decapitation not only has a 
much lower rate of success, the marginal value is, in fact, negative. The data provide an essential test 
of decapitation's value as a counterterrorism policy. 

...Particularly ominous are Jordan's findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are 
religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy 
are 17 percent. Of course, that's better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group 
fading away when there's no decapitation are 33 percent. ...

11:18 AM Friday, April 16, 2010

http://publicintelligence.net/baltimore-police-department-guns-that-look-like-toys/

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