Municipality police of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, has come forth with yet another breathtaking initiative to keep us all safe and free from the evil oppression.
In my not so humble opinion, the Internet is an open, international medium. It shouldn’t matter where you come from – once you’re online, you should be able to access all public information and services. Yet it tends to happen increasingly often that some resource just tells you something like [Access denied. You are not in an approved area. Now please go have an intercourse with yourself.] which is a thing that irritates me.
It’s a long day at work and I wanted to refresh myself with some music. Blast, I had no music on my new laptop (ThinkPad T500, wee!) yet, so I tried to use Pandora, which I remember as a very clever, customizable and enjoyable streaming music service. To much disappointment, I was greeted with the message “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S.” I wonder who’s behind this – my guess is RIAA and their cronies… No matter; my patience was gone, and my cyber artillery armed and ready for a devastating barrage.
A simple message for everyone who would impose borders upon the Internet: I fart in the general direction of your futile and annoying restriction attempts.
And I can teach everyone else and their granny how to do it, too. » » Find more of “Internet Without Borders + HowTo” inside » »
Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant “had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.” Of course, it’s all video games’ fault.
Jolly. :-D I do hope parents have long respawn timers…
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However, on defense of video games, they are very educationary. A six year old kid stole a car, drove it around, and eventually crashed, claiming that he learned that stuff playing Grand Theft Auto.
Sweet. I can’t wait till I learn some cool swordsmanship and magic from Warhammer Online. :-D
It is perhaps due to my ignorance that I am noticing this now, or maybe I just dismissed it as impossible, but I was pretty shocked by a finding that struck me tonight
Especially after 9/11, it is a common occurrence that Europeans pity citizens of the United States, because their privacy is invaded at every corner, and all that newspeak and fear-mongering really remind us of Orwell’s 1984. My father is even so concerned about his privacy and personal information, that he turned down an opportunity to go to the post-2001 USA several times.
In fact, when I was about to leave for the Land of Freedom to spend a semester there last fall, I even had to pay for being watched and tracked. My visa request would not be granted unless I paid a $100 fee to SEVIS, an organization whose very purpose is to spy on foreign students and visitors.
I always thought that compassion is all that we had to offer in this context, but it turns out I was wrong: Obviously, an agreement between US and EU [NY Times] is about to happen, that will give the US government access to personal data of EU citizens. Am I the only one who feels this is an outrage? Any reason we should trust Team America with this? Of course, they claim they will only “look for suspicious activity”, but just consider how the FBI abuses the Patriot Act. Do you remember that sweet pot of honey they were feeding everyone prior to the Patriot Act vote? This is a binding agreement, and indeed is a big deal. If the EU will have to turn over any such information US would ask for, I think I have yet another reason to move to Norway. » » Find more of “Big Brother’s long fingers” inside » »
And after a brief break, the thing that everyone has been expecting has finally come! Step right up, step right up, everyone, and read the latest shreds of my mighty wisdom, this time about how the witty and the pretty prevail over the shitty security, and how is that no pity. Uh, okay, okay, sorry, keep the eggs and tomatoes to yourself.
According to the BBC: A virtual stripper is helping to defeat anti-spam security checks. Spammers have created a Windows game which shows a woman in a state of undress when people correctly type in text shown in an accompanying image.
Of course, the text comes from online captchas, designed to prevent automated abuse of the resources and services a company provides, intended to make sure that an actual person is trying to access.
Well.. I know I shouldn’t side with the shady lowlifes, but this is just so ingenious. :-D Why not let the horny, libidinous losers do the dirty work, that your algorithms can’t? They will even have fun in the process, and improve their cognitive and typing skills as well.
It is expectable that poor people in a country with seriously damaged infrastructure would suffer from various diseases. Thus, it came as a little surprise that a few weeks ago, cases of cholera started to appear around Baghdad. According to BBC, at least 2000 cases have been confirmed, and the number is growing fast. It is also far from final, as there have been around 30 thousand cases of acute water diarrhea, which may later be confirmed as cholera.
Cholera is a disease often linked to contaminated supplies of drinking water. “It causes severe diarrhoea and vomiting, and patients, particularly children and the elderly, are vulnerable to dangerous dehydration as a result. Treating the condition – or rather alleviating these severe effects, requires only simple measures. However, the clean water and rehydration salts required are often in short supply in areas where they are needed most.” Indeed, the article also reports that only one in five Iraqis have access to effectively sanitised water. That struck me as little weird, so I started to dig around a little. Obviously, most waterworks in the city are now entirely without chlorine. Curious. Isn’t chlorine cheap and easy to produce?
However, chlorine has been dubbed Evil™, and it’s import banned. Why? Iraqi insurgents have used it as a payload for bombs a few times. According to WHO, there are 100 kilotons of water sanitiser waiting on border with Jordan, and because of fear someone could use it to make bombs, it can not get into the country. As is often the case, the worst damage does not come from the terrorist actions themselves, but from our overreaction to them. Chlorine chemical bombs are not particularly effective, compared to other possible payloads, and their usage is dying out. According to wiki: “Higher levels of exposure can cause fatal lung damage; but because the gas is heavier than air it will not dissipate until well after an explosion, and so it is generally considered ineffective as an improvised chemical weapon.” Although chlorine, particularly potassium chlorate, can also be used as an ingredient to produce some explosives, it generally is not effective either, and can be easily replaced.
But the “side-effects” of these bombings are adverse. They have caused the country to lose its supply of drinking water, which could cost thousands of people their lives. It definitely shows how US Army cares about civilians of the area. Also, surprisingly, no one thought of banning salt. :-P All you need to produce chlorine is salt, water, and electricity. Then again, we should probably also ban water. And electricity.
Now here’s a thought for terrorists. Next time, mix a little wheat in your bombs. Following this pattern, the security forces will identify it as a bomb ingredient and issue a countrywide ban. Of course, people will be dying of famine, but that’s only necessary to keep them safe from evil insurgents. In your face, terrorists!
After last month’s resumption of regular patrols of strategic bombers, which were suspended after the 1991 Soviet Union breakup, Red Army* flexes its muscles yet again, this time by testing of Father Of All Bombs, an air delivered fuel-air bomb, yielding the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT. That makes it approximately four times as powerful as US Army’s MOAB. (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or Mother Of All Bombs.) It’s not the bomb I want to talk about, though, it’s the propaganda and attitude of Russian officials that caught me breathless. “The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability,”‘ says Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Gotta love that guy. This statement is misleading at the very least, because most nuclear bombs have way more power than that. For example, Fat Man, one of the first atomic bombs ever used, that was dropped on Nagasaki, had a yield of cca. 21 kilotons of TNT. That gives the mighty FOAB credit to merely 0.2 % of Fat Man’s destructive power, which, while comparable, is nowhere close.
See the Russian report video for yourself:
But Alex is just awesome, he doesn’t stop there. Sharing his wisdom, (estimated to be at least 23, ;-)) with the world, he claims, that the bomb is “environmentally friendly”. Excuse me? Okay, maybe it does not have nuclear fallout with long half-life, but calling a bomb worth of 44 tons of TNT, that leaves “lunar landscape” in its wake, “environmentally friendly” is just outright funny.
Tu-160, the bomber that dropped daddy of all bombs earlier this week.
However, funny turns to insanely idiotic. As bloomberg.com reports: The new weapon disperses a cloud of explosive material that is set off by a charge and produces “an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature,” Perviy Kanal said on its Web site. After the blast, “the soil looks like a lunar landscape,” according to the report.
The new bomb carries fewer explosives than the U.S. device, while the temperature at the center of its blast is twice as high and the area of damage much greater, Perviy Kanal said.
“This has made it possible to reduce the accuracy requirements and made it cheaper, which is necessary in the current situation,” Yuri Balyko, head of the Defense Ministry’s 30th Central Research Institute, told the channel.
The new weapon will allow Russia “to ensure the nation’s security and at the same time battle international terrorism in any situation and in any region,” Rukshin said.
Oh my. I feel dumber just for having read this exhibition of pure wisdom. So we have a weapon that turns an enormous area to lunar landscape, which, in turn, allows us to reduce the accuracy requirements, and, therefore, we can use it to battle international terrorism in any situation and in any region! Holy zombie Jesus, Russian military brains are just precious! :-D Now, if I were a Chechnyan partisan, that would be all I needed to hear to capture a building in the middle of Moscow, and wait for the brave Red Army to level their capital city with one of these babies.
__ * I know it’s not called Red Army anymore. But hey, it seems that not many things have changed apart from the name…
Posted 2 years, 11 months ago at 20:58. 11 comments
After several positive posts, the time has come to write a little rant. Even before entering the US, one thing was clear to me. They appreciate security. It doesn’t necessarily have to work. As long as it makes them feel safer, a security theater is all they need. At some schools, it’s mandatory to have transparent backpacks in order to prevent shooting scenarios. Others want to cut loss on lives by giving the students a fair fighting chance. Bulletproof textbooks are sure to give them an edge over a gunner!
In the meanwhile, plenty of watch lists are created, to keep everyone safe. Don’t worry though, the overfunded homeland security department has done its best to protect us against major threats, such as sinister blinking devices, or deadly biological warfare. Oh, and of course, dropping your iPod into the toilet will also be professionally handled by a full-scale terror alert. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think they deserve our utmost respect for keeping the country safe, though, especially now that the majority of Americans are officially homegrown terrorists. Of course, a lot of security is in place not because it really works, but because it covers the asses of those responsible. As my favourite security guru, Bruce Schneier, so eloquently advises, refuse to be terrorized!
Here on Roosevelt University, the security is also tight. There are security guards everywhere, and I’m glad that we’re allowed to go to the restroom without having to identify ourselves. Last weekend, for example, I had to show my temporary meal card four (!) times before I could have my lunch. First time when entering the building, second time when entering the cafeteria, then at the counter, and then the fourth time to some overzealous security-conscious guard inside.
The irony is, though, that the temporary meal card is a simple printed business card with no photo or security measures whatsoever. The cost to make a copy of such a card is under one dollar, and literally anyone can use it. On the card it says that it was valid only for the first weekend, yet it’s been used for three weeks already. Some of my friends have thrown theirs away after those two days, and couldn’t get their meals until they managed to get a replacement. The security people were treating them like scum for having thrown out a worthless piece of paper that was no longer valid!
Student ID is something we use everywhere except eating at the University Center. They completely rely on it for security and identification. However, to get my student ID, I did not have to prove my identity! I just walked in and said who I was, they took a picture and I was good to go. Those people should realise that the security chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that if you take several eyes of thick steel and pin them together with a paper clip, it isn’t going to work. It’s pointless to check student ID at every corner, if one can get a student photo ID just based on their claim to be a student.
Security is not only a problem at the university. For example, at the jazz festival, a simple blue shirt with the sign SECURITY gave you the right to boss everyone around as you pleased. Tell them where and when to go, what and how could they photograph, where to sit, how long to stay at a given place… and they did so with great zeal and obvious pleasure. I have never seen less professional and significant, and at the same time more annoying security.
In the Michigan lake, the lifeguard people go to great lengths to protect you. They care about your wellbeing to such an extent, that they do not let you swim further, than twenty meters from the beach, where the water is slightly below chest-level for me. I expected that there would be some sort of a barrier in the water, and people observing the swimmers from a watchtower on the beach. That was obviously not enough, because there was also a chain of lifeguard boats facing the beach approximately every thirty meters, with people yelling at you to swim back when you entered neck-deep water. Oh my. I was having a really hard time restraining myself.
It was really hot on the beach, and so it came as little surprise that later on, one woman collapsed and fainted. She was quite dehydrated, and possibly in need of an IV, so we called 911 to send an ambulance. First on the scene was a police car. They added to the overall chaos by “taking care of the situation”, but that was understandable. Maybe they were around with nothing else to do, so they took the call as well. However, before the ambulance arrived, two more patrol cars came by with their sirens ablaze, and a huge firetruck! Now, I understand that the woman was in need of water, but sending a whole firetruck to the beach still seemed like a bit of an overkill to me… no wonder that those departments are eternally low on funds, if they spend their resources like this. :-( I hear sirens several dozen times per day in my room. If every call is handled in such manner, I’m no longer surprised.
Posted 2 years, 12 months ago at 03:09. 5 comments
