In-A-Gadda-Levitre

she loses her job and offers a lame apology

and the fun doesn't stop chinese hack into lawmakers computers

while I can't argue it's a necessity for teenagers, there's something very comforting about being able to "find" my 17 y.o. daughter almost anytime of the day or night, or that she can call me if she has car trouble or just needs something. And then there's that Verizon GPS thing that can actually tell me where she is, lol

awesome! check out this Press Release from Great Escape in Lake George, where the Comet is alive and well.

A short documentary on current weapon systems overspending that costs us $300 billion according to GAO Report. link Overspending on advanced weapons and program delays are nothing new as anyone who follows defense and government appropriations knows quite well. The percentage of cost overruns and amount of delay is staggering on this one.

well, here's the only pic I've ever seen of the cabling entering/exiting the room. It's a secure location, of course there's no inside pics. I said the the chances of breaking innocent people's civil rights and rights to privacy were extremely high and we shouldn't give them a blank check. I don't think they did something illegal per se, in terms of their little splitter project. My impression is that the Cheney, Addington and some others crafted a warrantless wiretapping document and wrote it in the broadest sense possible such that they could do just about anything they wanted in the name of preventing terrorism. They totally skirted the entire checks and balances system, because they bypassed congress and most of the WH staff, including Rice and Powell. Bush signed it into law via a signing statement and they were good to go. So, according to that particular interpretation or bill, they're covered. Did they break laws in crafting that warrantless wiretap bill (is it unconstitutional) or in the process of eavesdropping on suspected AQ yahoos did they deny innocent people their civil liberties? I have no clue and would yield to the EFF and the courts. The key to all this involves a Narus box. Narus is a deep packet inspection (dpi) intercept system that runs at wire speed. It has a rich set of dpi data mining tools in addition to the hardware that let's you actually look at the payload, not just the packet header, and lets you recreate the entire IP session with all the handshaking, routing, etc. It works on data and voice as well. They could supply all kinds of parameters like IP address, VOIP number, SIP URI, keywords, etc. and it will recreate messages, emails, voice calls, file transfers, http traffic, all that. Narus is the baddest intercept solution out there, bar none. I don't profess to know how the NSA obtains or analyzes its data, but they probably pay huge amounts of black money that would give them a range of IP addresses used, or something like that. The internet is not all smart, but if you understand encapsulation, packetization, and some low level TCP/IP routing protocols, you can look at every packet, determine if it meets some criteria, store it if it does, and throw the rest away. That is exactly what how a Narus dpi box works, and of course they've invested in slick data mining tools that makes it much easier on the analysts. I could care less about traffic cameras, or whether I came through a toll both at a certain hour on Friday. I do care whether the NSA can view every single data packet regardless of who sent and received it, or any VOIP or voice call routed over the net at any time. That's too much leeway and it's not necessary. You gotta have some limits and force them to narrow down their warrant list to some reasonable number. Let them have a good discussion about how many people they need to intercept and how they will update it, as opposed to giving them the master keys to the information highway. not a rant, just a general agreement amongst internet people that they went a wee bit too far in the name of fighting global terrorism. Trust me just doesn't cut it in this case.

you're right, they had no clue about what they had. They didn't even sell it really, as long as you didn't claim it was yours, and lots of companies did that besides Apple. It will go down as 1 of the worst decisions in intellectual property ever.

in terms of sheer numbers, no, he's not the biggest issuer. But his way of using them and in what context has people shouting WTF. As an example, he will sign a bill from congress, invite the creators to the White House and praise them, then as soon as they're gone, issue a signing statement that he intends to ignore major portions of the bill because they conflict with his constitutional powers as his office interprets them. In other cases, he's signed things like the warrantless wiretap bill without going to congress and getting authorization. Even his National Security Chief Connie Rice or his Secy of State (Colin Powell) didn't get to review it.

try googling signing statements our current president has raised this to an art form

Obama walks a fine line in politics... Stroger was black and a fixture in the Afro-American Community. He got a new hospital built and did lots of good things that the residents liked and supported, as well as doled out many personal favors. Claypool was white, and was Mayor Daley's chief of staff. He had the reputation as a reformer, he slashed 1,000 jobs and public assistance budget in Chicago neighborhoods. There are conflicting opinions about whether those were bloated city jobs or actually putting hungry people to work. The point is he didn't have a great reputation either and actually worked for the Daley machine. He was a friend of Claypool and Stroger. In the end he (and Jesse Jackson) remained neutral, didn't support either candidate, and now Claypool works on Obama's campaign. This makes him insincere and gives him poor judgment skills?

iphone is AT&T only, I doubt if tmk-nj wants to switch services, but he'll have to answer that

hey, good response ya, I hear you about getting into all the technical stuff, but there's usually some good overviews that break it down and graphics, attachments, all that. I've been inside data centers like that secret room, they actually lock you in. It's the EFF, he can talk about it, they like that. Gets public opinion on their side. Freaking communist liberals, kill em all. Don't you think there's lots of people that will deny something like that exists? Brush it off as someone who is getting even for not getting promoted. Or deliberate spin. It was probably important to get right in front of this say "there can be no doubt about what this equipment is for and what is capable of" Yes, it has to be dumbed down to what the average Mr and Mrs. America can grasp. How many people like yourself get it so easily? ya, they don't care about our freakiness. I don't know what our National Security Advisers tell the Senate Intelligence Community about specific programs, but Dubya told us over and over it was point to point communications. The propensity for violation of privacy or other civil rights is off the hook here. If the NSA said to AT&T, hey we need unlimited access on the following 400,000 names, that we want every 1 and 0 that touches them, with Top Secret security, and we reserve the right to make wholesale and immediate changes to this list as our needs arise..., that would be more acceptable to most reasonable people. What they said was, we want unlimited top secret access to everyone and everything. We shouldn't give the government a blank check to monitor every packet and phone call across the internet backbone, agreed?

here's a link with some more detail. An internet exchange point interconnects different web and voice traffic kinda like a gigantic intersection of networks, in that packets destined for other networks or countries are routed in and out, billions and billions of them per day. IXPs are what make the world wide web truly worldwide. There's only a handful and there's only two internet nodal points in the US, MAE WEST and MAE EAST. The objective was to peer into MAE WEST from AT&T's IXP, allowing them access to all internet traffic. If you want ugly technical details, have at it. The NSA, with the cooperation of AT&T, split off a copy of all traffic that routed through the IXP so they could analyze it. That means every email, every porn pic, every IM convo, every VOIP phone call (and other traditional landline calls), etc. were visible and audible to them. This has everything to do with wiretapping international phone calls at long distance companies switches. For one thing, this is where the calls are routed overseas in many cases. They used a broadly worded piece of legislation that enabled warrantless wiretapping on suspected terrorists to justify and implement nothing less than "wiretapping the internet."

yes, you're right... but what came out was that the NSA had built what is essentially a giant internet splitter, which enabled it to view every single data packet and listen to every single electronic voice connection that passed across major Internet Exchange Points. That's way beyond a warrantless wiretap on Mohammed Al Sadeem or someone they suspected to be a terrorist.

ya, I was laughing about that myself, the 1st year of the Cougar was 1967 and wasn't offered as a convertible until '69 I think.

I agree, but clearly some presidents (and candidates) are naturally good speakers and some are not so good

I've read some stuff that says he shrinks without his teleprompter, so the town halls might be real interesting this summer. You can criticize him all you want. The only part that bothers me is when the really venomous stuff gets spit out, there's no reason to be like that.

wow, you really wanna go there? you can trash the new guy on a lot of things, but on giving speeches it ain't even a fair fight

ya, I'm definitely with you on that ...

both candidates are most likely not on the same page about what ending the war means Obama wants to end private insurance (for the most part) and have the government run a huge health care system, with some assumptions that the current system can scale up and they can negotiate huge discounts with the providers, etc. McCain wants to end the employer funded health care (for the most part) and assume that the market will offer competitive pricing, bringing the cost down. You can argue for either, but to say they're both for health care assistance, taxes, etc. is a wee bit oversimplified.

but hor laai yue

as I said before it wasn't anything to do with content or (as you mention) accomplishments, but all about oratory style.

I hear you on that... but isn't there a lot of speculation that VA is not only leaning purple, but might actually change it's tradition and vote democratic in November or is that a lot of crap?

I have no doubt that you heard this on the radio, but there is not 1 article or mention of it on the web, so although it's a big deal to you, nobody else seems to care. On the contrary, they seem to be making a big deal that 10,000 showed up right after a major storm in a strong republican state, citing people that were making up excuses to get out of work, or those driving hundreds of miles to see him. Now we'll hear it's because the media is so busy ball washing Obama...

I'll admit that in a flash, the dems haven't fielded a serious candidate since Bill Clinton and he sure earned his name as the teflon kid. I never thought Gore could win either. what's your take on the latest Veteran's Bill?