[Quote:]

Marluddin Jalil, a Sharia judge who has ordered the punishment of women for not wearing headscarves, was uncompromising: “The tsunami was because of the sins of the people of Aceh.�?

Thundering into a microphone at a gathering of wives, he made clear where he felt the fault lay: “The Holy Koran says that if women are good, then a country is good.�?

A year after the disaster which many see as a divine punishment, emboldened Islamic hardliners are doing their best to eradicate sin — and women are their prime targets.

[Quote:]

MILLIONS of Australians who tape TV shows and copy CDs will soon get the right to do it with a clear conscience.
The Federal Government will next year legalise the video recording of television shows for personal use, and the transfer of songs from CDs to MP3 players, in a bid to overturn a ban which has made criminals of much of the population.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has flagged tidying up copyright laws by adding fair-use loopholes that will clear the way for private citizens to copy the content without breaking the law.

But yet to be decided is whether a levy will be slapped on the store price of blank CDs and MP3 players, such as iPods, to compensate artists for the revenue they stand to lose under the new laws.

Anyone care to bet if these legislators can ignore a potential new tax?

[Quote:]

This study is from August, but I missed it. The researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were “known unsafe.” Their definition of “known unsafe”: a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available.

MSIE was 98% unsafe. There were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole.

Firefox was 15% unsafe. There were 56 days with an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. 30 of those days were a Mac hole that only affected Mac users. Windows Firefox was 7% unsafe.

Opera was 17% unsafe: 65 days. That number is accidentally a little better than it should be, as two of the upatched periods happened to overlap.

This underestimates the risk, because it doesn’t count vulnerabilities known to the bad guys but not publicly disclosed (and it’s foolish to think that such things don’t exist). So the “98% unsafe” figure for MSIE is generous, and the situation might be even worse.

Wow.

[Quote:]

Two lawyers for Saddam Hussein said Monday that the former Iraqi president’s half brother claims U.S. officials offered him a ranking government position in Iraq if he testified against Saddam but he rejected a deal.

Picture this: You’re a young woman trying to make it as a singer. You’re offered a job, singing for a “Christmas card.” That’s good, right? A step up. Something to add to the resume.

Then you find out….

[source]

This monumental Neoclassical-style power plant was built circa 1915 and put into service in 1925, burning coal that was brought in from barges on the river. It’s grandiose architecture reflected the pride and fortitude of the electric company, whose services were being particularly scrutinized by the public at that period of time. The 15 acre site even housed the world’s largest generator at the time.

The power plant closed in 1985 after 60 years of operation, and although a few transformers are still live, the site crumbles from deterioration. Parts of the 130 foot high cruciform ceiling are collapsing into the turbine hall, and the air is rank with the noxious odor of many chemicals seeping into the floors. Efforts are being made to register the site as a historic building and possibly renovate the power plant into useable space.

This should help you keep your eyes and attention on the road ahead….

[Quote:]

Viacom Outdoor introduceert de ‘Lightning Poster’, een nieuw en high tech buitenreclame product. Door middel van het gebruik van opvallende lichteffecten worden de campagnes op een flitsende manier ondersteund. Bacardi heeft de primeur in handen: hun landelijke campagne in week 52 voor Bacardi Flavours zal uitgebreid worden met Lightning Posters. De posters zullen de vier grote NS stations in Nederland sieren.

Met de Lightning Poster heeft Viacom Outdoor zelf ook een primeur in handen. De poster is namelijk de eerste in zijn soort in Nederland. Door het toevoegen van spectaculaire lichteffecten aan reguliere reclame-uitingen zijn er nu nog meer mogelijkheden de campagnes kracht bij te zetten. Met een selectieve plaatsing op strategische plekken in het Nederlandse straatbeeld zullen de reclamecampagnes die gebruik maken van dit product absoluut de nodige aandacht krijgen. De levertijd van ontwerp tot feitelijke plaatsing is slechts drie weken. Hierbij kan gebruik gemaakt worden van reguliere ontwerpen.

Als marktleider op het gebied van buitenreclame streeft Viacom Outdoor ernaar hun producten relevant, waardevol en innovatief te laten zijn. De wensen en behoeften van de klant spelen hierin een sturende rol. De Lightning Poster is dan ook een waardevolle aanvulling op een reeds breed assortiment. Eerdere buitenreclameprimeurs van Viacom Outdoor waren dit jaar de interactieve abri (via bluetooth), de geurabri en de stationsspreads met LCD-schermen.

[Quote:]

An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won’t be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq’s political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

[Quote:]

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn’t think he should be constrained by their intentions.

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration’s secret eavesdropping program is justified because “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it.”

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What’s good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

[Quote:]

President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.

The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration’s anti-terror tactics.

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post’s executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest’s Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

Of course, what W calls “damaging to national security” is in reality just “damaging to his policical career”.

[Quote:]

A French children’s magazine named as its Child of the Year a British schoolgirl credited with saving about 100 tourists at a Thai beach when the tsunami struck last year.

The upcoming issue of Mon Quotidien, which hits newsstands Tuesday, features a smiling Tilly Smith on its cover.

Smith, now 11, had studied tsunamis in her geography class in Oxshott, a small community just south of London, two weeks before going to Thailand on vacation.

On a morning walk on a Phuket island beach on Dec. 26, 2004, Smith recognized the warning signs that a tsunami was coming when she saw “bubbling on the water and foam sizzling just like in a frying pan.”

She told her parents and alerted staff at the Marriott Hotel, where they were staying. The beach was evacuated minutes before waves struck. The beach was one of the few on Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.

[Quote:]

Dear Mr. Yankee,

My reaction was similar to yours when I saw what Google returns for the phrase “baby Jesus.” “Certainly,” I thought, “those rotten bastards at Google intentionally designed their algorithms to mock our Lord.” But after thinking and praying about it for awhile, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re seeing God’s hand at work here.

Think about it. If Jesus blesses us by appearing on shower doors and grilled cheese sandwiches, why shouldn’t He place His visage on a butt plug? And shouldn’t we feel blessed that our Savior loves his children so much that he wants to get intimately close to us?

And how many times have you been watching someone like Bill O’Reilly defending Our Leader for one of his many non-mistakes, non-lies, or non-criminal acts and then suddenly he bringd our Lord into the argument? After seeing him do it, haven’t you ever thought, “O’Reilly sure pulled Jesus out of his ass for that one.” Well, maybe that’s exactly what he did.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ordering one of these. It certainly looks a lot less painful than my crucifix.

[Quote:]

Here are the most outrageous statements Media Matters for America has documented this year.

[..]

Former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett: “[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” [Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America, 9/28/05]

[..]

Bill O’Reilly, agreeing with caller that illegal immigrants are “biological weapon[s]“: “I think you could probably make an absolutely airtight case that more than 3,000 Americans have been either killed or injured, based upon the 11 million illegals who are here.” [Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 4/15/05]

[..]

Tucker Carlson: “Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he’s nice, but you don’t take him seriously. That’s Canada.” [MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson, 12/15/05]

[Quote:]

New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches – skewed in favor of presidential power.

One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps – a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo.

The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito’s view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights.

In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a “signing statement” about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts’ focus away from “legislative intent” – a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute – toward what he called “the President’s intent.”

In the memo, Judge Alito noted that one problem was the effect these signing statements would have on Congressional relations. They would “not be warmly welcomed by Congress,” he predicted, because of the “novelty of the procedure” and “the potential increase of presidential

[Quote:]

The most disturbing instance of improper behavior occurred last year during the Republican National Convention when a sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police set off a bruising confrontation with demonstrators.

The man, who had vivid blond hair, was holding a sign at a march of poor people when the police suddenly moved to arrest him. Onlookers shouted at the police to let him go, and officers in riot gear responded by pushing against the crowd. Protesters were put on the ground, and at least two were arrested. Meanwhile, the blond-haired man spoke quietly with the police and was quickly led away. The same man was videotaped at an arrest scene a day earlier calling out words that seemed intended to rile the bystanders.

This was a deliberate effort to incite violence that would in turn justify a tough police response.

[Quote:]

Channel 4 News commissioned the list of the 10 things Britons should really worry about in 2006.

The report assesses threats using three criteria – loss of life, economic impact and probability.

Oddly enough, crossing the street didn’t make the list.

[Quote:]

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for “The Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.
The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

[Quote:]

With all of the controversy about the news that the NSA has been monitoring, since 9/11, telephone calls and email messages of Americans, some folks might now be wondering if they are being snooped on. Here’s a quick and easy method to see if one’s email messages are being read by someone else.

The steps are:

1. Set up a Hotmail account.
2. Set up a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediffmail.com)
3. Send messages between the two accounts which might be interesting to the NSA.
4. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server that you have access to itsserver logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the message should encourage an NSA monitor to visit the URL.
5. If the server log file ever shows this URL being accessed, then you know thatyou are being snooped on. The IP address of the access can also provide cluesabout who is doing the snooping.

The trick is to make the link enticing enough for someone or something to want to click on it. As part of a large-scale research project, I would suggest sending out a few hundred thousand messages using various tricks to find one that might work. Here are some possible ideas:

• Include a variety of terrorist related trigger words
• Include other links in a message to known AQ message boards
• Include a fake CC: to Mohamed Atta’s old email address (el-amir@tu-harburg.de)
• Send the message from an SMTP server in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
• Use a fake return address from a known terrorist organization
• Use a ziplip or hushmail account.

Besides monitoring the NSA, this same technique can be used if you suspect your email account password has been stolen or if a family member or coworker is reading your email on your computer of the sly.

It is not a good idea to try this if you hope to ever again fly on an American airline without first being strip-searched by the TSA monkeys.

[Quote:]

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Is a warrant needed to conduct surveillance on public property? No, not really. But these searches were conducted on the private residences of Muslims throughout the nation. Does monitoring radiation levels constitute a “search”? In 2001, as the article points out, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of thermal imaging to detect heat lamps in a residence was a “search” under the 4th amendment and a warrant was needed. The case was U.S. v. Kyllo, and the opinion was written by Justice Scalia.

…From Justice Scalia in Kyllo:

Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a “search” and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.

[Quote:]

Governor Taft of Ohio is about to sign Senate Bill 9, the Ohio Patriot Act. Among its provisions:

• Police can deny entry to “transportation infrastructure” to anyone not showing an ID;
• Police can demand the name, address, and date of birth of anyone suspected of having committed a crime or being about to commit a crime, or having witnessed a crime or a plan to commit a crime. Failure to provide this information is an arrestable offense — so basically all demonstrators could be required to give their names, addresses and dates of birth or face arrest;
• Reminiscent of Joe McCarthy’s famous question, many state licenses will begin with the question “Are you a member of an organization on the U.S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion List?”. Failure to answer means no license; answering affirmatively is self-incrimination.
• Perhaps worst of all, the original version of the bill simply prohibited state or local governemnts or government employees from objecting to the USA PATRIOT act. The current version allows criticism, but threatens local government with the loss of funds if they in any way “materially hinder” Federal anti-terrorism efforts.

[Quote:]

Whether you’ve gotten a card or not, rest assured that Alaska thanks you for the $454 million Christmas present. Remember those “bridges to nowhere” that were finally taken out of the federal budget? Well, they’re back.

One of the bridges is to Gravina Island. Gravina Island’s population: 50. Most of the land is protected wilderness. A very small number of private persons own land there. Guess who owns 33 acres?

[Quote:]

Bad news for quizzers: the 101st annual quiz from King William’s College isn’t any easier than the previous 100

Better fire up your Google-fu.

[Quote:]

The vice president is an iPod fan, and keeping it charged is a priority for his staff.

Normally that isn’t an issue, even when he’s flying around the world. Air Force II is equipped with outlets in each row of seats.

But when Dick Cheney was traveling home overnight Wednesday from his diplomatic mission, most of the outlets went on the fritz.

Working passengers began lining up their laptops to share the power from a couple of working outlets — particularly the reporters who urgently needed to prepare their articles to transmit during a quick refueling stop in England.

But when Cheney said his iPod needed to be recharged, it took precedent above all else and dominated one precious outlet for several hours. The vice president’s press staff intervened so a reporter could use the outlet for 15 minutes to charge a dead laptop, but then the digital music device was plugged back in.

That way, Cheney got his press coverage and his music, too.

Sounds like a cool story, right? Except, you shouldn’t believe a word of it. An iPod charges just nicely though USB as well, so hook up any random laptop to the power, and hook up the iPod to the laptop, and both will charge.