[Quote:]

The judge who used to sit in charge of the American star chamber secret court issuing surveillance warrants says that his organisation should not have been sidestepped by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11.

Royce Lamberth was head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002. As such, he was responsible for authorising secret intelligence-gathering operations in America involving terror and espionage cases. The FIS Court – set up in response to various spook scandals in the 1970s – turns down only 1 per cent of applications it receives for wiretaps, surveillance, bugging and covert burglaries (sorry, searches).

[..]

“What we have found in the history of our country is that you can’t trust the executive,” he said.

“We have to understand you can fight the war [on terror] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war.”

The Bush administration had suggested that the FIS surveillance-approval process was too cumbersome and time-consuming, holding up the struggle against terrorists. Lamberth strongly denied this, saying that he had always been happy to issue warrants for taps and burglaries at a moment’s notice.

Apparently he approved five secret operations by cellphone while stuck in traffic on the morning of 9/11, and was always happy to unleash federal operatives against their possibly traitorous fellow citizens – even in the small hours of the morning or at weekends.

The good judge also criticised the FBI’s implementation of Patriot Act measures, in which 56 regional supervisors were delegated powers to issue the controversial National Security Letters (NSLs). NSLs not only permit swashbuckling, unregulated surveillance, but they can also be accompanied by terrifying Soviet-style gag orders that can forbid any discussion of the NSL having been issued, on pain of a five-year stretch in the cooler.

[Quote:]

Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

The simulation could be used to better understand which elements in the building’s structural core were affected, how they responded to the initial shock of the aircraft collision, and how the tower later collapsed from the ensuing fire fed by an estimated 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, said Mete Sozen, the Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering in Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering.

It took about 80 hours using a high-performance computer containing 16 processors to produce the first simulation, which depicts how the plane tore through several stories of the structure within a half-second, said Christoph M. Hoffmann, a professor of computer science and co-director of the Computing Research Institute at Purdue.

[Quote:]

De politie moest vrijdagavond 22 juni alle zeilen bijzetten om te voorkomen dat een doorgedraaide drugsgebruiker met zijn auto de openbare weg opging. De man vernielde met zijn auto een heel korenveld.

Rond 18.25 uur kreeg de politie melding dat er op het Kornpad in Dussen een grijze Mercedes terreinauto het korenveld was ingereden. Ter plaatse troffen de agenten een compleet verwarde man aan, die met zijn auto constant rondjes reed door het korenveld. Het lukte op geen enkele manier om contact te maken met de man. Toen een van de agenten zijn portier probeerde open te trekken, gaf de man gas. De agent viel op de grond en kon, door razendsnel zijn benen weg te trekken, voorkomen dat hij werd overreden. Om te verhinderen dat de automobilist de openbare weg zou bereiken, werden de toegangswegen naar het veld met politievoertuigen afgezet. Dit zou namelijk een onaanvaardbaar veiligheidsrisico met zich hebben meegebracht.

Vervolgens zijn twee 4×4 drive politieauto’s ingezet om de Mercedes klem te rijden. De man probeerde te ontkomen, waarbij hij een metalen hek ramde en in een naastgelegen boomgaard enkele appelbomen omver reed. De actie werd gecoördineerd vanuit een politiehelikopter die boven het korenveld hing. Het lukte uiteindelijk om de man tot stoppen te dwingen, waarbij de Mercedes SUV in de sloot belandde. De betrokken politievoertuigen en de auto van de verdachte raakten daarbij beschadigd. Achteraf bleek dat de man, een 35-jarige Tilburger, in de auto van zijn vader reed. De verdachte verkeerde onder invloed van cocaïne, zo verklaarde hij later zelf. Ook in de auto werd een gebruikershoeveelheid harddrugs gevonden. Hij is ingesloten en in verzekering gesteld. Over het totale schadebedrag is op dit moment nog geen duidelijkheid. De politiehelikopter heeft vanuit de lucht de ontstane schade aan het korenveld op foto’s vastgelegd.

Gelukkig hebben we de beelden nog…

[Quote:]

De zes internationals van Jong Oranje die zaterdag na de gewonnen EK-finale de Surinaamse vlag over hun schouders droegen, hebben onbedoeld voor veel beroering gezorgd.

Ryan Babel, Maceo Rigters, Royston Drenthe, Gianni Zuiverloon, Boy Waterman en Ryan Donk wilden slechts laten zien hoe trots ze zijn op hun afkomst, maar maakten een storm van negatieve reacties los op diverse websites.

Op de site van het AD logen de commentaren er niet om. ,,Bah, ik werd er misselijk van. Het is toch niet voor niets het Nederlands elftal? Als je je meer Surinamer voelt, moet je niet voor Oranje uitkomen,’’ luidde een van de veelal anonieme reacties.

Ik vraag me af waar diezelfde mensen waren toen er massaal met de friese vlag werd gezwaaid tijdens de schaatswedstrijden in thialf.

[Quote:]

linguists and philosophers to muse on the crazy relationship between words and their meanings. In the law, words—the important ones, at least—are defined narrowly, and judges, lawyers, and jurors are trusted to understand their meanings. It’s precisely because language is so powerful in a courtroom that we treat it so reverently.

Yet a Nebraska district judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, suddenly finds himself in a war of words with attorneys on both sides of a sexual assault trial. More worrisome, he appears to be at war with language itself, and his paradoxical answer is to ban it: Last fall, Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004.

Safi’s first trial resulted in a hung jury last November when jurors deadlocked 7-5. Responding to Cheuvront’s initial language ban—which will be in force again when Safi is retried in July—prosecutors upped the ante last month by seeking to have words like sex and intercourse barred from the courtroom as well. The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they’ll just have to read the witnesses’ eyebrows to sort out the difference.

And at the next murder trial, the word “Murder” will be banned.

[Quote:]

“We remain wholly committed to the destruction of America, the Great Satan,” al-Sharif said. “But now is not a good time for us. The season finale of Lost was such a cliff- hanger that we have to at least catch the first episode of the new season. After that, though, death to the infidels.”

“Probably,” added al-Sharif, who noted that his nearly $6,000 in credit-card debt from recent purchases of a 52-inch HDTV and a backyard gas grill prevents him from buying needed materials for the attack.

Though the members of the cell said that they “live only to spill the blood of crusaders who oppress Muslims,” they cited additional reasons for the delay, including an unexpired free Netflix trial and nagging lower-back pain.

“I think I’m entitled to a little time to fully enjoy the in-dash MP3 adapter and heads-up display that Allah, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to provide me with,” munitions expert Mohammed Akram said of the 2006 Mercury Mariner that is intended to be used as a car bomb during the attack. “Also, I have nine months left on the lease. But after that, I am more than willing to load it with explosives and go to my glory in its all-leather interior and heated seats.”

And there you have it. Sending a grill, a 52-inch HDTV and a honda civic to each citizen of Iraq and Afghanistan would have been a lot cheaper. It wouldn’t have made Dick Cheney or his Halliburton friends any richer, though.

Apple has posted a 20 minute guided tour of the iPhone.

Watching it I see that at some point in time, the designers sat down and said “well, we’ve all been using smart-phones for a while now, what irritates us most, what did they wrong?”

And then proceeded to do those things right. My own windows-mobile based smart-phone just started a retirement countdown, because I see all the things that irritate me on it solved, and solved very, very well.

[Quote:]

A young Eurasian Crane — on the right — eats from a litter picker disguised as an adult crane, on the left.

It’s at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, England. Turns out the staff there was worries that the birds would become too accustomed to humans, and then too dependent. So they came up with a set of crame costumes and heads to fool the youngsters.

[Quote:]

Na twee dagen en één lange nacht van onderhandelingen stemde grootste dwarsligger Polen toch in met een voorstel van EU-voorzitter Duitsland.

Polen, Groot-Brittannië en Nederland zagen de meesten van hun eisen ingewilligd. De komende maanden werken de lidstaten de politieke afspraken uit tot gedetailleerde juridische teksten.

Een verheugde premier Jan Peter Balkenende zei dat het “hoofdstuk van de grondwet nu is afgesloten”. “Dit is een resultaat waarmee we recht doen aan het nee van de Nederlandse burger.”

Wach-effe…. dus “we doen het toch maar noemen het geen grondwet” is voldoende om te claimen dat je recht doet aan het nee?

Ik weet niet wat je gesnoven hebt, maar ik wil er ook wat van!

[Quote:]

In a recent ruling by the district court of Stockholm, the publisher of the Swedish daily Aftonbladet was found guilty of hate speech and sentenced to a conditional sentence and fines. An anonymous user in a moderated forum on the Aftonbladet web site uttered the hate speech.

It has been debated whether the speech was removed from the forum quickly enough or not, but that is an issue not dealt with in this case. According to the court the crime was committed immediately upon publication.

The legal situation in Sweden regarding freedom of speech on the Internet is ambiguous. According to the laws regulating freedom of speech, the publisher has a strict accountability for everything published in his paper. Only during extreme circumstances should the publisher escape accountability. When it comes to the Internet, the publisher of a web forum can be held accountable if he is a registered publisher and works for a media company.

And now the Swedish foreign minister is being investigated for a comment on his weblog.

rough English translation:

Good. Sometimes, the best way to get a bullshit law changed, is to enforce it against those in power.

[Quote:]

So when is the supermassive star Eta Carinae going to blow? No one knows. But at 100 – 150 times the Sun’s mass, it doesn’t have much time left. And the presence of lots of nitrogen in the gas surrounding it is a bad sign: that means that the star was making heavy elements in its core, then belching them up into space. By the time a star like Eta Car is making nitrogen, it doesn’t have long left to go. And when it goes, it’ll go.

Read the entire article, it is great!

Here is an excellent rant about compilers.. read it if you’re in IT.

[Quote:]

Between 1973 and 2006 dramatic changes along the coast of the United Arab Emirates follow the development of Dubai, one of the country’s seven emirates. The country is located along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula where the land tapers to a sharp tip that nearly separates the Persian Gulf to the north from the Gulf of Oman to the south. This trio of images from NASA’s series of Landsat satellites shows the remarkable transformation.

[Quote:]

The Pickens County Library System’s half-hour summer programs for middle and high school students were supposed to take a light-hearted look at the topics “Secrets and Spies: How to Keep a Secret by Writing in Code or Making Invisible Ink” and “What’s Your Sign?” Another program was to examine astrology, palmistry, and numerology; and others were to feature tarot cards, tie-dying t-shirts, how to make a Zen garden, and yoga.

Now the programs are cancelled in the wake of phone and e-mail threats from the community, believed to emanate from a single local Baptist church. The astrology program was labeled as “witchcraft” by callers, while the Zen garden and yoga programs were objected to as “promoting other religions.” The t-shirts workshop? “Promotes the hippie culture and drug use,” callers said.

“If you have an anonymous call of a bomb, what do you do?” asks Library Director Marguerite Keenan, explaining her decision to cancel the YA programs. “You clear the building, you close the building for the protection of the children. And that’s hugely sad.”

source

Here’s a nifty problem. First, download this maze. Open it in Photoshop and use only Photoshop features to solve the maze.

Go ahead, try. Then, read the solution after the link:

Read the rest of this entry »

[Quote:]

Every executive agency in the government, including the president’s office, is required to issue an annual report disclosing statistics on document classification and declassification activity. Every executive agency, that is, except for one: the vice president’s office. U.S. News & World Report explains:

Megan McGinn, Cheney’s deputy press secretary, says the vice president’s office is exempt.

“This matter has been thoroughly reviewed,” McGinn told U.S. News, “and it has been determined that reporting requirements do not apply to the office of the vice president, which has both legislative and executive functions.”

“Thoroughly reviewed,” I assume, means that David Addington has written a memo saying Cheney doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. He’s not executive, he’s not legislative, he’s a quantum superposition of both and therefore not subject to the classical laws the rest of us are.

Usually their arrogance isn’t quite so bald-faced. I guess Cheney is tired of putting up a facade for the little people.

[Quote:]

On Sunday, June 24, 2007, local, state and national officials are conducting an exercise to test the delivery of emergency medicine.

Postal carriers will deliver small, empty, cardboard boxes that represent medication to approximately 52,000 households in the Germantown (19144), Fairmount (19130), and Boulevard (19149) areas of Philadelphia. A Philadelphia Police Department officer will be with each postal carrier as part of the test.

For this test, this empty box is meant to represent emergency medications that would prevent people from becoming sick from a bioterrorist attack.

So, let me get this straight. This exercise is meant to demonstrate that the Postal Service has the capacity to deliver small packages to homes in three zip codes within the city. Every single postal delivery will have his or her own police escort, to ensure that this tricky and complex task is properly carried out. And the delivery will consist of a surrealist joke, an empty box representing medication.

I feel safer already.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

The CIA said Thursday it has decided to declassify most of a voluminous 1973 file known as “the family jewels,” which details some of the agency’s most notorious operations.

Assassination plots, human experimentation, illegal wiretaps and surveillance of journalists in the 1950s through the early 1970s are among the activities documented in the 693-page file, according to previously released documents about “the family jewels.”

“Much of it has been in the press before, and most of it is unflattering, but it is CIAs history,” CIA director Michael Hayden, who announced the decision in a speech to the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.

“The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency,” he said.

A different Agency? Really? I have only two words for you: extraordinary rendition.

[Quote:]

EMI began selling its music in high-quality DRM-free format last month. It’s unrestricted catalogue is now available for sale from 7Digital and Apple’s iTunes. In future, EMI will sell DRM-free music through Amazon and PassAlong Networks.

Berkowitz said that initial success with DRM-free songs seems set to boost sales of digital albums, as well as songs. She confirmed that sales of the legendary Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon had increased since it shipped DRM-free – these are up 350 per cent.

The other three major labels: Universal, Warner and Sony/BMG are reportedly studying the results of EMI’s experiement closely. Those labels still favour rights-restriction in an attempt to protect their content, but market pressure may force them to emulate EMI and join Apple’s iTunes Plus service.

Something quite interesting is that I haven’t seen any utility that removes the peronalized info from those mp3 tracks. My conclusion so far is that people don’t worry about that info because they don’t give away the music they buy. And that means their hatred for DRM isn’t based on any inability to copy the music for friends, but on the limits what they can do with the music themselves.

Note for the music industry: your customer is generally honest, and they appreciate being treated as such. You may want to learn from that.

In the mean time, the rest of the industry continues their policy of buying politicians:

[Industry Committee Demands a Canadian DMCA:]

Just as parliamentarians voted to break for the summer, the Industry Committee (member list here) issued its report on counterfeiting and piracy, unambiguously titled Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft.  The report and its recommendations are stunning as they represent the most lopsided copyright related report since Sam Bulte chaired the Canadian Heritage Committee.  The Committee acknowledges that the statistical evidence is “at best, very crude estimates”, so it chose to adopt a 1998 OECD study that places global counterfeiting at US$600 billion (never mind that the OECD has just released a report setting the number at one-third that figure).

While no one supports counterfeiting, the Committee’s zeal to address the issue is striking, even going beyond the roadmap from the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network.  In particular, the report makes the following recommendations:

• ratify the WIPO Internet treaties (seemingly because the U.S. has placed us on the Special 301 list)
• increase damages and penalties under the Copyright Act
• create a new offence for the distribution of pirated works
• create a new offence for the manufacture or distribution of circumvention devices for commercial gain
• create new administrative penalties for the importation of counterfeit and pirated goods
• create a new criminal offence for manufacturing, reproducing, importing, distributing, and selling counterfeit goods
• strengthen civil remedies for counterfeiting and piracy infringement
• increase the resources allocated to the RCMP and Justice to counter counterfeiting and piracy
• prioritize RCMP and Justice copyright enforcement
• encourage prosecutors to seek more significant penalties for counterfeiting and piracy violations, including imprisonment
• create a new IP Crime Task Force
• new border measures, data sharing, and the creation of an IP registry

The government will be required to respond to this report in the fall.  While it may not accept all the recommendations, this report dramatically escalates the pressure for one-sided copyright reforms that mirror DMCA-style laws.

And the same in the movie industry:

[Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying:]

A proposed amendment to the current copy protection license governing DVDs would completely ban all DVD backups, and prevent DVD playback without the DVD disk being present inside the drive.

The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) this past March. The proposed amendment is scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, according to Malcolm.

[Quote:]

Apple Inc. may be developing lower-cost flavours of its iPhone smartphone in order to attract attention of the mass market, an analyst said in a note to clients.

That must be a great job if you can get it. You state the bleeding obvious, and you get paid for it.

[Quote:]

In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two.

[Quote:]

Rudolph Giuliani’s membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel’s top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited “previous time commitments” in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why – the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani’s lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said – and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.

Money is more important than Iraq. And if you wonder why this isn’t headline news, that’s simple too: it’s not a $400 haircut, and it’s not how he smells.

[Quote:]

Today President Bush issued the third veto of his presidency and his second on stem cell research on a bill that would lessen restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

It’s a subject that most Americans support, according to an April 2007 ABC News poll that found 68 percent of Americans support stem cell research.

[..]

“These boys and girls are not spare parts,” President Bush said in July 2006.

Not for the next 18 years anyway: