Dagmar wrote:

NBC Reporter with hidden camera in purse hoping to catch conference attendees committing to crimes (according to Defcon staff) flees Defcon 15 after being outed.

OMG FUCKING LOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!

For more information on this awesome totally ethical NBC program, see this.

AHAHA!

But really I think that she should lose her job for such a stunt...
This is unethical and I think dateline is taking it too far...

See my other post on "Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics"

Is she a member?
She was awarded something from them in 2003.

She has a BSJ02/MSJ03 from Northwestern so I assume she is not an idiot.

She will be here in October ... someone should drop in and say Hi! ... more
it's a public place... someone should go film her undercover getting drunk...

Gota love the internet ....

RE: YouTube - NBC Dateline Reporter flees Defcon 15

Is there anyone on MemeStreams who regularly uses linux on their desktop?

I have to use Windows every day at work. There is something nice about my home computing environment being a little more slick. I like being able to open a unix command prompt. I like the design subtleties of my mac. Its pleasant to use. But I think it may be time to part ways.

I'm tired of Apple. My first mac, an iBook, had a problem where the screen would "go fuzzy" and require a motherboard replacement. This would happen annually, sometimes twice a year. For a while, Apple replaced the motherboards for free, but every time this occured, it involved a week without a machine. Once it also involved a computer which came back with a completely new hard drive. All my data was gone. Clearly, Apple never got to the root cause of the problem, as it kept happening over and over again. Eventually, last summer, Apple said they wouldn't replace the motherboard for free anymore, and their price was in excess of $1000. I had no choice but to buy a new computer.

So I bought a Macbook. I knew it was going to be trouble, but I did it anyway. It was nice for while.

About a month ago I spilled some beer on it. Obviously, my fault. Not like my prior problem. However, these things do happen to laptops and laptops ought to be designed with that in mind.

Instantly, one of the design flaws of the MacBook that I knew would be a problem going in reared its ugly head: There is no way to remove the keyboard. Keyboards get nasty. They get dirty. They do not last as long as the rest of a laptop. Good laptops are designed to make them easy to replace. But not the macbook. Its keyboard is embedded into the system. Its hard to remove and hard to clean. You have a problem with it, you have to send the system in for service.

After 24 hours of drying out, the keyboard didn't work, and so I figured it was going in for service. Fortunately, after a few more days of drying out the keyboard miraculously recovered. Worked fine. Worked fine for a while, anyway. Eventually the mouse started sticking. This got worse and worse over time until last week, when the mouse simply stopped working altogether.

Having no simple way to take the computer apart, my theory was that dust had collected to stickiness in the mouse, and that if I removed the battery and literally sprayed some water on the trackpad and then gave it a few days to dry out, it would likely be fine. This was a stupid idea. I should have SSHed into the thing and cleared out my data first. But I didn't. Again, my fault, not Apple's.

The computer isn't fine. I must have shorted something against the clock battery (which is basically impossible to access) and fried a motherboard component. There is gunk in the computer which might be capacitor guts. I'm fucked.

The reason its hard to get inside the macbook is that it has 27 screws which must be removed. These screws are extremely small, ... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

Desktop Linux

Multinational corporations have foreign policies, and the "home" country doesn't necessarily get special treatment:

In an effort to curb distrust, in 2003 Microsoft signed a pact with China, Russia, the United Kingdom, NATO and other nations to let them see the Windows source code.

A few thoughts:

1) Possession of source code has limited defensive value unless you actually build your software from that source. Based on press reports the agreement does not facilitate local compilation.
2) Is it really feasible for a third party to audit the Vista source? The people involved seem to think so, or are at least making a show of it. I am dubious.
3) The utility of this 'pact' would seem to be substantially offensive.

Consider:

Microsoft has reportedly signed a new government security program source code agreement with China Information Technology Security Certification Center, allowing CNITSEC and other approved institutions to look over the source code and relevant technical data of Microsoft's products, including Windows Vista ,so as to improve their evaluation on the security of Microsoft products. The agreement is an important part of the MOU signed between National Development and Reform Commission and Microsoft in April 2006.

Microsoft's Government Security Program helps government departments and international organizations evaluate the security of Microsoft products. CNITSEC previously signed an agreement with Microsoft on security source code in February 2003 and was authorized to check over the company's major source code and technical data.

From 2003:

According to sources at the software company, China is the eighteenth nation to sign such an agreement to view Microsoft's proprietary source code.

Surely the number has grown since then.

Craig Mundie's doublespeak:

This program is an integral element of our efforts to help address the unique security requirements of governments.

Microsoft Forges 'Pact' With Cyberwarriors Worldwide

k wrote:
This is already awesome, but even more, i want this with a 12 hour cycle.

This is way cool. It would be fun to deconstruct some pop tunes and visualize them with this technique.

RE: whitney music box var. 0 - chromatic - 48 tines

The event begins 54 minutes past midnight PDT (0754 UT) on August 28th when the Moon enters Earth's shadow. At first, there's little change. The outskirts of Earth's shadow are as pale as the Moon itself; an onlooker might not even realize anything is happening. But as the Moon penetrates deeper, a startling metamorphosis occurs. Around 2:52 am PDT (0952 UT), the color of the Moon changes from moondust-gray to sunset-red. This is totality, and it lasts for 90 minutes.

Night owls on the west coast and early risers on the east coast might catch this red moon...

NASA - Dreamy Lunar Eclipse

When writer Elena Lappin flew to LA, she dreamed of a sunkissed, laid-back city. But that was before airport officials decided to detain her as a threat to security ...
...
As it turned out, I was to spend 26 hours in detention. My crime: I had flown in earlier that day to research an innocuous freelance assignment for the Guardian, but did not have a journalist's visa.

Welcome to America | www.guardian.co.uk

He goes way to far, but he is trying to make a point.

Jim Cramer Blows a Head Gasket 8/3/07

Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No, heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile.

And this is winning???

It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan | Salon News

This may be my favorite Gibson book of all time. - Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow sure seems to have liked Spook Country. I didn't get into Gibson's last novel. Some of the marketing ideas were cool but for some reason it just didn't grab me. The linear style didn't build the suspense level that I sought. But I'm going to give this one a shot.

Gibson has a habit of writing physical places I've been to into his novels. I recall in All Tomorrow's Parties the main character walking down a street in San Francisco toward the location at which I was reading the book. Rattle tells me early on in this book a character checks into a Manhattan hotel that a number of MemeStreams users crashed in during the last HOPE, probably around the time the novel is set.

Anyone here reading it yet?

Boing Boing: William Gibson's Spook Country

Seriously. This is definitely above and beyond the usual. No crazy patterns, no violent blinkingness, no creepy face to spring out at you.

Go to the site, and check out the castle by putting your mouse cursor over the image. Notice that it's entirely black and white. Move your mouse pointer off to one side of the image. Now, just like it says, stare at the dot in the center for about 30 seconds, and don't move your head or look away. Relax your eyes even. Then without looking away, move the mouse pointer back into the image.

VIBRANT COLOR!

When you blink and it goes *pffT!* back to black and white is pretty trippy.

Really, really cool optical illusion