The Department of Homeland Security is hoping to overcome that limitation by automating the identification of individuals whose behavior suggests they pose a threat via a program dubbed "Hostile Intent."

Pretty soon the "Thought Police" will be able to arrest you for a "Thought Crime".

The software is pretty cool. So is the mood driven PONG. [ Video Link ]

But the spectrum of human emotion can not be lumped into a few categories.

Donnie: Life isn't that simple. I mean who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.
Kitty Farmer: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
Donnie: Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else!

Homeland Security tests automated 'Hostile Intent' detector

It looks like the world's highest production cost car show, Top Gear, is coming to America. BBC America that is. That's right -- Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May won't just be stopping by to hoon around a bit like they did last time, instead it looks as though they'll be coming stateside to a local cable operator near you -- at least according to the BBC America site. They're showing off air times starting on August 20th with "Episode 1."

I can't wait!

Top Gear: Top Gear UK Is Coming To BBC America!

A Minnesota man accused of drunk driving has sued to see the source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN machine that busted him, and the state Supreme Court is allowing the request to go forward.

His attorney told the paper, "The problem is, the manufacturer of the thing thinks they can hold it back and not tell anybody how it works. For all we know, it's a random number generator."

If they’re going to be accused based on what some machine says, then they ought to be allowed to challenge the accuracy of the machine. And they can't do that unless they’re allowed to know how the machine works.

Who is doing the QA work for these state certification programs?

What if the machine was off by a 100th of a BAC measurement? I applaud this effort, even if it is just a slick way to get out of a DUI.

Demanding the source code for the Intoxilyzer 5000EN

404 Not Found

403 Forbidden

400 Bad Request

HTTP errors - a photoset on Flickr

Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.

So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before?

I've personally used IBM's Many Eyes and I'm thankful they make such a service freely available.

Also, I secretly have a crush on Fernanda B. Viégas; one of the researchers that worked on Many Eyes. Oops, I guess it's not a secret anymore.

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

New Site Up
Fri, 08/03/2007 - 16:04 — mtrump

The new site is up. More content will be up shortly

IRC at #summercon on EFNet

Announcements | summercon 2007

This made me BIG LULZ and even EPIC LULZ.

They call themselves 'Anonymous'

DESTROY

They are hackers on steroids, treating the Web like a real-life video game, sacking Web sites, creating chaos and disrupting innocent people's lives.

DIE

Like an internet hate-machine.

ATTACK

FOX found out about 4chan.org. FOX, stop being a LULZ killer.

FOX Investigates: 'Hacker Gangs'

I was writing an application for creating a manifest for JavaScript. I was unable to do it using DOM; instead I wrote my own application for parsing JavaScript files. It is little tough to peek into JavaScript objects, initial I could only get the members and fields using for-in. but that was not enough, what if someone stored a file locally and I have to write code to execute it, I would be able to get only the members, just executing members without passing the required input parameter if any will not work. The code below will parse the file and give me the options as to what input is required and if something is returned what it could possibly be returning except primitive types. Knowing these things in advance makes it easier to execute the code. Well it worked for me; let’s see how it works for you. I know many people are looking for something like this.

JavaScript Reflection

First the Philippines abolishes capital punishment... now this.
You're on notice Philippines!

Inmates at central Philippines prison re-enact the moves from Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' music video.

Convicts boogie to 'Thriller'

KH:

We do not publicize how often the no-fly system stops people you would not want on your flight. Several times a week would low-ball it.

Almost 20,000 False Positives:

The Justice Department's proposed budget for 2008 reveals for the first time how often names match against the database, reporting that there were 19,967 "positive matches" in 2006.

19,967 / 52 = 383.9
What that really translates to approximately 350 people per week inconvenienced. If they were arrested, deported, or their plot foiled we would of heard about it in the news.

But remeber what KH said about why they use the no-fly list:

Because it works.

Schneier on Security: Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator (Part 3)