Advertising on web pages went from small, single banner ads to obnoxious fly-across animations and other practices that went past what I was willing to allow -- so I block virtually all of it.

Advertising on television has gotten nearly as bad. It's very poorly targeted, frequently either offensive or incredibly banal. It's disingenuous or outright misleading, and aggressive.

Programming is no longer a good enough trade for me to sit through the advertising.

Well managed sites do not store your password. They store an encryption HASH of your password. When you type in your password, they use the same routine to HASH what you type in and compare the hashes. You cannot go backward from a hash to a password (well, not a modern hash, and not with a password that isn't a simple common word). There is no excuse for a web site to actually have a stored copy of your actual password anywhere in their systems.

So far, none of the Philips "Ambient LED" bulbs I've purchased has failed. I have several, in 40 and 60 watt equiv. The 60's (around 850 lumins) are not the latest prize winners, but are still quite efficient.

I --HATE-- the CFL bulbs. I have found them to be unreliable as well as uncomfortable to use for reading or working. These new LED bulbs, however, have a very nice color to them, a fairly wide spectrum, virtually no flicker at all, and as I said -- so far, I have yet to have one fail.

I actually prefer these new ones to incandescent bulbs for reading and lighting a room -- I would never have said that for any form of CFL or long tube fluorescent.

Fantastic post. I agree with most of what you say - although I think the vulnerability of many of the least mainstream religions has a lot to do with the fact that they're running websites put up on the cheap, built and managed by amateurs. These sites are just more vulnerable than sites built and run by professional web site designers and administrators.

I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read Kupfernigk response. The sites which are least professionally built and maintained are most vulnerable to outsiders planting malware. Many of the less mainstream religious sites fall into this category of low technical management and are thus vulnerable.

Porn, being a huge industry, seems to get the attention of more skilled developers and administrators (if not actors and camera people). While surely some are not, and those will be vulnerable, I think most of the porn sites that are malware laden fall into the category of 'honeypots' with either fake or real porn placed with the deliberate goal of being a malware vector.

I'd have guessed 9/10 would have data on them. Higher than that if you could real serious forensics and not just dripping the used drive in a reader.

How many Apple "Genii" (Genuses?) will bother to do a drive wipe? What about Geek Squad types? The red shirt guys (now there's a good name) in Staples? Even the ones who know -- will they wait the hour+ while the drive wipe happens?

If I still did stuff like that for a living (thank FSM I don't and haven't in 20 years) I'd b pulling the drives as untouched as possible until I new the data transfer worked as well as possible. Then I'm done -- would I have the discipline to then waste and hour more wiping a drive? Probably not when I was that age.

More than that, it will likely interact with the brain differently. You could conceivably be creating sheep with very different brain function.

no, you're thinking plant fats with one hydrogen atom vs. animal fats with two. the "hydrogenate" plant fats to make them taste and have the texture of animal fats but as a result, they're just as bad for you.

This is more about the fatty acids and oils that are why fish are healthier to eat than beef (in that we eat too much beef and not enough fish, generally).

The real question is ...how will it taste.

I don't get this. They don't have as a good a network, and where they do have coverage it is spotty and calls drop. They seems to be hostile to their own customers, and people don't seem to get what they pay for.

I run a web service for firefighters that sounds like thousands and thousands of text messages each month -- and does using using the US providers' preferred method of sending them via SMTP. AT&T is the slowest at receiving the messages and getting them out to phones in most places by a long way. Verizon is usually a matter of a second or two, where I've seen AT&T regularly take 5 minutes or more and occasionally much longer.

Why do people put up with this crap?

I'm going to sound like a commercial for Verizon here -- but I swear, I'm not in any way tied to them other than as a customer.

I've been a Verizon customer for years and years. While it is true that recently they changed from an "unlimited" service to some reasonable (IMHO) caps based on price, the plan isn't bad at all and it's spelled out pretty clearly. I pay 50 bucks for up to 5gb in a month, and if I go over that it costs me about $10/gb -- which is in line with my service pricing. Most months, I'm way under. Once or twice in a year if I'm travelling a lot and using slingbox over LTE I may go over -- but it's no big deal. My calling plan has a contract length, but I can reduce the monthly minutes and cost or increase it pretty much at will with no penalty so if I care to I could manage the bill to save a bunch of money. My kids phones use my minutes so they don't cost much to add to my plan, and because I'm a volunteer firefighter, they give me 20% off everything plus free unlimited text messaging.

I'm not 100% happy all the time with them, sure. Their international data plan is unusable these days (where it used to be a good deal) but overall -- I don't have the kinds of problems I see people with AT&T complaining about.

First, "at a rate 10 times the previous gold standard" is interesting, but meaningless. What is the actual rate, and how is it measured?

Second, what is the cost and availability of the materials needed for the catalyst? Does this require some kind of unobtainium? The article is very vague here.

Third, Is this something we can practically manufacture in any kind of real scale or are we talking microscopic results measurable only in the lab?

Well, because I've had some hazmat training as part of my volunteer firefighter work, I am at least somewhat aware of basic chemistry which could be misused to cause harm but which would be very unlikely to fall into the category of things which would be caught by the checkpoints I've seen. Some, for example, could be impregnated in ordinary clothing and would not be at all obvious.

Note that 1) I do -not- know all the things those machines look for, and have never tried to found out; 2) I'm not a chemist and can't offhand even recall the name of the stuff I have in mind (though I did see a live demonstration of its effects once); and 3) I certainly don't advocate trying any of this kind of thing.

My point is that if I, with a very limited exposure to this kind of information, can conceive of ways to exploit the system then I have no doubt people with real expertise in the related fields would have absolutely no problem coming up with far more dangerous "solutions" if they thought about it for any length of time.

If I thought these security measures actually worked, I would be all in favor. I don't believe they do. I believe someone with a moderate level of expertise should have no problem bringing the materials through such a screening that would be sufficient to cause a fair degree of mayhem either on board a plane or even in a terminal.

Hell, if I really thought we'd be more secure, I'd walk through the damn scanner bare ass naked. I'm not exactly a body double for the statue of David, but what the hell, it is only a human body and nothing to be so ashamed about. A little less body shame and a little more violence-shame wouldn't hurt our society at all.

Since it does not really add to the security of the situation, however, I am not in favor of this kind of intrusive search strictly for the purpose of security theater. Hiring lowest dollar contractors at least possible wages to perform such an important role is itself a fool's game.

I'm sorry, but no matter much this woman felt violated -- and surely she was bothered by the search -- I find it hard to believe in "....a particularly invasive search involving multiple incursions of a finger into the passenger's vagina." I just find that somewhat implausible unless either the woman wasn't wearing any pants or underwear or else the TSA person was a remarkably talented person with a fair degree of privacy for what I would expect in a security line.

Somewhere, maybe, there is some exaggeration going on.

Lithium Ion batteries are inherently unstable and have to be charged and discharged very carefully. Unlike the old school batteries you'd think of, these batteries have a controller to manage them built in. When that fails, you have big problems (remember the defective ones a few years ago that would just burst into flames?)