according to the article on torrentfreak, LulzSec was cracked last year because one of their hackers used HMA, and HMA readily gave up their logs to the FBI. HMA is a UK company. So, if privacy is of any worth to you, don't go with HMA. If you think you can use HMA to get onto torrents and share movies or songs without worrying about the long arm of the american law, think again. next stop, gitmo.

... leaving the door wide open for human-vegetable hybrids.

the law seems to forbid human hybrids with other mammals. That leaves a huge area of potential nobel prize research for human hybrids with funguses, reptiles, invertebrates (bugs, jellyfish, worms) and plants, without even having to put out the call through seti for extraterrestrial volunteers.

this cups not half empty, it's half full!

aside from the guy probably being a credit card stealing scumbag accessory ...

as a canadian i am very aware of the unhesitant inclination of americans to apply their laws the world over. black ops renditions? no problem.

consider that this guy has never set foot in the US of A, possibly accepted credit card numbers using servers entirely out of american jurisdiction. it's possible he broke no laws in his own country. As i understand it, some american collected all the credit card numbers and offered them up to this guy. so, he's like a pawnbroker knowingly accepting stolen goods, except he's like a pawnbroker in another country. Now, if I was to steal some jewelery from an american, maybe in canada, and hot foot it to nigeria to sell my loot, is the US of A going to rendition whoever I sell them to there? As far as I know, once I get out of the country - heck, maybe even if I crossed state lines, I'm clear, and the guy I sell to is clear too. Why is the credit card thing any different, legally and jurisdictionally?

The example isn't the greatest because it's pretty clearly against the law to steal jewelery in canada, america, and probably even in nigeria too. Hey, but suppose it's England, and I find some jewelery just lying there on the street, hightail to nigeria, sell it. As far as I know, in canada and america, it's finders keepers, but in england I'd be a thief.

So why does the US have any jurisdiction here? the guy never set foot on US soil. he wasn't even arrested in the US. The americans got the indians to execute their warrant. This guy probably hasn't even been served with anything, no disclosure whatsoever. Did he even know there were charges against him? He's been given the guantanamo bay judge jury executioner treatment.

Suppose the americans decide to enforce their dmca act across the world. What then? Well, I can imagine the pirate bay crew would be facing some quality time in a corner of cuba, stat.

Closer to home we've got some compassion club guy in BC gold territory who sold some seeds to americans from an online seed catalog in canada. he never set foot in the states, and it's the US post office that should be jailed for trafficking but here he is being sent to an american jail for years, and probably not one of those martha stewart comrad black country club prisons either.

Well, heck, the americans invaded afganistan on the slimmest of pretexts so what do you expect. the taliban offerred up bin laden if the americans would just present some proof he was 911 connected, but the americans got all indignant about some ragheads getting uppity and asking questions, so they invaded instead. 8 years later bin laden is still at large - but they got the oil. oh, and the poppy crop is outstanding.

talk about yer hardware backdoors ... this one is a pseudo random number generator that can be rigged to generate predictable keys. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ketcham.php

The remarkable thing is that 4 exocets hit their targets, caused considerable damage, but none of them exploded! The worst damage was caused when the flame from the solid fuel rockets of the exocets ignited the aluminum hulls, which then could not be extinguished. The british have since reconsidered their decision to build their ships out of inflammable metals. Aluminum will burn even under water, and the only way to extinguish the fire is to smother it with inert materials (non-oxygen bearing).

At the time I thought that one failure to explode was possibly accidental equipment failure, but for all four to fail, that had to be a kill switch. I think the british had the kill codes for the exocets, but only used them to disable the explosive, not the targeting, not thinking about how the heat of the fuel would set the aluminum hull on fire. They were probably under some obligation to the french not to reveal the existance of the kill codes, and to not use the kill codes so as to make the exocets look really bad, like turning them around and hitting argentine positions. that would really kill the market for exocets, wouldn't it.

The wikipedia article on exocets documents the falklands/malvinas war, noting that none of the exocets to hit their targets, actually exploded ... here's wikipedia on the three british ships struck by exocets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Conveyor ...

"On 25 May 1982 the Atlantic Conveyor was hit by two[2] Exocet missiles fired by a pair of Argentine Super Étendard jet fighter. The ship caught fire, the fire then became uncontrollable. When the fire had burnt out, the ship was boarded but nothing was recoverable and so the decision was made to sink her. It is unclear whether the missile's warhead detonated ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet ...

"The Exocet that struck the Glamorgan failed to explode, but the unburnt rocket fuel caused a significant fire."

"The crew of the Sheffield and members of the British Task Force were of the opinion that the missile had exploded, but the official report from the RN Board of Inquiry, now available (2007) on the Internet, states that from the evidence available the warhead did not explode. The damage caused was due to the large kinetic energy of the missile, and the unused missile fuel that ignited on impact."

imagine what the damage would have been if they had actually exploded!

the cleaners have physical access to your everything. what contract did you sign with them? you know, to minimize your risk, you should outsource your IT to the cleaners. they already have physical access to everything, so it's not much of an extra step to let them maintain your systems too. they're even in the office on a daily basis. if you have any IT issues, just leave them a note!