Can't imagine what makes you think I am British.

You presume I have no personal experience, you believe that because you have been in prison that your experience speaks to the behavior of the average convict, yet you even admit that they behave better inside than outside and yet it is the out side we talk about.

As for giving a mother advice on child birth without being female, You do know that the vast majority of OBGYN doctors are male right? So the vast majority of women who give birth do so with the advice of men.

I thank you for a wonderful post demonstrating the danger of observational bias in forming peoples belief systems.

This is daft, the hardened prison inmate is almost 100% certain to view you as prey and to happily exploit your trust. Your understanding of people is simply backward, the convict *will* fuck with you if he wants to, you need not "give him a reason to". Your average church goer on the other hand almost certainly needs to be given a reason to care about you. You may not find acceptable the things that would cause the church goer to take an interest in you. But if you believe that as long as you do nothing to attract their attention you are safe from the average convict you are dangerously deluded.

Excellent thesis and a most delightful dedication!

    A few salient points from this thesis, for the Slashdot crowd:
    - Accumulation: knowing what to keep and what to toss
    - Distribution: where/how to keep copies
    - Digital stewardship: maintaining objects isn't enough ... you must properly catalog things
    - Long term access means more than just saving bits ... they must be properly rendered

Convolved on this are problems with copyright, fair use, payment for archives, orphaned collections...

Then there's the cost of creating and maintaining a long term digital repository.
Librarians have done a terrific job with our printed archives. Who will become our digital librarians?

Just happened to be staying in the same hotel and I don't recall what started us off but some how we struck up a conversation and he wound up telling me some great stories.

The story about the guy in the FexEx box is even better than the article makes out. Since they couldn't actually ship a person via FedEx for many reasons, the box had to seem to come from the right location which would have meant putting it on a plane, and what not. So to make it all look right Steve got himself a real FedEx uniform and put FexEx stickers on the side of a van and even had one of those scanner guns the delivery people used and pretended to be a FedEx delivery person in order to drop off their "package". As I recall he even picked up all their out going FexEx packages and dropped them off at the local FedEx center to fully make the deception work.

It was one of my more interesting random conversations, at some point they should write a book about this stuff, he had lots more stories than just this one. But yeah basically if someone really wants to get inside your building and steal your stuff badly enough they will.

Yes you need physical security, to prevent the guy in the FedEx box replacing your keyboard with one with a hardware key logger. And planting a transmitter inside your machine to send out the data wirelessly once it has your encryption passwords.

Some 25 years ago, I was on booktour for Cuckoo's Egg. I visited Iowa City and spoke at Prairie Lights bookstore -- delightful people and a wonderful place! A haven for writers, readers, and hackers.

After my talk, I passed along a Klein bottle to an Iowa computer hacker who was fooling with unix. In turn, he gave me a Corn Grenade . I tossed it in my backpack, headed for my next stop, and next evening went to Ames Municipal Airport.

This was in pre-TSA days, but there was certainly airport security: the security guy at the Ames airport discovered the corn grenade in my carry on. Happily, he recognized what it was - a cool, brass, art sculpture which was completely inert. By that time into booktour, I was pretty inert. We chatted for a few minutes, and I took the commuter plane to Chicago.

I'd forgotten about my 3 pound brass friend when the plane landed at O'Hare. But the Chicago X-ray scanner found it, and all sorts of alarms went off. Natch, I was taken aside, given the third degree. Seems that corn grenades aren't recognized in the distant lands of northern Illinois. I had to explain all about corn grenades (and my book, and klein bottles...) Missed my flight, slept overnight in O'Hare, and wound up shipping the heavy lil' guy by UPS ground. Today, that brass ear of corn smiles at me from across my dining room, reminding me when I got hacked by a computer jock in Iowa City...

If history teaches anything it is that just because an insecure protocol should not be used does not mean it will not be used.

If anything since "insecure ~= simpler than a secure protocol" it almost insures it will be used.

To further show what a terrible idea pushing videos ads is, I had not bothered to get F.B. Purity until now, but just the thought of having vid ads with sound pushed at me was enough to make me go and get everything blocked.

However visions of the Aesculaptor Mark 3 from Logan's Run may make me conclude that the good old fashioned Mark I Eye Ball is still up to the task.

I think after years of surviving being stuck in the arm by humans I can decline to avail myself of this one particular advancement without feeling I've suddenly gone Luddite

The article author seems to assume that patented technology just falls from the sky and comes for free to the lucky patent holder who then exploits the rest of the world, when they say;

"But the patents had devastating real-world implications, because they kept the prices for the diagnostics artificially high."

they are arguing from false premises. Now in this case I happen to agree with not allowing patents on unmodified genes however it is still the case that the prices are only artificially high if the diagnostics would have existed had it not been possible to acquire patents on them in the first place,

According to the article it would have been ok if they had gotten the patents if they were motivated to save lives rather than make money. This is not an article which rationally discussed the problems of the patent system, and those problems are legion, it is an article that says if you try and make money you are bad. Not really very interesting.

You expect local legislatures and police to respect SCOTUS rulings? How quaint a notion. Well after they arrest you and convict you perhaps on appeal they will see the error of their ways.

Oh the wonders of the internet if someone says anything we don't like they are in a fantasy land? Seriously? You clearly can't read or make any judgements for yourself that you need me to specify that the first two are obvious endangerments, the next is malicious falsehood which may lead to reputational injury which is a damage to business property, which happens to be a crime in NY called.....

Reckless endangerment of property.
    A person is guilty of reckless endangerment of property when he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of damage to the property of another person in an amount exceeding two hundred fifty dollars.

So it would be pretty easy to cause a lost of business exceeding $250, thus endangerment.

The last one is what we who can separate reality from fantasy like to call sarcasm, but since you seem to have trouble I'll admit that I don't think it would represent endangerment of the reputation of the City of Chicago since they don't have any reputation left to endanger.