Comment Re:Maybe that's why... (Score 3, Interesting) 571
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7585645.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7588329.stm
Yes, stay in your magic fluff land in-spite of reality.
Submission + - UK's new police "wartime" powers
gnuman99 writes: For all those that think UK residents retain their privacy in spite of the new lip-reading and talking CCTV cameras, there is another nail-in-the-coffin of privacy and freedom from the Tony Blair government. It gives unprecedented "wartime" powers to police officers. UK's Times Online reports,
New anti-terrorism laws are to be pushed through before Tony Blair leaves office giving "wartime" powers to the police to stop and question people.
John Reid, the home secretary, who is also quitting next month, intends to extend Northern Ireland's draconian police powers to interrogate individuals about who they are, where they have been and where they are going.
Under the new laws, police will not need to suspect that a crime has taken place and can use the power to gain information about "matters relevant" to terror investigations.
If suspects [how is a person of interest a suspect?] fail to stop or refuse to answer questions, they could be charged with a criminal offence and fined up to £5,000. Police already have the power to stop and search people but they have no right to ask for their identity and movements. Related Links
No general police power to stop and question has ever been introduced in mainland Britain except during wartime.
Furthermore, these laws did *nothing* in the civil unrest in Ireland. The entire decades old conflict ended when the *mothers* and *sisters* of the fighters said that enough is enough. That is when the NRA laid down their weapons because they had no support from the community. They lost their purpose. They certainly didn't do it because they were somehow afraid of the police!
I lived in the former Soviet Block country and spent some time in the Soviet Union itself, I know that these laws were also part of the KGB. They could stop anyone for any reason. Many in the west have joked about these laws with a simple phrase when police stops you "Papers!". KGB used the poor excuse of spies and saboteurs to explain these laws (although they never found any). If they just thought of using terrorism, maybe people in the East Block would have never revolted.
But the real question is will the British public accept these new laws as they did everything else in the recent years? Or will they fight for their freedom, as the great generation once did?
New anti-terrorism laws are to be pushed through before Tony Blair leaves office giving "wartime" powers to the police to stop and question people.
John Reid, the home secretary, who is also quitting next month, intends to extend Northern Ireland's draconian police powers to interrogate individuals about who they are, where they have been and where they are going.
Under the new laws, police will not need to suspect that a crime has taken place and can use the power to gain information about "matters relevant" to terror investigations.
If suspects [how is a person of interest a suspect?] fail to stop or refuse to answer questions, they could be charged with a criminal offence and fined up to £5,000. Police already have the power to stop and search people but they have no right to ask for their identity and movements. Related Links
No general police power to stop and question has ever been introduced in mainland Britain except during wartime.
Furthermore, these laws did *nothing* in the civil unrest in Ireland. The entire decades old conflict ended when the *mothers* and *sisters* of the fighters said that enough is enough. That is when the NRA laid down their weapons because they had no support from the community. They lost their purpose. They certainly didn't do it because they were somehow afraid of the police!
I lived in the former Soviet Block country and spent some time in the Soviet Union itself, I know that these laws were also part of the KGB. They could stop anyone for any reason. Many in the west have joked about these laws with a simple phrase when police stops you "Papers!". KGB used the poor excuse of spies and saboteurs to explain these laws (although they never found any). If they just thought of using terrorism, maybe people in the East Block would have never revolted.
But the real question is will the British public accept these new laws as they did everything else in the recent years? Or will they fight for their freedom, as the great generation once did?
Feed What’s Online: The Pangs of Two Becoming One (nytimes.com)
Google’s $3.1 billion deal for the online advertising firm DoubleClick could put the company at odds with itself.
Feed Dell’s Founder Is Rethinking Direct Sales (nytimes.com)
Michael S. Dell is now thinking about changing the way the company markets its computers.
Journal Journal: Asian Americans need to get it together 3
Asian American kids are getting tossed in jail for no decent reason. There's no Jesse Jackson to raise a ruckas, and no white influence and cultural experience to rise to the defense. It's more than time to organize politically to keep this BS from happening.
Journal Journal: The terrorists have won (some bad language) 7
So someone here on the 'dot has a .sig that goes something like this:
Behold, for I have created a nation of humorless pussies - Osama Bin Laden
I don't normally use such language. Unfortunately, I run across stories that make me think this quote is 100% spot-on.
Bookmark At OpEdNews: Meet The The Bushites, The Real Snags in The Withdrawal Plan (opednews.com)
Submission + - Charter.net Hijacks Your Browser
csharpner writes: This may have negative ramifications for Charter as news of this unethical activity gets out:
As of yesterday (as best I can determine) (2007-04-26), Charter.net cable internet services is now hijacking bad DNS queries. In other words, if you mistype a domain name and end up typing one that doesn't exist, normally you'd get an error message. Your own browser has settings where you can choose to be redirected to a search page of your choice, or none at all, if that is your choice.
Charter took that choice away. Now, all bad queries go to here:
http://ww11.charter.net/search
It doesn't matter what your browser settings are. This is because your browser depends on an error code coming back from the Domain Name Servers (DNS), at which point your browser would either display an error message or redirect you to your chosen search page. Now, since Charter's DNS servers never return errors and instead respond with Charter's search page, your browser never receives the proper error code and therefore has no trigger to take you to your chosen search page.
This presents further problems as many software applications (off the shelf and custom, and enterprise software) depend on the internet working the same everywhere. Many applications depend on this error code. They will all fail to work as designed because Charter wants to make advertising revenue.
This unethical activity was attempted by Verisign back in 2003 (but in their case, it effected the ENTIRE internet, not just customers of a single ISP). You can get more information on the Verisign fiasco here for context:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=verisign+hija cks+browser
As of yesterday (as best I can determine) (2007-04-26), Charter.net cable internet services is now hijacking bad DNS queries. In other words, if you mistype a domain name and end up typing one that doesn't exist, normally you'd get an error message. Your own browser has settings where you can choose to be redirected to a search page of your choice, or none at all, if that is your choice.
Charter took that choice away. Now, all bad queries go to here:
http://ww11.charter.net/search
It doesn't matter what your browser settings are. This is because your browser depends on an error code coming back from the Domain Name Servers (DNS), at which point your browser would either display an error message or redirect you to your chosen search page. Now, since Charter's DNS servers never return errors and instead respond with Charter's search page, your browser never receives the proper error code and therefore has no trigger to take you to your chosen search page.
This presents further problems as many software applications (off the shelf and custom, and enterprise software) depend on the internet working the same everywhere. Many applications depend on this error code. They will all fail to work as designed because Charter wants to make advertising revenue.
This unethical activity was attempted by Verisign back in 2003 (but in their case, it effected the ENTIRE internet, not just customers of a single ISP). You can get more information on the Verisign fiasco here for context:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=verisign+hij
Submission + - OLPC to run Windows, come to the US
An anonymous reader writes: 'Yesterday Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab now head of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, gave analysts and journalists an update on the OLPC project. Two big changes were announced — the $100 OLPC is now the $175 OLPC, and it will be able to run Windows. Even in a free and open market where there are free and legal alternatives to using Windows and Office, there's a huge demand for Microsoft software. The OLPC was seen as a way for open source Linux distributions to achieve massive exposure in developing countries, but now Negroponte says that the OLPC machine will be able to run Windows as well as Linux. Details are sketchy but Negroponte did confirm that the XO's developers have been working with Microsoft to get the OLPC up to spec for Windows.' We also find out that the OLPC gets a price hike and will officially come to the US. Could this be tied into Microsoft's new $3 Windows XP Starter and Office 2007 bundle? Now that the OLPC and Intel's Classmate PC can both run Windows, is Linux in the developing world in trouble?
Submission + - NBC Believes They Own Political Discourse
PoliSciASU writes: "MSNBC has established draconian rules regarding the use of the Presidential Primary Debates on the internet. Kevin Bondelli talks about why this is shameful and wrong. Voters are missing out on the ability to actually have an engaged conversation about the candidates and their debate performances because of NBC's greed."
Submission + - My next programming language?
An anonymous reader writes: I'm looking for a next programming language. The last language that I really took seriously was Java. But then it tried to become everything to everybody and got off track. I've dabbled in Ruby, but it seems to be too immature to take seriously. Are there any other languages that can offer ease of development, portability, etc. I'd appreciate your advice. Thanks!
