According a Houston PD officer in the auto thefts division, the worst place you can put something is on the floor of passenger back seat. That's the first place someone looking to do a smash and grab looks.

Also be aware of someone walking around the parking lot (near cars) that appears to be talking on a cell phone. That's a definite "take it with me or leave" red flag.

It was not meant as condescending, merely as an observation. She didn't even consider one until 3 of her friends got one, then all of a sudden, she HAD to have one. There are numerous other examples.

And perhaps they are looking for the next bright shiny, must have item. If everyone has one, it isn't as special anymore. Fads come and go.

Now whether or not the iphone IS a fad is another question I'll not try to answer. Personally, I've played with my wife's iphone and just can't see why people are so crazy about them. Overpriced and not very flexible IMHO. But maybe it's peer pressure. I've always been rather resistant to it, while my wife is at the other end of the spectrum.

...no one can (yet) stop you writing in anyone's name on an election ballot...

Having worked in Texas elections, I can tell you this isn't really true, at least in Texas. While you can write any name you want, only names on the list of write-in candidates will be counted. So if you write in Mickey Mouse, and he's not on the list, that vote won't be counted.

While I like, and use, Sumatra myself, anyone thinking to replace Adobe with it should be warned it does NOT contain a browser plug-in for reading PDFs. Some sites (*cough*State of Texas*cough*) are coded so they don't work right if you lack the plug-in.

...Of course if you've got No-script or Ad Block, you're probably fine...

Ad Block I love (actually adblock plus), but I've tried No-Script and don't have it any more. It's a great idea, but for most people, it's just too much work. Too many sites don't work properly without javascript. It's stupid and it's wrong, but that's the reality on the web. You wind up just disabling no-script before too long because yet another site doesn't work properly and you're tired of making an exception for every site, or in my case, get tired of the [quite understandable] complaints.

...The patent system and the copyright system require that holders of such must protect and defend their own material...

True, for now. The danger is Congress hasn't truly represented the people for quite some time, and instead represents those with money. This means those with money, like the RIAA, can have the law changed. That's the real danger.

...because you have no idea when they might act out their fantasies for real...

I remember watching a show, Penn and Teller IIRC, where they stated the states with the highest porn consumption had the lowest rates of sexual assault, and the states with the lowest porn consumption had highest rates of sexual assault. They did admit that this isn't proof the two are related, but you have to wonder.

If looking at child porn prevents someone from actually hurting a child, then while the production of the porn was a bad thing, some good can come out of that act. And if some good can come out of it, should we stop the distribution? Punish the producers yes, the ones doing real, physical harm. But is it right to needlessly endanger another child?

I'm beginning to think it is something like organ donation. The best organ donors are young, healthy people who should, by all rights, still be alive. They are the ones killed by accident or crime. If it's a crime, the criminal is (or should be) punished, but the fruits of that crime, usable organs, are not illegal to donate to help save the lives of others.

...or recent grads with no experience.

And how do they get experience when no one wants to employ them? I speak from personal experience. I have both a BS (U of MD) and a Masters (Texas A&M) in Chemical Engineering, and I graduated (both times) to unemployement. I must have sent out close to 1500 resumes. Got 3 interviews and didn't get hired for any of them. Did some time working in law enforcement, and now am underemployed as a computer tech. My degrees were worthless. Part of that was the economy when I graduated, and a large part of it was my school's placement offices sucked. For my BS, only 6 out of 22 had job offers, and at least 1 was as a salesman, not an engineer.

I currently have a neighbor in the same boat. He has a BS in Chem. Engr and works as a DBA because he couldn't get a job in engineering too. He's already told me he doesn't want either of his kids going into engineering. The job market sucks.

We don't have a shortage. We merely need to give the ones we have an opportunity.

I like the quote: "...Starz, in a statement, called its decision "a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging" of its content...". Translation: We think we can gouge Netflix now that they are big enough and if we pull our content, then people with just buy it elsewhere. Piracy doesn't exist.

I can't help but wonder if this is just hard-ball negotiating tactics and as Feb 28 approaches, some deal will reached.

...AT&T they live in their own little dillusional world.

More like they think they are above the law, and to a large degree, they are correct. :(

I applaud your windmill tilting skills.

It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.- E. Debs

Then who did you vote for last election? Did you vote independent or third party? Did you vote at all? Because it should be apparent to everyone here that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going to help anyone but themselves and the rich.

I can say proudly that I have voted in every General Election since I've been old enough, and I've been voting against both the Dems and Reps all this time. I keep wondering just how bad Congress has to get before enough other voters wake up and join me.

Sure, with the hashes you can break the passwords quickly, but that requires you first have the hashes. Now think about attacking over the web and brute forcing it. Let's assume their brain dead and allow you to try all day long. How fast can you try passwords? Remember, you have to consider not only your connection speed, but their speed and the rate their server can answer.

I recently tested hydra on a full duplex 100Mbit network with just two computers on it, one being an ssh server and the other the attacker. The best speed I could sustain was around 220 tries/min. Assuming a 6 character password, lowercase only (English), if an attacker tried for 30 days non-stop and knew the character set, and knew it was 6 characters long, their chance of guessing the password would be (6^26/220/60/24)*30/(6^26) = 0.01%

Keep in mind, out of some 30 odd real life attacks against an ssh server I've got data on, the fastest attack I've seen is about 150 tries/min and that attack lasted less than 4 minutes. Obviously, if you use a dictionary attack and a dictionary password, the chance of brute forcing it jumps dramatically. But the actual data I have shows most usernames are tried only 1-3 times (depending on the attack) before the attacker moves on to the next account.

But the fact remains, it's not web brute force attacks that need to be feared. It's a server compromise where the hashes are compromised that is to be feared. And with Amazon's GPU clusters available for rent, the best hash can be brute forced quickly and cheaply.

Hotmail's changes are like the TSA. Lots of noise, inconvenience, and expense, but little to no real security improvement.