Posts by Stuff n Things
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ahem... an internet attack.
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I've been fascinated by the suggestion that Russia has launched a internet attack on Georgian websites.
Suggestions are that computers based in Russia have been overloading websites for Georgian government departments and the the main newspaper. Estonia has sent over security experts as they believe Russia did the same thing to them a couple of years ago:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/georgia-under-o.html -
Wow, dude...
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And the alarming story of a mother called in to school to be confronted with allegations that her autistic daughter was being sexually abused -- on the evidence of a psychic …
Bizarre story that one. I am very impressed by the factual and sensible approach taken by the journalist writing the article, though. At the bottom they even have links to Q and As on autism and an article about how to tell if your child is autistic.
I know that our newspapers are under-resourced and we're a small country and all that, but how come WE can't have something like that more regularly? I know that Stuff does interlinking when it has big stories with multiple articles, but this sort of story seems more of a local news article.
When Israel invaded Lebanon I happened to have a look at a New York Times article on the subject, and noticed the elaborate backup stories about the background to the conflict. Maybe I'm missing these because I only read articles online, but we just don't seem to have that sort of reporting...
Anyway, endrant - hope everyone has a lovely weekend...
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I was quite taken with Simon's Willison's vision of "decentralised social networking" via OpenID. I wonder if that's the long-term challenge to facebook, and not another centralised service that has to justify its value by making unfeasible amounts of money without betraying the trust of its users.
I think a key thing that would turn people off Facebook was if there was a significant scare around privacy information. There is a significant number of people out there who get worried about "the government" holding on to personal information - and here we have an instance where large amounts of very personal information about the day-to-day lives of a person is being held by an overseas corporation who (as I understand it) have admitted in the past that they will use that info for marketing purposes. In fact, until recently there was no easy way to actually remove information from Facebook if you decided you didn't want these details held.
I'm a Facebook user myself, but I must admit that I am wary of these things. As is the case with so many pages on the net, it is worthwhile wondering what would happen if something you said 10 years ago could come back to bite you. Now, if Facebook had a specific policy of securely deleting information after a set period of time, that would be helpful...
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But I guess 'bionic core stabilizing muscles' wouldn't sell.
lol
I tried with Bionic Woman - for a couple of episodes anyway... I couldn't get into it.
You know those action series that start off great and then run out of storyline (Stargate would be the shining example - why did it keen going - maybe also Charmed)? When they don't have exciting things to do they start devoting whole episodes to pretenting they're a drama and talking about how each person FEELS and about RELATIONSHIPS. Key plot idea: hero gets locked in room at the start of the episode and spends the next 45 mins analysing their relationships with people.
Bionic Woman felt like it was already doing that. They looked like they would drip-feed minimal amounts of action - but the main focus would be the scientist's relationship with the evil woman, the hero's difficulties with trying to be mom to her sis, etc, etc.
To be blunt SNORE.
But perhaps I'm not the target audience.
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Because I'm far too busy and important to do my own research, can someone please tell me what the likelihood of Clinton taking Obama for VP or vice versa is, depending on who wins the nomination?
I understand that, traditionally, the Deputy is chosen to fill the skill gap of the President. IE: Pres has focus on national issues, DPres has background in international stuff. Pres doesn't have eye for detail, DPres should. Etc, etc.
Caution: your experiences may vary... :-)
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Anyone else been reading 'pronunciation' and cringingly thinking 'pro-now-n-ce-ation' instead of 'pra-nun-ce-ation'?
Had a discussion about this with a mate the other day. He always finds it ironic when folks winge about having to correct overseas' visitors pro-now-n-ce-ation.
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My first reaction is that I don't like the idea of pardons. It's an admission that a legal system has failed in some way.
Maybe this is more of a problem where you've got a state law/federal law distiction. The views of a federal-level pardoner may be different to those of state level law-makers.
Then again, you link in to your West Wing quote about whether it is good to have inconsistent law.
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re: the XBox 360 - to be fair it has only been able to play useful video files since a major Nov/Dec update last year. Before then it could only play WMV files (ug). I suppose Microsoft figured they needed an advantage over PS3, so finally allowed for DivX playback. Oh well, good for us (now, if only I could get it to find networked files...)
Nick M - I notice that the main noise from my XB360 comes from the DVD drive, so it's not so bad if you're playing stuff off a USB drive. Oddly enough, it also seems to be quieter when playing CDs vs DVDs...