It is now officially the middle of January - so why is it 65 degrees Farenheit and why are there people walking around in shorts and t-shirts? No, seriously, what gives? I'm sitting here in khakis and a polo shirt in downtown DC (wishing that I was working from home because it is, apparently, a holiday and as such 90% of the city has the day off) in a building that's so empty that most of the hallway and office lights weren't even turned on to conserve power. It's a little creepy, actually.
It's been an interesting weekend, to be sure.. Lyssa and I have been in the market for a couple of things lately, namely a bookcase or media shelf of some kind that we can migrate our DVD collection to, and ring binders that we can move our CD collections into while we rip and encode everything. So, to that end, we spent Saturday driving around searching for stuff along those lines. In two days, we didn't find any bookcases anywhere we looked (well, that's not entirely true, I did find one bookcase, a floor model at OfficeMax, but the construction …
It is now officially the middle of January - so why is it 65 degrees Farenheit and why are there people walking around in shorts and t-shirts? No, seriously, what gives? I'm sitting here in khakis and a polo shirt in downtown DC (wishing that I was working from home because it is, apparently, a holiday and as such 90% of the city has the day off) in a building that's so empty that most of the hallway and office lights weren't even turned on to conserve power. It's a little creepy, actually. Friday night I wound up staying up late …
Have you ever read an end-user license agreement before? I mean really sat down and read one, and not just scrolled through it just to unlock the little 'I agree' button at the bottom of the window so that you could install software that, legally you didn't really buy but actually bought permission to use for a while on your computer. There's some pretty scary stuff in EULAs these days, such as consent to have spyware installed on said box and dropping certain customer protection rights written into law, on the off chance that the software goes haywire and wrecks …
Why don't they just give up on Dibold's e-voting machines? They're already been proven insecure and unauditable beyond the shadow of a doubt. They've already compromised the hardware and software in an undetectible manner. The keys to the locks can be freely purchased online... or fabricated by hand because Diebold put an image of the master key on their website. Because the locks used on the Diebold electronic voting machines are the same ones used on many filing cabinets (the locks of which can be purchased in many hardware and office supply stores), it wasn't hard for Kinard of the …
Remember the REAL ID Act of 2005, which mandates that every US citizen must be issued a national ID card that fits certain federal standards, is electronically readable, and most importantly will be necessary if you ever want to get a job, open a bank account, or fly. They are also supposed to be damn near impossible to copy or counterfit, though the usual rules of sitting at the console when attacking apply. Well, the state of Maine flat out rejected it and asked Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act, and Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, and Washington state are also …
