Just a few days ago it was made official – eccentric systems cracker Gary McKinnon, known as the UFO Hacker by the news media has lost his final appeal and will be extradited to the United States to stand trial. If convicted, McKinnon is looking at 70 years in federal prison for compromising 97 computer networks operated by the US Department of Defense in his quest to prove that UFOs exist. Federal prosecutors claim that McKinnon’s actions may have interfered with their response to the events of 9/11, though there is little to no evidence supporting their claim …
Now that it's Thanksgiving Day and there's nothing to do until the turkey has finished roasting in the oven, I've got a chance to write about everything that's happened in the past couple of days.
Aside from adding a thirteenth bookcase to the apartment (which actually contains the bulk of our DVD collection) last Saturday brought with it an afternoon with the Mad Scientist Coffee Klatsch while Lyssa stayed home to relax. I spent the afternoon with Hasufin, Mika, and Jason trading doomsday scenarios that ran the gamut of elegance, subtlty, and destructive potential, an activity which I'm surprised didn't …
I roused myself from bed far earlier than I'm accustomed to on Saturday morning, around 0800 EST5EDT or so, for what is traditionally the most memorable event prior to one's wedding.. the bachelor's party. While most of the groomsmen weren't able to attend on Saturday due to their lack of proximity (most of them live at least one state, and usually more than that away from the DC area), the festivities were well attended by close friends from nearby. Shortly before 0900 local time most everyone had assembled on the doorstep: Jason and Jarin arrived first, followed by Grant and …
Friday as a whole wound up being something of a comedy of errors - the first half of the day was supposed to be spent at the dentist's office having stage two of my emergency root canal performed (building up the plastic post, taking the cast for the permanant crown, and placing the temporary), but per usual things started going south. While out running an emergency errand on Friday morning I got a call from my boss - not only had I been re-assigned to another project at the last minute but there was apparantly a pressing need to show up at …
It has recently made it into the press that the FBI has been conducting wired surveillance of an international nature - the specifics of the operation aren't known, which is what one would expect of an ongoing investigation. However, due to an ongoing problem with controlling funds allocated to fieldwork, they forgot to pay the telco bill for the wiretap and the telco summarily shut the line off. The FBI's been fighting problems with mismanagement of money and embezzlement for years now, and while the measures they've put in place are helping to some extent they sometimes cause problems. This is …
Fire fighters in central London were called out in full hazmat gear when they received a report that a) something was on fire, and b) it was causing knocking down everyone that was within range of the cloud. Knocking down as in, "couldn't breathe, couldn't see, in lots of pain."
At 1900 local time they had pinpointed the location (the Thai Cottage Restaurant) and the source of the noxious smoke: A cooking pot containing about nine pounds of nam prik pao, which is a Thai dipping sauce made up of super-hot chili peppers that are fried until they are burned …
Since almost the beginning of Iraq II, the US military has been concerned about bloggers leaking information about upcoming operations and situations in the field that hadn't been cleaned up yet. Lately, they've been commanding troops to police their weblogs and clear all posts through a superior officer before actually posting in the hopes of minimizing the amount of sensitive information that gets out, which makes sense when you think about it. Remember what Geraldo Rivera did back in 2003? URLs and names of blogs have to be registered with the chain of command so that they can keep an …
Windows OneCare is Microsoft's all-in-one personal security suite, encompassing everything from malware removal to virus scanning on your average personal workstation. The latest release has a particularly nasty glitch, though: When scanning your Outlook .pst files, if it happens to come across an infected e-mail it'll move the whole file into quarantine or delete it entirely depending upon how you've got it configured. It doesn't treat a file that is a legitimate part of a Microsoft app any differently from a trojan executable on the hard drive.
Oops.
Thankfully, there is a workaround for this problem outlined in the article …
