Upsetting — extremely well done — article by Jane Mayer for the New Yorker, on the CIA's 'Black Sites'.
Short version, and some reactions, in Report: Harsh Methods Used On 9/11 Suspect from the Washington Post. (Note the Officially Approved Euphemism here: “harsh methods” indeed.)
War crimes, I tell you.
That the Democrats were supine in letting the FISA (Wiretap) bill rush through with minimal scrutiny is clear. What the bill does, though, I haven't quite figured out to my satisfaction.
It's another couple of degrees towards boiled frog; no, it's mostly sensible; no, it's a blank check for the executive, with meaningless oversight.
It's for six months — or is that a year? — and will, I predict be renewed once.
As part of my now nearly complete service on the ICANN Nomcom, I had to think about what skills make for a good member of the ICANN Board of Directors. It seemed to me one way to think about it was that skills should be defined by what I wished the Board did; but that another way to think about it was that that skills should be defined by what the Board actually does.
But what does the ICANN Board actually do? I decided to find out. Or rather, I made my research assistant find out. The results surprised me, and I've posted them now at ICANNWatch, under the title What Does the ICANN Board Do?.
Here's the first paragraph:
In an effort to identify the skill set that would best serve future Board members, we conducted a quick and crude analysis of the most visible evidence available of what the ICANN Board actually does: the ICANN Board meetings. We recognize that this is perhaps not the best evidence imaginable: much of what the Board does is done in secret, and Board meetings have been criticized as somewhat scripted. Nevertheless, many Board members reject these critiques, and even if it were true that meetings are scripted, they remain important events and do memorialize many of the most important things that ICANN does. Besides, one has to start somewhere.
As a long-time Francophile married to a Brit I am of course appalled at this display of European stereotypes that is making the rounds by email. But it's funny anyway.
Terrorism Alert!
The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940, when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been recategorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.”The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.
Also, the French Government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Surrender” and “Collaborate.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.
It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”
The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose.”
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday, as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
Actually, I'm only publishing this because I believe in affirmative action for pan-European jokes that include smaller countries.
I'm not at YearlyKOS (although I wish I were); and I'm not at Defcon either. I've never been able to justify going to Defcon, although it sounds fun. This year in addition to the program, the Defcon ID badge looks really interesting.
Last year's badge was a fine piece of round circuit board with the DEFCON SmileSkull and Crossbones cut into it, a bunch of circuitry, two lit LED eyes, a single watch battery, and a toggle switch to make the eyes blink in sequence. If you were really clever, you could hack the code in the badge to blink out your own secret messages …
…The sucker has a Freescale MC9S08QG8 microcontroller and contains a 5 column by 19 row matrix of LEDs to allow user-customizable scrolling text messages. The default message is I (heart) DEFCON 15. Power source is a pair of lithium coin cell batteries.
Touch the top SmileSkull icon and it turns things on. It’s not a clicky switch, it’s a touch switch – major improvement from last year. A second touch control under the rotary dial symbol (and there’s one to explain to your kids about) allows one to type in a customized message.
If that wasn’t enough, the LEDs are also programmed to deliver a persistence-of-vision (POV) secret message if you trigger the proper mode then wave it around in front of your eyes in one direction, kinda like those hand-held trick LED signs people were having fun with a few years ago.
So many conferences, so little time (& money…)
Dreamhost is unveiling a new service with an unusual pricing model. DreamHost Private Servers will provide CPU and RAM a la carte. $1.00/month for each 10 MB RAM and 10 MhZ CPU, protected, on a shared server (there's also a burst mode, but it's not guaranteed). Unfortunately, you buy them together (I need CPU more than RAM).
So, how much is enough to run a blog?
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