taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Funny: NYPD alerts cops to ‘terror indicators’.

The NYPD has ordered its patrol force to be more vigilant about spotting and reporting possible signs of terrorism, including individuals who “express hatred for America.” …. The cards advise them to contact counterterrorism investigators when they have suspicions over anyone who is, among other things, carrying driver’s licenses from different states, videotaping utilities and tunnels or wearing fake uniforms.

Sounds like the Village People won’t be playing NYC any time soon, then ;)

Tags: anyone, counterterrorism, driver, force, funny, hatred, nypd, patrol, terror, terrorism, vigilant

Travel: I’ve just spent a week in the UK; much culture was imbibed, I got to see Michael Landy’s Semi-detached at the Tate, met up with some good mates including the pregnant Lean, and was a happy camper overall.

Then I had an 11-hour transatlantic flight, stuck in the middle of a 5-seat row with pointy elbows on both sides; then, best of all, arrived at US Immigration and found myself fingerprinted and had my photo taken, in accordance with their new policies under the US-VISIT program.

Apparently the biometrics equipment providers are a company called Cross Match Technologies. Fingers crossed (arf!) they have better false positive rates than their competitor, Identix.

I’m looking forward to seeing similar false-positive-prone usage of biometric data, for US visitors to other countries in response. (With hilarious results!)

Aside: I wonder how href=”http://use.perl.org/%7eMatts/journal/18915″>Matt’s cooking-related-program-activities injury will affect his biometric profile?

Also of relevance — apparently Boston are introducing random spot-checks of passenger’s papers on their metro transport.

It’s interesting that travel by train requires a passport, driver’s license, or similar heavyweight documentation — but one can zip around the country unimpeded by road. Of course, all of this is moot, seeing as the 9/11 hijackers had perfectly-in-order documentation, including driver’s licenses, and travelled extensively under their real names and passports. One wonders what exactly all this has to do with the War Against Terror, given that.

Funny: Knight Foundation, featuring a downloadable David Hasselhoff Paper Plane! Don’t forget, the song ‘Hot Shot City’ is particularly good.

Tags: camper, culture, documentation, driver, flight, hour, middle, semi-detached, transatlantic, travel, week

The Killer Elite (Rolling Stone):

The twenty-two-year-old driver, Cpl. Joshua Ray Person, and the vehicle team leader, twenty-eight-year-old Sgt. Brad Colbert — both Afghan War veterans – have already reached a profound conclusion about this campaign: that the battlefield that is Iraq is filled with ‘fucking retards.’

Later on:

Captain America, the platoon commander who is almost universally disrespected by the enlisted men, seems to deal with the stress by rising to a state of jabbering incoherence. Up by the bridge there are four enemy dead scattered under the eucalyptus trees, along with piles of munitions — RPGs, AKs and hand grenades. Captain America runs back and forth, picking up their weapons, hurling them into the nearby canal and screaming at the top of his lungs. No one knows what he’s screaming about or why, but as another officer who came upon this scene later concluded, ‘Whatever he was doing, he was not being in command.’

Fantastic series of articles, well worth a read. (Found on stuff.) Similar to this, here’s an unauthorized weblog from a soldier on duty in Iraq — the inside story.

Spam: Good article by Vipul on spam filtering, at MIT Tech Review:

Here’s a list of three rules (created after the most important features of e-mail) that anti-spam software should strive to follow:

• 1) Ability to send and receive e-mail from a stranger. (Whitelisting, payment systems, and challenge/response break this rule.)

• 2) Ability to send and receive pseudo-anonymous e-mail. (Domain-based authentication breaks this rule.)

• 3) E-mail should be free. (Payment systems break this rule.)

He said it. Killing off several useful legit uses of email, just to fix spam, is no good. Looks like he’s started writing his blog-like thing too, again, so I’ll be adding that to my ‘roll (assuming it stays updated! ;) No RSS yet though…

Tags: ability, cpl, driver, elite, killer, payment, rolling, rule, spam, stone

While trying to figure out why my loaner laptop is SO SLOW, I found this on the Linux Dell laptop temperature-control i8k driver website:

No credits to DELL Computer who has always refused to give support on Linux or provide any useful information on the I8K buttons and their buggy BIOS.

Makes you wonder if there are any laptop manufacturers with a concept of open hardware support.

(BTW, current theories on the woeful speed are (a) 128megs of RAM just isn’t enough to use GNOME or KDE on linux these days, and (b) a 4200rpm disk with feck-all cache can’t handle any hard work.)

Other bad news: my heavy-lifting desktop PC’s arrived and won’t power on. yikes.

But — on a brighter note: the sun’s come out; I saw an eagle yesterday; and it rained last night, and all the birds are twittering in the trees, catching worms etc. In the meantime, the lazy cat sits on the balcony and watches idly, even when one lands on the railing less than 3 feet away. I suppose catfood is a lot easier to get hold of. ;)

Tags: computer, dell, driver, information, laptop, linux, loaner, slow, support, website

rOD links to Massholes, an incredible gripe site for residents of Massachusetts to bitch about shitty driving, for example:

Dear Masshole Driver,

WHAT on earth makes you think that making a right hand turn from the left hand lane is a good idea??? Really, I’d like to know.

Signed, The-nice-person-you-totally-cut-off-and-almost-killed

Incredible stuff. Sounds like they could do with the cool innovation recently introduced here — the “dob-a-dangerous-driver” line (1).

Let’s say you’re doing what a friend of mine did a few months ago: crossing the road, with your kid in a buggy, at a pedestrian crossing, with the lights in your favour — then a speeding driver breaks the lights at top speed and nearly totals the pair of you.

This great innovation then allows you to whip out your mobile phone (hey, this is europe, everyone has one (2)), and immediately report the car’s registration number — and 2 weeks later he receives a fine! Hey presto, instant justice. (3)

And in the last week, they’ve introduced penalty points for bad driving; 12 points and you lose your license. Things can only get better — for the pedestrians that is, at least. ;)

(1: no, it’s not really called that BTW)

(2: except me, that is — I’m so far ahead of the bleeding edge I’ve given them up)

(3: well, I’m exagerrating, I think there was more witness and due process involved, but it’s pretty close.)

(4: errno==EDANGLE: dangling footnote found)

Tags: bitch, driver, driving, gripe, hand, innovation, massholes, rod, shitty, site