Stacey's Mom in a commercial?
Tying in prune juice tinged sugar water?
Just Brilliant.
is a walking meme. - s.g.
Stacey's Mom in a commercial?
Tying in prune juice tinged sugar water?
Just Brilliant.
Users sue Match.com for date fraud: "Xeni Jardin:
Frustrated Match.com users are suing the online dating service over complaints that company employees posed as interested date prospects -- online and in-person! -- to trick accountholders into re-upping paid subscriptions. Please stifle your ROFLs.Match.com is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.
'This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in,' said H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit.
Link to story (Thanks, Mo)"(Via Boing Boing.)
Roll Call: "
Roll Call (sub.req.) ...
The partisan spat over the veracity of testimony by oil company executives last week spilled over into personal barbs on the Senate floor Wednesday, with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) accusing Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of impugning his character on the chamber floor.‘It’s been brought to my attention that the Senator from Illinois has unfairly maligned my character,’ Stevens declared on the floor almost three hours after Durbin accused Stevens of making it easier for oil executives to lie to Congress about whether their companies were involved in closed-door energy policy meetings with Vice President Cheney in 2001.
How often do witnesses not get sworn in when they go before congressional committees?
"(Via Talking Points Memo.)
POLITICS: The War on Gaping Assholes: "Abraham Lincoln once said that when you ‘familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage you prepare your own limbs to wear them.’ Pat Robertson quoted Lincoln when he launched his Presidential bid, as did Paul Giamatti in The Negotiator. The sentiment, that when we are exposed to oppression we act as though we are oppressed (even when we are free), can be applied to the war on porn. Or the war on the hardest of hardcore porn. And the war on pee in porn. Those at SuicideGirls and SG’s members know of the potential of prosecution because of depictions of simulated gore and urination.
Because the Devil lives in Photoshop and people’s urtheras, many other hardcore porn sites are seeking web hosting outside of the country and, like SuicideGirls, have changed or removed images.
Of course, if you are a guest of the CIA at Guantanamo Bay, those acts aren’t vulgar; they’re standard operating procedure.Ironically, the behaviors described as prosecutable and obscene in the FBI memo overlap quite directly with behaviors that FBI agents and others have witnessed at U.S. facilities holding prisoners in the War on Terror. At these facilities, actual torture—not adults hurting each other for sexual pleasure, but adults torturing other adults in order to coerce confessions—has reportedly occurred. Pictures have surfaced showing U.S. soldiers engaging in a level of brutality that makes the brutality dished out by Max Hardcore seem gentle in comparison. And at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an FBI agent has reported seeing prisoners 'chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.' One had pulled his own hair out so that it lay in a pile on the floor next to him. Even more ironically, it was Gonzales who, in 2002, as White House Counsel, signed off on a memo widening the possibilities for violent behavior by U.S. interrogators, a memo that led directly to Americans viewing, in pictures from Abu Ghraib and reports from Guantánamo Bay, the sadism, urination, and defecation that Gonzales appears to abhor so greatly in another context.
And still more ironically, this month top Bush administration officials have been fiercely lobbying against a move by Senator John McCain to outlaw any further torture of prisoners held by the United States, with Vice President Dick Cheney emerging as the most prominent and passionate administration defender of torture. Meanwhile, American conservatives have responded positively to Gonzales's move to curtail the sadistic porn available to Americans, with the Family Research Council announcing 'a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general' as a result of the new obscenity squad.
It’s very easy to apply a ‘slippery slope’ argument to the idea that torture is ‘acceptable’ in certain circumstances of national security, or that it’s a ‘slippery slope’ if you condone or censor people like Max Hardcore. But there is a huge difference between the investigation and prosecution, case by case, of obscene, nonconsensual acts and inciting fear in people who share the predilection for rubberized hoses in asses, enjoy viewing or taking part in double-fisted, double-penetration, and/or like peeing on themselves or their man-whore.
But there’s something to be said that if pictures were posted on the internet of CIA interrogators ‘protecting freedom,’ they would be violating federal obscenity laws.(Written by: Christopher)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
Vice President Dick Cheney jumped into the fray Wednesday by assailing Democrats who contend the Bush administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq, calling their criticism ''one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.''
Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: ''I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.''
...he related several stories of visiting wounded troops, including one who was blinded and lost both his hands but had been denied a Purple Heart because friendly fire caused his injuries.
''I met with the commandant. I said, 'If you don't give him a Purple Heart, I'll give him one of mine.' And they gave him a Purple Heart,'' said Murtha, who has two.
I'm not sure I have an opinion on Bob Woodward's culpability for keeping silent about the fact that he'd been a target of the Valerie Plame leak well before other reporters. While courts at all levels concluded that Matt Cooper and Judith Miller were required to testify, nothing would have required them or Woodward to rush forward unbidden. Woodward's worst offense was joining in the Victoria Toensing/Joe DiGenova chorus of 'there's no crime here,' which is only a little more shameful than it already was, now that we know what he knew.
Much more interesting are the obvious strains in his 'odd relationship' with his Post colleagues, especially Walter Pincus. I should say that I know nothing about what goes on in the Post newsroom. But for as long as I've been reading the Washington Post regularly, I've found it sort of ironic that the paper has some of the most amazing investigative reporters in history, reporters who really earn that overused modifier. Pincus and now retired George Lardner are the best examples, but Morton Mintz was another and in the younger generation, probably Dana Priest is a fourth. All are the kind of reporters who understand how to break open a federal agency, nurture an unhappy bureaucrat with a story to tell until he's ready to tell it, or read through 10,000 pages of public records to find the connections between two events. And none of them are or were all that well known.
Meanwhile the paper also had someone who was probably the embodiment of the term 'investigative reporter' to a generation, but who is actually not that at all. Woodward instead is a stenographer of the narratives of the people at the very highest levels of power, recording their semi-official versions of history. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just a different activity. Even Deep Throat turns out to be not a White House underling shocked at what he's witnessing but basically a rival center of power in Washington at the time, the post-Hoover FBI. I've always wondered if that caused a little tension at the paper. (When I say 'stenographer,' echoing Maureen Dowd's criticism of Judith Miller, I don't mean to associate Woodward with Miller, whose 'entanglement' with sources and her role in the story, makes her something other than a journalist.)
I was glad to see that Greg Anrig linked to an old Joan Didion essay about most of Woodward's books. To my mind the most interesting and revealing of those books is the most unlikely: Wired, his out of print 1984 biography of John Belushi. Wired is almost like a French experimental novel of the 60s, like the novel whose name and author I forget right now that is written entirely without the letter 'e': It is a book about humor written entirely from the perspective of a person without any sense of humor or irony. It's years since I read it, but I vividly remember the flat earnestness with which Woodward recounts the 'Bees' segment from the early Saturday Night Live, and Belushi's dislike of it, the same tone he would later bring to Colin Powell's march to war. He has no idea why people would dress up as bees, laugh at people dressed as bees, or that there are motives and paradoxes underneath the surface. Woodward's mind has a total literalness to it -- as Anrig says, he believes that 'what's really going on' is exactly the same as what his sources tell him. That's wired in, not something he can do anything about, and so I've always been a little sympathetic to Woodward. (And before anyone says 'Asperger's,' let me just say my name's not Bill Frist and I don't do remote medical diagnosis.) And you can get something out of his reporting, if you bring your own sense of irony and skepticism.
p.s.: The book I was thinking of is 'Le Disparition,' by Georges Perec, which I cannot claim to have read either in French or in its English translation. From Google and Wikipedia, I learn that such texts are called 'lipograms' and that 'writing this way is impractical.' Indeed.
"(Via The Decembrist.)
Paris: Beaujolais Nouveau Wino Weekend Begins: "
In North America, people celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November; it's a day of gratitude, love, and generosity. France, being France, celebrates a wine -- the year's new Beaujolais -- on the third Thursday of November. It's a day of drinking, drinking, and, uh, drinking. Beaujolais can be most charitably described as simple, young, and fruity. Most Frenchmen, however, describe the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau as a great excuse to drink the cheap vinegary stuff. In large quantities. This is not one of those wines where you sniff at the cork, take a sip, then swish around in your mouth to fully appreciate it in all its exquisite complexity. It's more of a 'whoo, the weekend's almost here, let's go to some smoky old wine bar with friends, and drink bottle after bottle of the stuff while snacking on little sausages-on-a-toothpick!' No tips needed to find a good place to quaff the ol' Beaujo': almost all cafés, brasseries, and wine bars in Paris and the rest of France will be offering a special today and in the next few days to come. So elbow up to your favorite bar counter with your friends, and let all that astringent goodness flow. Incidentally, in New York, today's advent of the Georges Duboeuf vintage shall be commemorated with various Frenchish restaurants serving dishes and/or cocktails created with the wine, available through November 20.
Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2005 [Official site]
Previously: Best Lebanese Dining in Paris: El Fares, Chocolate, Meet Booze, Digital Living Festival, The Campbell Apartment, Music Mash
"(Via Gridskipper.)
Microsoft announces CableCARD for late 2006: "
We know they’ve been long and hard at work getting it, and now Microsoft’s finally got the
missing link to their Media Center
platform strategy: CableCARD support. This
means, of course, that no longer will Media
Center users (or Vista users, as it were) be subject to the whim and fancy of cable operators and their boxes, but
will be able to get true, integrated high definition cable television support straight to the PC. There is a caveat,
however. Microsoft is only penned to get one-way CableCARD support (v1.0), meaning Pay-Per-View, on-demand programming,
advanced EPG, and the like (v2.0) are out of the question.
[Thanks, Dave]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.
"(Via engadget.com.)
Guy fixes computers in exchange for sex: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Sync has a short piece about a 34-year-old guy named 'Ray Digerati' who placed an ad of Craig's list that said 'WILL FIX COMPUTERS FOR SEXUAL FAVORS,' and he says it's been non-stop action ever since.Most of the calls I get are for spyware removal and viruses. One girl didn't even wait for me to finish the virus scan—she just grabbed me and gave me a blow job.Do you have a set, um, pay scale?
No, I leave it up to their discretion. One girl didn't want to have intercourse, so she offered me a massage and then finished me off with a hand job. It's basically all about the time I spend: If I'm working for one or two hours, I'd like a blow job. An orgasm for every two hours of service is pretty fair. If it's something simple that I can fix in 15 minutes, I'd like to get a foot massage.
Link"(Via Boing Boing.)
You've most likely heard of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff who's been making the media rounds recently, discussing what really happened during the lead-up to war and after. This evening he's going to be on Chris Lydon's Open Source radio show. He'll be taking listener questions both off the air and also from the show's website. If it doesn't play in your area, they also stream it from the site.
"(Via Talking Points Memo.)
The executives [ from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. ] were not under oath when they testified [ about meeting with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress ] , so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress.
Desperate Santorum makes play for post-Enlightenment Era voter bloc ...
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom.Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a 'legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom.'
But on Saturday, the Republican said that, 'Science leads you where it leads you.'
Actually, to insulate themselves from charges of liberal bias aren't journalists supposed to refer to this as 'what some Democrats refer to as 'science''?
Just asking.
"(Via Talking Points Memo.)
Finally, I Am A Bathroom Graffito: "
Received in email from Tanner Beck, who says:
Suprisingly obscure bathroom graffiti I found in the men’s room at the 8-Ball in Ann Arbor, MI. If people were writing my name above trough-style urinals, I’d like to think random people would email me pictures of it.
" (Via Warrenellis.com.)
This feels too cute to be true, but I suppose it's easy to get lost in a rising tide.
;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Monday, Nov 14, 2005 7:22 am
Subject: [IP] Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis
Begin forwarded message:
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: November 14, 2005 6:15:00 AM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis
Hi Dave:
Here's a surprising new twist on the out-sourcing issue, an issue which was featuring a lot in IP a little while ago.
cheers
Brian
====
From the Independent - a national UK paper - yesterday:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article326822.ece
Young Britons flock east to answer India's call-centre crisis
In a remarkable reversal, the subcontinent's telesales firms are eagerly recruiting British labour to fill a skills shortage
By Stephen Khan
Published: 13 November 2005
An army of British workers is being recruited to staff India's vast network of call centres because of a shortage of suitable candidates on the subcontinent.
In a remarkable reversal of the outsourcing that has seen thousands of jobs lost in the UK, telesales operations are looking to fill a skills gap in the east with young Britons willing to work on Indian wages.
And they are eagerly taking up the challenge. Both recent graduates and those with experience of working in British call centres are flocking to sign up for jobs in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore that pay just �350 a month.
It might not sound like much, but many are finding that they can earn enough to live on for six months or a year before heading off travelling. Indeed, a stint in the call centres followed by a period mellowing out on Goa's beaches or touring the palaces of Rajasthan is becoming the fashionable way for single young Britons to spend a gap year.
However, with surveys suggesting that India's telesales industry will be short of more than 120,000 employees over the next two years, many of the newcomers are expected to stay on.
The problem has arisen because while millions of Indians aspire to work in the call centres, managements are becoming more particular about whom they hire. This follows complaints from callers in the UK about staff being unable to understand them.
There has also been a high attrition rate in many of the centres, as Indians became fed up with punishing hours and abuse from callers.
That has not put off young Britons, though. The clamour for jobs in India has reached such a level that agencies have been set up to place them with Indian firms.
One is Launch Offshore, founded by Tim Bond. "People are desperate to sample a slice of another way of life," Mr Bond said. His firm has close to 100 workers in India and expects to place more than 200 next year. Those who sign up are given flights out and accommodation as well as Indian wages.
Among the first to land in the subcontinent was Kenny Rooney, a 28-year-old from Livingston in Scotland. He had worked in a call centre at home, but after nine months in India says he does not want to return. "This is an incredible country," he said, speaking from Bombay. "I have had a brilliant time and met people from all over the world."
Further down the west coast is Pune, a hub of the call-centre industry. Ian Hussey, a 20-year-old business studies student at Sheffield Hallam University, recently began working there. "Doing the work from the bottom up, you learn about the people and the company. It's great."
Young Britons of Indian origin are also finding the jobs offer them a chance to rediscover their roots. Among them is Hasmita Patel, who is also working in Pune. "This has been the best thing I've ever done," said Ms Patel, from Leicester. "It has really allowed me to see the country and get to know people. I've learned so much about myself."
Those operating the centres are delighted by the newcomers. "The cultural fit of the British works wonders. They are very enterprising. They tell me about how we can enhance what we are doing here, what we can share," said Sukaya Katoch, head of training at Pune call centre GTL.
An army of British workers is being recruited to staff India's vast network of call centres because of a shortage of suitable candidates on the subcontinent.
In a remarkable reversal of the outsourcing that has seen thousands of jobs lost in the UK, telesales operations are looking to fill a skills gap in the east with young Britons willing to work on Indian wages.
And they are eagerly taking up the challenge. Both recent graduates and those with experience of working in British call centres are flocking to sign up for jobs in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore that pay just �350 a month.
It might not sound like much, but many are finding that they can earn enough to live on for six months or a year before heading off travelling. Indeed, a stint in the call centres followed by a period mellowing out on Goa's beaches or touring the palaces of Rajasthan is becoming the fashionable way for single young Britons to spend a gap year.
However, with surveys suggesting that India's telesales industry will be short of more than 120,000 employees over the next two years, many of the newcomers are expected to stay on.
The problem has arisen because while millions of Indians aspire to work in the call centres, managements are becoming more particular about whom they hire. This follows complaints from callers in the UK about staff being unable to understand them.
There has also been a high attrition rate in many of the centres, as Indians became fed up with punishing hours and abuse from callers.
That has not put off young Britons, though. The clamour for jobs in India has reached such a level that agencies have been set up to place them with Indian firms.
One is Launch Offshore, founded by Tim Bond. "People are desperate to sample a slice of another way of life," Mr Bond said. His firm has close to 100 workers in India and expects to place more than 200 next year. Those who sign up are given flights out and accommodation as well as Indian wages.
Among the first to land in the subcontinent was Kenny Rooney, a 28-year-old from Livingston in Scotland. He had worked in a call centre at home, but after nine months in India says he does not want to return. "This is an incredible country," he said, speaking from Bombay. "I have had a brilliant time and met people from all over the world."
Further down the west coast is Pune, a hub of the call-centre industry. Ian Hussey, a 20-year-old business studies student at Sheffield Hallam University, recently began working there. "Doing the work from the bottom up, you learn about the people and the company. It's great."
Young Britons of Indian origin are also finding the jobs offer them a chance to rediscover their roots. Among them is Hasmita Patel, who is also working in Pune. "This has been the best thing I've ever done," said Ms Patel, from Leicester. "It has really allowed me to see the country and get to know people. I've learned so much about myself."
Those operating the centres are delighted by the newcomers. "The cultural fit of the British works wonders. They are very enterprising. They tell me about how we can enhance what we are doing here, what we can share," said Sukaya Katoch, head of training at Pune call centre GTL.
--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Don't trust your hardware: "align="texttop" border="0" height="325" hspace="4" vspace="4" width="400" />
I wasn’t able to see David Maynor’s ‘You are the Trojan’
(pdf) talk at Toorcon, but it’s a really
interesting subject. With such a large emphasis being placed on tightening perimeter security with firewalls and IDS
systems how do attacks keep getting through? The user: bringing laptops on site, connecting home systems through a VPN,
or just sacrificing security for speed.Peripherals can also be a major threat. USB and other computer components use Direct Memory Access (DMA) to bypass
the processor. This allows for high performance data transfers. The CPU is completely oblivious to the DMA activity.
There is a lot of trust involved in this situation. Here’s how this could be exploited: Like a diligent individual
you’ve locked you Windows session. Someone walks in with their hacked USB key and plugs it into your computer. The USB
key uses its DMA to kill the process locking your session. Voila! your terminal is now wide open and all they had to do
was plug in their USB key, PSP, iPod… With the XBox 360’s eagerness to work with your iPod, I’m guessing it is probably
just vulnerable to this attack as anything else.Has anyone done this? Maximillian Dornseif presented 0wn3d by an iPod at CanSecWest. The firewire protocol allows
direct memory access and doesn’t require a host which makes this attack even easier. He’s got presentation materials
and code for iPod Linux on his site. There are
legitimate uses. If you were doing forensics you could copy the live memory contents of the machine with minimal
effects.Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.
"(Via hack a day.)
CULTURE: London Dating Scene: Brains, the New Black: "Tired of looking for your soulmate in sea of drunken louts at a bar? Or trying to have a talk at a club pounding music out at 150 decibels? Perhaps the new 'intellidating' scene is for you!
Speed dating and clubbing just don't seem to fill the void for many lonely hearts any more. 'Intellidating' is being acclaimed as the hot new way to romance.
Debating societies, art classes and poetry readings -- all are thriving in the British capital as dating turns cerebral.
The trend has been spotted by a wide range of social commentators and even prompted the heavyweight magazine The Economist to declare: 'Seriousness is booming.'
The appropriately named Sebastian Shakespeare wrote in London's Evening Standard newspaper: 'Debates and poetry readings are fast becoming London's most romantic nights out.'OK, I'm not so hot on poetry readings, but a break from the typical dating schemes is a welcome change according to Ginny Greewood, who runs a club dedicated to cerebral lonelyhearts.
'You are not concentrating on what is happening from the navel to the knee -- you are connecting to the gray matter,' she told Reuters.
'They have got the income and the intelligence: they just need someone to organize their social diaries.'
'I think intellidating is a great phrase,' she said. 'I'm sure it will end up in the dictionary. If you are an intelligent person in an important position at work, you are not going to hang out in a bar or go speed dating.'John Gordon and Jeremy O'Grady have set up a similar scene -- a debate club called Intelligence Squared that has sold out every night they've organized.
So cerebral daters out for rarefied seduction are treated to mind-stretching debates like 'Better rough justice than another 9/11' and 'The rise of China spells the decline of the West.'
'Whether it is dating or debating is debatable but this represents an opportunity for people who want intelligent dating,' O'Grady said.
'There is such a lack of institutional fora other than the dance floor or the club for them to meet. It is all so hideously difficult.'Sounds like my cup of tea.
(Written by: Noctua)
"(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Friday, Nov 11, 2005 3:24 pm
Subject: [IP] November mini-AIR - Not Valid in Kansas
Begin forwarded message:
----------------------------------------------------------
2005-11-06 Not Valid in Kansas
Many things are no longer valid in Kansas, thanks to the November
8, 2005 mandate by the Kansas State Board of Education.
As a public service, we have created warning stickers that say:
NOT VALID IN KANSAS
as per order of the Board of Education,
November 8, 2005
Use of this device or substance may
require, imply, and/or endorse the existence
of one or more of the following:
chemistry; evolution; electromagnetism;
gravity; mathematics; thermodynamics;
education.
You can download a printable PDF file:
<http://www.improbable.com/teach/lessons2005/NOT-VALID-
INKANSAS.pdf>.
NOTE: The Kansas Board of Education is co-winner of the 1999 Ig
Nobel Prize for Science Education for its earlier work on this
subject.
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