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iPhone Background Apps

A non-conspiracy theory about why Apple has banned background applications from the iPhone. Battery life. I, for one, find the argument convincing.

Insecure by design

You can read the contents of a computer’s memory by plugging in a firewire device. I’ve read of similar attacks with USB, but those have generally been exploits. The firewire problem appears to be part of the design.

No powering down for you

Thanks to AJJ: wow.

She’s no Bill

I’ve written elsewhere about not writing HRC off - yet, anyway. But, I have to say, even when she is using lines that got her husband great applause, she just can’t quite get the oratory right.

The things war justifies

I’m posting it here, because I have not done any fact-checking, but the the premise behind this book is shocking and intriguing. It is amazing what things a war far away can be used to justify.

During World War I, 30,000 American women were rounded up, and half of them were detained, often for months, for the supposed purpose of preventing the spread of venereal diseases in soldiers. Some of the arrested were prostitutes, while others were so-called charity girls, young women who picked up men at dance halls simply to have a good time. That the incarceration of these women at detention camps surrounded by barbed wire did nothing to change the rate at which soldiers were contracting STDs was a piece of information that the Committee on the Prevention of Social Evils Surrounding Military Camps was not much interested in during the late summer of 1918. Nor did the committee seem to care that it was often the men who had infected the women.
The unfortunate female detainees at 43 sites around the country were subjected to hard labor, forced medical treatment, unspeakable humiliations and even rape. Their ordeal provides the inspiration for Michael Lowenthal’s lively and illuminating novel Charity Girl.

Grounds for suspicion

If we really have become this kind of society, where anything out of the routinely ordinary is grounds for suspicion, the chilling effect on individuality is going to amount to a positive frost.

Lobby of Parliament

Yesterday thousands of people lobbied Parliament asking for a referendum on the EU Constitution currently being debated in Parliament.

The BBC hardly mentioned it at all, and on their online site used what can best be described as sarcastic speech marks in the headline.

Growing up in the UK, I like to believe that the BBC is impartial, independent and covers all important news stories in unparalleled detail. Often, I feel that they are testing my faith.

What cat?

My thanks to my friends at my second favourite place in the universe (you know who you all are) for pointing me in the direction of this rather interesting webpage:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? 

Updated daily, it seems.

The Security of Paper Documents

Any security that relies upon the difficulty of producing a paper document is suspect.

President Blair

With thanks to The Adam Smith Blog: