Friday 26 November 2010

The voice in the phone told me to...

Here's why you don't just obey strangers who call you up over the telephone. You also should beware about advice forward from strangers via email.


A man trashed his South Carolina motel room on orders from a prank caller, who told him there was a "midget" imprisoned next door.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Wait for the theory

If you find a theory you don't like, just wait - there'll be another one along in a while.

www.physorg.com
‎(PhysOrg.com) -- In general, asking what happened before the Big Bang is not really considered a science question. According to Big Bang theory, time did not even exist before this point roughly 13.7 billion years ago. But now, Oxford University physicist Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan from the Ye

Body scanners for the trains?

Physic mind probes next, to try and catch the sort of strong principled reactionary who might turn terrorist while on the train as a consequence of something they read in the paper. (Or possibly by the bad service).



Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for US vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary. '[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,' Napolitano said

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Could you spot a skimming cash machine?

Do you think you could spot a dodgy cash machine? I don't think I could - look at these pictures and see for yourself.


Criminals increasingly are cannibalizing parts from handheld audio players and cheap spy cams to make extremely stealthy and effective ATM skimmers, devices designed to be attached to cash machines and siphon card + PIN data, a new report warns.

Dangers of using general purpose computers for specific purposes

The benefits of being able to use a general purpose computer for online banking is also the curse of being able to use a general purpose computer for online banking - namely all the other purposes for which the computer is used and by which it can be exploited.


An escrow firm in Missouri is suing its bank to recover $440,000 that organized cyber thieves stole in an online robbery earlier this year, claiming the bank’s reliance on passwords to secure high-dollar transactions failed to measure up to federal e-banking security guidelines.

Friday 19 November 2010

MP's afraid to investigate News of the World?

"something is dangerously out of kilter" when MPs such as Adam Price on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee confess they have been "held back" from probing into News Corporation's affairs because of "fear of what that company might do to them" – or when former employees are "too frightened to speak publicly about what they know" .

Support your possibly independant lobbyists-for-hire; they will harass OFCOM and your MP's for you.

It's worth a fiver from me, and they take paypal. Standing up to be counted (if that's what it is) was never so easy.
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c05d05/2d442c4a/58ac402e/4674fb5d/2183962099/VEsF/

www.guardian.co.uk
Guardian editor-in-chief argues that no individual or organisation should be allowed 'that much power'. By Dan Sabbagh

Friday 12 November 2010

Global Warming Good for Rain Forests



www.theregister.co.uk
OK, so let's take it that global warming is coming: that temperatures are set to rise by easily 3°C by the end of the century. Disaster, right? The tropical rainforests - lungs of the planet - will die, CO2 levels will thus rise even faster, a runaway process will set in and planet Earth will be transformed into a baking lifeless hell.

Not so much, according to top boffin Carlos Jaramillo of the US Smithsonian Institution. Jaramillo, who works at the Smithsonian's Tropical Research centre, says that 60 million years ago temperatures were up to 5°C higher than now and atmospheric CO2 was running close to 1000 parts per million - way beyond the planet-busting thresholds set by the UN - and yet the rainforests flourished.

"It is remarkable that there is so much concern about the effects of greenhouse conditions on tropical forests," says Jaramillo's Smithsonian colleague Klaus Winter.
more

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Consider the Lilies

Good singing AND good sound engineering (and the picture choice isn't bad)

Tuesday 9 November 2010

The Prayer - from Quest for Camelot

This is good too - but not as a headache cure - I did buy the Heavensong mp3's because of it.

Hmmm... version removed from Youtube - now I'll have to buy Heavensong;. See track 13 here at the Deseret Book website. try Celine Dion instead:

Music for a headache

This music is good for a headache - competes with Barber's "More tears from heaven"
And what is it we shall hope for?