I'm going to be at Philcon this weekend!

I'm temporarily without car so I'm looking for a ride from the bus station on Friday and then again on Sunday (although that can obviously be different people). Thank you in advance!

 I'm on it- @tedivm

For you developer folk I've got a guest blog post up at Carsonified.

How to Create Totally Secure Cookies

This goes beyond the basics and introduces some new features in modern browsers. Its also the first of a two parter, with the second article focusing on securing session (including some fun stuff as Ajax race conditions and session fixation).

So apparently there was a cell phone commercial in Israel that has gotten people all riled up. The advertisement (which I'll pop below) shows some Israeli soldiers coming down the road and getting hit with a soccer ball that flew over the wall. Next think you know, they have an impromptu game going with the Palestinians across the wall (after calling all their friends, this is a cell phone commercial after all). The big problem people had with it is that they felt it made light of the Israel/Palestine situation.






If that were the end of the story I wouldn't have cared, but someone decided to see what would happen if they tried to play it out in real life.
So, for your viewing pleasure, here's what happens when you attempt to start a soccer game with Israeli soldiers.

 

I just got what can only be described as the email version of timecube.

( Brace yourself . . . )

WASHINGTON—In a slight shift from his campaign trail promise, President Obama announced Monday that his administration's message of "Change" has been modified to the somewhat more restrained slogan "Relatively Minor Readjustments in Certain Favorable Policy Areas." "Today, Americans face a great many challenges, and I hear your desperate calls for barely measurable and largely symbolic improvements in the status quo," said Obama, who vowed never to waver in his fight for every last infinitesimal nudge forward on the controversial issues of torture and the military ban on homosexuals. "Remember: Yes we can, if by that you mean tiptoeing around potentially unpopular decisions that could alienate a large segment of the populace." Washington insiders said that, while the new mottos are certainly in keeping with Obama's pledge of government transparency, they are significantly less catchy.

source

I should point out I'm shocked I wasn't beat to this post by tonysalieri.

WASHINGTON (CNN)  -- Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter told colleagues Tuesday that he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, Sen. Harry Reid says.
Sen. Arlen Specter was expected to face a tough primary challenge in 2010.

The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race.

"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right," Specter said in a statement posted by his office on PoliticsPA.com.

"Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Specter, a five-term Senate veteran, was greeted by a loud, sustained round of applause by dozens of constituents outside his Washington office shortly after the news broke.

"I don't have to say anything to them," a smiling Specter said. "They've said it to me."

Read the Rest at CNN.

Seriously LJ, why did you have to start with the audio ads? I don't want to hear "Congratulations you've won a fee wii" when I look at someone's journal. Basic netequitte, stuff it with the automatic audio.

While I am not condoning their actions, the idea that this was a black and white situation with defined good guys and evil pirates is absurd at best. Unfortunately, many people (including some who are normally quite informed on things) are missing a large, and somewhat significant, part of this story.

I am lazy, so I'm just going to quote some shit and let you all read up on this on your own.

From http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html -

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.

In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the detainees, condemned the decision in a statement.

“Though he has made many promises regarding the need for our country to rejoin the world community of nations, by filing this appeal, President Obama has taken on the defense of one of the Bush administration’s unlawful policies founded on nothing more than the idea that might makes right,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/asia/11bagram.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

To quote Kevin Bankston, from the EFF:

"President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties. But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a "secret" that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."

Mr. Bankston will be on Countdown tonight.

Says Court Must Dismiss Jewel v. NSA to Protect 'State Secrets'

San Francisco - The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday.

In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging the agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The Obama Justice Department claims in its motion that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets." These are essentially the same arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago in Hepting v. AT&T, EFF's lawsuit against one of the telecom giants complicit in the NSA spying.

"President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/04/05

http://www.cdt.org/headlines/1196

Cybersecurity Bill Proposes Unprecedented Government Power Over the Internet - A cybersecurity bill introduced today in the Senate would give the federal government extraordinary power over private sector Internet services, applications and software. The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 would, for example, give the President unfettered power to shut down Internet traffic in emergencies or disconnect any critical infrastructure system or network on national security grounds. The bill would grant the Commerce Department the ability to override all privacy laws to access any information about Internet usage in connection with a new role in tracking cybersecurity threats. The bill, introduced by Sens. John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, would also give the government unprecedented control over computer software and Internet services, threatening innovation, freedom and privacy. CDT President and CEO Leslie Harris said, "The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy." April 01, 2009

I am a resident of Chicopee, Massachusetts. Today I decided to call up my Representatives and Senators in an attempt to ask for more oversight and to express my concern over other related issues.

First I called the offices of Representative Richard Neal. The person I talked to was polite, knew about the topics I was bringing up, asked questions to make sure she understood my opinion, and finally made sure to get my address down so she could send me a response. When I got off the phone I remembered exactly why I voted for this guy, even though we do disagree on a few issues.

Then I called Senator Kerry's office. The experience couldn't have been more different. When I mentioned I was calling about oversight in the economic plans, the person at the other end took on a confrontational attitude and responded "Well, do you want oversight or do you want to get us out of this current downtrend?", as if they were mutually exclusive. The conversation went down from there.

Whenever I brought up concerns he would try to downplay or argue his way out of them. I said I didn't believe the plan would work, but before I could explain why he launched into a tirade about how it already was working because the market went up. I tried to point out that one day gains are meaningless unless they're sustained, to which he said CitiBank made a profit so things must be going right. At my mention that they're still raising my interest, even though I didn't miss payments or anything, he said I shouldn't be expecting overnight results.

When I asked him for his name, he hung up. No one picked up when I called back (I was not calling back to continue the conversation, at this point I just wanted the name).

Even if this guy answering the phones doesn't like my opinion, he damn well better listen and pass it on.

Not one to blame an entire office for a single disgruntled employee, I called up one of the Senator's other two offices. Here I spoke with another person, who told me that I would need to call the first office back up, or if I wanted I can put a voicemail in the 'opinions' mailbox. After a little arguing I got him to take my information and promise to look into it, however I don't have much confidence in that happening. Apparently Senator Kerry's often has better things to do than listen to constituents.

It is fine to argue or offer counter points. The conversation I had with Representative Neal's office was quite productive because of it. Even if we don't come to an agreement, the people listening and taking these calls should be passing these opinions off to the people we elected, so they know what we, the people, are thinking.

The problem here is the barely hidden contempt that members of government (whether elected officials or the people they hire) show us lowly middle and lower class people. Apparently we aren't smart enough, or well informed enough, to have opinions. We should just sit back, shut up, and let the people who got us into this mess clean is up, and if we really care about the situation getting better we won't have the audacity to ask for oversight in how our money is being spent.

Forget the fact that its our tax dollars being used, our money being devalued, and companies like JP Morgan are buying new jets when we've had to jump in and bail them out. Forgot the fact that these people argue on one hand about not redistributing the wealth while using the other to funnel money up the top. They could at least have the decency not to rub it in our face and act like its for our own good.

If you're looking to understand how this country got into the mess its in, I highly suggest you read this article from Rolling Stone.

If you read just one thing I link to all year, make it this one. Right now there are a lot of people trying to act like this is some big, unforeseeable event, and not the result of anyone's wrong doing. These people need the rest of us to play into the assumption that this is all to complicated for us to understand, because its the only way to keep their own asses safe from prison (or angry mobs) once the rest of us wake up to the fact that we've been swindled.

Consider this a public service announcement- 'the more you know' and all that- and take some time to read this article and research things on your own, then lets get a conversation going. Talk to your friends, loved ones, random strangers, etc and get them to keep the conversation going with others, and then maybe this country can snap out of its apathetic state.

Ganked from hughcasey.

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?