International trends suggest that prison radicalization and recruitment are common. Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe bomber, and Muktar Said Ibrahim, involved with the second and failed London attacks in 2005, were radicalized while serving time for petty crimes in Britain. Jamal Ahmidan, a leader of the 2004 Madrid bombings, was radicalized while serving time for theft. Mohamed Achraf, while serving time for credit-card fraud in Spain, established the Martyrs for Morocco, recruiting nearly 20 inmates for attacks on Spain's National Court. Safe Bourada created the Partisans of Victory while serving time in France and recruited convicts for attacks in Paris. Jose Padilla, currently serving a 17-year terrorism conviction, and Michael Finton, arrested last month while allegedly attempting to detonate a bomb in Illinois, were both introduced to radical Islam while serving time on non-terrorism-related charges. And Kevin James founded the Assembly of Authentic Islam behind bars in California, recruiting two fellow inmates for attacks in Los Angeles.

Jundollah is a small armed group of Baluchis that was formed in 2003 to fight the central government in what it termed "national discrimination against the Baluchi people of Iran." 

Interesting ...

The Origin Data Locker: For the paranoid geek who lives with his parents in their fortified underground bunker. Doubt it? Everything from the belongs-on-a-battleship looks to the AES encryption software to the 6-18 digit PIN screams "you will not get the 1TB of porn inside me."

Just waiting for the price to come down a tad ...

Indeed, Iran received a dose of its own medicine, when a shadowy Sunni separatist group named Jundullah targeted a group of high-level Iranian security officials with a lethal suicide bomb attack on Sunday. The attack killed the deputy commander of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards Ground Forces, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, deputy commander of the Guard in the restive Sistan-Baluchistan province, and at least 29 others. Dozens of people were wounded. It was one of the harshest attacks sustained by Iran in recent years.

Life's a bitch, ain't it boys ...

Brazilian authorities said 2,000 police operatives were yesterday hunting for the drug traffickers behind a sudden outbreak of violence in Rio de Janeiro which has so far claimed at least 14 lives and seen a police helicopter shot down.

This will need to be ancient history if you want your Olympics to be profitable ...

Am I really going to compare how you should start a PPC campaign to a sniper’s bullet? Absolutely.

It might work ...

The Second Amendment Foundation on Oct. 9 warned Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to heed the public rejection of a proposed gun ban at city parks facilities or face the consequences in court. SAF obtained information from the mayor's office that the overwhelming majority of citizens living both inside and outside the city turned thumbs down on the mayor's plan to ban even legally-carried firearms in city parks facilities. Nickels has already been advised by Attorney General Rob McKenna that the city has no authority to enact such a ban, which would be illegal under the state's preemption law.

You'd think that after being voted out of office over it he would get the idea that his gun-banning ways are not wanted there ...

Most Virginians say they want required criminal background checks on those who buy guns from unlicensed dealers, a survey found. The survey, conducted by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, also found a majority said they prefer a ban on concealed weapons in restaurants serving alcohol, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Sunday. The survey showed 80 percent of those likely to vote said they wanted a change in state law so it requires criminal background checks on people before they could buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer at a firearms show.

I bet it doesn't actually say any of that ...

Until now, the biggest known planetary rings in the solar system were Saturn's E ring and faint, thin sheets of dust orbiting Jupiter. The newly discovered ring spans from 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn – or farther – and is 2.4m kilometres thick.

Cool pics, too ...

Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel, one of several law enforcement leaders across the state who urged the governor to sign the ammunition bill, told lawmakers that Sacramento police were able to track 229 illegal ammunition purchases in 2008, the first year after the Sacramento City Council approved its ammunition ordinance. There were 173 convicted felons among those illegal purchasers. Scores of illegal guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were taken out of the hands of criminals who are not supposed to have them.

Ahhh ... some new laws making illegal purchases a crime, how enlightened ...

This is a tragedy from any angle, and my bleeding heart goes out to Meleanie Hain's family and friends. She did not deserve to die, and was not killed because she owned a gun or openly carried it. She was not killed because her husband owned a gun. She was a victim of domestic violence, and so are her children. Scott Hain could have killed his wife and himself by any number of means. She and he would be just as dead, their kids just as parentless. The guns kept in Meleanie Hain's house did not cause her death, but they did not prevent it, either. That's bad news for the cause she spent the last year of her life advocating. Like most fringe distractions masquerading as real issues, the open-carry cause is all hat and no cattle, a tantrum seeking an easily cowed audience. Advocates push it as a gun-rights crusade, but it's goon rights they're really out to protect and expand.

No, it's goon rights they are out to curtail ...

The full-body scanner, which can spot weapons and explosives hidden under clothing, was launched with great fanfare at Manchester Airport last week. But now – with the system due to begin operating at full capacity at Manchester’s Terminal 2 next week – security chiefs have been told no one under 18 can be subjected to the new checks. Child protection experts have warned that the image produced by the Rapiscan machines may break the law which prevents the creation of an indecent image or pseudo-image of a child. The legislation, the Protection of Children Act 1978, could potentially have led to security officers facing criminal charges for doing their job by examining the images.

Probably shouldn't have abandoned evil intent as a necessary component for a crime to be committed ...

The boundary where the pressure from the solar wind and the interstellar medium are at the same pressure, 16 billion kilometres from Earth, forms a giant bubble called the heliopause, and it's nothing like what scientists predicted it to be.

Interesting ...

Recent Ubuntu releases have offered users the option of encrypting all but their boot partitions with block-level encryption, explains Brooks, but the feature has been limited to the text-based alternate install disk, not the more commonly used default LiveCD-based disk. In Ubuntu 9.10, the default LiveCD installer now offers a home directory encryption option, and according to Brooks, it's a good one. The encryption scheme is layered atop the file system and targets specific system folders, as opposed to encrypting everything on disk, and it should "deliver improved performance by ignoring data outside of home or swap directories," writes Brooks. It also allows for unattended booting, as well as for multiple home directories, each encrypted with its own key.

I need to give Linux some more thought and experimentation ...

The problem, of course, is that the global rule trumps any situational common sense, any discretion. But in granting discretion those in overall charge must trust people below them who have more detailed situational knowledge. It's CYA security -- the same thing you see at airports. Those involved in the situation can't be blamed for making a bad decision as long as they follow the rules, no matter how stupid they are and how little they apply to the situation.

Here, here ...

It looks like the Air Force will be getting a new toy.  The Pentagon recently awarded a nearly $52 million contract to speed up delivery of the "massive ordnance penetrator" or MOP.  The MOP, which will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, is a precision-guided bomb that will carry 5,300 pounds of explosives and is designed to destroy deeply buried and hardened underground targets.  Not surprisingly, the MOP began development during the Bush administration – which certainly would have coveted such a weapon as part of its policy of preemption (more properly prevention since the Bush administration’s national security policy called for preempting emerging threats before they materialized rather than preemptive defense against known, imminent threats).  What is surprising is that the Obama administration has decided to accelerate the program so that the MOP can be aboard B-2 stealth bombers as soon as next summer.

Haaretz is reporting that the IAEA has viewed a three minute video that shows a simulated Iranian nuclear weapon detonation.

Hmmm ... the Iranian leadership must WANT their country reduced to a smoking glass crater ... crazy bastards ...

We wholeheartedly agree. NASA should put its unique resources into pushing back the final frontier and not in repaving the earth-to-orbit road it cleared a half century ago. Commercial human spaceflight is not competitive with NASA. It is complementary. Indeed, a strong partnership between NASA and the commercial sector is nothing new. NASA already relies on commercial rockets to launch multibillion-dollar science payloads and NASA is well along in its plans to turn over space station cargo resupply duties to the private sector. The time has come for NASA to build on these successes and embrace commercial crew transportation as well.

Have you ever looked at a visual puzzle where you had to relax your eyes and “let yourself” see the hidden image?  If you were able to do this, you probably noticed that you had to let it happen at first. Later you could let it happen more easily, and later still you could see the image whenever you wanted; you were in control.  Think of tai chi in this way.  First you have to let it happen.  Later you’ll learn to control it.

Perez-Hernandez, a painter by trade, was having trouble finding jobs because of 2002 felony domestic violence convictions in King County, Engle said.

A mug shot to compare to the ATM caps would be helpful, here ...

Interesting ... uhhh ... points ...

Despite its gusty reputation as a “gas giant,” Jupiter’s blood-red clouds hide a dense, rocky core that’s perhaps 20 times as massive as Earth. That core blocks any spacecraft’s passage through the center of the planet, but even a detour through the clouds would be a disaster.

Cool pic, too ...

Carried [a] full frame stainless 1911 Kimber in [a] Kholster today.

I've been a fan of USB thumb-drive encryption for a long time, and in recent years the best form of that encryption is hardware-based, employing an embedded crypto processor within the USB drive itself. Hardware encryption is critical to prevent "man in the middle" attacks that can occur with host computer encryption, and to achieve reliable cross-platform zero-footprint operation without installing special software.

Hmmm ...

I recently took my 90-year-old father to the airport so he could catch a flight to visit my brother in Chicago. He still walks on his own, but feebly. I had to leave him to not only maneuver through security by himself (taking off his shoes, etc.), but he had to negotiate the long concourse to his gate alone. He can do it, but it is physically and emotionally taxing, and he's too darn proud to ask for a cart, and all I can do is stand there helpless and watch him wearily shuffle away. My eyes tear, and I get angry at the insensitivity of our airport system. 

Don't vote for ANYONE that isn't actively pursuing the policies you want in place ...

The result of California’s new law will be to drive business out of state, to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals and conspirators, and to deprive citizens of their Constitutional rights. The law will have zero impact on real criminals, and in fact the state will know less about who has ammunition than before the law, since most gun owners will buy surreptitiously. The law does nothing except express, at a significant dollar cost, the contempt legislators have for legitimate gun owners.

He's never really acted like that much of a conservative so this should come as no surprise ...

When an Oregon teen talked his way onto an airplane bound for Chicago last weekend, he unknowingly revealed a little-known hole in airport security. Kids don't have to show photo ID. That may come as a surprise to many air travelers. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, travelers are accustomed to removing their shoes, not carrying liquids and otherwise coping with strict protocols of airport security.

The surveillance audio/video of a gun fight in a Toledo bar ...

In a press conference Friday, Muni officials addressed the separate melees, affirming that video footage captured both fights. The department has turned over tapes of the Monday scuffle on the 9-San Bruno to police investigators, with the hopes that inspectors will be able to identify some of the suspects involved in the brawl, according to Muni spokesman Judson True.

As usual, the cameras weren't helpful to the people being beaten ...

Scientists at the University of Missouri are developing a small nuclear battery that they say can hold a million times more charge than standard batteries. The radioisotope battery, being developed by Jae Kwon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and other researchers, is the size and thickness of a penny.

Interesting ...

The Russian Soyuz capsule carrying Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and two other space travelers landed safely in Kazakhstan on Sunday, ending the entertainment tycoon's mirthful space odyssey. Laliberte, who wore a bulbous clown nose during his stay aboard the International Space Station, was extracted from the cramped Soyuz capsule Sunday morning following its landing in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan. After the landing, he was carried from the capsule wearing the round red nose.

So far, the space tourism has been surprisingly safe.

That's why I've taken the important first step of signing on to an amicus brief encouraging the Supreme Court to overturn the Chicago gun ban. Last year, I signed onto a similar brief -- and I was joined by 55 U.S. senators and 250 U.S. representatives -- urging the Supreme Court to uphold our rights. I'm also encouraging all of my colleagues to sign on as well. Our fundamental rights are far too important to be put at stake.

My interest in home security did not start until 5 a.m. on a nice summer morning when a man with a baseball bat crashed through an all-glass door on my patio. It is not the sort of wake-up call anyone would enjoy. Things turned out fine for me and, for that matter, for the burglar. He got away with a wallet grabbed from the kitchen counter and I got away with my life and limbs intact.

It's unfortunate that it frequently starts that way but rarely has the happy ending ...

Some people have suggested that forms were designed originally for the purpose of passing down fighting techniques secretly, negating the need to document them and thus risk having them being exposed or stolen. While others suggest their designed and sole purpose was to provide a pre-determined set of training aids to improve such attributes as balance, coordination and timing, just as we might see a Western boxer using his shadow boxing. There is probably some truth to both, and this would explain why some forms flow naturally into successive techniques whilst some others are a combination of techniques which don’t seem to flow together.

[Smile]

My Passport Essential and My Passport for Mac drives also feature user-selected password protection combined with military-grade 256-bit hardware encryption, which scrambles files before they are stored. Typically found only on much more expensive drive systems, the encryption acts as a virtual padlock to keep data secure.

I was looking at these at Fry's over the weekend and found that there was almost no information about the encryption on the box (it said there was encryption but not what kind or anything). I guess it's a sign that you're getting old when you expect manufacturers to talk about their products on the containers ...

The application enables you to encrypt an entire partition or storage devices (USB flash drives, etc) or create a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it as a virtual disk, that can be accessed via a drive letter. Any file that is stored on this virtual drive is automatically encrypted on-the-fly, and can only be accessed while the drive is mounted with the correct password or key. TrueCrypt supports a variety of encryption algorithms, including AES-256, Blowfish (448-bit key), CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, and Twofish. Other features include support for FAT32 or NTFS formatting, hidden volumes, hotkeys for mounting/dismounting and more.

The is worth spending some time with, but don't go crazy on it. Get a couple of thumb drives and experiment with the different features and processes before you try to encrypt your operating system or something else that is equally risky and probably completely unnecessary ...

The chemical irritant turned to be a pepper spray, according to a statement from the hotel. "The can of spray belonged to one of our guests, and was accidentally tipped over by a member of our housekeeping staff while servicing the room," the statement said. Once the hotel was aired out, all guests were able to return to their rooms.

A new experience and a fun story to tell ...

Someone apparently with Carney-Nunes videotaped that performance and posted it at the author's Web site without the approval of school officials. A copy of that video appeared in September on YouTube, titled "School Kids Taught to Praise Obama." Citing concerns for the safety of students and staff, Superintendent Christopher Manno has asked organizers to reconsider the protest because classes will be held that day. Manno said protesters will not be allowed on school property and additional district staffers will be on hand.

Let the kids sing their song. I'm sure the parents can get them out of it if they think it's appropriate or necessary.

MessageLabs said there was evidence of an increase in the number of brute-force password breaking attempts, where dictionary attacks are used against online webmail accounts, perhaps using POP3 or webmail to conduct the attacks. “Users with simple or weak passwords are the most vulnerable. On the website, an attacker will be asked to solve a Captcha puzzle to prove they are a real person. Captchas can be easily bypassed using a variety of Captcha-breaking tools,” MessageLabs said.

You might try memorizing a long poem or something like that and then cycle through uses of the first letter of however many words are needed to hit the right password strength, next pass use the first and third letter, etc. It makes it easier to remember the new password each time because you remember the previous password from having used it for 3 months and you know the algorithm for choosing each 'next' password ...

The fact that a handcuffed soldier suspected of being AWOL escaped from federal authorities at Denver International Airport and then could not be found doesn't mean security procedures are lax, an airport spokesman said Thursday. "Obviously, the place is crawling with security," said Jeff Green, a spokesman for DIA. "We have security pretty much everywhere."

It might mean that, though ...

In December 2008 Zaidi hurled both of his shoes at Bush during a news conference – missing him – and yelled: "This is your parting gift, you dog."

Hmmm ... never heard that he was yelling anything at the time ...

The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor. They frequently target police and government officials, whom they accuse of colluding with landlords and rich farmers to exploit the poor.

The trouble with reading/hearing about this sort of thing is that it's difficult to ascertain whether they have some legitimate gripe of whether they just like perpetrating violence. You're going to hear both versions and you can't really know ...

I've always (since a few seconds ago) wanted a chateau ...

What's special about WorldView 2 is the capability to image in eight different color bands, which is double the number on earlier satellites. The result will be the next step in the commercial Earth-imagery business, by taking the sharp clarity and painting the pictures in the truest natural colors. "At this time, there isn't another satellite which combines high-resolution with eight bands and the level of agility that we get from the WorldView-class satellite," a DigitalGlobe spokesperson told Spaceflight Now. The added colors promise to heighten the amount of information and insights that can be extracted for uses such as diagnosing the health of crops, determining the impact of natural disasters and identifying features for national security.

Police say that a 50 year old man was washing his car at the self-service car wash on East 22nd Street, near South Beverly Avenue at about 4:30 PM when a robber approached him.  The robber is said to have pulled out handgun, and threatened the man's life.  The victim reportedly drew his self defense gun and shot the robber, causing the robber to flee to a get-away vehicle driven by a suspected accomplice.  Shortly thereafter, a suspect arrived at a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound matching that of the robber.  The injured suspect, and the person who drove him to the hospital, are in custody.  The robbery victim was unharmed.

I do so love it when they fight back ...

The WaterWall is an end-to-end water security management system that provides government and municipality water utilities the ability to prevent, protect, detect, manage, and recover from everyday tasks to minor events and major crisis. These events include accidents, natural disasters, operational faults, contaminations, and sewer leaks to sabotage, chemical/biological materials, terror, and cyber crimes. Through online, real time data streaming the WaterWall collects and manages all information from the physical protection components and the water monitoring systems. The WaterWall unifies security and information systems to provide early warnings, and manage all events. It achieves this by using a sophisticated model composed of dynamic semi automatic procedures and on demand communication tools. With this, the WaterWall can manage manpower and resources to support all operational needs. Furthermore, the WaterWall reduces potentially costly human error, and makes it easier to establish and maintain compliance with industry and government regulations. The WaterWall also dramatically improves the speed and effectiveness of incident response and recovery while actually reducing operating costs. It"s a solution that creates an environment where all current and future technologies, people and actionable procedures are fused into a unified, control and management platform empowers control room and/or remote control personnel to focus on all aspects of management from one location.

Interesting ...

You can see three people walking across the parking lot. The first two walk out of the bottom of the video frame. A third person walks in the same direction as the first two, then stops and walks back towards the direction of the ocean. The person stops, apparently scanning the ocean, then turns and runs in the other direction after spotting the incoming tsunami wave. The questions that haunt the viewer are what became of these people? Did they survive?

One of the first two guys looks like he is aware that something is amiss but doesn't seem to realize what. (my guess is there's a distinct lack of water in the area where he's used to seeing the ocean.) The third person definitely realizes what's wrong and high-tails it. Presumably the video ends when the power shorted out ...

According to a report in Nature News, the suspect, a French-Algerian, was taken into custody by French police on October 8 in the town of Vienne. He is believed to be a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) who, since 2003, has been performing data analysis on one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. French antiterrorism police arrested the 32-year-old researcher together with his 25-year-old brother. The duo is suspected of passing along information about possible terrorism targets inside France to members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - the North African wing of al-Qaeda. There is no evidence that his work at CERN is connected to terrorism, according to laboratory spokesman James Gillies. 

Hmmm ...

Nine shootings -- from pellet and BB guns -- have turned a Manhattan neighborhood into a shooting gallery, and cops can't seem to hold the fire. On Thursday night the shooter struck again. In recent weeks, police have arrested three people and confiscated two air guns, but the shootings continue, which means someone or some people are still on the loose.

"A while back, our New York Mayor Bloomberg came down here to take away some of your Virginia gun rights," a man says in the spot, in a Sopranos-like accent. "You see, the mayor thinks you guys are responsible for our New York crime problem. But when Mayor Bloomberg got down here, your guy, Bob McDonnell, kicked him out of Virginia. Now that was very disrespectful." Contacted about what the spot meant with the claim that McDonnell "kicked [Bloomberg] out of Virginia," an NRA representative said it was a reference to the fact McDonnell sent Bloomberg a "cease and desist" letter. He also pointed to McDonnell's work with the legislature to make sure sting operations would be illegal. "So now I'm here to make sure Mr. McDonnell doesn't get in New York's way again," the man continues in the ad, as Italian-style music plays in the background. "Listen to me: When you vote, I strongly suggest you forget about your freedoms and your Mr. Second Amendment Bob McDonnell. I want you to do it for New York. If you know what's good for you."

This $20 million project could surely save you a lot of pain at security checkpoints like airports, stadiums, mass transit centers etc. You may not even have to remove your jacket and shoes. However, one of the researchers, Daniel Martin is of the viewpoint that the measurement of body signals cannot measure the intent of the person. Many critics have say that the regular method of tracking the terrorist or suspect is much more convincing than the FAST technology. Civil liberties groups have found another reason protest claiming that no one has the right to measure ones bodily functions and is an invasion of ones privacy. The FAST technology hopes to start its field testing by 2011.

If means is lacking, intent is irrelevant ...

From the user's perspective, however, the drive is almost as easy to use as any thumbdrive. I tried it with a few computers and it worked very well. The drive comes with two separate partitions. One is a fixed 30MB read-only partition that contains the security software. The second is the rest of the drive's capacity to store data. The first time you insert the drive into a computer, be it a PC or a Mac, its self-contained security software will prompt you to pick a password and a security question for retrieving password when it's forgotten. Once a password is chosen, you'll need to run the software again each time you connect the drive to a computer, then enter the password to gain access to the drive's data partition. After that, the drive works just like any other thumbdrive. 

I'm happy to see more folks getting into the biz, maybe the prices will come down ...

Commuters choked and coughed in the ticket hall of a busy station last Friday morning as a police officer tried to restrain a man. Stunned passengers at Ealing Broadway station watched as a single officer tackled the man who was resisting arrest for a public order offence at around 8:30am. The officer released pepper spray and peak hour commuters rushed to move away from the scene, covering their noses and coughing after inhaling the fumes.

Use the foam, guys ...

The River Rat’s face was photographed up close and uncovered during a bank heist in August — and the security video images were widely publicized by newspapers and TV stations around the area. And yet the armed robberies continued and now total at least 15, most in Vancouver and Portland, says the FBI. The holdups of banks and cash advance stores began Aug. 7 in Portland and, two months later, with the FBI and five police agencies trying to identify him, they still don’t know who he is. How does he do it?

If/when they catch him it will be interesting to see what his invisibility methodology looks like. He has to be in a situation where something other than his appearance causes peoples eyes to pass over him, or recognize him and then discount the possibility that he's the River Rat ...

The CCTV video (the action really begins at the 1:11 minute mark) is entertaining enough. It's not every day that you get to witness a pair of homophobic thugs getting their comeuppance. Nor do I suspect that our anti-heroes in question Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22 believed that they would achieve world-wide Internet fame, really more scorn and ridicule, for getting their clocks cleaned by guys in heels who can pack a punch.

This is pretty funny. I would like to see everyone develop their martial ability to the point where random attacks on the street become a thing of the past ...

At the outset, the viewer is high above the earth, ominous music precipitating a perilous dive through space and clouds directly into the CELL headquarters -- a camera move that ends with a symbolic explosion. Elway, who's inside, is brave enough not to run for cover -- but he's certainly more somber than usual as he shares his memories of 9/11 as the World Trade Center explodes again. Back then, he couldn't believe something like the attacks could happen in America, but he understands now. "This is something we're going to have to deal with the rest of our lives," he warns.

Seems like a good basic primer ...

Carrying a lethal weapon in public confers a grave power that carries with it great responsibilities. Those who lawfully engage in the practice realize that. Those who are considering “carrying” need to know what those experienced people know.

No matter how happy you are when you're at the mall buying your first gun, don't jump up and down yelling 'I've got a gun, I've got a gun!'

8. Big Trouble in Little China (1986): A trucker, who walks and talks like John Wayne, finds himself in an underworld battle in San Francisco’s Chinatown with an army of spirits. This is Carpenter’s parody of the action film and one of his favorite genres, the kung fu movie.

Great movie ...

Last year, in the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. However, as that case concerned the actions of the District of Columbia government, a federal entity, the high court was not called upon to decide whether the right bound states and local governments. Over the years, almost the entire Bill of Rights has been held to apply to state and local governments by operation of the Fourteenth Amendment.“The freedoms we enjoy as Americans are secured to us against violation by all levels of government,” noted Alan Gura, of Gura & Possessky, PLLC, lead counsel for the McDonald plaintiffs. “State and local politicians should be on notice: the Second Amendment is a normal part of the Bill of Rights, and it is coming to your town.”

Planetary scientists such as Lunine have suggested that methane plays the same role on Titan that water does on Earth, freezing, evaporating and raining down on the moon's surface. Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, and is on an extended mission to investigate the planet's rings and moons.

Denver's Police Chief Gerald Whitman agreed that law enforcement, through Colorado's intelligence and fusion centers, worked well together in the investigation that led to the arrest of terror suspect Zazi. However, Whitman says he hopes more tips in the future come from residents. "We need the tips from the community. We really do need those. Even though sometimes they may be burdensome, when they come in large numbers when we're in a heightened state of awareness after an arrest like this, but I guarantee we're going to follow up on each one of them and follow up to see if there's a connection to anything," Whitman said.

I think most people know what to look for. The problem is that they ultimately don't trust you enough to expose themselves unless they are really, REALLY sure ...

Police say that Mark Brown returned to his home on the 8500 block of Norton at about 9:30 AM, and heard an unusual noise that sounded like a burglar.  Brown is said to have grabbed a shotgun from his bedroom.  The burglar reportedly then jumped out of a bedroom closet and rushed towards him, causing Brown to fear for his safety.  Brown fired in self defense, fatally wounding the intruder and saving himself, police say.  Brown, who has lived on the same street for the last 50 years, was unharmed and is not expected to face any charges.

Probably folded him up like a snotty tissue ...

"He kept jumping up and down in the street here saying, 'He's trying rob me. He's trying to rob me.' And he said 'I shot him. Why'd you make me do this? Why'd you make me do this?' Becker said. "I kept telling him to, 'Put the gun down. Put the gun down. I want to go see if I could help this kid.' And he wouldn't drop the gun."

Remember ... no matter how happy you are when you go to the mall and buy your first pistol, don't start jumping up and down yelling "I've got a gun! I've got a gun!"

"Tracking devices can be useful to parents," Allen told the AP. "Our concern is that they will be viewed as more than they are." Security companies are marketing such devices as those that can be placed in children’s backpacks, although some more invasive methods, such as implantable devices also exist. Still, security firms say that these methods are not intended to be used as substitutes to good parenting. "This is not tag and release," Todd Morris, CEO of BrickHouse Security, told the AP. "But even the best parent, with the best intentions, can find it hard to keep track of their kids all the time."

A taxi driver, he had been detained on suspicion of attempted rape. The police interrogation was so relentless, he says, that it brought him to the brink of suicide. "When I first started saying I was innocent the intimidation and the pressure on me grew stronger," he said. "They kept saying, ‘Your family is giving up on you, they’re very disappointed in you.’ They kept repeating over and over. "I got to the stage of there’s really nothing I can do about this. Anything I say they’re not going to listen to, there’s nothing I can do. I just said yes, one word yes. That led them to arrest me." That confession was enough to see Hiroshi Yanagihara convicted and spend more than two years behind bars, even though a footprint at the scene did not match his shoe size. He was only cleared after he was released, when another man was found guilty of the crime.

Yes, traveling with kids is a whole different ball game. For sure.

Police say that 61 year old Carlton L. Burgess of Lumberton, NJ had some sort of unknown dispute with Marcel Alston of Halifax, NC back in 1988.  It is said that the two men had not seen each other in several years, until Burgess came to Alston's home at 7AM and knocked on the door, waking him up.  When Alston opened the door, Burgess promptly began beating the man, leaving a gash on his head, according to police.  Alston is then said to have turned and ran up the stairs of his home, only to have Burgess shoot him in the buttocks and continue to follow him.  Alston was able to run upstairs, get his self defense gun, and fatally shoot Burgess in self defense after Burgess followed him into his bedroom.  Alston survived, and was treated at a nearby hospital for the gunshot wound and gash on his head.

Oh man ... not in the buttocks ...

Fight Quest unveiled itself in December 2007 to eager viewers with the discipline of Kung Fu. Each episode follows a routine formula. First, the show opens with an introduction to the art (Kung Fu in this case) with a montage of exciting clips to hook viewers. Second, viewers see a staged Kung Fu fight between experienced practitioners to get the adrenaline flowing. The audience is then introduced to the masters who will be teaching the hosts. What makes ‘Fight Quest’ different from ‘Human Weapon’ is that the hosts, Doug and Jimmy, are split up and undergo different training regiments with different masters. Once the training begins, viewers are given the hosts’ points of view in asides. One will start to notice that each host has his defining characteristic.

Announced by the global credit card company on Monday, these best practices are designed to further the payment industry's efforts to develop a common, open standard while providing guidance to encryption vendors and early adopters. Data field encryption protects card information from the swipe to the acquirer processor with no need for the merchant to process or transmit card data in the "clear."

Every laptop user should have a healthy paranoia about the possibility of getting their notebook stolen or hacked while they're using a public Wi-Fi network at the airport or coffeehouse. Stay circumspect and use some of the tools built into your notebook's operating system to keep yourself safe.

Not much detail, but ...

CSD already had in place a fiber optic-supported virtual local area network (VLAN), which allows users to view stored and real-time video without interrupting regular enterprise traffic. This allows administrators to handle surveillance and respond immediately to a security problem, as well as to review potential security breaches, captured by the cameras as they occur, at day's end.

The article doesn't really say whether they have someone watching the cameras all the time or whether there are people on campus that, once notified that something is going on, will be able to respond and come up with the right answer. The fact that they plan on reviewing potential security breaches at 'day's end' doesn't really load me with confidence that they have any idea what security is all about.

HANGOVERS Sometimes so bad, ya need a friend just to hold your brain in your skull….

Lieutenant General Fang Fenghui, general director of the parade, told Xinhua the parade was supposed to showcase the transformation of the PLA from a low-tech, manpower-intensive force to a high-tech, 21st-century one. And nothing says futuristic! like white go-go boots. 

Sooo right ...

In fact, developers claim the laser gunship would have sniperlike precision. When they requested the Advanced Tactical Laser to be deployed to Iraq a couple of years back, the Marine Corps envisioned using it as a way to target individual insurgents — to devastating psychological effect. Such weapons, when used against people, “can be compared to long-range blowtorches or precision flamethrowers, with corresponding psychological advantages for [Coalition Forces] CF,” the request stated. But don’t expect a frightening “spontaneous combustion” weapon to be fielded soon. The Advanced Tactical Laser is still a demonstration program; the company has proven that it can package a chemical-powered laser inside a C-130, but as Noah has been writing for years, it’s hard to see the practical application of flying around with lots of toxic chemicals.

Let me know when it's available as a sidearm ...

For those entranced by security theater, New York City is a sight to behold this week. A visit to one of the two centers of the action -- the Waldorf Astoria, where the presidents of China, Russia, the Prime Ministers of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the President of the United States -- are all staying. (Who gets the presidential suite? Our POTUS.) Getting to the Waldrof is a little intimidating, which is the point. Wade through the concrete barriers, the double-parked police cars, the NYPD mobile command post, a signals post, acreages of metal fencing, snipers, counter surveillance teams, FBI surveillance teams in street clothes, dodge traffic and a dignitary motorcade or two, and you're right at the front door of the hotel. A Secret Service agent from the Midwest gestured dismissively when a reporter showed him a press credential. "You don't need it. Just go in that door over there."

Have you ever worried that knuckle cracking will give you arthritis or wondered why pregnant women don't tip over? Me too. Research into those topics--as well as studies finding that diamonds could be created from tequila and giant panda feces are good for composting--received Ig Nobel Prizes in a ceremony on Thursday night at Harvard University. The prizes, awarded to scientific achievements that "cannot and should not be reproduced," are presented in the week before the real Nobel prizes are announced and are sponsored by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research." A Thousand Oaks, Calif., doctor won the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his firsthand research into arthritis in fingers. As a child and in adulthood, Donald Unger's mother, several aunts, and mother-in-law warned him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis in his fingers. To test that theory, he cracked the knuckles of his left hand, but not the right hand, every day for more than 60 years.

"There's a new reality in laptop pricing," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at market-researcher IDC. "It's getting harder and harder to sell anything over $800." O'Donnell cited a data point that showed the average selling price of notebooks falling below desktops briefly in retail. "That may have been an anomaly, but the fact that's it's even close is indicative of this phenomenon."

The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is usually around late September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumn and spring Equinoxes of the solar calendar, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.

Thunder Bay‘s tai chi association is looking to raise $100,000 towards the construction of International Taiji Park on the city‘s waterfront. The rest of the $200,000 project will come from government and other funding sources, members of the Peng You Taiji Quan Association said Friday at the campaign‘s launch in Marina Park. The park, which will be located near the skateboard plaza and will ideally be completed in 2011, will include a traditional Chinese-style moon gate entrance, leading to a flagstone pad in a Yin Yang shape. It was designed by Thunder Bay architect Walter Kuch, a news release says.

Most important: Forgive yourself for being captive and unable to meet your obligations. When Ingrid Betancourt was rescued from FARC forces in Colombia, she told debriefing officers that she had more problems related to the mental stress from feeling she had let down her family, friends and associates by becoming a captive than the physical stress. Even though she understood that she was a captive through no fault of her own, she had a difficult struggle overcoming her guilt. She and other captives have reported that self forgiveness is the most important key to survival in a long term captivity. Seven years, in her case.

This is a fairly exhaustive dissertation on personal security measures for traveling in terror-prone regions ...

This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks and all reported crimes for 17 districts throughout Israel between 2000 and 2005. After controlling for the fixed-effect of each district and for district-specific time trends, we show that terror attacks reduce property crimes such as burglary, auto-theft, and thefts-from-cars. Terror also reduces assaults and aggravated assaults which occur in private homes, but increases incidents of trespassing and “disrupting the police.” Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a stronger deterrence effect produced by an increased police presence after a terror attack. A higher level of policing is likely to catch more people trespassing, and at the same time, reduce the number of property crimes. The decline in crimes committed in private houses is likely an indication that the tendency for individuals to stay home after a terror attack further increases the costs of crime.

Hmmm ...

Formation flying missions in space sound like science fiction, but missions using multiple spacecraft are already in the planning stages. These missions will involve multiple spacecraft flying anywhere from tens to hundreds of meters apart. The highly accurate distance measurements would allow a formation to monitor their distance and turn the formation into a single large sensor.

[Smile] ...

The end result, the developers of Mozilla's Content Security Policy (CSP) hope, is that policy-enhanced browsers will be completely immune from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks from malicious sources, by virtue of restricting themselves to either only executing inline code from trusted, certified sites, or not executing any such code at all.

Firefox just keeps getting better and better ...

An unscientific poll can be found here ...

For police the incident turned out to be little more than a false alarm, but for the university, it turned out to be an opportunity to test their ability to get the message to the students through technology they use.

One night the motion detector went off and we panned over to see a pedestrian.  Not unusual, and given that it was a quiet night, we panned along with him to see make sure he had no intention of making mischief.  He wandered into the next lot and stopped to pick something up, then seemed to loiter near a car.  Before long we could see something bright in the car and we could tell it was on fire.

As I went through the line and took off my shoes, yet again demonstrating that my footwear has no potential for dangerous, rapid expansion under high heat and pressure, I began to wonder. We in medicine are expected to demonstrate at least some benefit of the things we do to our patients.  The government wants to have comparative effectiveness data to see what works and what doesn’t, and what needs to continue being reimbursed.  I’m not sure that’s always a good idea, but it is what it is. So let me ask, ‘how many shoe bombers have we now caught, except for the first one?’  Is there data?  Is there any suggestion that the enormous slow-down of the security lines that results from shoe removal and re-application causes any improvement in security? Isn’t it ironic that the government wants us to cut costs on unnecessary procedures, even as we have no real idea if all of the gesticulations we endure in airports have any bearing on our safety?

Yes ... NNT, or Number Needed to Treat, the gold standard of effectiveness in medicine. Why aren't they doing it for security measures?

Excluding speculations about future breakthrough discoveries in physics, it is shown that with what is at present known, and also what is technically feasible, manned space flight to the limits of the solar system and beyond deep into the Oort cloud is quite well possible. Using deuterium as the rocket fuel of choice, abundantly available on the comets of the Oort cloud, rockets driven by deuterium fusion, can there be refueled. To obtain a high thrust with a high specific impulse, favors the propulsion by deuterium micro-bombs, and it is shown that the ignition of deuterium micro-bombs is possible by intense GeV proton beams, generated in space by using the entire spacecraft as a magnetically insulated billion volt capacitor. The cost to develop this kind of propulsion system in space would be very high, but it can also be developed on earth by a magnetically insulated Super Marx Generator. Since the ignition of deuterium is theoretically possible with the Super Marx Generator, rather than deuterium-tritium with a laser where 80% of the energy goes into neutrons, would also mean a breakthrough in fusion research, and therefore would justify the large development costs.

Once we have this capability, Mars isn’t really the only place that we can go. With a megawatt-class VASIMR, basically we will have access to the entire solar system. Mars is an interesting place, but so are Europa and Ganymede and Enceladus and Titan. These are places where we might find extraterrestrial life. Even with the 200-kilowatt solar-powered VASIMR we could do amazing things. We’re developing a concept to drive it close to the Sun, between Venus and Mercury, where it can get a momentum boost and catapult a probe into the outer solar system at high speed. This would let us deliver a package to Jupiter in one-and-a-half years; otherwise that trip takes about six.

Interesting ...

Yet this extraordinary planet is also the least explored in the Solar System. Before the current Messenger mission only 45 per cent of the planet's surface had ever been glimpsed, using the Mariner crafts in the 1970s. Now after three flybys in 2008 and 2009, around 95 per cent of the surface has been imaged. Only a few small sections around the poles have yet to be covered.

After a new antenna is placed on the school grounds, officers will be able to park even further away, out of the sight of any people who may be causing problems at the school and safely assess the danger of a situation, or see if it is simply a false alarm.

I believe that this comes in the 'when seconds count, the police are only minutes away' category ...

Sources said Skype has shared its encryption code with the US, China and other governments but is refusing to accept similar Indian requests.

Hmmm ... that's news you can use ... or not use, as the case may be ...

In contrast, by transferring all card holder data out of your systems, a company eliminates capital expenditures. It’s a simple premise: The less data there is onsite, the less it costs to keep it secure. This will also reduce the complexity of a company’s PCI audit. Because the merchant no longer stores cardholder data, they will be removed from the scope of PCI Requirement 3, reducing the number of questions needed to answer on the audit.

You may not know it, but this year, the State of Hawai‘i designated the second week of October as Hawaiian Aerospace Week. And the timing couldn’t have been better. In the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 9, stargazers across the globe will keep an eye on the sky, watching with anticipation as a spacecraft is intentionally crashed into the moon. This will create a plume of debris that will rise more than three miles above the surface of the moon, an event that will hopefully determine if water exists beneath the lunar surface.

“I know a lot of the bad guys in Chicago come over to Indiana to get their guns,” Heimke said. “Every time I drive from Indiana to Chicago, nobody sees what I’m bringing in. If other communities took the same approach as Chicago, we would be even safer.”

The tooth fairy will protect you ...

"The IDF conducted many serious internal investigations. I told leaders from the United States and Europe that the norms of the IDF are among the world's most ethical and I say with confidence that the IDF is one of the most punctilious armies when it comes to the purity of arms and serious, in-depth investigations of untoward conduct," Barak said.

And I think that there is a good chance that regardless of what else happens, Iran is going to have an accident before they achieve any proximity to a nuke ...

We are now at a crossroads with the RT Program and have the experience and knowledge from the lessons learned over the last several years to move the program forward in an effective manner. The failure of Clear, and their shutdown June 22nd came as a shock to the 250,000 RT members nationwide, to Clear's competitors (FLO and Vigilant Solutions) and to all who had invested in RT. As FLO prepares to re-launch the RT program in the next 30 days, we see Clear's unfortunate demise as a unique opportunity to fix what was wrong with RT in the past and focus on all the things that were right. 

Let's pay these guys to do something that ultimately doesn't add to flight security, identify fliers, rather than use the money to do something that ultimately DOES add to flight security, verify that fliers don't have the means to interfere with the flight.

The weapon “creates a heating sensation that repels individual adversaries”. They performed testing with this device mounted on a rifle and they’ve managed to figure out that the combination of laser pulse power and wavelength can cause a ridiculously painful sensation on the skin without causing a burn.