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[solarbird]

Here're some things I found interesting this week that aren't economic in nature:

From ysabel, have Susie Bright on the many problems of "NSFW" and self-censorship.

If you're interested in photography at all - or just want to see some cool photos of an Dubai falconer and his bird - this photographer's blog entry is of real interest.

The Obama administration's desperately-needed high-speed rail proposal. You have a lot of various usual suspects going around doing the CARS CARS CARS chant, but, well, you know what I think of the energy situation.

How to make Totoro cream puffs! Yum!

Boston College Campus Police are insane, decreeing that using command-line interfaces can be taken as a sign of criminal activity. Yay? Oh wait, no.

Comments

[janne.livejournal.com]

I'm mildly puzzled by the Susie Bright piece and the offhand declaration that 'nobody' would have trouble with NSFW articles if they were in glossy magazines rather than on the web. Certainly not true of my workplace, people would look very pointedly at me if I dug out a Vanity Fair at lunch hour. I'm glad people are generally considerate and add NSFW tags, that means I feel more confident in opening non-tagged mail and links when I'm at work or otherwise have people reading over my shoulder...

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I'm excited about the high-speed rail proposal, even though the proposed money to jump start it is at least an order of magnitude too small. What worries me is that the Obama map (http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/images/rail_map_blog.jpg) of proposed rail lines shows the exact same routes as a map produced in 2001 (http://www.bostonreb.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/high_speed_rail.png) for the Clinton administration based on a plan put together in 1993. The selected regional corridors are definitely the right ones and would show up on any map, but they have such anachronisms that seem to indicate that this is a just a graphic redesign and that new information has not been incorporated. Examples include a coastal line shown in California where the actual CAHSR has decided against having a line for years now, and no inclusion of the since-proposed "Texas T-Bone" to connect Houston to the line between San Antonio and Dallas at a point somewhat north of Austin.

The California oversight is particularly perplexing given that the system there has a lot of momentum and is the most likely to actually take place with the right amount of federal attention and money now.

I just hope that they've learned something since the Clinton administration on this and other issues because it's beginning to feel like deja vu (i.e. Democratic president promises big hopeful changes to get elected, gets none of them, and only has successes on the issues where he's least progressive or in some cases actively harmful, most notably civil liberties.)

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

It continues to stagger me that Amtrak's been decrementing the national passenger-rail service; most recent example I can think of is the ending of the Clocker, their very-popular, high load-factor and most profitable service between Penn Station New York and Philadephia.

Electric intercity rail is the only thing that **really** makes sense in the long run. You and I might well differ in detail on where the electricity should be coming from (or, more correctly perhaps, where **not**), but the cost per ton-mile and energy expenditure in joules per ton-mile is so much lower with electric-powered steel wheels on steel rails.

(As a wistful aside, most of the infrastructure is still in place to re-electrify the north Cascades rail crossing. Just need to restring the catenary).

Damn, I **miss** the Northeast Corridor. :(

[dpawtows.livejournal.com]

Years ago, my Dad once gave a long rant based on the "well known" fact that trucks are inherently more fuel-efficient than trains, and that all this silly talk of passenger trains is more Liberal Big Government Spending (TM). His logic made absolutely no sense, but he's firmly convinced of it. Argh.

[avram]

About the Boston College thing, f you look at the full warrant application (PDF here), the command-line thing is just briefly mentioned in a list of reasons for probable cause that starts off with the computer owner's roommate telling the campus police that the owner has hacked into the college's grading system and changed people's grades, among other things.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

isn't that just heresay?
do they have *anything* beyond people saying "he knows computers, he can do X and Y and Q, so he must be a criminal"?

the reason i ask, is actually rather embarrasing. i am *NOT* any sort of computer genius - i can make the things run, is all. and i always could; my dad TAUGHT HIMSELF HOW TO PROGRAM when i was 2 (so, 1979-80) because he was sure that the AF was going to switch from the old mainframes to PC in the near future and he was tired of changing lightbulbs on the mainframe (that really was his job for like 4 years at Pave-Paws, Beale AFB, CA).
so, i knew ABOUT computers, knew how to turn them and their parts on, i knew how to use a tape drive (OMG, do you *remember* those? ever try playing on in a tape deck?!) i could do basic commands in Basic. that was it.

in tenth grade, because i owned a computer and a modem (24 baud, and gawd i thought it was the fastest thing ever), i was ACCUSED of HACKING the high school's computer and CHANGING my GRADES. despite the fact that my grades had NOT, in fact, been changed, except for my APChemistry grade, which had been LOWERED from a B to a D+ (who the hell would hack into the system to LOWER their grades?) all my other grades were checked and confirmed by my teachers. none of the rest had been changed.
EVERY PERSON who was in that AP Chemistry class had their grade changed to a D+.

i was suspended, pending expulsion, for a week, because i OWNED A COMPUTER AND A MODEM SO I MUST HAVE HACKED THE SYSTEM.
after i had been suspended for a week...
the AP Chemistry teacher
discovered that he used the wrong program when he updated the grades in the computer (he wrote his own programs to input the grades, i have *NO* freaking clue why as it was ALREADY a damned easy thing to do...) and that *HE* was the one who had, in fact, changed all those grades.

so they "removed" the suspension from my record. i was recorded as being "absent; unexcused" for a fucking week.
no appology. nothing.
and my mother didn't unground me, either.
despite proof that i HAD DONE NOTHING.


erm. ok, 16 years later i shouldn't still be this angry. sorry.

the whole point there, that got lost for a sec, sorry, is that many many people have watched "Hackers" one too many times.
so far as i can see, everything that the police "have" is just someone saying "well, he's good at computers so *obviously*..."

[avram]

No, hearsay is oral statements not made in evidence. If Bob testifies that Tom said something, that's hearsay. If Bob testifies that he saw something, that's the testimony of a witness.

What they have is the testimony of his roommate that he did various illegal things. Maybe his roommate's making it up, maybe not. Are you arguing that witness testimony shouldn't constitute probable cause?

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i don't know if i am arguing that. i will be honest in saying that i don't know as much as i should about this aspect of the law.

i think what i am saying is that in a situation where there is no other evidence of a crime that is like this (a theoretical "no-victim" crime, i mean. i don't know if anyone was hurt, or could have been hurt, by what allegedly happened) that a witness should be a collaboratoy, but not the *main* probable cause. i may be wrong - i don't really know enough to make a GOOD judgement, and i am basing that thought on my experience with roommates, who i have had do some pretty stupid and horrible things.
i mean, i wasn't correct on what "hearsay" actually was, so i know i'm not really the best person to be judging this. i'm really just trying to figure out how to think about it, if that makes sense.

the experience i had, being accused of something based solely on what someone said, is what i was basing my original thought around. i also know that i have issues with "probable cause" as its come to be used, especially from the standpoint of civil rights. thats why i asked my question... to get more info.
i'm probably too old to be this ignorant. trying to fix it :)

thanx