Why would elevators or boilers be
connected to the Internet?
"Imagine what would happen if
an attacker broke into the network for the industrial
control systems for New York City's elevators and boiler systems
and decided to disrupt them, imperiling the lives of hundreds of
thousands of residents relying on them. Think it could never happen?
Think again. 'You could increase the speed of how elevators go up
or down,' says Steve Ramirez, business analyst, analysis and
communications in the Office of the CIO of the New York City Housing
Authority, which provides public housing for low- to moderate-income
families in the five boroughs of the city. And if attackers ever
successfully penetrated the network-based industrial control systems
for the boilers, they could raise the heat levels for municipal
boilers, causing them to explode."
Paranoia or do they know something we
don't? How will they determine I have an iPhone in the package I'm
mailing? Are they saying any iPad may suddenly burst into flame
because Apple didn't properly install the battery?
USPS
to ban overseas shipments on tablets, smartphones, more
As of next week, the United States
Postal Service, or USPS, is banning
all international shipments containing lithium ion batteries,
which many electronics have (see the full list below).
The most likely reason for the ban is
that if lithium ion batteries are fully charged or not correctly
stored or packed, they can catch fire or combust -- something
obviously best to avoid while shipping.
… The USPS says it may
change the ban on January 1, 2013 and allow customers to mail
certain quantities of lithium ion batteries internationally,
including to APO and FPO locations, "when the batteries are
properly installed in the personal electronic devices they are
intended to operate."
We have become a nation of corporate
sheep. Profit over principle.
Few
Companies Fight Patriot Act Gag Orders, FBI Admits
Since the Patriot Act broadly expanded
the power of the government to issue National Security Letters
demanding customer records, more than 200,000 have
been issued to U.S. companies by the FBI. But the
perpetual gag orders that accompany them are rarely challenged by the
ISPs and other recipients served with such letters.
Just how rare these challenges are
became more evident following the recent release of a 2010 letter
from the Justice Department to a federal lawmaker.
In December 2010 in
a letter (.pdf) from Attorney General Eric Holder to Senator
Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the FBI asserted that in February 2009 it
began telling recipients they had a right to challenge the built-in
gag order that prevents them from disclosing to anyone, including
customers, that the government is seeking customer records. That
policy was mandated by a 2008 appellate court decision, which found
that the never-ending, hard-to-challenge gag order was
unconstitutional.
Holder noted, however, that in the year
and 10 months since the FBI started notifying recipients of this
right, only a small handful had asserted that right.
“Thus far, there have
been only four challenges to the non-disclosure
requirement,” Holder wrote, “and in two of the
challenges, the FBI permitted the recipient to disclose the fact that
an NSL was received.” [“the FBI permitted” 'cause a judge
would have tossed the whole request? Bob]
(Related) Apparently someone told the
Senator what was happening right under his nose.
Senator
seeks DOJ cellphone tracking data
May 11, 2012 by Dissent
John Ribeiro reports:
U.S. Senator Al Franken has in a letter asked the Department of
Justice for information on its practices in requesting location
information from wireless carriers, following reports that law
enforcement agencies are requesting such information sometimes
without warrants.
Franken, a
Minnesota Democrat, said he was concerned about reports that after a
Supreme Court decision on tracking using GPS devices, state and local
law enforcement agencies may be requesting the location records of
individuals directly from their wireless carriers instead of tracking
individuals through GPS devices installed on vehicles, according to a
copy
of the letter on the website of the American Civil Liberties
Union.
Read more on Computerworld.
Cute, catchy name, but in the end a
call for more government workers?
May 09, 2012
Insourcing
Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: An Overview of the Legal
Issues
CRS: Insourcing
Functions Performed by Federal Contractors: An Overview of the Legal
Issues - Kate M. Manuel, Legislative Attorney; Jack Maskell,
Legislative Attorney, May 7, 2012
- "Recent Congresses and the Obama Administration have taken numerous actions to promote “insourcing,” or the use of government personnel to perform functions that contractors have performed on behalf of federal agencies. Among other things, the 109th through the 111th Congresses enacted several statutes requiring the development of policies and guidelines to ensure that agencies “consider” using government employees to perform functions previously performed by contractors, as well as any new functions. These statutes require that “special consideration” be given to using government personnel to perform those functions (1) recently performed by government employees, (2) closely associated with the performance of inherently governmental functions, (3) performed pursuant to a contract awarded on a non-competitive basis, or (4) performed poorly by a contractor because of excessive costs or inferior quality. The Obama Administration has similarly promoted insourcing. For example, in February 2010, the Secretary of the Army testified that the Army intended to insource 7,162 positions in FY2010 and 11,084 positions in FY2011 through FY2015. Although the Department of Defense (DOD) subsequently abandoned such insourcing initiatives because the initiatives did not result in significant savings, several contractors filed suit alleging that DOD failed to comply with the applicable guidelines when insourcing particular functions."
Free is good...
5
Reasons to Download Autodesk Inventor Fusion Now
… The product is currently in a
“Technical Preview,” which means you can download it for free
until the end of the year.
… One warning, CAD programs take
hundreds, if not thousands of hours to become expert on. I’ve been
using a competitive product, Solidworks, for years, so I understood
the basics going in. If you are coming to this with little
experience, brace for frustration. It takes time to learn, but the
payoff is enormous.
Of course, as a true conspiracy
theorist I know this looks like something the government would fake
(the timing is just too convenient) to reduce panic as the end nears.
I would be certain of somehow Al Gore was involved...
End
of the World Averted: New Archeological Find Proves Mayan Calendar
Doesn’t End
So much for the world ending on
December 21, 2012. We’ve
been saying it for years, but a new find by archaeologists
confirms the Mayan calendar indeed does not end this year but keeps
going, just like turning a page to a new calendar.
“It’s very clear that the 2012
date, while important as Baktun 13, was turning the page,” David
Stuart, quoted by Alan
Boyle on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log. “Baktun 14 was going to be
coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. … The Maya calendar is going
to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of
years into the future.”
One tool of future education.
"Univ. of MN is cataloging
open-access textbooks and enticing faculty to review the texts by
offering $500 per review. From the article: 'The project is meant to
address two faculty critiques of open-source texts: they are hard to
locate and they are of indeterminate quality. By building up a
peer-reviewed collection of textbooks, available to instructors
anywhere, Minnesota officials hope to provide some of the same
quality control that historically has come from publishers of
traditional textbooks.'"
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