Monday, May 13, 2013

Apparently no one knows that refusing to say “no” is very similar to saying “yes.”
Feds Won’t Say if NSA Surveilled New York Terror Suspects
Federal authorities prosecuting brothers on allegations they plotted to blow up a high-profile target in New York City are refusing to confirm publicly whether they cracked the case by employing a style of warrantless electronic eavesdropping first introduced by President George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.
The reason, attorneys affiliated with the defense suggest, is because such a concession would create the nation’s first eligible defendant to challenge the constitutionality of the surveillance tactics, which Congress codified into law in 2008 and then again in December.
… A single acknowledgment could open the floodgates to challenge the surveillance tactic, which Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in February noted that “commonsense” (.pdf) tells us is being employed by federal investigators.


To my Ethical Hackers: I told you the code was upside-down!
"An Australian university appears to be excelling at cultivating some of Australia's best computer hackers. Following the University of NSW's students recently placing first, second and third in a hacking war game (the first place winners also won first place last year), The Sydney Morning Herald reports on what exactly about the NSW institution is breeding some of Australia's best hackers. It finds that a lecturer and mentor to the students with controversial views on responsible disclosure appears to the be the reason for their success."


“It's our job to find or create evidence that people who are wrong (politically) are not paying their fair amount in taxes.”
Reports: IRS targets more groups
The IRS repeatedly changed the criteria it used for singling out nonprofit applications for further review, at one point looking at all groups hoping to make “America a better place to live,” according to new reports Monday morning.
The Wall Street Journal and Reuters both reported that the IRS moved beyond giving a skeptical eye to “tea party” and “patriot” groups. It was also targeting groups focusing on specific issues including “government spending,” “government debt,” “Education of the public via advocacy/lobbying to ‘make America a better place to live,’” and all groups that “criticize[d] how the country is being run.”


For those of us who use Excel a lot!
… Short-Cuts Add-In is a free to use add-in that has been made for Microsoft Excel, which you can use to quickly open the spreadsheets that you regularly access. First, you must place the add-in file in the appropriate Excel directory – a guide on how to do this can be found on the add-in’s website. With the add-in added, you can right click on your open spreadsheets and select “Short-cuts” to open up the add-in’s window. From here you can access and create groups of Excel spreadsheets.


For my Geeks: Told ya...
"In a widely-read WSJ Op-Ed, English major Kirk McDonald, president of online ad optimization service PubMatic, informed college grads that he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages. 'Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture,' McDonald advises. 'Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough.' Over at Typical Programmer, Greg Jorgensen is not impressed. 'I have some complaints about this "everyone must code" movement,' Jorgensen writes, 'and Mr. McDonald's article gives me a starting point because he touched on so many of them.'"


Dilbert shows us what could happen if I combine my love of computers with my wife's dog training equipment,,,

No comments: