From Patsy McGarry’s “Church ‘lied without lying’” (Irish Times: 26 November 2009):
One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying.
According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed [...]
Posted on December 1st, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From David Foster Wallace’s “Introduction” (The Best American Essays 2007):
Here is an overt premise. There is just no way that 2004’s reelection could have taken place—not to mention extraordinary renditions, legalized torture, FISA-flouting, or the
passage of the Military Commissions Act—if we had been paying attention and handling information in a competent grown-up way. ‘We’ meaning [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Diana B. Henrioques’s “Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders” (The New York Times: 20 December 2008):
But whatever else Mr. Madoff’s game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme — a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Darnton’s “Google & the Future of Books” (The New York Review of Books: 12 February 2009):
As the Enlightenment faded in the early nineteenth century, professionalization set in. You can follow the process by comparing the Encyclopédie of Diderot, which organized knowledge into an organic whole dominated by the faculty of reason, [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Adam St. Patrick’s “Chop Chop Square: Inside Saudi Arabia’s brutal justice system” (The Walrus: May 2009):
This is Saudi Arabia, one of the last places on earth where capital punishment is a public spectacle. Decapitation awaits murderers, but the death penalty also applies to many other crimes, such as armed robbery, rape, adultery, [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “List of confidence tricks” (Wikipedia: 3 July 2009):
Get-rich-quick schemes
Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied. For example, fake franchises, real estate “sure things”, get-rich-quick books, wealth-building seminars, self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters, fortune tellers, quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals, Nigerian money scams, charms and talismans are all used to separate the mark from his [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Brian Krebs’ “Glut of Stolen Banking Data Trims Profits for Thieves” (The Washington Post: 15 April 2009):
A massive glut in the number of credit and debit cards stolen in data breaches at financial institutions last year has flooded criminal underground markets that trade in this material, driving prices for the illicit goods to the [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Bruce Schneier’s “The Economics of Spam” (Crypto-Gram: 15 November 2008):
Researchers infiltrated the Storm worm and monitored its doings.
“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted — a conversion rate of well under 0.00001%. Of these, all but one were for male-enhancement products and the average purchase price was close [...]
Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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photo credit: Andres Rueda
From Brian Kreb’s “An Odyssey of Fraud” (The Washington Post: 17 June 2009):
Andy Kordopatis is the proprietor of Odyssey Bar, a modest watering hole in Pocatello, Idaho, a few blocks away from Idaho State University. Most of his customers pay for their drinks with cash, but about three times a day [...]
Posted on June 20th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Rob Cottingham’s “From blocking to botnet: Censorship isn’t the only problem with China’s new Internet blocking software” (Social Signal: 10 June 2009):
Any blocking software needs to update itself from time to time: at the very least to freshen its database of forbidden content, and more than likely to fix bugs, add features and [...]
Posted on June 13th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Scott Wolchok, Randy Yao, and J. Alex Halderman’s “Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System” (The University of Michigan: 11 June 2009):
We have discovered remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in Green Dam, the censorship software reportedly mandated by the Chinese government. Any web site a Green Dam user visits can take control of the PC.
According to [...]
Posted on June 13th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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The Saint Louis Beacon published an article on 27 April 2009 titled “Tweets from the jury box aren’t amusing“, about legal “cases across the country where jurors have used cell phones, BlackBerrys and other devices to comment – sometimes minute by minute or second by second on Twitter, for instance – on what they [...]
Posted on May 3rd, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, personal, social software, tech in changing society | No Comments »
From “Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free” (Spiegel Online International: 19 March 2009):
Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.
German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may [...]
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Ellen Messmer’s “Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with ‘Underground Economy’ report” (Network World: 24 November 2008):
The “Underground Economy” report [from Symantec] contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised. Symantec [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):
From a licensing perspective, the vast majority (typically 60-70%) of all open source projects are licensed under the GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
…
GPLv3 was published in July 2007, some 16 years following the creation of [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):
Cumulatively patents have been doubling practically every year since 1990. Patents are now probably the most contentious issue in software-related intellectual property rights.
…
However we should also be aware that software written from scratch is as likely [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Steven Weinberg’s “Without God” (The New York Review of Books: 25 September 2008):
Contradictions between scripture and scientific knowledge have occurred again and again, and have generally been accommodated by the more enlightened among the religious. For instance, there are verses in both the Old and New Testament that seem to show that the earth [...]
Posted on April 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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Kissing
Interviewing for a new job without your boss’s knowledge
Visiting a therapist
Praying
Inspired by Patrick Keefe’s “Camera Shy” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003).
Related posts
iSee: online map of CCTVs in Manhattan
In Britain, you can see footage of you captured by CCTV
Tracking via cell phone is easy
The NSA and threats to privacy
Surveillance cameras that notice aberrations
Posted on April 10th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: law, politics, security, tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From Catey Hill’s “Massive ATM heist! $9M stolen in only 30 minutes” (New York Daily News: 12 February 2009)
With information stolen from only 100 ATM cards, thieves made off with $9 million in cash, according to published reports. It only took 30 minutes.
“We’ve seen similar attempts to defraud a bank through ATM machines but not, [...]
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From John Siracusa’s “The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age” (Ars Technica: 1 February 2009):
Nuances aside, the big picture remains the same: DRM for digital media distribution to consumers is a mathematically, technologically, and intellectually bankrupt exercise. It fails utterly to deliver its intended benefit: the prevention of piracy. Its disadvantages, [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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