Blackhacker

The President has modeled his SS reforms after A system in Chile. The NY Times

Dagoberto Sáez, for example, is a 66-year-old laboratory technician here who plans, because of a recent heart attack, to retire in March. He earns just under $950 a month; his pension fund has told him that his nearly 24 years of contributions will finance a 20-year annuity paying only $315 a month.

"Colleagues and friends with the same pay grade who stayed in the old system, people who work right alongside me," he said, "are retiring with pensions of almost $700 a month - good until they die. I have a salary that allows me to live with dignity, and all of a sudden I am going to be plunged into poverty, all because I made the mistake of believing the promises they made to us back in 1981."

The situation in Chile is not exactly like that in the US.

The program in Chile differs from the voluntary model that President Bush is considering. Participation here has been not voluntary for people entering the labor force since 1981.

On the other hand, Chile was careful before it started its private system to accumulate several years of budget surpluses, in contrast to the recent large deficits in the United States.

At least the Chilean Govt show confidence in the system right ?

Chile spends about $2 billion a year to pay retirees from its armed forces, according to Mr. Scolari. The military imposed privatization on the rest of the country, but was careful to preserve its own advantages and exclude fellow soldiers from the system. Despite calls that the military be forced to give up its exemption, no civilian government has been prepared to pursue that.

Thank God I already have a 401(k).

Downhill Battle has done something great. They are making available "Eyes on the Prize" for download. I am not going to comment on the legalities providing this. But I feel it is absolutely import that Every American see it. The link to the site is available on the left. I am getting mine as soon as I get home.

hat tip cobb

UPDATE:Downhill battle has removed the torrent links. Apparently they where contacted by the copyright holders, and told to stop. I am a very disappointed.

Reading this blog you might have already guessed. I am the worst speller on the face of the planet. Add to this fact that I am the worst typist in the world. AND I am no prone to proof reading It makes for some pretty embarrassing mistakes. Writing a blog only exposes my weakness to the whole world especially since almost NO blogs have spell checking built in. I am always writing posts in Word spell checking it and then pasting back to the my blog, or where ever I am posting too.

There is no need for that anymore Spellbound is browser extension for firefox. You simply download the plugin and the dictionary of you choice. It automatically installs. All you have to do is just restart your browser and voila! (French word may not be in my dictionary). Now on any text entry right click and select check spelling!

Now my blog will at least look as intelligent as I really am, or in the very least not look as dumb

Here is why.

Soon there will be. Google Video is a new product that enables you to search an index of transcripts from recent TV programs. It’s just an early-stage beta product at this point; you’ll only see stills and text snippets from shows that match your search terms, and you can only search shows from a few channels, dating back to December, 2004, when we started compiling the index. But we’ll be steadily improving Google Video in the months to come, so as they say in the TV biz, stay tuned.

Anyone who knows anything about NJ politics knows there are three big issues in the Garden State: High property taxes, High auto insurance, and "Pay-to-Play" corruption. Pay-to-Play is when businesses give contributions to canidates for elections in return for government contracts when they win. One of the last thing McGreevy did before stepping down as Governor was sign an executive order banning the practice. The federal court has stepped in.

TRENTON — The federal government won a court battle yesterday against New Jersey, saying the state’s ban on "pay-to-play" practices restricts competition by barring campaign donors from winning contracts for state work.

The state went into U.S. District Court in Trenton seeking an injunction against the federal government for its decision to withhold highway funding, but the judge refused to override the federal government’s position.

The federal government had filed documents Thursday, saying New Jersey’s anti-pay-to-play executive order, issued last September by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey, limited who could bid on state work.

And that, said lawyers for the federal government, violated federal guidelines for awarding highway contracts. The lawyers said businesses and individuals seeking government contracts have a right to make political contributions.

Says who ?!?!?!

If you ask me (if you are reading this you did) keeping the politcal system fair and honest trumps individual rights to bid on contracts. We talk about all of the money being put political campaigns. Where is this cash coming from ? This is America, the largest capitalist system on the planet. Everything is for sale. Everything is a sale of some sort. Contributors are buying somthing. If small and medium size business can influence govnerment to get there hands on public money, with contributions what do you think is going to happen as gloabalization sets in ?

C|Net

"Evil twin hot-spots present a hidden danger for Web users," said Phil Nobles, an academic researcher who specializes in wireless Internet and cybercrime. "Because wireless networks are based on radio signals, they can be easily detected by unauthorized users tuning into the same frequency."

Once an unknowing user has connected to an evil twin, a hacker can intercept transmitted data. Users are invited to log into the evil twin with bogus log-in prompts and can be lured into passing sensitive data such as user names and passwords.

This vulnerability seems to only effect public hotspots, and not your private WLAN, at least as long as your private WLAN is using some sort of encryption so that clients won’t connect to "Twins."

Lily Tomlin

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent,
hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that
get all the publicity. But then–we elected them."

twice

The unofficial Google Blog is talking about Google’s effort to digitize about by my count 36M books. If you remember I posted a bit about in a little while ago. Soon you will be able to Google stuff authors have written in using atoms, and if you are a copyright holder you can get paid too !

Do you hold the copyright on a book? Does your book have an ISBN? If you answered yes to both these questions, you don’t have to wait for all this. You can simply sign up to Google Print, send Google a copy of your book, and they’ll scan it in and OCR it for you for free! Then they’ll send you checks with all the money your book makes through ads! So please do it! Please?

Security Focus has an interesting story about a hacker who broke into T-Mobil network, stole secrete documents from the Secrete Service and more..

The same source also offers an explanation for the secrecy surrounding the case: the Secret Service, the source says, has offered to put the hacker to work, pleading him out to a single felony, then enlisting him to catch other computer criminals in the same manner in which he himself was caught. The source says that Jacobsen, facing the prospect of prison time, is favorably considering the offer.

The moral of this story is as long as the Secrete Service is stupid enough to transmit sensitive information across public networks, you can always break the law by stealing said information, selling it and expect to recieve a job offer after you get caught.

From space.com

DARMSTADT, Germany — The first pictures revealing the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan, were shown from Europe’s Huygens probe showing what look like drainage channels on the surface of what until today has been a planet totally hidden from view.