RawCode

From Stonetable:

The Washington Post is running an article about how the TSA is training agents on how to detect “stress, fear and deception” among travelers waiting in line.

If you are traveling I really hope you are not having a bad day, feeling sick, worried about something, or have a medical condition that affects motor functions as you might be detained and searched.

From the article:

The teams have referred more than 40,000 people for extra screening since January 2006. Of those passengers, nearly 300 were arrested on charges including carrying concealed weapons and drug trafficking. TSA officials will not say whether the screeners have helped nab potential terrorists, but they say terrorists and other lawbreakers exhibit the same behavioral clues.

This new training doesn’t make me feel any safer when it has a success rate of only 0.0075%.

Filed by RawCode at 2:08 am under Commentary
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It is time to shake up the Telco/wireless industry.

Various telcos have mentioned how they want to charge companies like Google because they are making money off their networks.

Google takes that threat seriously. Hopefully seriously enough that they take their $12 billion dollars and buy a national slice of the 700mhz spectrum. They already own thousands of miles of dark fiber across the US, so why not use the 700mhz band for the “last mile” transit to customers. Google will have a direct path to the customer and own every step of it. They could offer reduced rate/ad support cell phone and internet use.

Now some people are scared of a situation like this, one company that owns the content, the transport and the devices you use to access the content. However, do you think GOOG could do any worse than AT&T already has? I mean they have already shown that they are will to work with the NSA to spy on American Citizens, it is awfully hard to beat that.

I say we should give GOOG a chance and hope they outbid the others.

Filed by RawCode at 1:11 am under Commentary
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http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/040207-cisco-channel-partners.html?page=1

Cisco is being very careful is how it supports grey market gear. According to the article, Cisco Partners will stall SmartNet negotiations  if your supplied list of serial numbers contains Grey market gear that was acquired outside of a Cisco Certified Partner. If Cisco is going to be this strict, they need to have some sort of Used Hardware Certification that people can choose to but, but with limitations on support time frames and issues they will resolve. They could also choose to limit what IOS you can install on used hardware as an incentive to buy new.

This way it would allow Cisco to direct customers to new hardware, while limiting their exposure to supporting used gear.

Filed by RawCode at 2:43 am under Commentary
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I know that we all appreciate YouTube for all the entertainment it provides. All the videos of people being dumbasses, all the creative artsy movies and of course the commercials and music videos that we all love. But past all that, YouTube makes it easy for users to use the video medium to get their voice heard. The only reason why I mention this now is because of this video. It caught my attention purely with its simplicity and quality.
Goodbye to You cover by mynameismeghan

Just a girl with a garage as her stage, and she is one of the highest ranked users on YouTube. No special effects, no flair. Just talent, and a video camera. This is what YouTube is all about.

Filed by RawCode at 7:54 am under Commentary
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As per the New York Times:

NASA Plans Permanent Moon Base

Important quote:

The space shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010, and the United States plans to scale back its involvement in the International Space Station. The station is still under construction, with a mission by the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Thursday. Ms. Dale said money would be shifted to the lunar exploration program from the shuttle and the station.

So it looks like we are not going to develop the ISS any further, just help it maintain orbit I assume. I wonder what the other Countries think of this new development. I’ll bet we did not even hint that we would be scaling the support back for the station to anyone.

Now with a proposal on the table for a permanent moon base, I wonder how far off the NASA Space Elevator actually is?

Filed by RawCode at 4:51 am under Commentary
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Yes leet speak is a dangerous code that children are using to evade parents comprehension. Here is a YouTube video to prove it:

Leet speak

Alrighty then. I can understand why parents would be concerned since l33t speak is alien to them, but it is hardly a plague on our children.  I think the bigger issue would be why your children are willing to meet a stranger off the Internet and you do not know anything about it. The technology gap that exists between generations can explain some of it, but parents just need to keep a better eye on their children.

Filed by RawCode at 6:51 am under Commentary
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Soon it will be December 1st, a very sorrow filled day for myself. If any of you can remember, my father passed away on this day in 2005. I still think of him alot as most children do of their father or mother. More specifically I have been thinking about how I could have made better decisions regarding his care. I know that this sort of thought process is rather self-deprecating and defeating, but I think it is something I need to write down.

A couple years back we had a discussion regarding what he would like done if he could not communicate because of a medical condition. Above all else he told me that he did not want rely on a machine for sustaining his life during an illness. He had seen first hand what being in a hospital for six months to a year does to a person in the 60+ age group. He wanted nothing to do with that.

Yet when he came down with pneumonia in the hospital and they put him on a respirator, I never mentioned his wishes. The doctors said the road to recovery would be hard, but doable. I had faith in my fathers ability to pull through it all. He was in excellent health for an 84 year old, it should not take him too long to recover! Once his lungs recover, it should only take a few weeks until he gets home. He will appreciate what we have decided to do for him.

Whenever I visited him, it was painful to see him hooked up to the machines. I so wanted him to survive though. To continue being a part of my life. So I could see him smile again, and go on a a trip that I had been wanting to take him on. In retrospect it would appear that I was blinded by my own selfish want to have him be a part of my life still. When it came down to making the decision, I thought about what I wanted. Not what he would have wanted to happen in this instance.
During his last months when he was awake, he was always happy to see me come by. He never showed me what he was truly feeling inside when he was stuck in a wheelchair, unable to control his bodily functions, unable to feed himself. He smiled when I brought him gourmet chocolate from foreign lands, and smuggled in a beer so he could have a sip or two. He was happy that I bought him some very small dumbbells so he could exercise in his room and Alaskan Fireweed honey for his waffles and pancakes at breakfast.

After he passed my mother informed me how he wondered why we had went against his wishes about the machine. He did not want to live in this new life that had been forced upon him by the illness. With his muscles so weak he ended up a shell of his former glory that could not even take care of himself. He hated being a burden on all of us, but above all he never let me see one iota of that. He did not want to burden me any further with his thoughts regarding the matter.

So hence, Sometimes I think I made a bad decision for him.

Filed by RawCode at 7:03 am under Commentary
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So I got off of work @ 8am Alaska time. I figure hey I should drive by BestBuy and see if anyone is in line already. They open at 10am, so I am thinking no one would be there, PLUS it is -9F currently. So I head on by.

15 people in line.

WTH. People, some people want to buy a Wii without dying in the cold. Anyways, just more Wii whining. I just refuse to wait in the cold for a console unlike Mr. Hamp. So it is my loss, but I stay warm. Hrm… Maybe that isn’t such a good trade off…

Damn it.

Filed by RawCode at 9:51 am under Commentary
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I am inclined to think so. I have been reading on the forums how grandparents and other groups of people that normally do not play games, want to buy A Wii. People that loathe tradition gaming platforms, now want to play!

I think the Wii will be a complete sellout all the way through Christmas.

Filed by RawCode at 2:27 pm under Commentary
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Posted today by the local Anchorage Daily News: Snuffed out

We have a large native Alaskan population in Alaska. (As if you couldn’t figure that out.) And they have their own hospital called the Alaska Native Medical Center. <-- Google maps link.  They have recently made a new rule stating that tobacco is banned anywhere on the property. So no one can smoke, chew or have any form of tobacco on the ANMC grounds.

*Even in your car*

I agree with almost everything, but I would like to think that you should be able to smoke/chew/use a tobacco product within your own vehicle. But they have an even stricter code for employees.

Employees must follow a stricter code than patients. They can’t come to work smelling like cigarettes or have tobacco products showing in pockets. Repeated violations could mean discipline or potential dismissal, officials said.

Holy crap. You cannot even smell like smoke when you come into work. Any employee will have a rather difficult time fitting smoking into their life with such rules in place. While I think rules limiting smoke exposure for non-smokers are helpful, I think some of these rules go a touch too far.

Filed by RawCode at 8:27 am under Commentary
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