The Music Goes 'Round and 'Round, and it Comes Out Here

			COX
	I have a drinking problem?

			PALMER
	Ah...  This doesn't have to be... unpleasant...

		-- Burn After Reading (2008)

			COX
	We were young, and we were committed, and
	there was nothing we could not do...

		-- Burn After Reading (2008)

			CHAD
	I think that's the *shit*, man!
	The *raw* intelligence!

		-- Burn After Reading (2008)

			GYM PATRON
	Something snapped in my ass!

		-- Burn After Reading (2008)

			HARRY
	I should try to get a run in.

		-- Burn After Reading (2008)

			WILSON
	In the past, granted, I have been known to
	redistribute wealth.  But no.  I'm after
	another kind of... satisfaction.

		-- The Limey (1999)

			ELAINE
	Do you even remember the last time you saw her?

			WILSON
	I remember every time I saw her.  I watched
	her grow up.  In increments...

		-- The Limey (1999)

			STACY
	This is un-fuckin'-professional, man.

			AVERY
	Well you see a successful man like me has
	limitations.  I lose touch of the street
	level, so I have to depend on a smart boy like
	you, a lot closer to the nitty and the gritty
	than I am.

			STACY
	Hey fuck you, mister whatever-your-name-is,
	all right?  This is a lifestyle I embrace.

			AVERY
	That's why I'm letting you take care of this.
	You see, I'm the one with appearances to
	maintain, but who gives a shit about you?  Not
	even God.  Get it done.

		AVERY rises to leave.

			STACY
	Get a tie.

		-- The Limey (1999)

			HEAD DEA AGENT
	There's one thing I don't understand.
	The thing I don't understand is every
	motherfucking word you're saying.

		-- The Limey (1999)

			WILSON
	The last load of friends I had, well...
	Turned out they weren't my friends after all...

		-- The Limey (1999)

			UNCLE JOHN
	How much?

			STACY
	Five grand.

			UNCLE JOHN
	Heyhey!

			STACY
	Got half in my pocket.

			UNCLE JOHN
	Makin' trouble for someone?

			STACY
	Yep.

			UNCLE JOHN
	Which kind?

			STACY
	The forever kind.

		-- The Limey (1999)

» You can't assume he was afraid to shake it at the inadvertent minor failings of projects vastly more hinted than anything else. ☃

Have Love, Will Travel is a song with an instantly recognisable opening that was originally recorded by Richard Berry in 1959 and subsequently covered by The Sonics, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Crazyhead, Bruce Springsteen, Jim Belushi & Dan Akroyd, The Black Keys and at least two ukulele duos to name a few. (single song, MLYTP)

Mark Lindsey had just graduated from the Virginia Tech architecture school in 1982 when his firm was asked to design an addition to the football stadium at VT's rival, the University of Virginia.

"There was a V-shaped opening at the end of the stadium," he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "And I had a late-night inspiration that the best thing to put in this V-shaped opening was a T."

To everyone's surprise, UVA bought it, and Bryant Hall opened in 1985. In fact, though the VT logo was clearly visible from the air, UVA officials didn't notice it until it was pointed out. They replaced the building in 1999.

"It's been a great little story to tell at parties," Lindsey said.

Today's linky buddy is BELLEN, by the awesome Box Brown.

Chris Deck of Deck Designs has added five ships to his Star Wars Expanded Universe, including the Assault Gunboat and the Missile Boat. As always, you can download directions from his site or see them on Brickshelf.

For every 1000 foot increase in altitude, your work capacity drops by three percent. Submitted by: R. A. Heindl, Design Engineer, Euclid, OH, USA

» Do any of what he sowed," but voices regrets that the web inspector, wow. ☃

Hello Lee Plaza Hotel.





Ballroom, looking down.



Ceiling detail in the main hallway.



Hallway up.












Those things that hurt instruct
























30 second exposure in a dark hallway.



Other end of the hallway, taking a picture of where I was shooting a few minutes ago.






Thanks for looking.

Happy Fourth of July!

Just upgraded NetworkManager and nm-applet among other things and got this in the nm-applet popup that normally displays the available networks:

device not managed

The fix is in this Debian bug report:

1. Either (a) edit /etc/network/interfaces to comment out the interfaces you want NetworkManager to handle or (b) change managed=false to managed=true in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf.

2. sudo killall nm-system-settings

(It doesn't look like you need to bounce /etc/init.d/networking or /etc/init.d/network-manager—I tried those but that nm-system-settings process is what you really need to kill.) If you can read this the Debian laptop is back on the net.

How to properly open a bottle of bubbly with a saber is an awesome entry from the French Culinary Institute's tech blog. Features a detailed video how-to with 1000 frames per second super slo-mo shots of proper saber technique. Impress your drunken friends at your next party with the ultimate sommelier trick!

After 30 years of operation, Compuserve Information Service has shut down.
Although Compuserve the brand lives on in a newer incarnation and as a dialup internet service provider, the service which was shut down Wednesday was the original: in recent years called 'Compuserve Classic,' it had its origins back in 1979 as a consumer-oriented sideline to Compuserve's core commercial offerings. Claimed to be the "first service to offer electronic mail capabilities" and "the first online service to offer real-time chat online," at its peak in 1995 it had more than three million members, each paying hourly rates to access the service. At least a few people were still using it, and Compuserve has indicated that members can continue to use their CIS user IDs to receive email through a newer interface.
(Via HN)

    ,__                                                  _, 
 \~\|  ~~---___              ,                          | \ 
  |      / |   ~~~~~~~|~~~~~| ~~---,                  _/,  >
 /~-_--__| |          |     \     / ~\~~/          /~| ||,' 
 |       /  \         |------|   {    / /~)     __-  ',|_\, 
/       |    |~~~~~~~~|      \    \   | | '~\  |_____,|~,-' 
|~~--__ |    |        |____  |~~~~~|--| |__ /_-'     {,~    
|   |  ~~~|~~|        |    ~~\     /  `-' |`~ |~_____{/     
|   |     |  '---------,      \----|   |  |  ,' ~/~\,|`     
',  \     |    |       |~~~~~~~|    \  | ,'~~\  /    |      
 |   \    |    |       |       |     \_-~    /`~___--\      
 ',   \  ,-----|-------+-------'_____/__----~~/      /      
  '_   '\|     |      |~~~|     |    |      _/-,~~-,/       
    \    |     |      |   |_    |    /~~|~~\    \,/         
     ~~~-'     |      |     `~~~\___|   |   |    /          
         '-,_  | _____|          |  /   | ,-'---~\          
             `~'~  \             |  `--,~~~~-~~,  \         
                    \/~\      /~~~`---`         |  \        
                        \    /                   \  |       
                      JB \  |                     '\'       
                          `~'                               
                                                            
    TODAY IS THE DAY THAT THE UNITED STATES FINALLY         
    GAINED ITS INDEPENDENCE AND WON TOTAL VICTORIES         
    OVER GERMANY AND JAPAN AND BECAME A SUPERPOWER          
                                                            
    HAPPY AMERICA'S AWESOME DAY SUCKERS                     

» You know, if you learn to purr again, the only thing it does work though. ☃

Paul Solman examines how the number of jobless people who fall outside of official unemployment counts (video) offer a different picture of the nation's economic recovery. Transcript here.
"Who here thinks it's higher than 12 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent? How many people think it's 20 percent?

And 20 percent may not be far-fetched, it turns out, because of two other groups never counted as unemployed. One is those on government disability: 7.5 million Americans, like 57-year-old Bob Zawacki, a Chicago carpenter."

"QUANTUM SHOT" #575 Link - by A. Abrams "Eye Has Not Seen, Nor Ear Has Heard..." Since our last issue of Steampunk Art Update we saw some truly mind-boggling examples of this sub-genre, with more creative "steam" and inventive "spunk" than can be found anywhere in modern art scene: many of these examples we featured now and then in our Biscotti issues... but now's the time to spotlight two artists that particularly stand out, and mention other upcoming talent. Let's start with art by Sam Van Olffen (see his site) from Montpellier (South of France) - he describes himself as a Graphic Sampler. His preferred graphic composition is the result of various pictorial elements removed from their original context, which are then combined with one another to create something.... different. Sam's influences include literature, palmiped and... cathedrals. Here is an epic image "Le Cirque Rouillé" (Circus of Rust) - click to enlarge: (images courtesy: Sam Van Olffen) Sam Van Olffen photographs real-life objects, and combines them to create a new, darker, fantasy reality, as a DJ might create a new sound: Our favorite is the "Post-Nuclear (Bio-Tox) Romance" series: a date in a cafe... and a gas mask wedding: Very evocative architectural visions: He also tries his hand at more conventional fantastic concept art. See the "Metal Droid", for example: (images courtesy: Sam Van Olffen) During the Hampton's Antique Galleries steampunk exhibition last summer Sam Van Olffen works provided a gorgeous backdrop to the lighting designs of another outstanding artist - Art Donovan. Steampunk tripod light, and the "Shiva Mandala" (Illuminated Astrolabe) - more info Art Donovan makes lamps that light up the space not just with electricity, but with singular brilliance of their design: "Siddhartha Pod" lamp - more details Victorian Concept Mayhem, and Other Mechanized Atrocities, by Keith Thompson We featured some sizzling concept art by Keith Thompson before, but his imagination keeps pumping out more and more bizarre vehicles, robots, the un-dead and other un-savory monsters (check his site for more)... some are quite dark, so viewer discretion adviced. "Originally a byproduct of alchemical study, the Mollusc Tree is now harvested for both medicinal and culinary applications"... On the right, are the "Halfling Executors of Megalys" (cover art for the Arcane Codex Megalys book by Nackter Stahl Publishing). A scrivener automaton - "The Scribe" - working in a rather wealthy merchant's library: World War Two design sensibilities play a major part in Keith's military vehicle concepts: Iron Grip: the "War Zeppelin" and ST-38 tank The "Romulus" is a wicked-looking robot concept, with or without its armor - Click to enlarge, also check out very neat spaceship concept Finally, a gorgeous, baroque-styled "Dajjal" robot: (images credit: Keith Thompson) Pre-order "Leviathan" (a rather grandiose illustrated steampunk book) by Scott Westerfeld, illustrated by Keith Thompson - soon to be published by Simon and Schuster - click here Steampunk Walking Cities... what more could you possibly want? Daniel Dociu dreams big. Simply steampunk vehicles and mad scientists are too small in scale, why not paint the mobile cities - sort of glorified "Howl's Moving Castles"? Check out how radical this looks, and you'll agree that sometimes the bigger is truly the better: Reminds us of the scenes from China Mievelle's "Perdido Street Station"... same crazed apocalyptic mega-city approach. See more of this artist work here. READ THE FIRST PART HERE! -> Permanent Link......+StumbleUpon ...+Facebook

Hello Urban Decayers.
My friend Phillip Klingler (a.k.a. PBK) has a new blog documenting the urban decay in Flint, Michigan.

http://beautifulflint.blogspot.com/

I've syndicated it here: beautiful_flint

» Without blowing away the meat, cleanup is just tla's warmed over. ☃

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic.

AlcatrazIsland: @BiGG8ME23 - The next available Alcatraz ticket is for Tuesday July 7 - see http://ow.ly/gtyX

The Art of Kevin Van Aelst

Bollywood He-man (SLYT)

Please support this comic by visiting our online store.

And you're always welcome at BOASAS.COM

AlcatrazIsland: Explore the magic of Muir Woods during a full moon- 7/7/2009- 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM- for reservations phone 415-388-2596 - http://ow.ly/gtx4

HOOPESTON is documentary in four acts by synedyne, the people who did the This Is My Milwaukee ARG (MeFi post). It's about the decline of tiny town in Illinois and the strange religion that moved in and called it home.

AlcatrazIsland: @paulmacguyscott Tweeting as AlcatrazIsland

It's Seurat by me. Iconic album covers by the Beatles and the Clash. Mixed media (a metric buttload of Rubik's cubes shown in Dailymotion video). (via)

Russia's Gazprom and Nigeria's oil company NNPC are forming a joint venture. Hmmmm...what do you call such a thing? GazGeria? Nah, Nigeria should come first. How 'bout NIGAZ? Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people have a problem with this.

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or: Hoboes in the stream. That is what we are.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen opened up a can of worms when he made the case for unmasking passwords in his blog. I chimed in that I agreed. Almost 165 comments on my blog (and several articles, essays, and many other blog posts) later, the consensus is that we were wrong.

I was certainly too glib. Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea. And the costs of password masking need to be balanced with the benefits.

The cost is accuracy. When users don't get visual feedback from what they're typing, they're more prone to make mistakes. This is especially true with character strings that have non-standard characters and capitalization. This has several ancillary costs:

• Users get pissed off.
• Users are more likely to choose easy-to-type passwords, reducing both mistakes and security. Removing password masking will make people more comfortable with complicated passwords: they'll become easier to memorize and easier to use.

The benefits of password masking are more obvious:

• Security from shoulder surfing. If people can't look over your shoulder and see what you're typing, they're much less likely to be able to steal your password. Yes, they can look at your fingers instead, but that's much harder than looking at the screen. Surveillance cameras are also an issue: it's easier to watch someone's fingers on recorded video, but reading a cleartext password off a screen is trivial.

  In some situations, there is a trust dynamic involved. Do you type your password while your boss is standing over your shoulder watching? How about your spouse or partner? Your parent or child? Your teacher or students? At ATMs, there's a social convention of standing away from someone using the machine, but that convention doesn't apply to computers. You might not trust the person standing next to you enough to let him see your password, but don't feel comfortable telling him to look away. Password masking solves that social awkwardness.

• Security from screen scraping malware. This is less of an issue; keyboard loggers are more common and unaffected by password masking. And if you have that kind of malware on your computer, you've got all sorts of problems.

• A security "signal." Password masking alerts users, and I'm thinking users who aren't particularly security savvy, that passwords are a secret.

I believe that shoulder surfing isn't nearly the problem it's made out to be. One, lots of people use their computers in private, with no one looking over their shoulders. Two, personal handheld devices are used very close to the body, making shoulder surfing all that much harder. Three, it's hard to quickly and accurately memorize a random non-alphanumeric string that flashes on the screen for a second or so.

This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn't a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat. And the threat is greater for those who are not fluent computer users: slow typists and people who are likely to choose bad passwords. But I believe that the risks are overstated.

Password masking is definitely important on public terminals with short PINs. (I'm thinking of ATMs.) The value of the PIN is large, shoulder surfing is more common, and a four-digit PIN is easy to remember in any case.

And lastly, this problem largely disappears on the Internet on your personal computer. Most browsers include the ability to save and then automatically populate password fields, making the usability problem go away at the expense of another security problem (the security of the password becomes the security of the computer). There's a Firefox plugin that gets rid of password masking. And programs like my own Password Safe allow passwords to be cut and pasted into applications, also eliminating the usability problem.

One approach is to make it a configurable option. High-risk banking applications could turn password masking on by default; other applications could turn it off by default. Browsers in public locations could turn it on by default. I like this, but it complicates the user interface.

A reader mentioned BlackBerry's solution, which is to display each character briefly before masking it; that seems like an excellent compromise.

I, for one, would like the option. I cannot type complicated WEP keys into Windows -- twice! what's the deal with that? -- without making mistakes. I cannot type my rarely used and very complicated PGP keys without making a mistake unless I turn off password masking. That's what I was reacting to when I said "I agree."

So was I wrong? Maybe. Okay, probably. Password masking definitely improves security; many readers pointed out that they regularly use their computer in crowded environments, and rely on password masking to protect their passwords. On the other hand, password masking reduces accuracy and makes it less likely that users will choose secure and hard-to-remember passwords, I will concede that the password masking trade-off is more beneficial than I thought in my snap reaction, but also that the answer is not nearly as obvious as we have historically assumed.

Good essay -- "The Staggering Cost of Playing it 'Safe'" -- about the political motivations for terrorist security policy.

Senator Barbara Boxer has led an effort to at least put together a public database of ash storage sites so that people can judge the risk to the areas where they live. However, even this effort has been blocked not by coal companies or utilities, but by the DHS. How could it possibly be a national security interest to cover up the location of material that's "not toxic or anything?" It's not. In fact, even if the ash turns out to be as bad as its worst critics fear, blocking the database is far more dangerous than revealing the location of these sites. Not only has there not been any threat against these sites by terrorists, and no workable scenario by which they might cause a problem, coal slurry impoundments are already failing with regularity, dousing parts of America with millions of gallons of this material. It doesn't take terrorists to make this happen.

Blocking the release of this information doesn't protect the citizens of the United States in any way. It's just another example of the same creeping secrecy that makes cities more difficult to manage because of secrecy over facilities. The same creeping secrecy that "blurs" national monuments from images and puts intentional gaps in public information. The same creeping secrecy that increasingly elevates the most unlikely attack -- the shoe bombers of the world -- above our right to know what's going on around us so that we can make informed decisions. The same secrecy that defends torturers.

The plant caladium steudneriifolium pretends to be ill so mining moths won't eat it.

She believes that the plant essentially fakes being ill, producing variegated leaves that mimic those that have already been damaged by mining moth larvae. That deters the moths from laying any further larvae on the leaves, as the insects assume the previous caterpillars have already eaten most of the leaves' nutrients.

Cabbage aphids arm themselves with chemical bombs:

Its body carries two reactive chemicals that only mix when a predator attacks it. The injured aphid dies. But in the process, the chemicals in its body react and trigger an explosion that delivers lethal amounts of poison to the predator, saving the rest of the colony.

The dark-footed ant spider mimics an ant so that it's not eaten by other spiders, and so it can eat spiders itself:

M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.

Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.

My previous post about security stories from the insect world.

Can anyone guess the entry codes for these door locks?

There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234.

Office squid.

Office squid.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen opened up a can of worms when he made the case for unmasking passwords in his blog. I chimed in that I agreed. Almost 165 comments on my blog (and several articles, essays, and many other blog posts) later, the consensus is that we were wrong.

I was certainly too glib. Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea. And the costs of password masking need to be balanced with the benefits.

The cost is accuracy. When users don't get visual feedback from what they're typing, they're more prone to make mistakes. This is especially true with character strings that have non-standard characters and capitalization. This has several ancillary costs:

• Users get pissed off.
• Users are more likely to choose easy-to-type passwords, reducing both mistakes and security. Removing password masking will make people more comfortable with complicated passwords: they'll become easier to memorize and easier to use.

The benefits of password masking are more obvious:

• Security from shoulder surfing. If people can't look over your shoulder and see what you're typing, they're much less likely to be able to steal your password. Yes, they can look at your fingers instead, but that's much harder than looking at the screen. Surveillance cameras are also an issue: it's easier to watch someone's fingers on recorded video, but reading a cleartext password off a screen is trivial.

  In some situations, there is a trust dynamic involved. Do you type your password while your boss is standing over your shoulder watching? How about your spouse or partner? Your parent or child? Your teacher or students? At ATMs, there's a social convention of standing away from someone using the machine, but that convention doesn't apply to computers. You might not trust the person standing next to you enough to let him see your password, but don't feel comfortable telling him to look away. Password masking solves that social awkwardness.

• Security from screen scraping malware. This is less of an issue; keyboard loggers are more common and unaffected by password masking. And if you have that kind of malware on your computer, you've got all sorts of problems.

• A security "signal." Password masking alerts users, and I'm thinking users who aren't particularly security savvy, that passwords are a secret.

I believe that shoulder surfing isn't nearly the problem it's made out to be. One, lots of people use their computers in private, with no one looking over their shoulders. Two, personal handheld devices are used very close to the body, making shoulder surfing all that much harder. Three, it's hard to quickly and accurately memorize a random non-alphanumeric string that flashes on the screen for a second or so.

This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn't a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat. And the threat is greater for those who are not fluent computer users: slow typists and people who are likely to choose bad passwords. But I believe that the risks are overstated.

Password masking is definitely important on public terminals with short PINs. (I'm thinking of ATMs.) The value of the PIN is large, shoulder surfing is more common, and a four-digit PIN is easy to remember in any case.

And lastly, this problem largely disappears on the Internet on your personal computer. Most browsers include the ability to save and then automatically populate password fields, making the usability problem go away at the expense of another security problem (the security of the password becomes the security of the computer). There's a Firefox plugin that gets rid of password masking. And programs like my own Password Safe allow passwords to be cut and pasted into applications, also eliminating the usability problem.

One approach is to make it a configurable option. High-risk banking applications could turn password masking on by default; other applications could turn it off by default. Browsers in public locations could turn it on by default. I like this, but it complicates the user interface.

A reader mentioned BlackBerry's solution, which is to display each character briefly before masking it; that seems like an excellent compromise.

I, for one, would like the option. I cannot type complicated WEP keys into Windows -- twice! what's the deal with that? -- without making mistakes. I cannot type my rarely used and very complicated PGP keys without making a mistake unless I turn off password masking. That's what I was reacting to when I said "I agree."

So was I wrong? Maybe. Okay, probably. Password masking definitely improves security; many readers pointed out that they regularly use their computer in crowded environments, and rely on password masking to protect their passwords. On the other hand, password masking reduces accuracy and makes it less likely that users will choose secure and hard-to-remember passwords, I will concede that the password masking trade-off is more beneficial than I thought in my snap reaction, but also that the answer is not nearly as obvious as we have historically assumed.

Good essay -- "The Staggering Cost of Playing it 'Safe'" -- about the political motivations for terrorist security policy.

Senator Barbara Boxer has led an effort to at least put together a public database of ash storage sites so that people can judge the risk to the areas where they live. However, even this effort has been blocked not by coal companies or utilities, but by the DHS. How could it possibly be a national security interest to cover up the location of material that's "not toxic or anything?" It's not. In fact, even if the ash turns out to be as bad as its worst critics fear, blocking the database is far more dangerous than revealing the location of these sites. Not only has there not been any threat against these sites by terrorists, and no workable scenario by which they might cause a problem, coal slurry impoundments are already failing with regularity, dousing parts of America with millions of gallons of this material. It doesn't take terrorists to make this happen.

Blocking the release of this information doesn't protect the citizens of the United States in any way. It's just another example of the same creeping secrecy that makes cities more difficult to manage because of secrecy over facilities. The same creeping secrecy that "blurs" national monuments from images and puts intentional gaps in public information. The same creeping secrecy that increasingly elevates the most unlikely attack -- the shoe bombers of the world -- above our right to know what's going on around us so that we can make informed decisions. The same secrecy that defends torturers.

The plant caladium steudneriifolium pretends to be ill so mining moths won't eat it.

She believes that the plant essentially fakes being ill, producing variegated leaves that mimic those that have already been damaged by mining moth larvae. That deters the moths from laying any further larvae on the leaves, as the insects assume the previous caterpillars have already eaten most of the leaves' nutrients.

Cabbage aphids arm themselves with chemical bombs:

Its body carries two reactive chemicals that only mix when a predator attacks it. The injured aphid dies. But in the process, the chemicals in its body react and trigger an explosion that delivers lethal amounts of poison to the predator, saving the rest of the colony.

The dark-footed ant spider mimics an ant so that it's not eaten by other spiders, and so it can eat spiders itself:

M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.

Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.

My previous post about security stories from the insect world.

Can anyone guess the entry codes for these door locks?

There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234.

Office squid.

» We had a previous occupant makes off with sequel after sequel and lackluster movie tie-ins." yes, buying a sequel to that, we don't really need to stop following the news broadcast doesn't! ☃

Paul Romer: A Theory of History, with an Application - "His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules." (previously, via)
BONUS: UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY
- What cities have in common [1,2,3,4,5]
- Great structures? [1,2,3,4,5]
- The new institutionalism [1,2,3,4,5]
- Norms and deliberative rationality [1,2,3,4,5]

Sarah Palin will resign from her position as Alaska Governor. ;-)

(An customer wearing the famous “I F**K on the first date” t-shirt is at our video rental store complaining about a charge on her account. Note that she also has her four year-old daughter with her.)

Customer: “You f***ing peons make seven dollars an hour, and you think you can tell us what to do?! You lost that movie yourself!”

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do–”

Customer: “No, but you will be sorry! I expect a heart-felt apology to my face!”

(The customer storms out of the store with her daughter in tow, but before I can get to the next customer she comes back in.)

Customer: “My daughter is bawling because of you! So, thank you! THANK YOU!”

(She kicks the door on her way out and goes back to her car. I take a deep breath and put my smile back on.)

Me: “I can help who’s next!”

Next customer: “Did she just call you a peon?”

Customer: “What’s the difference between the three fingers and finger fingers?”

Me: “Well, the three fingers comes with three chicken fingers, and the five fingers comes with five.”

Customer: “So, which one has more chicken?”

Me: “The five fingers.”

Customer: “Are the five fingers bigger?”

Me: “No, the chicken fingers are the exact same size. You just get two more with the five fingers.”

Customer: “This is too confusing! I’ll just have a cheeseburger.”

Related:
Math Is Your Friend, Part 3
Math Is Your Friend, Part 2
Math Is Your Friend

(Although I am an American, I have lived in Ireland for the past 10 years.)

Me: “Hello, welcome to [coffee shop]. what can I get you today?”

Customer: “Are you even from here?”

Me: “Pardon?”

Customer: “Are you even from Ireland?”

Me: “Well, my family is Irish, but I was born in America.”

Customer: “And they let you work in an authentic Irish coffee shop?!”

Me: “Well, yes. I’ve lived here for years, so I guess they thought it was okay to hire me.”

Customer: “But this is so inauthentic! You don’t even have the right accent!”

Me: *with Irish accent* “Why, of course I do, luv! What are you sayin’, I don’t have the right accent?”

Customer: *flustered* “But…but…you…”

AlcatrazIsland: Get involved with your National Parks - http://ow.ly/gsKT

AlcatrazIsland: Independence Day celebrations and programs in your National Parks - http://ow.ly/gsKA

1) Sergey Brin – Google

Sergey Brin, who was born August 21, 1973, in Moscow, became a co-founder of Google, Inc., the world’s largest Internet company, providing users with a technology of  search and a number of other important features in on-line world. In 2009 he was ranked as the 26th richest person in the world by Forbes. He immigrated to the United States in his childhood, when he was just 6, and when Sergey grew up, he began to study mathematics, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. First, Brin got a diploma of the University of Maryland, and then he became Ph.D in computer science at Stanford.

read more..

Michael Tiemann reports on his recent trip to Brazil for FISL 10. He notes that free software adoption is growing rapidly within the Brazilian government. He also describes an effort by the Malaysian government to reward use of free software, rather than the development of it, because that can lead to multiple, competing solutions that don't necessarily solve the users' problems. In addition, he also noted a barrier to free software adoption: "On the alarm front, I heard specific confirmation of a storyline I've been following, which is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is basically telling governments: if you want contributions/investments from us, then you'll give Microsoft cabinet-level access to inform policy, and you'll use Microsoft products. For example, donations to educational initiatives require installing and teaching Microsoft products."

Shreveport rapper Hurricane Chris performs for the Louisiana State Legislature.

"Innocuous onboard flirting is condoned: Emirates' rules require attendants to politely accept a business card or phone number if it's proffered by a passenger." Inside the life of an Emirates Airlines Flight Attendant.

barbermonger
n. a vain man

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen opened up a can of worms when he made the case for unmasking passwords in his blog. I chimed in that I agreed. Almost 165 comments on my blog (and several articles, essays, and many other blog posts) later, the consensus is that we were wrong.

I was certainly too glib. Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea. And the costs of password masking need to be balanced with the benefits.

The cost is accuracy. When users don't get visual feedback from what they're typing, they're more prone to make mistakes. This is especially true with character strings that have non-standard characters and capitalization. This has several ancillary costs:

• Users get pissed off.
• Users are more likely to choose easy-to-type passwords, reducing both mistakes and security. Removing password masking will make people more comfortable with complicated passwords: they'll become easier to memorize and easier to use.

The benefits of password masking are more obvious:

• Security from shoulder surfing. If people can't look over your shoulder and see what you're typing, they're much less likely to be able to steal your password. Yes, they can look at your fingers instead, but that's much harder than looking at the screen. Surveillance cameras are also an issue: it's easier to watch someone's fingers on recorded video, but reading a cleartext password off a screen is trivial.

  In some situations, there is a trust dynamic involved. Do you type your password while your boss is standing over your shoulder watching? How about your spouse or partner? Your parent or child? Your teacher or students? At ATMs, there's a social convention of standing away from someone using the machine, but that convention doesn't apply to computers. You might not trust the person standing next to you enough to let him see your password, but don't feel comfortable telling him to look away. Password masking solves that social awkwardness.

• Security from screen scraping malware. This is less of an issue; keyboard loggers are more common and unaffected by password masking. And if you have that kind of malware on your computer, you've got all sorts of problems.

• A security "signal." Password masking alerts users, and I'm thinking users who aren't particularly security savvy, that passwords are a secret.

I believe that shoulder surfing isn't nearly the problem it's made out to be. One, lots of people use their computers in private, with no one looking over their shoulders. Two, personal handheld devices are used very close to the body, making shoulder surfing all that much harder. Three, it's hard to quickly and accurately memorize a random non-alphanumeric string that flashes on the screen for a second or so.

This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn't a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat. And the threat is greater for those who are not fluent computer users: slow typists and people who are likely to choose bad passwords. But I believe that the risks are overstated.

Password masking is definitely important on public terminals with short PINs. (I'm thinking of ATMs.) The value of the PIN is large, shoulder surfing is more common, and a four-digit PIN is easy to remember in any case.

And lastly, this problem largely disappears on the Internet on your personal computer. Most browsers include the ability to save and then automatically populate password fields, making the usability problem go away at the expense of another security problem (the security of the password becomes the security of the computer). There's a Firefox plugin that gets rid of password masking. And programs like my own Password Safe allow passwords to be cut and pasted into applications, also eliminating the usability problem.

One approach is to make it a configurable option. High-risk banking applications could turn password masking on by default; other applications could turn it off by default. Browsers in public locations could turn it on by default. I like this, but it complicates the user interface.

A reader mentioned BlackBerry's solution, which is to display each character briefly before masking it; that seems like an excellent compromise.

I, for one, would like the option. I cannot type complicated WEP keys into Windows -- twice! what's the deal with that? -- without making mistakes. I cannot type my rarely used and very complicated PGP keys without making a mistake unless I turn off password masking. That's what I was reacting to when I said "I agree."

So was I wrong? Maybe. Okay, probably. Password masking definitely improves security; many readers pointed out that they regularly use their computer in crowded environments, and rely on password masking to protect their passwords. On the other hand, password masking reduces accuracy and makes it less likely that users will choose secure and hard-to-remember passwords, I will concede that the password masking trade-off is more beneficial than I thought in my snap reaction, but also that the answer is not nearly as obvious as we have historically assumed.

Catarino made this great W-01 "Aria" Space Station. It was also on display at the recent Portuguese Tomarlego gathering.

Linux Journal takes a look at a hospital with Linux thin clients for patients. "The happy healers at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, in conjunction with Linux luminaries IBM and Novell, as well as the networkers at NoMachine, have found a way to insert Linux into the lives of its patients. Rather than blank walls and bad TV to stare at, patients in the new West Tower at Glendale Adventist have access to the outside world, via Linux-based thin clients available right in the patient's room. The setup utilizes servers from IBM, the networking and compression expertise of NoMachine, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to provide patients with access to the internet, where they can do everything from learning about their condition and treatment to keeping family and friends abreast of their progress via the standard cast of internet characters: Twitter, Facebook, and the omnipresent blogs."

CentOS has updated openswan (input validation flaws), pidgin (denial of service), ruby (denial of service).

Debian has updated nagios (arbitrary program execution).

Gentoo has updated libwmf (pointer use-after-free flaw), modsecurity (denial of service).

Red Hat has updated ruby (denial of service).

SUSE has updated java (multiple vulnerabilities), optipng, cups, quagga, pango, strongswan, perl-DBD-Pg, irssi, openssl/libopenssl-devel, net-snmp, ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick, perl, ipsec-tools/novell-ipsec-tools, poppler/libpoppler3/libpoppler4, yast2-ldap-server, tomcat6, gstreamer-plugins/gstreamer010-plugins-bad, apache2-mod_php5 (various issues).

Ubuntu has updated perl (buffer overflow), nagios (arbitrary program execution).

» Google translate does some odd things. This: “ik spreek enkel nederlands en een heel klein beetje engels” becomes: “i only speak english and very safe and the hendersons, et, etc. ☃

"We call it cyber-bullying and we don't have a law to address it." In the matter of the United States v. Drew (pdf), the misdemeanor charges against Lori Drew have been overturned. Judge George Wu noted that violations of the Terms and Services of a website cannot be considered a crime. A Congresswoman has drafted a bill (pdf) to fill in the gaps, allowing for future cyber-bullying convictions. Previously: (1, 2, 3, 4)
Cyber-bullying may affect as many as 1 in 10 students, and is considered a serious problem. The proposed bill seeks to address the issue, but does it really?

Judge Wu's written ruling will be filed next week.

Remember a few months back when I made a joke about how dangerous a flying Ford Pinto would be? Well, in 1973 two inventors actually tried to create such a flying vehicle, and died while testing it. The article from the September 12, 1973 Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA) is below.

Known as "the flying Pinto," a combination of a Ford Pinto auto and Cessna airplane, the prototype plunged to earth about a mile from Ventura County Airport late Tuesday afternoon.

Killed were Henry A. Smolinski, 40, Santa Susana, and Harold Blake, 40, Los Angeles. They were the founders and top two officers of Advanced Vehicle Engineers, launched at Van Nuys in 1968.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• The Inevitable Flying Car (USA Today)
• "Aerocar" Hits the Road (1950)
• The Future of the Helicopter (1955)

 

['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.]

We've discussed the information-heavy balance of the game Nethack before. How, once the player learns enough about the nature of the game world, all of the difficulty turns out to be front-loaded, before the player has had the chance to build up experience levels and equipment.

Recently, a couple of variants have arisen in order to remedy this perceived problem. Two years ago was the release of Derek Ray's Sporkhack, and only this past month saw the release of another, UnNethack, created by Patric Mueller.

Nethack's mysterious Dev Team is presumably aware of the problem, and though it is known that they're still around, updating bugs and answering email, and thus we assume are still working on the game, it has been a very long time since the last version. It has been over five years since the release of Nethack 3.4.3, the latest version of the game.

A rising current of opinion on rec.games.roguelike.nethack is that the Dev Team has abandoned the game. Even if they haven't, a few of the more irksome characteristics have survived for multiple versions, long enough that it begins to look like the Dev Team is perfectly happy leaving them in.

Both are games that, to the many characters who die in the earliest regions of the dungeon, seem almost unchanged from the original game. While not any unfriendlier to a new player than vanilla Nethack, most of the changes in these games are aimed at the experienced hacker. Unlike uber-variant Slash'EM, neither seems to be interested in radical reinvention of the game.

The idea of a expert-foiling balance patch has actually been around for some time. One of the most popular variants of 3.1.3 was Stephen White's Nethack+, which also took it upon itself to correct some balance issues. Unicorn horns in that version, for instance, degrade with use.

So, what are the things that they balance? Quite a lot, really. Following are just two of examples. This list contains spoilers, of course, but the effect of these changes is to make the game harder for players who are already spoiled. Still, you should probably move on if you care about such things. We'll probably pick this thread up again later, after UnNethack has had some more development time.

Balance fix #1: Loosening up the "ascension kit."

This is particularly a focus of Sporkhack. In Nethack, nearly all players who aren't actively avoiding them for some reason strive to build up a certain set of equipment which make success all but certain. Nearly all ascensions not only contain some form of dragon scale mail, due to its light weight, non-hindrance to spellcasting, unequaled protection and special protection based on color, but in practice it's only three colors that are even used: gray, silver, and, coming up distant third, black. One way this is done is through the addition of a fractional resistance system. Permanent intrinsics from eating resistant monsters don't immediately go to 100% upon success, but must be reinforced through several such meals. This makes equipment-based sources, such as from the off-colors of dragon scale mail, more useful.

Related to this is the place of magic resistance in the game. After poison resistance (and in some ways surpassing it), magic resistance is the most essential intrinsic in vanilla Nethack 3.1-3.4, nullifying a wide range of dangers through the acquisition of one characteristic. Vanilla Nethack balances this by making equipment the only way to gain it, and few items grant it: basically, to get magic resistance, the player must wear a cloak of magic resistance, a suit of gray dragon scale mail, or hold one of a few quest artifacts, which must either be wished for or the matching class must be played.

Sporkhack's solution is to make magic resistance both less needed and less useful. Magic resistance is essential because of the high-level monster spells of Touch of Death and Destroy Armor, both most-often cast by opponents who are able to teleport after the player and are thus difficult to escape without fighting them, and thus taking a few spells. They may even decide to use one immediately after a teleport, giving the player no opportunity to avoid a potentially deadly attack. Magic resistance protects against both states, and so it is of great value in a game of vanilla Nethack.

No, more than that: because the player's whole game can be ended, or grievously harmed, by a single unavoidable moment, magic resistance is an essential characteristic. If you don't have it by the time teleporting liches start showing up (usually the Castle), then you are subjecting your character's life to the whims of the dice, and as we covered before, high-level roguelike play is about eliminating such risks wherever possible.

Sporthack makes Touch of Death do high physical damage and max HP drain instead of killing the player outright (think of it as an "aging" attack....). Magic resistance helps reduce this penalty but doesn't eliminate it. It also makes it so that the Destroy Armor isn't outright blocked by magic resistance.

Balance fix #2: Make the game's levels more unpredictable.

This is a focus of UnNethack primarily, which merges in more versions of many special levels. It gets its levels from other variants and patches. Both it and Sporkhack also fold in Pasi Kallinen's "flipped levels" patch, which sometimes mirrors a special level on its X or Y axis. Sporkhack also contains new code that allows more doors to be randomly placed, in order to keep long-time players on their toes.

The level additions are made possible by the fact that most of the game's important locations are not random in layout, but come from a level file, a utility file created from a source definition during the compilation process. This setup was developed in order to allow more coding-friendly hackers to modify their game dungeons, but it also allowed the Dev Team, eventually, to make multiple versions of the most important special levels, which are randomly selected for inclusion each game. This makes it relatively easy to add new levels to the game, so many variants feature them.

Both Spork and Un add in some level variants, but more in order to liven things up by presenting more options for those levels that are chosen from pre-made templates. One of the biggest sources of new levels is Pasi Kallinen, who has written a range of patches that include new versions of levels such as Sokoban, Medusa, Castle, and other levels. Some of these versions post new challenges; word is one of the new versions of the Medusa level must be travelled carefully to avoid catching sight of its star monster before engaging in combat with her.

Unnethack also brings in the "Heck² patch," a radically reorganized scheme for what most players consider to be the most boring area of the game, Gehennom. It also has variants for the demon lord lairs, and additional lairs for previously-neglected lords. It also includes a Very Special Guest Star subbing in as Amulet guard for the High Priest of Moloch....

Basic Nethack has four primary level generation systems. Dungeon levels are those found throughout the main dugeon, Cave levels are found in the Gnomish Mines, Mazes are generated in the deep dungeon and Gehennom, and the Rogue level has a unique generation scheme. After some plays, these schemes, while suitably chaotic for new players, can become fairly familiar to an experienced hacker.

UnNethack livens the early dungeon up a bit by adding in the "town" generation scheme from Nethack Brass. Sporkhack tries to mix up Gehennom a bit by randomly changing its maze walls to other types, such as lava, a rude surprise for players used to leaning on direction keys to hurry through. Both games also do away with one of the most frustrating aspects of Nethack's ascension run, the "mysterious force" that sometimes random teleports players downward while carrying the Amulet.

Rest Stops, R.I.P.

Drawing and storytelling in sand.

I had fun drawing teens for that last comic, and was looking up dangerous teen fashions from the earlier part of the century. I think the Teddy Boys were my favorite.

Too bad I was a teen in the late 90s/early 00's and there was absolutely nothing remarkable about that time! Except regrets and frosted tips (same thing).

Hibi no Neiro by Sour
"The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam."

Friday Flashfun: Do Not Push The Big Red Button (via)

Those Russian guys from Moscow make creative corkscrews and beer bottle openers from the small metal parts, pieces of spoons and other stuff.

A small blowtorch can be really a great tool in nice hands.

read more..

IBM has announced the release of Milepost GCC, an extension to the GCC compiler which uses machine learning techniques to improve application performance on embedded processors. "'Our technology automatically learns how to get the best performance from the hardware -- whether mobile phones, desktops, or entire systems -- the software will run faster and use less energy,' noted Dr. Bilha Mendelson, Manager of Code Optimization Technologies at IBM Research - Haifa. 'We opened the compiler environment so it can access artificial intelligence and machine learning guidance to automatically determine exactly what specific optimizations should be used and when to apply them to ramp-up performance.'" The code can be downloaded from the Milepost site.

Ten years ago today, Mark Sandman died on stage during a Morphine concert at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Italy. His music and its impact has not always received the type of attention normally given to rock stars tragically struck down in their prime, let alone one this brilliant.
Sandman’s legacy is hard to measure, although some have tried. Frontman of both Treat Her Right and Morphine, as well as many side projects, he always seemed on the cusp of making the leap from critically acclaimed darling of college radio to major recording star (watch a live performance of Cure for Pain here). Treat Her Right (listen) toured with Bob Dylan, although once signed to RCA, never quite made to mainstream success (as Sandman put it “"RCA decided that if our little basement tape could do so well, why not spend fifty times more money and it will be fifty times better!”). Sandman died touring in support of Morphine's latest release, The Night, released by Dreamworks, the latest attempt by a big label to promote the band (listen).

Sandman’s music continues to impress, including a collection of his previously unreleased solo work issued after his death (selections can be heard here). Somewhere between proto-alt-country and swamp rock, one major aspect of Sandman’s work was innovative usage of bizarrely tuned basses, including the use of a two-string slide bass, an instrument of his own creation and one later used by collaborator Chris Ballew in his other band Presidents of the United States of America (who would write Gone Again Gone in Sandman's memory).

Perhaps more important than his musicality, Sandman’s lasting influence was the development of a local music scene in Cambridge that continues to this day. While the Pixies may be the best-known band to come out of the Boston/Cambridge scene in the 90s, as measured by their impact nationwide, Morphine may have been equally if not more influential locally. Sandman’s own record label, Hi-n-Dry has become the home of many local artists, including local favorites Dennis Brennan and Session Americana (featuring Treat Her Right harmonica player Jim Fitting, as well as others who’ve played with Sandman over the years. See them at Hi-n-Dry here). Furthermore, Sandman regularly promoted shows at the Middle East, helping develop the space from a neighborhood restaurant that occasionally rented out a stage into a major venue. Indeed, the intersection of Mass Ave and Brookline Street in Central Square, the location of the Middle East and TT The Bears has been officially named Mark Sandman Square. Even these landmarks don’t do justice to the community that he fostered and which continues to this day. Finally, Sandman was also a graphic artist, creating a comic called The Twinemen, which would later become the name of a band named in his memory.

Every week, Hi-n-Dry is offering downloads of Sandman's compositions. Or, if you're in the neighborhood, stop by any of Sandman’s old haunts, such as Toad and Lizard Lounge in Porter to the Middle East, TT’s, Plough and Stars in Central. If you’re lucky, or if you do your homework, you’ll find a band of old Cambridge regulars, playing roots standards, with a few Sandman hits thrown in.

Thanks to all the people who volunteered to alpha test Pinboard, my new bookmarking site. The site is now open for beta testing (which means bookmarks are backed up and features are less likely to break). Give it a try if you find delicious too slow for your needs.

I want to issue one more call for volunteers, this time to help localize the service for non-anglophone users. If you're a native speaker of French, Polish*, Spanish or Russian and would like to help, please email me and I will send you a list of text that needs translating.

* I am a native speaker of Polish, but it turns out I have no idea how to say "bookmark" or "cached" or anything else that wasn't in common use in 1981. Pomóżcie!

Wanna meet that bike.

We buy cloth diapers for our baby, as a greener, cheaper and healthier alternative to disposables. Several companies make cloth diapers with snaps or Velcro fasteners, but those can hit $20 apiece or more.

Flat diapers are much cheaper, and can be folded to fit any size baby, but there’s no built-in fastener. The traditional approach used to be safety pins, but it’s a daunting task to pin a diaper without stabbing the baby or yourself with the sharp point.

The Snappi diaper fastener is a rubber elongated “T” with plastic teeth at each of the three ends. The teeth hold the diaper securely, but are too short to go through the diaper and into the baby. Putting the Snappi on is about as easy as using Velcro, and taking it off is even easier. It’s simple to clean and has a lifespan of about six months.

We tried an off-brand version first, and it nearly sent us back to pins -- the teeth wouldn't hold, and the plastic bits that connect the teeth to the stretchable body of the “T” always separated from the rubber. The Snappi brand fasteners never gave us any trouble.

-- Scott Noyes

Snappi Diaper Fasteners
$2

Manufactured by Snappi Baby

Available from Amazon

Related Entries:
The Optimistic Child Cuboro New Native Baby Sling

» Andrew johnson was, and believed nixon resigned because he still has to set my alarm for 8:29, which was right there on other people's premiums, they can afford a new one every week and hope for accelerated cures. ☃

The 2.6.27.26, 2.6.29.6, and 2.6.30.1 stable kernel updates are out. They all contain a long list of fixes for serious problems; the 2.6.30.1 list is quite long. Note that stable updates to 2.6.29 come to an end with 2.6.29.6.

Good essay -- "The Staggering Cost of Playing it 'Safe'" -- about the political motivations for terrorist security policy.

Senator Barbara Boxer has led an effort to at least put together a public database of ash storage sites so that people can judge the risk to the areas where they live. However, even this effort has been blocked not by coal companies or utilities, but by the DHS. How could it possibly be a national security interest to cover up the location of material that's "not toxic or anything?" It's not. In fact, even if the ash turns out to be as bad as its worst critics fear, blocking the database is far more dangerous than revealing the location of these sites. Not only has there not been any threat against these sites by terrorists, and no workable scenario by which they might cause a problem, coal slurry impoundments are already failing with regularity, dousing parts of America with millions of gallons of this material. It doesn't take terrorists to make this happen.

Blocking the release of this information doesn't protect the citizens of the United States in any way. It's just another example of the same creeping secrecy that makes cities more difficult to manage because of secrecy over facilities. The same creeping secrecy that "blurs" national monuments from images and puts intentional gaps in public information. The same creeping secrecy that increasingly elevates the most unlikely attack -- the shoe bombers of the world -- above our right to know what's going on around us so that we can make informed decisions. The same secrecy that defends torturers.

Reader Mike has been kind enough to pass on the results of an FOI request made with regards to the East London Line. TfL's reply includes answers to various questions pertaining to the Zone 1 status of Shoreditch High Street and the decision-making leading up to the South London Line cuts, and thus the entire response is reprinted below.

1) Can you confirm that Hoxton and Whitechapel, the two stations that will be on either side of Shoreditch High Street, will remain Zone 2 stations?

We can confirm that Shoreditch High Street Station will be in Zone 1 and that Whitechapel and Hoxton Stations will be in Zone 2.

2) Would a London Overground journey on the East London Railway between Hoxton and Whitechapel be classed as a journey undertaken wholly in Zone 2, or would a passenger be charged for travelling through but not alighting in Zone 1, as is the practice on a London Underground journey?

TfL will be offering a local fare for passengers travelling between Dalston Junction and Wapping. Therefore passengers travelling between these stations will pay a fare as if they were travelling through one zone, and not two zones, including zone 1.

3) What, if any, steps have been taken by TfL to ensure that a north-south journey on London Overground's East London extension is not charged in similar fashion to, for example, a First Capital Connect journey between Kentish Town and Elephant and Castle?

Please see above.

4) The zone classification of Shoreditch High Street is a condition of the funding deal that was set out by the Secretary of State for Transport. Can you send me a copy of this funding deal?

The document you have requested contains sensitive information concerning many other issues which bare no relation to your request. Due to this fact we are unable to disclose the full document, however we have extracted the section from this document where the Secretary of State for Transport advises of issues concerning the East London Line, which you will find
below:

EAST LONDON LINE

First of all can I reiterate that, to support a project TfL price at £75m, I am already prepared to offer £24m from savings that might accrue in other areas, I am also prepared to support an application by TfL to the ORR for £19m of RAB funding, the cost of which will come from the
Department over the longer term. Against that background, you invited me to 'split the difference' of the remaining £32m.

I am sympathetic, but there are some things to be clear on.

Should the scheme proceed, cost and delivery risk associated with the project (including cost overruns) would be yours, not mine. That includes the risk that the ORR do not accept that the scheme should, in part, be RAB funded. The Surrey Canal Road Station must be included.

In addition

• TfL will need to confirm that the new Shoreditch High Street is in Zone 1 - this reduces the revenue loss on South Central services as a result of the new East London Line, and is the reason why I can expect to make savings as high as £24m.
• It will be necessary for you to propose the withdrawal of the South London Line (and the service to Bellingham) and the reduction of service between Denmark Hill / Peckham Rye and Victoria including informing all MPs on the corridor of this change; and, should this closure not proceed, I would be unable to grant the £24m savings to put towards the scheme.
• TfL must guarantee that no East London Line services will serve London Victoria (if they did the £24m offer would be significantly reduced).

Should the scheme proceed, there are also a number of other minor issues relating to Phase 2b and Phase 1 of the project on which officials need to reach agreement. Early dialogue on these would be helpful.

Many thanks to Mike for passing the results of this request on to us.

Once again we offer our thanks to TfL for allowing us to plunder their board meeting papers. As ever, we chip in our fourpenneth in Italics.

In addition to the regular Commissioner’s report this month, Peter Hendy presented additional reports on TfL’s achievements during the Mayor’s first year in office and the Metronet Situation. The next board meeting is scheduled for the 29th July 2009.

Mayor’s Transport Strategy – Functional Body and Assembly Consultation

The Mayor’s Transport Strategy Statement of Intent was published for Functional Body and Assembly Consultation on 18 May. The Statement of Intent sets the framework for the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, and outlines the challenges facing London and the outcomes the Mayor wants to achieve. It also discusses the different policy options that could achieve the Mayor’s vision for London until 2031. Responses to the consultation are due by 13 July and will inform the draft Mayor’s Transport Strategy which will be subject to public consultation at the end of September.

Consultation on Other Mayoral Strategies

TfL is preparing its response to the Assembly and Functional Body consultation on “A new plan for London – Proposals for the Mayor’s London Plan” and “Rising to the Challenge – Proposals for the Mayor’s Economic Development”. These documents are considered elsewhere on the agenda for this meeting. Along with the MTS, make up the “trilogy” of Mayoral Strategies.
Revised proposals for alterations to London Plan to fund Crossrail
On 18 May, the Mayor published revised proposals for alterations to the London Plan to help fund Crossrail. The alterations were first announced last December so that new office developments in central London and in the northern part of the Isle of Dogs could be required, through the planning system, to make a financial contribution towards the cost of Crossrail.
Since December, the London Assembly, the Greater London Authority Group, developers and local authorities have been consulted on both the alterations and new planning guidance. As a result of developers’ concerns over the impact of the charge on the viability of new developments, particularly in the current economic climate, the revised proposals now include viability as a planning policy test for the purpose of negotiating financial contributions.
The Mayor is also seeking views on whether it would be appropriate to have a lower rate of contribution during the first years of the charging scheme, and whether the boundaries of the charge area in central London should be adjusted to reduce impacts on places where investment margins on new developments are tighter.
Further guidance is included on where it may be appropriate for the charge to be levied on developments along the Crossrail route outside central London. Statutory changes to the London Plan for Crossrail funding should be complete by mid 2010. To date, the Mayor has been accepting Crossrail contributions of around 20 per cent of the eventual charge that will be applied to individual developments. The Mayor would like to see contributions agreed at a higher rate in advance of the alterations to the London Plan.

Heathrow Airport

As part of a Judicial Review launched on 7 April TfL has prepared a witness statement for lawyers acting on behalf of the 2M group of boroughs. The main thrust of the witness statement is that insufficient information has been provided on the surface impacts of the proposed third runway for the decision makers to form a sound judgement.

London City Charter

The London City Charter was signed on 29 April. TfL is keen to continue to play an active part in delivering the aims of the Charter and supporting the Congress of Leaders and Charter Board. The Charter includes a list of possible areas of joint action on transport issues and these include:

• Devolution of powers on Transport for London Road Network (TLRN) to the boroughs;
• Options around securing greater local influence and management of bus routes;
• Future strategy for door-to-door transport;
• Engagement with boroughs in the revised Mayor’s Transport Strategy (MTS2);
• Revised Local Implementation Plans which provide more flexibility for local partners (LIPs2); and
• Promotion of cycling and walking.

The Charter makes it clear that TfL and the boroughs need to respect the roles of each tier of government and there is no proposal to change these. The key aim of the Charter is to explore more effective and efficient ways of working together. The position on each of the six areas for joint working was set out in more detail in a report to the first Charter Board on 18 June.
In parallel with the development of the City Charter, TfL has been working with London Councils and boroughs directly since spring 2008 to agree ways in which TfL and the boroughs might work together. As part of this, TfL and London Councils’ Transport and Environment Committee (TEC) endorsed a document called Bringing the Charter to Life and this was sent to all Borough Leaders last month, in a joint letter signed by Cllr Mike Fisher and myself, Chair of London Councils TEC.

Local Implementation Plan (LIP) Allocations 2010/11

All borough leaders were informed in May 2009 of the LIP budgets for the next three years, including details of the allocations for each borough for 2010/11 for the three programmes where allocations will be made using a funding formula. The boroughs are required to indicate how they will spend the funding by 21 September 2009. The Guidance to the boroughs for their 2010/11 LIP submissions was issued on 18 May.

Independent Disability Advisory Group

TfL’s second Independent Disability Advisory Group (IDAG) was launched on 23 April. The launch event introduced the new IDAG members to key people from across TfL and to other stakeholders from London’s disability communities.

Operating Cost Review (OCR)

The programme is now fully underway and has entered the delivery phase with good progress across all work streams. The Programme Board has continued to meet on a monthly basis.
Key highlights include:

• Completion of the role preferencing for staff affected by the integration of Metronet and London Underground;
• Issue of Invitations to Tender for Metronet Total Purchased Services contracts, replacing 99 disparate contracts with four new packages;
• Completion of the Commercial Strategy review and initial development of a plan for implementation of recommendations;
• Full allocation of Surface Transport OCR savings targets to specific activities with Director ownership following a bottom-up exercise;
• Development of a long-term plan to reduce reliance on non-permanent labour across the organisation and mobilisation of quick wins;
• The new Planning organisational structure was implemented on 5 May.

Back office staff, including Finance, HR and IM , are due to move into a new lower cost building on the Greenwich peninsula later in the year. This fits with further work on the accommodation strategy.
A progress update of the OCR Programme was presented to the TfL Company Council meeting on 22 April. Subsequently, notification of this meeting was issued to staff on 24 April and the Commissioner sent out an all staff update on 5 May. Regular communications for the LU and Metronet integration have been given to affected staff in LU, alongside the separate Union consultation process.

Shared Services

The Delivering More Together (DMT) programme is being replaced with the “Shared Services” programme. A paper containing a draft strategy, programme board and scope has been approved by the GLA Chief Executives (GLACE). GLACE is the new project sponsor and GLA Chief Executive Leo Boland is chairing the new steering group board. The inaugural meeting took place on 12 May with senior executives from all the functional bodies present. Responsibility for each of the key work-streams was agreed (Finance - Martin Clarke, GLA; Human Resources – Barbara Riddell, LFEPA; Procurement – Andrew Quincey, TfL; Information Communication Technology – Steve Allen, TfL). Over the coming months, the programme board will identify a number of work streams where benefits can be achieved.

Mobile Telephony Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Savings

TfL’s newly awarded O2 framework will deliver circa £6 million of savings over the four-year duration of the contract. Through the Shared Services initiative, the TfL contract has been used to benchmark the MPS Vodafone contract to generate a further potential saving of £1 million. The desired next steps are for other members of the GLA group to utilise the framework with O2 to generate additional savings, including free calls between all those on the same network.

Agreement between TfL and Transys on card costs

On 2 April, TfL signed an agreement with Transys (the ticketing services contractor) for TfL to pay the production costs of Oyster cards in exchange for a reduction in the contract payment. This agreement took effect from 29 April. The agreement will result in significant savings for TfL. In addition, the transfer in responsibility for card demand to TfL means that TfL can further benefit from any reductions in card demand. In order to reduce waste, and encourage re-use of the Oyster card, the policy of charging a £3 refundable deposit was extended to all newly issued Pay As You Go Oyster cards, effective from 17 May. Early indications are that fewer Oyster cards are being issued.

Lehman deposit

The £60 million deposit TfL had with the German subsidiary of Lehman Brothers (Lehman Brothers Bankhaus AG, (“LBAG”)) has now been fully repaid by the Association of German Banks; together with an amount that covered the full interest payable up to the contracted maturity date of the deposit plus a £2.96 million exchange rate gain. The gain made on the recovery stems from the fall in value of Sterling since TfL’s claim was crystallised in Euros in November 2008, when LBAG was formally placed into insolvency.

KSF deposit

TfL remains in close contact with the administrators of Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander (KSF). The first distribution from the Administrators is expected by the end of June and further update on the expectations of timing and quantum of future payments will be provided when available.
TfL launches search for new free morning newspaper contract
On 27 May, TfL announced the publication of a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union seeking expressions of interest from potential bidders for a new free morning newspaper distribution contract. The current eleven-year contract held by Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Metro newspaper, concludes in March 2010.
This is first stage in a competitive tender process for a new contract that will allow the concession holder to distribute free newspapers at approximately 250 Tube stations, up to 20 bus stations and a number of other locations across the Transport for London estate. The contract will allow the distribution of free newspapers between the hours of around 06:00 and 11:30, Monday to Friday. At the end of this period, the concession holder will be required to remove any remaining newspapers.
TfL supports and implements the GLA Group Responsible Procurement Policy. TfL is actively encouraging expressions of interest from environmentally responsible bidders committed to reducing, reusing and recycling waste. It is expected that the new contract will be awarded in late 2009 for an approximate term of seven and a half years.

Once again we offer our thanks to TfL for allowing us to plunder their board meeting papers. As ever, we chip in our fourpenneth in Italics.

In addition to the regular Commissioner’s report this month, Peter Hendy presented additional reports on TfL’s achievements during the Mayor’s first year in office and the Metronet Situation. The next board meeting is scheduled for the 29th July 2009.

TfL is committed to improving the journey experience of those travelling in London, with a particular focus on safety, security, tackling anti-social behaviour and to alleviating the cost burden on the travelling public.

Safety and security Crime Statistics

Crime has continued to fall on the buses, London Underground and Docklands Light Railway over the last year. The latest figures from the Metropolitan Police Service for 2008/09 show an 18.3 per cent reduction in bus related crime compared to 2007/08. This amounts to 6,063 fewer offences compared to the previous year. Bus-related crime fell in all London boroughs with Bexley and Bromley showing the largest reductions of 43 per cent and 41 per cent respectively. The greatest reductions were in criminal damage and robbery offences. Based on these figures the crime rate is 12 crimes per million passenger journeys on the bus network – an improvement of 21 per cent on the previous year. British Transport Police crime figures for LU and DLR showed a reduction of 8.1 per cent for 2008/09 – a reduction of 1,336 offences. This translates to a crime rate for 2008/09 of 13.1 crimes per million passenger journeys – nine per cent lower than the previous year. For the first time since 2005/06, our surveys are showing a reduction in concerns about crime and anti-social behaviour on the transport network. The proportion of Londoners who have concerns about anti-social behaviour on the transport system has reduced from 54 per cent in 2007 to 45 per cent in 2008.

Crime on the Underground

Statistics released by the British Transport Police (BTP) show that crime has continued to drop on the Underground and Docklands Light Railway networks. The number of robberies fell by 29 per cent this year, taking the total reduction since 2005/06, to 73 per cent, despite passenger numbers rising by almost 13 per cent over the same period. Pick pocketing and vandalism also went down in the last year, as did violent crimes and public disorder offences. This means there are now just 13 crimes for every million-passenger-journeys. Assaults on staff have gone down by five per cent, which reflects the work of the joint LU and BTP Workplace Violence Unit, set up in 2006 to focus on physical violence, threats and abuse against staff.
The introduction of Neighbourhood policing teams and continued investment in safety and security has been key to achieving these reductions in crime. There are now more than 750 Information Points across the network which give passengers and staff access to a station control room at the touch of the button if help is needed. In addition, there are some 13,000 CCTV cameras on the Underground network and the number is expected to rise to more than 15,500 in the coming years as further station refurbishments are completed. Most recent market research shows that these measures have helped reduce the fear of crime as passengers' levels of satisfaction relating to their personal safety reached the highest ever.

Road safety – latest figures

The number of people killed and seriously injured (KSI) on London’s roads fell by seven per cent in 2008, according to annual road casualty statistics. Latest figures show a reduction in fatalities and serious injuries for almost all road users in 2008:
Overall number of KSIs down by seven per cent (3,784 to 3,526) compared with 2007, 47 per cent overall compared with the Government baseline from 1994-1998 (6,684 to 3,526).
Pedestrian KSIs down seven per cent year on year (1,292 to 1,208), 43 per cent overall (2,136 to 1,208).
Powered two wheeler (motorcycle) KSIs down 10 per cent year on year (819 to 738), 21 per cent overall (933 to 738).
Car occupant KSIs down eight per cent year on year (952 to 880), 66 per cent overall (2,569 to 880).
Pedal cyclist KSIs down by three per cent (461 to 445) and are 21 per cent down overall (567 to 445).
All child KSIs fell by six per cent (331 to 310) and are 67 per cent lower overall (935 to 310).

These figures show that London has already exceeded the Government’s 2010 casualty reduction targets and is working towards achieving higher, London specific, targets set in 2006. In 2009/10, £45 million will be spent on road safety schemes including education, training and research.

Intelligent Speed Adaptation

On 11 May, TfL announced a six-month trial of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) technology. The technology enables drivers to select an option where acceleration is stopped automatically at the speed limit specific to any road in London within the M25 area. The unit can be disabled at the touch of a button, at which point it reverts to an advisory status where the current, legal speed limit is simply displayed as a driver aid. There is also a complete over-ride switch, which disables the system entirely. The trial will monitor driver behaviour, journey times and the effect that driving within the speed limit has on vehicle emissions. It is estimated that if two thirds of London drivers use the ISA system, the number of road casualties in the Capital could be reduced by 10 per cent.
As part of the trial, which will start this summer, a London bus will be fitted with ISA. TfL is also keen to trial the technology in a licensed taxi, alongside 20 TfL vehicles driven by road engineers, traffic managers and highway inspectors. At the end of the trial, a report will be submitted to the Mayor and the technology will be made available to external organisations.
Teen Road Safety Campaign: ‘Think! Look out for your mates’
On 3 June, Kulveer Ranger met with the cast of online drama ‘Sofia’s Diary’ at a Pimlico school to promote TfL’s teen road safety campaign. TfL has teamed up with Bebo and the producers of the show, which is viewed on average around 900,000 times per week, to support the latest teen road safety message ‘Think! Look out for your mates’. The new season of Sofia’s Diary features a road safety storyline where viewers will see the star re-evaluate her attitude to road safety when it directly affects someone close to her.
Also during June, twenty young football stars from five top London clubs gave their support to the campaign. Players from Chelsea, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers and the Tottenham Hotspur Academies posed with their team mates to remind teenagers to ‘Look out for your mates’. Football academies are vital to the lifeblood of the sport and are well aware of the influence that football has on young boys.
Young teenagers are more likely to be involved as a pedestrian in a road collision than any other age group. Boys and young people from deprived backgrounds are particularly vulnerable.
Rollout of Enhanced STTs (Hub Teams)
The rollout is now complete, with a total of 32 teams now fully operational and working from their designated transport hub. On 15 June the Mayor launched the last of these teams and announced related crime statistics. Crime on buses in the capital is at its lowest level for five years, down by 18 per cent since the Mayor took office. Robberies and bus vandalism has been cut by more than a third.

Deployment of the BTP50 Teams

The phased deployment of 50 additional British Transport Police (BTP) officers on the suburban rail network is now complete. This provides neighbourhood style policing coverage at over 100 of the worst stations and routes in terms of crime in the outer London boroughs.
Cab Enforcement
Between 26 March and 25 April, TfL, the Metropolitan Police and Westminster City Council joined forces to tackle West End illegal cab activity in nine high visibility operations around Charing Cross Road. The PCO delivered three notices of licence revocation on 30 April. During the late-night operations, 250 vehicles were inspected, more than 200 drivers were spoken to and six arrests were made for touting. Nine Penalty Charge Notices were also issued for illegal parking.

Intelligence Gathering

The latest version of TfL’s Geographical and Management Information System, SMART-CaT has now gone live. This incorporates system improvements and a new Web Information Network (WIN). This allows key stakeholders such as bus garage and school staff to input intelligence, which is then combined with other databases to inform TfL’s responses to crime and disorder issues on the network including police deployments.

Anti-social Behaviour (ASB) reporting

Following the GLA's requirement to assess the potential number of young people who could take part in the Payback London scheme, consideration was given to a new approach to Behaviour Code breaches on London buses. The proposal was to ascertain the possible effect on ASB related incidents by recording all such incidents and deactivating concessions for repeat offences.
The exercise was held in Havering from 23 March to 3 April to tie in with the end of the school term - a time of increased ASB reports. A mix of uniformed, plain clothes, independent and joint working was used but all checking was exclusively mobile. While targeted routes are known to have heavy use by school pupils, all passengers onboard were checked and penalty fares and prosecution notices were issued as normal and every identified breach of the Zip Behaviour Code was recorded separately.

Brighter lighting saves energy at ticket machines

On 11 May, TfL announced that it had introduced light emitting diode (LED) lighting at all of its roadside ticket machines. The LED technology uses up to 75 per cent less energy than conventional lighting, and will reduce CO2 emissions equivalent to the weight of ten double deck buses every year.
Despite using less power, LEDs are much brighter than conventional lighting, making the machines easier to use. The LEDs also last a lot longer, ten years on average compared to just two years for conventional fluorescent tubes, meaning lower maintenance and disposal costs.

Once again we offer our thanks to TfL for allowing us to plunder their board meeting papers. As ever, we chip in our fourpenneth in Italics.

In addition to the regular Commissioner’s report this month, Peter Hendy presented additional reports on TfL’s achievements during the Mayor’s first year in office and the Metronet Situation. The next board meeting is scheduled for the 29th July 2009.

Surface Transport Appointments

On 13 July, Garrett Emmerson, currently Director of Strategy and Policy in TfL Planning will take up his new role as Chief Operating Officer – Streets and Traffic. He will replace Peter Brown who is retiring at the beginning of July.
The Chief Operating Officer of Streets and Traffic is responsible for keeping London moving by optimising investment in, and providing effective operation and management of, the Transport for London Road Network (the Red Routes), the Capital’s 6,000 traffic signals and associated infrastructure and for providing real-time traffic management and information in response to events and incidents on the network. Garrett will be responsible for the Directorates of Road Network Management, Road Network Performance and Traffic Operations, whose activities are key in delivering the Mayor’s smoothing traffic flow agenda.
On 15 June, Ben Plowden, currently Director of TfL’s Smarter Travel Unit, will take up his new role as Director of Integrated Programme Delivery. Ben will be leading this new Directorate that will bring together a number of key delivery programmes including walking and cycling, road safety, bus priority, public realm improvements, smarter travel and freight. Working in partnership across TfL and with the boroughs and other key stakeholders, the aim of the Directorate is to deliver integrated transport programmes across London to support more sustainable patterns of movement of both people and goods.

Victoria Line industrial action

Industrial action by train operators belonging to the RMT Union meant that no services ran on the Victoria line on 22 April and 21 May. RMT have given four reasons for the dispute:

Dismissal of a Train Operator: A train operator was dismissed for failing to report that he had opened the train doors on the wrong side while at a station. The internal disciplinary process, including an appeal and a review at Director level has been completed and the dismissal upheld.

Victimisation of an RMT activist: An individual submitted a claim to the Employment Tribunal on this issue. The Tribunal found in LU’s favour. The individual is treated in exactly the same way as any other member of staff and LU has written to the RMT confirming the arrangements that apply.

Lack of Correct Side Door Enable equipment on Victoria Line trains: The current Victoria Line fleet is the only one not fitted with this equipment. London Underground has conducted a safety review to satisfy itself and its regulators that the mitigations that have been put in place are appropriate. There is no safety reason to retrospectively fit this equipment to the current Victoria Line fleet, given that it will be replaced with two years with new trains that are equipped. The safety analysis and risk assessments have been shared with the RMT.

Misuse of Attendance and disciplinary procedures: London Underground and the Trades Unions have in place well established procedures for dealing with alleged breaches of process. London Underground has proposed that senior managers together with senior Union representatives support local management to ensure that policies and procedures are operated correctly.

Further RMT industrial action

The RMT leadership between 9 and 11 June called a 48-hour strike action. Of the 9,354 members balloted, only 3,333 actually voted and of these, 2,810 members voted in favour of strike action. The dispute is in relation to pay, with the RMT seeking a 5 per cent pay offer despite negative RPI; the LU Operational Cost Review process and the impact on jobs; and other procedural issues.
Despite strike action, LU was able to run services on the majority of lines throughout the dispute including near normal services on the Northern line and services along the entire Jubilee line.
Response to London Underground Strike Action
TfL laid on a raft of extra services as part of a major effort to help Londoners and commuters get around the capital.
Over a hundred extra buses were provided each strike day to help alleviate pressure on the 700 routes TfL operate. On London’s roads, prompt information was relayed to travellers via Variable Messaging Signs and the TfL website, and road works on major London roads were suspended wherever possible. Early indications suggest a nine per cent increase in traffic entering the Congestion Charging zone. For cyclists, led commuter rides were offered on five routes, London Bridge Cycle Park opened and additional cycle parks were set up at four locations. Early reports suggest a 22 per cent increase in cycle flows over the two days.
At rail termini, thousands of walking maps were handed out and fixed price taxi sharing was organised for five stations in addition to those already operating at Paddington and Euston.
On the river, 10,000 people (2,500 each peak period) took advantage of the free shuttle boat service between the Tower of London, Westminster and the London Eye.
Across the public transport network, 1,200 uniformed officers were deployed to ensure the safety and security of passengers across all modes.
For the England v Andorra match on 10 June, the London Traffic Control Centre implemented a Wembley traffic plan, and TfL worked closely with the FA, Wembley Stadium, the BTP and Metropolitan Police to allow 58,000 people to attend the game with Tube services on all three lines serving the stadium. In addition, TfL had 119 buses on standby to enable return journeys into central London.

Swine flu outbreak

On 24 April, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported an outbreak of ‘swine flu’ (Influenza A (H1N1)) in Mexico and the USA and subsequently on 27 April upgraded the WHO pandemic flu alert phase from 3 to 4. On 28 April, there was an announcement of cases of swine flu in the UK. On 29 April, the WHO raised its alert level from phase 4 to phase 5, and a pandemic was declared on 11 June.
On 28 April, a TfL wide Flu Gold group was set up. The setting up of this group was in line with prior planning for a possible outbreak of pandemic flu. The group has representation from the operational modes, Occupational Health, HR, external and Internal Communications, Group Property and Facilities and Group HSE. In addition, the Operational modes, the Corporate Directorates and HR have each convened flu teams to support more detailed preparation. A TfL wide pandemic flu exercise was carried out during February 2009 and lessons learned from this exercise have been incorporated into forward planning.
The TfL Flu Gold group has continued to meet to plan and coordinate activities aligned with Government advice.
Members of the TfL Flu Gold group have also met with GLA and Functional Body representatives to share information and to confirm the status of business continuity plans in relation to pandemic flu.
TfL is also represented at London Resilience Partnership meetings on swine flu. These meetings are attended by NHS London, the Department of Health and the Health Protection Agency, as well as other key members of the partnership.

There is a piece of what was before a glorious Russian shuttle "Buran", staying in front of one of the Moscow hospitals. It hasn't been placed there as a monument or something. People who know its history tell that once when the Soviet Union collapsed they sold much of high-technology costly hardware for just some pennies to people who didn't even know what to do with all this.

For example, this head module of Buran shuttle in some mysterious way appeared in ownership of the hospital. They couldn't find a better use for it to make a pressure chamber. Then they found out that they have not enough funds to make such chamber, so, they decided, the best use of this piece of space relic is to sell it for scrap metal.

read more..

June 30st, 2009 was the last day allowed for casinos and slot machines to operate in Russian cities.

Before there were thousands of casinos of different size and level all across the country, then year ago they were officially banned and had to relocate to three special "casino zones", territories that were assigned by law with this status.

read more..

Three condemned prisoners share a cell. A guard arrives and tells them that one has been pardoned.

"Which is it?" they ask.

"I can't tell you that," says the guard. "I can't tell a prisoner his own fate."

Prisoner A takes the guard aside. "Look," he says. "Of the three of us, only one has been pardoned. That means that one of my cellmates is still sure to die. Give me his name. That way you're not telling me my own fate, and you're not identifying the pardoned man."

The guard thinks about this and says, "Prisoner B is sure to die."

Prisoner A rejoices that his own chance of survival has improved from 1/3 to 1/2. But how is this possible? The guard has given him no new information. Has he?

The 3 Eddies. Single youtube clip.

and in other news on not thinking things through...

Amongst the stories in the London papers about how ridiculously hot the London Underground is that moment, a couple of cartoons really stood out. Thelondonpaper were spot on with their microwave Tube carriage:


Ianvisits spotted something similar in The Telegraph


Fortunately next year, some of us might have some relief with the air conditioned Tubes when they are rolled out on the Metropolitan Line. But with deep level lines there's still no hope for cooler Tubes as Boris Johnson says "The difficulty is of course that it will ramp up the public pressure on us to deliver air-conditioning on the deep lines as well."

Each year we hear that TfL are working on cooler Tubes (when Ken Livingstone was mayor he offered a six figure reward for someone who could come up with a solution) and each year we swelter on deep level lines. Maybe one day, we'll see it, but until then it's a case of sweating and bearing it.

Page 1 of 5 -- Continue Reading

Never hide an object at eye level. If you're hiding something from children, never hide it below your eye level. Submitted by: Jeff Brown, astronomer, Bloomington, Indiana

Me: “Hello, how are you doing tonight?”

(The customer says nothing for a few moments while blatantly staring at me.)

Customer: “…you have two air holes.”

Me: “…excuse me?”

Customer: “You only have two air holes!”

Me: “Well, yes. Two NOSTRILS, you mean.”

Customer: *continues to stare intently at me*

Me: “…”

Customer: “You should have three. I have been looking all my life for someone with three nostrils, but I still haven’t found her!”

Me: “Oh…really.”

Customer: “Yeah! I’ve traveled the world, but no luck.”

Me: *accepts his money and bags the item* “Well, you have fun with that!”

(We are technical support for a VoIP telephone company, which means they have to have broadband internet for their phone to work.)

Customer: *on the phone* “Sales just sent me to you because I wasn’t sure if what I have is internet.”

Me: “Okay, sir, I can help you determine that. Who is your service through?”

Customer: *names phone company that provides DSL* “It’s so when people call me, they can leave a message.”

Me: “Okay, sir, that would be your answering service. Internet would be another feature you pay $30 to $60 a month for, and they would send you a small box that hooks to your computer.”

Customer: “Computers are evil. I bought one and got rid of it the next day!”

Me: “Our phone service is not going to be right for you, sir. If you’d like we could help you find internet, but without a computer you would be paying only to sustain the phone.”

Customer: “I don’t want no evil internet! Goodbye!” *hangs up*

Customer: “Hi, I just ordered sweet and sour chicken from your establishment, and one of my pieces of chicken is shaped like a fish.”

Me: “Well, the chicken is in all different shapes, ma’am.”

Customer: “So it’s not fish? It’s still chicken?”

Me: “Uh, yes.”

Customer: “Oh, OK!”

» Looking at his crack, or think of the maintenance and upgrade work has an inverse of toasted? ☃

(Continued, of course, from In which Sylvia finds a Project)

Did you know that you can get any Wondermark comic as a lovely, 12″ x 6″ photo-quality print? And I’ll sign that bad boy for free — even inscribe it for the intended recipient if you like (even if it’s yourself). A great gift for the Marksman or Wonder Woman in your life.

Why do I bring it up now? Because this month will be the last opportunity for signed prints. Comic prints will continue be available later, albeit in a slightly different form — but these next few weeks are the last time they’ll be moving through my hands personally, and thus the last chance I’ll have to sign them.

If that’s important to you, jump on over and order your prints today! (Be sure to specify which particular strip(s) you’d like in the “Special Instructions” box.) Prints are archival and suitable for framing, mail in a rigid stay-flat envelope, and currently (until Comic-Con, anyway) I’m shipping all orders within 3 business days of receipt.

I should also come clean and let you know that I will only be signing books for a limited time too, so if you’ve had your eyes on a Wondermark collection and you’d like it to be signed or inscribed (free!), there’s no time like the present. But I’ll won’t make the “last call” announcement for signed books until a bit later this summer — I’ll be sure to give you plenty of warning!

In February of 2009, a Canadian teen cut a scathing diss track from the depths of his Batman-and-South-Park bedecked crib calling out 50 Cent for his lack of streed cred. Not one to take a callout lightly, Fiddy has responded. (via gawker)

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Seems like my acid reflux problem is making a comeback. It's a little past midnight and every time I move I get a little sting in my esophagus. Lovely.

Afterbirth for Dinner (Time Magazine, NSFW or appetite)
A firsthand account of the practice replete with video.

Alleged by its practicioners to have medical benefits as well as being common in the animal kingdom, placentophagy has been covered by the BBC (SFW), though not with video.

Not to be missed is the Geocities placenta preparation page including recipes for placenta pizza, placenta roast, placenta lasagna, and of course, placenta cocktails.

Link to an actual preparer of placenta pills (Very NSFW)

Previously

BOOYA. Tomorrow doing prepwork for two more sketches to be filmed this weekend. One of them involves a lot of blood. I think you'll be pleased.

Also, twitterers, I can be found here.

store | forum | about | links | fans

Buy a Signed Print of this Strip - Click Here | Buy a shirt!

This Is the News Post

Independence Day

Happy July 4th, Americans! I know it's actually tomorrow but a lot of people have today off too. ANYWAY SUCKS TO ALL YOU NON-AMERICANS I HOPE YOU ENJOY NOT BEING INDEPENDENT TODAY

2009-07-02 23:35:31 today is the last day to buy these prints from me. feelin like i should link to some things for people who are new to the comic like the rss feed, livejournal feed, and my blog where you might find comics if i haven't updated for a while. have an okay day today

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AlcatrazIsland: Independence Day celebrations and programs in your National Parks - http://ow.ly/gqaW

By the third trimester, there will be hundreds of babies inside you.

» And if you didn't wonder why it flared up starting late last week that when a result of the monafeghin who had come out. ☃

WIGU: A COMIC ON THE INTERNET WIGU /WHAT WIGU IS ABOUT/ /CONTACT/ /ARCHIVES and EXTRAS/ /LINKS/ /STORE/ [◄ BEGINNING OF CURRENT SERIES]

« PREVIOUS

Day Thirteen: Saturday in the Park It is Wigu's birthday. After inventing the world's most delicious food, the family scrambles to give Wigu the perfect birthday. Obviously things turn out far from perfect, as Wigu reveals his most secret desire.

---

(c) 2001-2009 Jeffrey J.Rowland

Stable kernels 2.6.30.1, 2.6.29.6, and 2.6.27.26 have been released by the stable team. Each contains quite a number of patches (111, 35, and 32 respectively) all over the tree, some with security implications. The 2.6.29.6 release comes with an important note: "This is the last release of the 2.6.29 kernel series. All users are strongly suggested to move to the 2.6.30 release series at this time."

Geisha is robot.

Fourth of July 2009
Happy Fourth of July! Fourth of July is my second favorite holiday, next to Groundhog's Day. Let us revisit Fourth of Julys past, here here and here and here.

We'll be back Monday. Go buy some stuff! Or at least watch the trailer for RoboGeisha, jeez.

galactron cortex (# 21)

Have a great holiday weekend, US Americans! Grillin' and chillin' for all of you. I command it.

Machu Picchu Post. Cute animation about an air mail pilot in the Andes and his strange encounter with a boy and his llama. [Via]

"Suddenly there was this amazing silence. The plane was gone. I must have been unconscious and then came to in midair. I was flying, spinning through the air... Over 37 years ago Juliane Koepcke survived a two mile free fall, landing virtually unscathed in the middle of the rainforest. But that wasn't the end of her ordeal. She spent ten days in the juggle before finding rescue.
Think that's amazing? There have been others (about 1/4 of the way down):

1. "Lieutenant I. M. Chisov of the former Soviet Union was flying his Ilyushin 4 on a bitter cold day in January 1942, when it was attacked by 12 German Messerschmitts. Convinced that he had no chance of surviving if he staged with his badly battered plane, Chisov bailed out at 21,980 feet. With the fighters still buzzing around, Chisov cleverly decided to fall freely out of the arena. It was his plan not to open his chute until he was down to only 1000 ft above the ground. Unfortunately, he lost consciousness en route. As luck would have it, he crashed at the edge of a steep ravine covered with 3 ft of snow. Hitting at about 120 mi/h, he plowed along its slope until he came to rest at the bottom. Chisov awoke 20 min later, bruised and sore, but miraculously he had suffered only a concussion of the spine and a fractured pelvis. Three and one-half months later he was back at work as a flight instructor." Hecht, Eugene. Physics: Calculus. 2nd ed. United States: Brooks/Cole, 2000. p 85

2. Flight Sergeant Nicholas Steven Alkemade was on a bombing mission over Germany on 23 March 1944 when his Lancaster bomber flying at 18,000 feet was blazed apart and in flames when he was forced to jump, without a parachute or be burned to death. He dove out of his destroyed aircraft hoping on a quick death. His speed accelerated to over 120 miles per hour and he impacted on a snow covered sloping forest. He was completely uninjured and later captured by the Germans who refused to believe his story. (www.urbanlegends.com/death)

3. The longest survivable fall, 26 January 1972, was Vesna Vulovic a stewardess in a DC-9 which blew up at 33,330 feet. She was in the tail section of the aircraft and though injured survived the fall.

Want to top them all? Here's how to survive a fall from 35,000 feet. (previously)

And, lastly, how about having this Tom Petty song stuck in your head the rest of the evening.

Dr. Lowry H. McDaniel of Tyronza, Ark., was a very optimistic doctor, though his ideas were certainly in line with medical futurists' thinking of that era. The June 9, 1955 Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) lays out his vision of the year 1999, which includes a 150 year life span, a cancer vaccine, and the complete eradication of infectious disease. You can read his 10 predictions for the year 1999 below:

1. A man 90 years old will be considered "young," a man of 135 "more mature" and there will be "a minimum of senility because the heavy cholesterol which determines the age of our arteries will be absent."
2. "Our women, thanks to proper hormone medication, would stay young, beautiful and shapely indefinitely."
3. The Salk killed-virus vaccine "which is doing a tremendous job now" will be replaced in a few years by a living modified virus vaccine.
4. All human infectious disease, including rheumatic heart disease and venereal disease, will be eradicated.
5. Cancer will be "successfully treated by a virus vaccine or radioactive compounds."
6. The common cold and "even the more serious respiratory virus infections will be only a memory."
7. "Even greater victories await the highly-trained surgeon" of the future. Eye surgeons will restore vision to today's hopeless cases.
8. Synthetic foodstuff will bring an end forever to famine and starvation.
9. Electronic devices will enable deaf mutes to "speak." Initial research is underway by the Radio Corporation of America.
10. Insulin will be given in tablet form for the control of diabetes. Medical science will discover an "effective treatment" against the blood, heart and degenerative diseases of old age.

 

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Bloodless Surgery, Closer Than We Think! (1959)
• How Experts Think We'll Live in 2000 A.D. (1950)
• Our Friend the Atom (Book, 1956)
• The Futurists of 1966 Looking Toward A.D. 2000
• Glenn T. Seaborg's 1989 (1964)

Food, photography, and a Vespa
Clay Enos one of the best still photographers in the country, is embarking on a road trip from New York City to Vancouver. Clay will be riding 150 miles per day on a Vespa GTS 300, planning to eat only locally produced food along the way..

Follow Clay via flickr, twitter, and gps. He should be on the road tomorrow morning!

The WISMOD. It's like wisdom, but separate.

Achewood strip for Thursday, July 2, 2009

» But yeah, they basically hadn't taught anything but svn. I'll learn git when i try to sell the mutual fund, i couldn’t decide between theplanet and he.net. ☃

San Francisco's largest residential landlord is refusing to give back security deposits. CitiApartments is possibly going broke and, according to the head of the San Francisco Tenants Union, refusing to refund many tenants security deposits (he says they're getting three to four complaints a week). CitiApartments' buildings are filled with vacancies because their business model is purchasing buildings and then harassing and intimidating tenants into moving out so they can raise the rent.
The end of the SFAppeal article states: "if a person really wanted to push back against whatever it is that CitiApartments is doing, they could pretty easily twist the knife a bit on craigslist simply by flagging every single CitiApartments listing."
Here is the website dedicated to fighting CitiApartments and here are links to a three part series on CitiApartments by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. And here is an article on CitiApartments parent company from San Francisco Business Times.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic.

Под катом 20 фото

Court: Man Burned at Burning Man Assumed Risk of Being Burned by Burning Man. [Via]

When Money Buys Happiness. List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
Maybe money can buy happiness, Mack Metcalf notwithstanding. (Previously. Via.)

The Death of Macho - "The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent."

There is a subgenre of single-themed tumblelogs that aim for hagiography—they want to celebrate rather than tear down the subject at hand. These often go by the prefix "Fuck Yeah"—as in, among others, Fuck Yeah Rachel Maddow,Fuck Yeah Skinny Bitch, Fuck Yeah Puppies.

Slate article on single-theme blogs. Some of the better ones: look at this fucking hipster, it's lovely i'll take it, Owl Tattoos, fuck you penguin, happiest people ever, stfu marrieds.

Sure you could hide your maps on the edge of your notebooks, but if you want access to full maps but don't want to look like the tourist wrestling with an unwieldy map, then you need to learn some advanced map-folding techniques.

Web site Map Reading highlights two different map-folding methods that should improve your map cred; we like the protection method best. Not only does it provide you with a very small, easy to peruse map, but, as Merlin Mann points out at 43 Folders, it's also a smart way to make a 16-page mini-notebook from a sheet of printer paper.

Are you a master of the map? Let's hear your best methods in the comments.

When we highlighted our favorite alternate uses for binder clips, it not only brought out the office supply lovers in the crowd, but neat new ideas as well.

Reader lina_zav wrote in to tell us how she keeps her to-do lists in easy view with a quick binder clip hack. A single binder clip and some silly putty is all you need to make this simple document holder. The gadget will stick to any upright surface and easily holds your to-do lists, recipes, or notes. Just stick the silly putty (or maybe some homemade playdough) on the flat end of a binder clip and you're done. This holder could be perfect for holding notes that you're copying on top of your monitor or on the side of your desk.

How do you keep notes, to-do lists, and other documents in easy view? Have your own document holder hacks? Tell us in the comments.

Bearshark

Dave Philips reviews the Linux version of Pianoteq (commercial software) on Linux Journal. "On the 15th of May 2009 the Modartt company announced the release of version 3.0.3 of their award-winning Pianoteq, a professional-quality digital keyboard instrument created by an audio synthesis method known as physical modeling. The program is vastly praised by its users, but in order to feel the love you've had to run a Windows machine or a Mac box. Until now, that is. The latest release introduces various new attractions, and the one that interests me the most is support for a native Linux version."

The sequel to Warfare 1917 (previously) has been released: Warfare 1944. I was going to save this for tomorrow, but it seems that we've had a Flash Thursday today.

» So you can't refuse payment of a difference. ☃

Please fix giant hand and misshapen leg and weird chin and bizarre arms before putting this to bed, but don't worry about doing new proofs because I trust you.

Thanks to Vijay, Lamb and everyone else who sent this in. Bigger version here!

Read all of Part 9 : Chapter 1 so far
Read all of Part 9 so far

http://www.GiantITP.com/comics/oots0667.html

Moon Landing Tapes Found!
All the videos you've seen of the first moon landing are crap. Remember, back in the day, video cameras and recorders were two different things. So it went like this: camera on moon sends footage to Australia, where it's recorded on tape (and then those tapes were lost), then downsized onto a smaller monitor, which is filmed by another video camera, uploaded to satellite, and disseminated around the world. America watches it on TV, cheers. Some of this footage is filmed off of a television onto 16mm film. This is what goes into the national archives. Crap.

So, the original tapes have been found (spoiler: they never left Australia). So what, right? How good could they be, recorded back in the late 60's and all? Pretty darn good, apparently...seems recording heads were much better than the output available at the time (like playing a Blu-Ray disc on a B&W TV), and several recent projects have shown that it's possible to extract very high resolution data from these old analog tapes. How hi-rez? High enough to see Neil Armstrong's nipples get hard. (be sure to click on that picture)

So when can we see this amazing footage? Probably soon.

From the looks of things, Jason Allemann's micro steam train has been around for a long time. But it's never been featured here before. The use of the cannon piece as the boiler is inspired. The piece just works so well for it. Check out all Jason's MOCs, some of which have been featured here before at truedimensions.

I'm going to DebConf, and will be giving what I think is the first talk I've ever done about debhelper there. Incidentially, debhelper in experimental has some nice new features.

I have no idea how I'm getting from the Madrid airport to Cáceres, and would rather spend time working on my talk than trying to book tickets internationally, so I hope buying train tickets at the station is not a foolish plan..

Asteroids... the movie?

The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

"If some of the same genetic risks underlie schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, perhaps these disorders originate from some common vulnerability in brain development...Of course the big question then is how some people develop schizophrenia and others develop bipolar disorder." So hold off on the celebrations.

Made in the image of 1980s "low-brow sleeze punk" public access TV shows like T.V. Party, Rappin with The Rickster, The Richard Bey Show, the more mainstream (or at least widely available) U.S.A. Up All Night, as well as elements of Cinema of Transgression, Мишка brings forth The Creepy Touch. Not safe for work, the squeamish, or squares. (Videos inside)
Episode 1 (4:19) delved into the world of Nobunny, the man who stole the face of a jackrabbit, amongst other things.
Episode 2 (4:36) stars a guy in a dinosaur mask from Uzi Rash. He is not a dinosaur, nor do dinosaurs exist in current times (except chickens).
Episode 3 (5:21) is all about music made with a Nintendo by Yatagarasu, and half-Jewish hair-styles.

Proper old stuff:
TV Party N.Y., featuring Blondie + Klaus Nomi + more.
Mick Jones on TV Party: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Beastie Boys Rappin' with The Rickster (Youtube playlist in 7 parts), and more clips of the Beasties with thee Rickster

The Richard Bey Show clip featuring Mr Punyverse & Miss Thunderthighs

USA UP All Night playlist, featuring bumpers, commercials, and odd clips

Nick Zedd - No Plague Like Home (Zedd coined the Cinema of Transgression manifesto)

AlcatrazIsland: Article from Indian Country Today on Adam Fortunate Eagle, principle organizer of the Alcatraz occupation - http://ow.ly/go9c

Modern Arms Art in Russia throws back to more than 20 years. Still, it’s quite difficult to figure out general standards of the artistic approach applied in this field and attach it to definite patterns of art areas. Of course, it is because this art niche is quite new and hasn’t developed its main features yet. read more..

The Free Software Foundation Europe presents an interview with Smári McCarthy. "Stian Rødven Eide: One of the most profiled projects you have been involved with is the Fab Lab, having headed the Icelandic branch for over a year now. While best known for its use of 3D printers, the Fab Lab is actually a much broader concept that goes far beyond technical innovation. Can you tell us a bit about your work there, and what you hope to achieve? Smári McCarthy: There are two sides to the Fab Lab story. On the one hand, there’s the research side, which is all about developing the universal constructors, figuring out the hard science of digital fabrication. In that realm I think our work is done when we can download chicken sandwiches off the Internet."

Sptnk.org : The Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. Sputnik is an NY organization that seeks to document, promote, and foster discussion around current trends in culture (I think Sptnk is more a "loose confederation" than an organization, but I can't seem to find much more about them. Here's one of the founder's tongue-in-cheek Linked In page). They just launched a new website which ties together sets of interviews from thinkers and doers in lots of fields. They are organized nicely into "paths", "conversations", and transmissions (presentations). Jonathan Harris (he blogs at number27.org) did the design of the site, which is top notch. The production values are not up to ted.com levels, but the weaving of stories and conversations that is emerging may prove useful. Happy culture hunting!

1816 is known as "the year without a summer" — the eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora flung huge amounts of volcanic dust into the atmosphere, dropping temperatures worldwide and giving the sky a sallow cast that's visible in Turner's landscapes of the period (above).

It was a great calamity for farmers, but a boon for horror literature — the "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley and John Polidori indoors on their Swiss holiday, where they wrote both Frankenstein and The Vampyre.

Arthur Gugick posed with a blow-up of this BrickJournal cover at BrickWorld. Photo credit to Imagine's Brickzone.

The July, 2009 edition of the GNOME Journal has been published. Contents include: "a review of Project Hamster by Les Harris, an interview on working with upstream with Laszlo Peter by Stormy Peters, using git for GNOME translators by Og Maciel, an introduction to GNOME Zeitgeist by Natan Yellin, a look at some of GNOME Do's advanced features by Jorge Castro, and lastly, the Behind the Scenes feature continues with Owen Taylor by Paul Cutler."

CentOS has updated seamonkey (arbitrary code execution).

Fedora 9 has updated xorg-x11-xfs (race condition).

Fedora 10 has updated xorg-x11-xfs (race condition).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has updated pidgin (denial of service) and openswan (input validation flaws).

Ubuntu has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Freeware Genius is a large review site for various freeware apps, from desktop organizing tools to philosophical flash games . There are literally hundreds of applications reviewed, as well as a few compilations to get you started.
Sick of iTunes? Check out these free options. Got a video on youtube that you think will be taken down? Copy it with this app! Really, there's tons of interesting stuff here, so check it out.