The Celtic Syndicate

Yes, I mean that movie with Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

Sure, anyone who has lived in the real world this past decade knows that we’ve long since developed the technology to do all the fancy things shown in the film. What you may not know, though, is that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has recently enshrined in precedent a decision (also in audio) which asserts that such tracking by government entities is entirely legal.

As Adam Cohen over at Time puts it, the government simply believes that we have evolved past such petty things as privacy in this digital age:

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

Remember that this is the same court which decided (opening arguments in audio) back in 2008 that it’s a-okay for border agents, which now include just about everyone working at an International Airport, to search your laptop without probable cause, opining that the devices are no different from any other sort of luggage.

Well, much like encryption can be employed to lock your luggage data and block these illegal searches, somebody has come along to protect us from the tracking devices.

From Jason Chen over at io9:

These types of GPS jammers plug into the cigarette lighter in your car, and will “prohibit GPS signal” up to 10 meters. Ten meters isn’t too far, but it isn’t super close either, so cars next to you might get some GPS interference as you drive down the road.

This model is $33. There are handheld and higher-powered versions available for slightly more. Our friends at Brando have one too, for $50.

FYI, as far as I know, these devices are illegal to own and/or operate in the United States under numerous FCC regulations, so I am in no way endorsing these products.

Filed under: Gripes and Complaints - News - Politics - Technology
Tags: « 9th Circuit Court of Appeals • GPS • jammer • police • slippery slope • tracking »
by Kookus
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For anyone wondering why the US Armed Forces went ape shit over removable media last year, the secret is out: apparently, some jackass thought that Chinese official handing out free thumb drives in Afghanistan was legit.

The Washington Post:

Now it is official: The most significant breach of U.S. military computers was caused by a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop on a post in the Middle East in 2008.

Filed under: News - Technology
Tags: « China • dumbass • flash drive • Middle East »
by Kookus
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Ever wonder what happened to that mainstay of cheesy Saturday morning adventure shows? So did Daniel Engber over at Slate…

The fourth-graders were unanimous: Quicksand doesn’t scare them, not one bit. If you’re a 9- or 10-year-old at the P.S. 29 elementary school in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’ve got more pressing concerns: Dragons. Monsters. Big waves at the beach that might separate a girl from her mother. Thirty years ago, quicksand might have sprung up at recess, in pools of discolored asphalt or the dusty corners of the sandbox—step in the wrong place, and you’d die. But not anymore, a boy named Zayd tells me. “I think people used to be afraid of it,” he says. His classmates nod. “It was before we were born,” explains Owen. “Maybe it will come back one day.”

Filed under: Uncategorized
Tags: « adventure • nostalgia • quicksand »
by Kookus
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People constantly ask me why I’m not playing Star Trek: Online, being that I’m possibly the most rabid Star Trek fan alive today. Well, the guy(s) over at Aggrogate have summed it up pretty well:

Star Trek Online is a textbook example of a decent game that simply doesn’t do justice to its source material. It’s by no means a bad MMO, and in fact brings a handful of welcome new ideas that are just begging to be polished, but it simply isn’t Star Trek. Were it not for the Paramount pedigree, STO might have even be seen as a pretty good niche sci-fi MMO, perhaps a spiritual successor to Earth and Beyond, or a more casual-friendly competitor to EVE Online. With the Star Trek license dragging behind it like a chain, though, the game only feels like wasted potential.

Read more at aggrogate.com…

Filed under: Games - Gripes and Complaints
Tags: « failure • MMOs • obvious • Star Trek »
by Kookus
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Notice how screwed up our little corner of democracy is lately? We go from a dictatorial President bent on concentrating power in the executive branch and a congress too timid to stop him, to a President that embodies the spirit of bipartisanship and a congress unwilling to work with him. There is a word for this in the common vernacular: broken.

In the last two decades, we’ve gone exactly nowhere in terms of domestic policy. Health, environment, infrastructure… They’re all stuck at points of contention over twenty years old. The only thing it seems we as a country can get behind any longer is WAR.

How do we fix this? Well, step one in a multi-part fix is to BAN INCUMBANCY. Term lengths would need to be adjusted out a bit to make this workable, but I firmly believe that banning sitting public officials from running for office will change the nature of the beast in a positive way. My logic is that, by removing from office those who view legislating as a career instead of an honorable position of representation, by deleting the constant desire to pander to groups responsible for securing your future financial and political status, we can get back to the important business of running this country.

Sure, there are other factors, such as term limits, that need to be considered for this to be an effective fix, but we can iron that out as we go. Step one is to oust these career legislators; or, at least, weaken their grip on our government.

Filed under: Gripes and Complaints - Politics
Tags: « broken • fix it • government • solution »
by Kookus
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With Thanksgiving approaching it is the time of year to count your blessings.  Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living… I think that me meant that from time to time we had to take stock of what is important in our lives.  Examine, inspect, come to an understanding.

With this thought in mind, I have compiled a list of what I am grateful for. To put into words how important in my life these elements are is very important to me.

My family. We are not only the product of our genetic makeup but that is where we started out, and my husband’s family is my family, then there is my kitties and the beagle. They are family too.

My husband. He is kind and caring, loving and funny. He makes it all seem like it will be all right. He is wonderful.

My freedom.  Something we take for granted on a daily basis. I am free to go out as I please, without an escort. To wear pants, to vote, to work… to do all that because I live in the free country of the USA

My job. Working with good people doing something that I enjoy is wonderful.

My life in this time. To live in a time where we have proof of habitable planets outside of our solar system, to know for the first time in recorded history that we may not be alone in the universe… is just awesome.

This is a time to be thankful, and so, I am.

Filed under: Uncategorized
by lestatsmom
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Ever date somebody who could simply do no wrong? I mean one of those bat-shit crazy people who honestly believe that nothing can be their fault — textbook narcissism.

Once upon a time, I had the misfortune of being involved with such an individual. Well, to be honest, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of dating two such personalities, but the second seriously ended up as a drug-addicted mental patient. The one I want to talk about today managed to blunder through life well enough to presumably earn a degree of some sort and convince the local newspaper that she should be trusted with sharp objects such as pencils.

That’s right; she writes opinion pieces for the local paper, so, no, I’m not stalking anyone.

The most recent “enlightened debate” that this shining beacon of humanity has started concerns her experiences with MEN. Apparently we are all imature children incapable of so much as comprehending the concept of a successful relationship. Her articles state that her experiences with literally dozens of men have taught her that we are the scourge of the Earth, yadda, yadda…

Let me ask you something: from a purely scientific point of view, if you conduct the same experiment a dozen times, changing all but one variable each time, and end up with a dozen failed experiments, wouldn’t you begin to suspect that unchanged variable?

Speaking for all happily married men, let me just say this: maybe it’s you.

Filed under: Gripes and Complaints
Tags: « narcissism • relationships »
by Kookus
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So… Obama received the Nobel peace prize today. That’s special, I guess. I don’t really follow the process, so I have little knowledge of the qualifications involved, etc.

I hear from some of my right-leaning friends that he’s grossly under-qualified. Something about not actually having accomplished anything in his nine months in office. Personally, I think having negotiated the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty since the NPT counts, but what do I know?

Filed under: News - Politics
Tags: « Nobel • obama • surprise »
by Kookus
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An artist's representation of the Kepler spacecraft.

Well, we’re just a few days away from the launch of the Kepler Mission, designed to search out terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars.

Until now, we’ve only been able to detect Jupiter-sized planets orbiting distant stars by measuring the star’s “wobble”, as the gravity of those large planets tugs the star back and forth during the course of their orbits.  The Kepler Space Probe will essentially serve as a super Hubble, in that we’ll actually be able to see extraterrestrial planets crossing in front of their host stars.

Let me say that again: WE’LL ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO SEE EXTRATERRESTRIAL PLANETS FOR THE FIRST TIME. I don’t know… to me, that’s a big deal.

To make things even more exciting, it’s worth noting that the eggheads who were flabberghasted at the sheer number of planets we’ve found outside of our solar system, expecting planet formation to be somewhat of a rarity in the universe, have revised their stance, and are now claiming that the existence of Earth-like planets may be the norm rather than the exception.  Nobody wants to put a number on it this time, but considering that our galaxy alone has over 200 billion stars… well, you do the math.  At some point, the possibility of there being another planet out there where life developed comes so close to 100% that it’s simply not worth arguing about anymore.

We’re a long way from pointing at a star and declaring that there is an intelligent civilization on one or more planets orbiting that star, but this brings us one step closer to that goal.  One can only hope that NASA’s second wind doesn’t get quashed by the recent downturn in global economics.

Filed under: Science - Technology
Tags: « extraterrestrial • kepler • launch • nasa • planets • space »
by Kookus
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New York Post cartoon from 02/18/2009

If you follow the news, you’ve probably seen this image plastered all over creation.  Gods know… that media whore Al Sharpton certainly has.

Now, I’m no fan of Mr. Sharpton — his less than pure motives are about as subtle as a freight train rumbling through at 2 a.m.  That said, ignoring for the moment the man’s unique way of pointing out things that simply don’t exist, I have a hard time finding fault with his position over this.  The Guardian has a fairly decent, unbiased article on the situation, including a history of complaints about this particular artist.  It would seem that this isn’t his first cartoon which reeks of bigotry, with blogs such as Gawker handing him titles like “the Picasso of prejudice”.

Yeah, I know Obama didn’t physically write the stimulus bill as it currently stands; and, yeah, I know that it’s a play on a recent well-circulated news article.  I also know that racism and bigotry are alive and well in America today, and have the not-uncommon ability to smell bullshit when it’s being served as an apology.

Shame on you, NYP.  Not for printing the article — not everyone is sensitive to racism today; a credit to how far we’ve come as a society — but because you refuse to admit that there could even be a hidden meaning in that cartoon.  You think if you close your eyes, cover your ears, and scream about your own persecution loud enough, you won’t have to admit that an artist who has received more than his fair share of criticism over his bigotted drawings might have had ulterior motives in portraying the author of the stimulus bill as a chimp, alive or otherwise.  Al may be whoring it up yet again with his declaration that this is a call for violence against the President, but you’re no better by denying what is perfectly obvious to anyone with an IQ above room-temperature, after a careful examination of the facts.

Filed under: News - Politics
Tags: « al sharpton • cartoon • new york post • obama • racism »
by Kookus
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