The new Yakuza offer you cannot refuse...

"You better pay up or our hacker will make your rice cooker EXPLODE!"

LOL

The public purse must get really tight.

Pucker your anus!

Seriously.

Anyone not torrenting this?

Clearly it's some version of Kill Bill

With less Katana.

> assaulted at a series of parties

A SERIES of parties? How? Are there many parties doing rape in town at any given night? Do they pass drugged-up girls around? WTF??

Also looks like at this point in time the evidence will be so tainted / potentially shooped that it might well be thrown out. Unless someone fesses up.

Is there ever a *poor* timing?

Pretty rich that the US g'mnt speaks of "poor timing". WHO is using Nork's periodic antics for aggressive "need to do something" soundbites whenever it throws a tantrum? Presidents, senators and State Department doofuses are indulging a collective of infighting communist kleptocrats craving for attention. Good job.

Turn that FUD valve!

> The establishment of Trustworthy Computing changed how Microsoft and the entire computer industry thinks about security and privacy

Implying they weren't playing desperate catch-up then, being the typhoid Mary of the whole of the industry. Serious problems remain today.

One should also not forget that "Trustworthy Computing" was in a good part about protecting the content providers from the end user, not the end user from security problems.

Trendlabs, clear as mud.

This malware may arrive as either a file downloaded from certain malicious sites or as a file dropped by other malware.

Woah now, someone with Hollywood cyberspace sense must have written this.

What does it all mean?

What!

Dr Wiebke Ebeling of Australia’s Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics told The Australian that even at our distance – 30,000 light years from the centre – the fields would be so strong that “every single atom in your body would start vibrating and generating such heat you’d melt in an instant.”

How is that even possible? That would be worse than sitting in an NMR scanner. Stars, planets and gas giants with their conductive cores would burst like oversized eggs in a microwave oven. Think of the currents needed to generate those fields. I suspect the energy density of space would tear reality itself apart!

I'm sure something has been lost in translation.

In order to pass the Bridge of Eternal Peril, you must first answer this question...

"Which would hurt less: a global carbon price of $US20 now, or a $US100 carbon price in 2020?"

That's easy!!!

Inflation means that USD 100 in 2020 will be actually worth far less than USD 20 NOW. It might even be worth nothing at all.

On the other hand, if you have USD 20 now you could actually invest it and hope that it grows to a lot more (in whatever denomination) by 2020 (though seeing the serial sabotage of any growth prospect by the Keynesians in charge, I wonder how that would be possible). That investment might yield the unexpected result of actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions!

Indeed, performing a bit of tax evasion will certainly work towards that goal, reducing government spending on wars and hindering crap like Olympic Games and schemes to reduce CO2 emissions.

Finally, how do I spend USD 20 per tonne of CO2, pray tell? Who takes the 20 USD and what do I get for it? This seems to be an exchange. Will the government give me USD 20 if I continue to drive my old car for a bit longer, as opposed to promising me rebates and tax deductions if I scrap it now and buy a new one I don't need in order to "kickstart the economy" (actually destroying the second hand market)? Somehow I doubt it.

Watching Hollywood movies much?

Somehow I doubt that what the worlds is needs a bunch of leet, ideologically motivated haxxxor teens.

Oh well.

As for the Iron Dome, the only thing that can be said is DERP:

Even experts who believe Iron Dome performed impressively question whether it could cope with a better-armed adversary capable of firing missiles from military launchers, not holes in the ground and cobbled-together launchers in the backs of trucks as is the case in Gaza.

Richard Lloyd, the missile-system expert conducting the investigation for Tesla, said his preliminary findings echoed Prof. Postol’s doubts. There are few demonstrable examples of incoming rockets intercepted by Iron Dome and showing the sort of telltale damage that would be obvious if they have been blasted by the spray of rod-like pellets from an Iron Dome’s warhead, he said.

So what's the cost of this theater?

Uri Avnery has this to say:

The sting is that one of the Palestinian rockets costs only a few hundred shekels, while one Iron Dome missile costs 315,000 shekels. During the four days [in March 2012], 17.6 million shekels’ worth of missiles was spent by the Israeli side. This is apart from the very high price tag of the batteries themselves.

It's good that the US is paying.

Anyone who has read Greg Egan's "Quarantine" knows what's what. Here is the start, and I suppose one has to read it in a "hardboiled" voice

Only the most paranoid clients phone me in my sleep.

No dreams; I simply wake, knowing:

Yet another job to spy on the someone's wife...

> allows malware to be dropped onto Windows PCs running the vulnerable software

Sure it isn't simply a TIFKAM install?

"They don’t have any sense of reason or shame that we can appeal to, and they have no incentive to be accommodating. We’re not their customers. In fact they make their money from selling us, not selling to us, so they have an excellent motive not to help us."

Sounds exactly like that tax thing if you replace "selling" by "serving".