call me paranoid, but I get the feeling that there’s a whole lot more to this story than is being said in this article.

Feds allege plot to destroy Fannie Mae data
Friday January 30, 10:58 am ET
Feds allege fired Fannie Mae worker planted virus to destroy mortgage company’s computer data

URBANA, Md. (AP) — The Justice Department says it foiled a plot by a fired Fannie Mae contract worker in Maryland to destroy all the data on the mortgage giant’s 4,000 computer servers nationwide.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 35-year-old Rajendrasinh Makwana, of Glen Allen, Va., is scheduled for arraignment Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on one count of computer intrusion.

U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein says Makwana was fired Oct. 24.

Rosenstein says that on that day, Makwana programmed a computer with a malicious code that was set to spread throughout the Fannie Mae network and destroy all data this Saturday.

Makwana’s federal public defender did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Washington-based Fannie Mae is the largest U.S. mortgage finance company.

say you’re trying to move a spool of wire and you encounter some stairs…

New measures are being taken to make sure irregularities in September’s D.C. Primary vote don’t happen in November. Officials at the D.C. Board of Elections say they now know what caused 1,500 extra votes to appear in the count.

326 people voted at the Reeves Center precinct on primary election day in September. Their votes were captured on a computer cartridge, but the Board of Elections says when it put the cartridge into the citywide computer to be counted, 1,500 write in votes appeared from nowhere. The board completed its investigation of what might have happened and blames static electricity.

I’d be interested to find out who those extra 1,500 votes were for…

• Type: rangefinder camera
• Manufacturer: Canon
• Year of launch: 1971
• Film: 35mm with speeds 25 to 400 ASA
• Lens: 1:2.8/40mm (4 elements in 3 groups)
• Shutter: programmed shutter with speed/aperture combination 1/30 sec./1:2.8 to 1/620 sec./1:14.5
• Aperture: automatically or manually, 1:2.8 to 1:16
• Viewfinder: bright frame finder with 0.6× magnification, superimposed coupled rangefinder, shutter speed control meter scale and parallax marks
• Metering: CdS photo cell above the lens within the filter ring (EV 8 to 17 at film speed ASA 100). The shutter is locked when the meter indicates over- or under-exposure
• Battery: 1.3 V battery type PX625
• Film advance: Lever, exposure counter, rewind unlock button, and rewind crank
• Flash: hot shoe with second contact allows usage of Canolite D flash in automatic exposure mode. Other types of flashes may need an adapter and can be used only with 1/30 sec. shutter speed with manual aperture setting
• Dimensions 125×75×61mm
• Weight: 550g

how can you not LOVE the MythBusters?

Looks like there may be some meat to that story about China’s fake routers after all.

Yahoo’s Political dashboard 2008

It’s Mumbai, India.

the story behind of the “hint” is below.
Continue reading ‘name that country (answer)’

there’s some amazing things being done with HTML these days, from scriptaculous to mootools and, of course, Ajax
however, this has got to be one of the best implementations I’ve seen in a long time
I give you DHTML Arkanoid *.

^{* this is not the entire reason for the lack of posting around here lately…}

freakin amazing

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China’s growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China’s emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world’s biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

In 2004 the total greenhouse gas emissions from the People’s Republic of China were about 54% of the USA emissions. However, China is now building on average one coal-fired power plant every week, and plans to continue doing so for years.Various predictions see China overtaking the US in total greenhouse emissions between late 2007 and 2010.

China’s ahead of schedule

the Google camera…