The Defense Department mistakenly shipped secret nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan more than 18 months ago and did not learn that the items were missing until late last week [...]
Officials with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan’s fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters. [...] It was unclear yesterday how the two very different items were mixed up at a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Utah for the win! Seriously, how do you mix up batteries and nuclear weapon parts? One has dimensions comparable to a breadbox and the other is the size of my under-counter refrigerator. Come on, people!
Hey keys, now having your home raided by the FBI and getting arrested is just a click away! Add illegal hyperlinks to the exponentially-increasing multitude of dangers to avoid in our modern world:
The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them. [...]
Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.
It’s been quite a frightening week, but this is still the scariest thing I’ve read in a while. It’s more upsetting than knowing thieves can hack RFID credit cards for $8. It’s more distressing than Verizon giving the government direct access to all customer’s mobile voice calls, text messages, and physical location data. It’s even worse than Comcast being able to watch you through cameras they’re putting into their cable boxes. Why? Precedent is so important, and given that the government doesn’t even understand what the Internet is, they are in absolutely no position to be criminalizing it. I’m not defending child pornography, but the Internet browsing I do in my own home is absolutely none of the FBI’s business. Clicking on a hyperlink should never be considered a crime, and it should never cause authority figures to show up at your door, grab you, throw you in a van, and haul you off to jail… or worse. What’s to stop them from extending the illegal hyperlinks baiting beyond porn?
I’m so glad that the government will be able to pair this technique with the Patriot Act to keep America safe from all those ordinary people terrorists searching the Internets for “weapons” and “drugs” (nevermind they were actually looking for “history of Japanese weapons” and “cancer drugs and treatment options”). Of course, the private sector and their lobbying showboat wouldn’t miss the party, either; nothing would please the RIAA or MPAA more than having armed officers dispatched to your door for attempting to download music or movies online. Ah, freedom! Don’t you feel better already? 
Are you, too, annoyed by how difficult it is to just play DVD video files from your hard drive? Simplify your life by adding “Play DVD with VLC” to the right-click menu of every folder in one easy step! Press Windows Key + R to bring up the Run dialog and enter the following command:
REG ADD “HKCRFoldershellPlay DVD with VLCcommand” /ve /d “”%ProgramFiles%VideoLANVLCvlc.exe” -f “dvd://%1″”
That’s it! The effects are instant; try right-clicking on a folder now. 
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What is the world coming to? Does anyone else find the idea of a calorie-counting Firefox extension as hypocritical as it is undeniably disturbing?
Although I’m definitely a fan of the online DVD rental service Netflix, they have again disappointed me today. The website offers the option to put your memership “on hold”, which will temporarily stop Netflix from billing and mailing movies to you. On the surface, it looks like Netflix really cares about its customers by offering this extra convenience. From my point of view, however, this is really a selfish policy whose only purpose is to boost the company’s bottom line.
Let’s say you are a Netflix member whose billing date is at the beginning of the month. You are about to go on a two-week vacation, so you place your account on hold today and set the service to resume in two week. You’ve already paid for movies for the two weeks of your vacation, but, by placing your account hold, have elected to stop their delivery. In order to actually give you what you’ve already paid for, Netflix should move your billing date two weeks ahead to make up for the time that you will not be receiving movies. Netflix doesn’t do this. Unless your billing date is during your vacation, you gain nothing. The worst part is that you actually increase your risk of financial liabilities for the zero benefit you receive: Your account will be charged $20 per disc for any movies that aren’t received by Netflix within seven days of placing your account on hold. So basically, if you try to be an organized person and place you account on hold but then forget to mail those three discs back before you go on vacation, you’ve just given Netflix $60 for absolutely nothing.
I telephoned Netflix customer service to verify I correctly understood the account hold policy, which I did. Confronted with this information, the representative couldn’t tell me why I would want to place my account on hold.
