patrick.ainge.com

1) Read THIS.
2) Think.

ABSTRACT:

This paper attempts to set out some general parameters for coming to grips with a central homeland security concern: the effort to make potential targets invulnerable, or at least notably less vulnerable, to terrorist attack. It argues that protection makes sense only when protection is feasible for an entire class of potential targets and when the destruction of something in that target set would have quite large physical, economic, psychological, and/or political consequences. There are a very large number of potential targets where protection is essentially a waste of resources and a much more limited one where it may be effective.

A story in The Times of London.

The Financial Times today has an article about Jérôme Kerviel and the Société Générale scandal. Kerviel’s lawyers are claiming that SocGen is using the affair to conceal other losses.

Elisabeth Meyer and Christian Charrière-Bournazel told Agence France Presse that SocGen wanted to “raise a smokescreen that would distract the public’s attention from far more substantial losses that it had made in recent months, notably in the unbelievable subprime affair”.

They also said that the timing of the bank’s decision to close positions relating to Mr Kerviel’s trading and the manner it executed these trades “itself provoked the losses of €4.5bn”. The lawyers also claimed that Mr Kerviel’s trading was in profit to the tune of €1.5bn ($2.2bn, £1.1bn) at December 31.

Kerviel’s legal team went on to accuse Société Générale of increasing the losses by dumping Kerviel’s positions in the current declining market rather that taking time to assess the overall situation.

The NYTimes has a spot-on editorial on current FISA legislation.

Last night the invitation elves broke into my email and left me 6 more invites for pownce! Although I am a fan of inviteshare I am going to make some of them available here. Just leave a comment and I’ll get them out asap. I will update the post when they are gone. See you on pownce.

Appleinsider has some great photos of the Apple Bluetooth Headset. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for Apple to ship mine to me. :\

I was just over @ scobleizer and watched a demo of a new geo-presence service called plazes.com. It looked cool so I checked it out. The service allows you to publish your current location or ‘plaze’ and also find the ‘plazes’ of your friends. There is a desktop app available for both Mac and PC along with an SMS service that allows you to update from your mobile. They also offer a flash widget for placing on your Facebook profile or your blog to show people where you are. On the face of it this seem interesting but as with everything online the potential for invasion of privacy abounds. Plazes does allow you to limit if your current ‘plaze’ is available only to friends or to the general public. You can see the widget by clicking on the navigation link above.

It seems three engineers in Wales have figured a way to process carbon emissions into more beneficial biodiesel, methane gas, and fertilizer. The Greenbox was designed to be fixed underneath a vehicle where it takes in carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide until the next fill up, at which point the box would be switched out for a new one while the filled canister heads to a bioreactor for processing. We’ll have to keep an eye on this one.

[Via Engadget]

I got my iPhone on June 29th and I never looked back. I will be the first to admit that my blackberry did certain things that my iPhone is as yet not capable of. But, I also entered into the bargain fully aware of it’s shortcomings. I am an early-adopter. I understand owning 1.0 tech can be frustrating. it’s a reality I am willing to live with.

I bought the interface. This is the simplest way to put it. The apps, online and (hopefully) off, will come with time. Firmware will be upgraded. The world will spin. Everything else aside, the multi-touch interface is hands down the coolest consumer oriented tech to come along in the last 5 years , maybe more. Once you play with it…touch it you too will understand.

Scott Adams Writes:

…I want to live in a world where a rock star wondered, ‘How can I make a billion people think about my schlong for a few days’?

Brilliant.