April 11, 2007
Most Dangerous and Livable States
Two interesting lists are The 2007 Most Dangerous States and The 2007 Most Livable States.
Most Dangerous U.S. State (rank = 1): Nevada
Least Dangerous U.S. State (rank = 50): North Dakota
Most Livable U.S. State (rank = 1): New Hampshire
Least Livable U.S. State (rank = 50): Mississippi
Virginia ranks # 36 on the Most Dangerous State list (well below average, where a higher ranking is worse) and # 12 on the Most Livable State list (well above average, where a higher ranking is better).
Where does your state rank?
Technorati Tags: virginia
Posted by keg at 8:14 PM
March 14, 2007
Happy Pi Day
March 14 --> 3/14 --> 3.14... get it?
Some links of interest:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/index.html
http://www.wikihow.com/Celebrate-Pi-Day
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070311-103835-2325r.htm
http://www.piday.org/
Technorati Tags: academia
Posted by keg at 8:56 AM
July 15, 2006
The Government's Right to Tap
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, is a 1994 law that requires telecommunications companies to provide special access to their data by government officials -- the usual requirement is to gather evidence for criminal investigations:
To amend title 18, United States Code, to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes.
However, with the tremendous growth of the Internet, the government has long been trying to apply CALEA laws to Internet service providers too. It was pointed out that network traffic is different from telephone calls, that it would place an undue burden on often small ISPs to fund out of their own pockets the overhauling of their networks to provide network taps for government triffic sniffers and collectors, and many other concerns. However, last year the FCC issued regulations to apply the law to Internet networks.
There is an article at Inside Higher Ed that discusses the dilemma posed for colleges and universities:
Because colleges have taken numerous steps in recent years to make their networks more secure, making changes throughout their networks to make it easier for the government to monitor activities could have been hugely expensive. Colleges were particularly frustrated because they only rarely get requests (with warrants) from the government for such monitoring, and there has been no instance in which a college has been unable to comply promptly. The ACE sued the FCC over the regulations and a federal appeals court last month rejected the suit and said that the rules could be enforced. But the appeals court carved out an exception for "private networks," whose definition colleges have been trying to pin down.
Note that there are two perspectives to consider in this debate, as there are two sides of the network connection (collector and collectee).
Posted by keg at 2:42 PM
