short takes

[cellio]

Our landlord has installed combination locks on the restroom doors, as a security measure. Um. You already have to pass a security guard, or swipe a card, to get into the building. And if they were going to use locks anyway, wouldn't it be more secure to use those same cards instead of distributing a combination by word of mouth? (Every sys-admin known to man knows how well the shared password works over time.) Eh, whatever -- my memory for short sequences of otherwise-useless numbers is pretty good, so it doesn't harm me personally. It just seems a little odd to do it that way.

Was the Nick Berg video a fabrication? (Link from metahacker.) I can't tell if this is a case of conspiracy theories gone wild or something real, and I'm not qualified to evaluate things like Jordanian accents, but the point about the blood could be telling. (I have only second-hand information on the amount of blood, having neither the stomach nor the inclination to watch the video.)

The fine art of systems development (largish cartoon), courtesy of ommkarja.

Fun quotes from a chemistry class focusing on explosives, from anisodragnfly. My favorite: "This [fireball] should be four times bigger, but you should be okay where you are."

Seen on CNN:

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Hey, I love the new icon! It's a very nice picture of you!

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

I liked the picture I saw on CNN a few days ago, very similar except the prices listed were:

ARM - Regular
LEG - Plus
FIRST BORN - Premium

but they were just taped over the real prices and on normal paper.

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of one I saw outside a petrol station in Melbourne some years ago.

Regular: 19.1c/Litre
plus tax.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

We have the same sort of combination locks on our doors in our offices. Truth be told it's not that hard to get past the security guard in our building, and you only have to swipe a security card to get in if it's after hours. All the cypher locks do for us, really, is minimize the number of people who randomly walk in the building to use the bathroom. It's just not necessary that a bathroom be more secure than that. You wouldn't want them to be controlled by your electronic security card because then if you had a professional visitor to your building, they wouldn't be able to get into the bathroom.

It's not really meant to keep every single person that doesn't work there out of your bathroom. It's just meant to minimize the stragglers.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Is that a new picture of you? It's nifty.

I feel dreadful for Mr. Berg's family. Whether or not the video is a fabrication, he's dead and a national debate is going on about him wherever they look.