Interesting Links for 23-11-2012

[andrewducker]

• South Pacific Sandy Island proven not to exist, Cthulhu clearly to blame.
  (tags: maps pacific ocean )
• EU budget: Small storm in large tea-cup
  (tags: europe eu money uk )
• Ecstasy helps post-traumatic stress
  (tags: ecstasy ptsd )
• Call that a ball? Dogs learn to associate words with objects differently than humans do
  (tags: dogs perception

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

I am sure there will be Saudi women who say this is a wonderful thing which makes them feel safe. Rather like whoever it was who was saying how she didn't think women should be bishops.

[bart_calendar]

Soon they'll have to have their panties checked out by the CheckMate Infidelity System every night before bed.

Judge speaks about to sentencing teen to attend church

[cartesiandaemon]

Thoughts:

1. Is this a bit like The book in Anathem

Re: Judge speaks about to sentencing teen to attend church

[alextfish]

I was glad to see that the judge seemed pretty hardline about any possible reoffending. It's like he's saying "You get one more chance. Don't blow it."

And yeah, obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for children with a dedicated faith of another religion or similar.

Re: Judge speaks about to sentencing teen to attend church

[cartesiandaemon]

I was glad to see that the judge seemed pretty hardline about any possible reoffending. It's like he's saying "You get one more chance. Don't blow it."

Yeah. I found it hard to imagine that he'd do otherwise, but it's obviously necessary.

And yeah, obviously it wouldn't be appropriate for children with a dedicated faith of another religion or similar.

Exactly, although in some ways I'd more worried about people with a half-arsed sort of faith; people who are already dedicated are probably not going to go along with it, but if you take a wishy-washy Christian or atheist and force them to be Muslim, or vice versa, under the threat of jail, that's sort of terrible. Well, I guess it's ok if you assume religion is a purely social construct and it doesn't matter whether any of it is true, but most dedicated people wouldn't be comfortable saying that :)

Re: Judge speaks about to sentencing teen to attend church

[alextfish]

Well, I think a lot of the point in this "sentence" was to get the kid into a community that'll provide him some support and some kind of moral framework. So speaking as a Christian, I think I'd be happy if a nominal-Christian juvenile offender was sentenced to go to a Muslim mosque (assuming it was one with good youth work etc).

It'd make most sense (assuming you're doing this kind of idiosyncratic sentencing in the first place) to send someone to an establishment of the religion they've got some nominal ties to. In the case of secular Americans, that'd probably the Christian church for most of them, but there'd be areas where it'd be other things.

[fub]

Some sites send you a confirmation of your registration there with the password in plain text, while not storing the password itself as plain text -- it's just that they have that password during the process that creates the registration entry and email. So it might be that not all sites that are listed store the password as plain text.

(Why they would send a plain text password to someone who just registered is not entirely clear to me. It's a whole new security hole in itself.)

[alextfish]

Yes, I thought that. If you can *retrieve* your original password, that's definitely a problem, but being sent it *at registration time* isn't necessarily a problem.

[nancylebov]

It's a problem if someone breaks into your email.

[octopoid_horror]

Not really, unless I'm misunderstanding the point.

If someone breaks into my email, they'll see I get regular updates from lots of websites, so must logically have registered on them. For the bulk of the sites, all they'd need to do was to go to the website, hit the Forgot My Password button then use the "click this link to reset your password" email that turns up to reset my password to something totally different without ever knowing or needing my current one.

Few sites I use need any further verification. The silliest, to my mind, is the Verified By Visa thing which in order to reset your password needs information found on your bank card and your date of birth. In this Facebook age, it's safe to say that you shouldn't have a public profile with your DOB on it unless you want anyone who steals your bank card to be able to use it online after quickly searching for your name