Social Security numbers of 26 million-plus veterans stolen

One of my clients is a collection agency. The owner once told me the Social Security number is the magic key. Once you get that, all sorts of data doors open up and you can find information much easier. So, this is a serious theft indeed.

I’m having a little trouble with the given story, that an employee took the data home without permission, the laptop was stolen, and the thieves don’t know what they have. Not sure how they can assume that without knowing who the thieves are. Also, how did the employee get the data? Are safeguards so flimsy that data can simply be copied to a laptop?

Could this have been an inside job? I’m not saying it was, just that it could have been. Something is odd  about the story.

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Global temperatures will rise further in the future than previous studies have indicated, according to new research from two scientific teams.

They both conclude that current estimates of warming are too low, by anything up to 75%.

Their conclusion is backed up by a new report from the Australian government.

Imagine, an actual government that supports the findings of global warming scientists. Oh wait, that would be virtually all governments, wouldn’t it, the U.S. being the notable and sole exception.

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I doubt Congress will come to any agreement on immigrant rights before the November elections. The soon-to-be-passed Senate bill will have to be resolved with the nasty Sensenbrenner bill from the House, and this will be contentious in the extreme.

(Hey, what is it with Wisconsin, home of both Joe McCarthy and now Sensenbrenner? Their next door neighbor Minnesota has a long socialist history too while Wisconsin appears to hatch right wing extremists. Update: There’s always been seriously progressive politicians there too, as has been pointed out in the comments. My apologies, Wisconsin!)

My take, Republicans don’t want an immigration bill to pass until after the election. That way they can mobilize the hardcore Right to vote. The Democrats will bravely do nothing and duck the issue as much as possible while mouthing platitudes, but you knew that already!

That’s why hoping the Democrats will somehow do the right thing is, well, delusionary. They’ll do the right thing when forced to by the people. Not before.

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I just discovered yet another neat feature on Yahoo. You can sync your cell phone address book to Yahoo AND sync Yahoo Calendar to your cell. This is really powerful.

I use Yahoo Calendar as my primary calendar as it can send reminders of appointments at times I specify to email or my cell, an incredibly useful feature.

Now I can sync everything. It took about 3 minutes to do the first sync, and now my address book and calendar are a) synced and b) backed up.

More than Google, more Microsoft, more than anyone else, Yahoo really gets wireless.

(Note:”"This service is only available to Cingular and T-Mobile subscribers with SyncML compatible mobile phones.”)

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“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass

“Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.” — Saul Alinsky

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