Phaedrus

If anyone's interested, the original paper is here.

Awesome job, Mistert! The client's side of things is really not something we come across all that much, so it's hugely valuable to see it out there. Big tip o' the hat to you, sir!

I think you've posted this in the wrong place, Cato... it should be in the "first world problems" thread.... :)

This one was entirely deliberate, but it's too good not to be mentioned here. Someone at BMW has earned their salary :)

True. But then, I fear the person you refer to above has a sadly limited world-view, and a worse knowledge of history. Who said you have to vote to assert yourself politically? :) What she had in mind for Israel was probably something akin to apartheid-era South Africa. Of course, South Africa's politics is now dominated by the legacy of a convicted-terrorist-turned-politician who didn't achieve what he did by voting...

I hope you don't mind my asking but... I'm curious about this. I had always got the impression that most (if not all) SPs - or at least, the ones on CERB, who are the only ones I know much about - were fine with giving references, even if they didn't ask for references themselves. But you're the first person I can recall who's come out as saying that she wouldn't provide a reference if asked... and I'm afraid that makes you rare and exotic and deserving of further investigation :) What I don't get (possibly because I'm on the other side of the fence here) is why you characterize references as a wholly negative thing. I'm making an assumption here that you do your own screening and that you would prefer to avoid the time-wasters and those who may jeopardize your safety... but given this, isn't the collective experience of the SP community better than what any individual could hope to achieve alone? Yes, giving someone else a reference helps her to save time on screening, at a cost of perhaps a couple of minutes to you... but the flip-side of that is that being able to ask someone else for a reference similarly allows you to save the time you'd otherwise spend on screening. What I'm really asking here is: does opting out of the give-and-take of references completely actually save you time, in the long run? Sure, it's not always going to be perfectly even - I've heard SPs grouch about the fact that they're giving more references to another SP than they get in return. I'm just curious as to why you seem to be so thoroughly down on the whole thing. Is it really a zero-sum game?

You can haz my share of it. You're welcome :) And now, a propos of nothing in particular, a pic that is just generally awesome:

Good thing you're not a dentist, or you'd be completely fornicated. I think that's a nominee for the 'WTF' thread :)

Am I the only person who's now gong to go through the boobs thread and categorize them all? Purely in the interests of science, of course... :)

An interaction with the government that was handled quickly and efficiently, much to my surprise. This one almost went in the 'WTF' thread....

I couldn't help but notice that someone hasn't been mentioned on this thread for far too long. That someone is, of course, the inimitable SMQ! I'm sure this board would be much the poorer without her unique brand of spectacular lunacy (of which I thoroughly approve, if that's of any relevance) and her ability to cut the crap and say what she thinks in her own remarkable style. So, a big tip o' the hat to our resident sexual superhero, and more power to your elbow, and all of that. But no, I'm still not going to dunk my balls in Neet. Sorry.

I had the pleasure of meeting Cy Cy at Paradise recently. She's a new arrival there, and I'm sure she'll be popular (on the off-chance that she isn't already). Where to start? You can see what she looks like from her pics, although they don't really show you what good shape she's in and they definitely don't show you what a lovely smile she has. Or how much fun she is to be with. She gives a really good massage for those of you who think that's important. And she also geve me the pleasure of returning the favour... which was lots of fun. But that wasn't nearly as much fun as what happened afterwards, which left me somewhat weak at the knees. Definitely an awesome time, and I'll be back for sure!

[URL="http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/11/26/security-flaw-in-common-keycard-locks-exploited-in-string-of-hotel-room-break-ins/"][B]Security Flaw In Common Keycard Locks Exploited In String Of Hotel Room Break-Ins[/B][/URL] Whoever robbed Janet Wolfâ??s hotel room did his work discreetly. When Wolf returned to the Hyatt in Houstonâ??s Galleria district last September and found her Toshiba laptop stolen, there was no sign of a forced door or a picked lock. Suspicions about the housekeeping staff were soon ruled out, tooâ??-Wolf says the hotel management used a device to read the memory of the keycard lock and told her that none of the maidsâ?? keys had been used while she was away. With the mystery unexplained, the Hyatt tried to give its guests a sense of security by posting a guard in its lobby. But Wolf couldnâ??t shake the notion that a thief could re-enter her room at any time. â??I had dreams about it for many nights,â? says Wolf, a 66-year-old Dell IT services consultant traveling in Houston for business. â??Iâ??d wake up and think I saw someone standing there at my desk.â? Two days after the break-in, a letter from hotel management confirmed the answer: The roomâ??s lock hadnâ??t been picked, and hadnâ??t been opened with any key. Instead, it had been hacked with a digital tool that effortlessly triggered its opening mechanism in seconds. The burglary, one of a string of similar thefts that hit the Hyatt in September, was a real-world case of a theoretical intrusion technique researchers had warned about months earlierâ??one that may still be effective on hundreds of thousands or millions of locks protecting hotel rooms around the world. Last month Houston police arrested 27-year-old Matthew Allen Cook and charged him with theft in a September 7th break-in at the Hyatt House Galleria. Police also listed Cook as a suspect in the theft from Wolfâ??s room four days later and that of another guest at the hotel. Cook, who has a prior history of arrests for thefts and burglary, was identified when an HP laptop stolen from one of the hotel rooms was found in a local pawn shop, where staff helped police to identify him. A Houston police spokesperson offered no information about how Cook might have accessed the rooms he allegedly looted. But White Lodging, the Hyatt franchisee that manages the Houston hotel, believes that the rooms were opened using a device that takes advantage of a glaring security vulnerability in keycard locks built by the lock company Onity, specifically a model of lock that appears in at least four million hotel rooms worldwide. That security flaw was first publicly demonstrated by Cody Brocious, a 24-year-old software developer for Mozilla, at the Black Hat hacker conference in July. Brocious reverse-engineered Onityâ??s locks and discovered he could spoof the â??portable programmerâ? device meant to be used for designating master keys and opening locks whose batteries had died. On stage at Black Hat, Brocious showed it was possible to insert the plug of a small device he built with less than $50 in parts into the port at the bottom of any Onity keycard lock, read the digital key that provides access to the opening mechanism of the lock, and open it instantaneously. In a statement sent to me, a White Lodging spokesperson says the company became aware of the vulnerability in its Onity locks in August, based on reading one of the stories I wrote about Brociousâ??s lock-hacking technique over the summer. But White Lodging says Onity only implemented a fix for that flaw in its locks after the September break-ins at the Houston Hyatt, around two months after I first alerted Onity to Brociousâ??s work. Following those September incidents, White Lodging resorted to plugging the port at the bottom of its Onity locks with â??epoxy putty,â? according to the letter it sent to guests at its Houston location. The hotel company says itâ??s now working with Onity to put a more permanent solution in place, either plugging the locksâ?? ports or replacing their circuit board at every location it manages. â??We sincerely regret that these thefts occurred, and hope that measures we have taken satisfy your concerns,â? reads the letter to guests from White Lodging vice president Thomas Riegelman. But even Onityâ??s official response, late as it may be, has left something to be desired. Rather than pay for the full fix itself, which requires a new circuit board for every affected lock, Onity has asked its hotel customers to cover the cost of those hardware replacements. Its free alternative involves merely blocking the port on the bottom of the lock instead with a plastic plug and changing the screws on the locks to a more obscure model to make it harder to open the locksâ?? cases and remove the plugs. Forcing the customer to pay for anything beyond a band-aid-style fix may mean the flaw will remain unpatched in many cases, warns Brocious. â?Given that it wonâ??t be a low cost endeavour, itâ??s not hard to imagine that many hotels will choose not to properly fix the issues, leaving customers in danger,â? he wrote in a blog post in August. â??If such a significant issue were to exist in a car, customers would likely expect a complete recall at the expense of the manufacturerâ?¦I canâ??t help but feel that Onity has the same responsibility to their customers, and to customers staying in hotels protected by Onity locks.â? Meanwhile, the Houston Hyatt may not be the only site hit with the Onity hack. An alert published by the insurance firm Petra Risk Solutions in October claimed that â??severalâ? hotels in Texas have had their locks opened with Brociousâ?? technique. Todd Seiders, a former Marriott security director who now works as director of risk management at Petra, says he spoke with the general manager of one of those hotels, who knew of at least three Texas hotels affected in total, though Seiders declined to name them. Itâ??s not clear if suspects have been arrested in those cases. In a phone interview, Cookâ??s lawyer Charles Thompson declined to speak about the case or make Cook available for comment. â??We will vigorously defend these charges, and all the facts will be available after the trial,â? Thompson said. When I first wrote about Brociousâ??s technique in July, his lock-hacking tool seemed to be unreliable: In tests we conducted at three New York hotels, he was only able to open one out of three rooms, and only after a few minutes of tweaking his device. But after his Black Hat talk, Brociousâ??s work was soon refined by other hackers and researchers, who ironed out the bugs in his exploit and posted YouTube videos of the devices reliably opening hotel doors. One managed to fit the lock-hacking tool into an iPhone case. Another team of researchers squeezed it into the body of an inconspicuous dry-erase marker. As the technique spreads, hotels with Onity locks need to either shell out for Onityâ??s circuit board fix or at least block access to their locksâ?? ports, says Todd Seiders of Petra Risk Solutionsâ??he estimates that more than 80% of his customers have implemented a fix since August, but says that many more hotels around the world may not have been so careful. â??Weâ??re expecting incidents in which these devices are used to explode nationally,â? says Seiders. â??As crooks find success with it, theyâ??re going to go back to the Internet and say â??hey, it works. I was able to break into ten rooms.â?? And then others build it and try it. Weâ??re going to get hit hard over the next year.â? All of which raises the question of whether Brocious should have ever brought his findings to light. Brocious, after all, didnâ??t alert Onity to its security flaw before his presentation at Black Hat (though I did) and even licensed his technique for $20,000 to the Locksmith Training Institute, which trains law enforcement and others, more than a year before he made it public. Brocious has countered that Onityâ??s security bug is so simple it may have already been discovered by other hackers who used it in secret. And he says hotels needed to be made aware of the locksâ?? flaws so they could switch to a more secure model. â??I see no path to mitigate this from Onityâ??s side,â? he told me in July. â??Hotels need to come up with a plan to move to more secure locks.â? As for Janet Wolf, an actual victim of the Houston hotel thefts, she blames the Hyatt, not Onity. â??If theyâ??re vulnerable to these hackers and they knew this was a problem, to me thatâ??s their fault,â? she says. And would she rather that Onityâ??s security flaw had never been publicized in the first place? â??No,â? she says. â??It should be made public so that the hotels can fix it. If people are vulnerable and thereâ??s a fix out there, they need to know.â?

Bogus dentist accused of kissing buttocks of woman with toothache A 47-year-old man has been accused of posing as a dentist, treating a woman for a toothache and kissing her buttocks after administering an injection, according to a Hollywood police report. John Collazos was arrested Monday and charged with practicing dental hygiene without a license in a Hollywood case stemming from November 2010. He was also arrested in September for practicing dentistry without a license in Davie. Police said that Collazos treated the unidentified woman in an apartment in the 2000 block of Fillmore Street on Nov. 19, 2010, and charged about $65 for the services. The Hollywood apartment had a waiting room area and was fully equipped with dental equipment, the woman told police. Collazos allegedly examined her mouth and applied a paste to relieve the pain. He then administered an injection in the woman's buttocks to alleviate the toothache and then kissed her buttocks, the report said. He also inappropriately touched her genitals, police said. Collazos was released Tuesday on $1,000 bail.

Naked man mounts statue in central London Arrested by police after straddling 19th century statue of Duke of Cambridge for three hours A naked man clambered atop a large equestrian statue in the heart of London's Whitehall government district Friday, striking a variety of precarious poses before being coaxed down by police nearly three hours later. London police said that the man, believed to be in his thirties or forties, first climbed atop the massive bronze statue of the 19th-century Duke of Cambridge around noon. He climbed up and down the statue in the late autumn chill, at one point balancing himself on the duke's head. The man eventually came down after police and emergency services cordoned off the area, which is home to several government buildings including the prime minister's official residence. Scotland Yard said the man was detained under Britain's Mental Health Act. --------------- Bonus vid of naked guy on statue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PMV3DOuVgfo

As others have said, you shouldn't get this at a spa (which isn't the same as won't) and it definitely won't be discussed here, as it's still technically illegal according to the licenses the spas have. And yes, your best bet is to see a SP who also does massage. Cleo was a MA for a while and is now a SP, so she might be worth asking.

Tell her that you're quite happy to stick to just getting dances from her, but in return she has to promise not to ever get dances from any other guys in the club. That seems fair to me :) Failing that... yes, you may just have to tell her to stop being so damn possessive. Realistically, she has a choice between getting dances from you sometimes, and getting dances from you never. If she stops to think for a moment, the sensible choice is obvious.

And to add a fourth: ETA has just announced that it's prepared to disband, although the Spanish government has rejected that because there were preconditions attached. But it is, nevertheless, promising. I think you hit the nail on the head in an earlier post; if you're going to get people to leave behind the battles of the past, you have to show them some kind of future. And that's why the Israel/Palestine thing has been so utterly intractable: there really isn't anything for the Palestinians to do other than carry on fighting. I read something interesting recently (can't remember where, so no link) where it was proposed that the Palestinians should simply give up on a separate state, and announce that they wished to become Israelis, with all the rights and privileges and responsibilities that go along with that. It was an interesting idea... not least because it would, at a stroke, give a lot of Palestinians a positive future. Of course, it'd also mean the end of the concept of Israel as a Jewish state, so it won't fly, but I thought it was a nice idea...

Nothing. Given the choice between breakfast and an extra half-hour in bed... the decision's usually out of my hands by the time I'm done thinking about it.

Educational video of the day

Moscow is quite high on my list. Also St Petersburg. And then I'd like to take the Trans-Siberian Express to.... wherever it goes.