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Sex during the spin cycle's a big hit on screen, but in a grimy apartment laundry room where an elderly neighbor might walk in?

Sex during the spin cycle’s a big hit on screen, but in a grimy apartment laundry room where an elderly neighbor might walk in?

An old sexual trend is new again – washing-machine sex. On television, in movies, even in ads on the subway, appliance sex is causing a spin-cycle commotion.

Sadly, this is one exploit the apartment-dwelling ladies of New York City will have a difficult time enjoying. I learned this in my own laundry room.

But while Davidson specializes in fearless sex, there’s a lot of anxiety to account for when getting dirty while cleaning.

A full wash and a spin cycle takes about an hour. The ideal time to maximize the vibration level of your appliance is about 40 minutes into your cycle. Timing is key.

Sure, the idea of a spontaneous romp on a whirling washer sounds supersexy, but in practice, it really is too much trouble to do your delicates in the laundry room.

Problem No. 1: New Yorkers have communal laundry areas. These are usually in the basement of your apartment building, an area that abounds with mice and roaches and God knows what else. One look at my grimy ground floor and the mood was quickly squelched.

Problem No. 2: Lots of New Yorkers do their laundry at night, so if you think you can sneak downstairs for a quickie around midnight, you just might run into your 65-year-old neighbor washing his sheets. That was awkward.

Problem No. 3: New York City washing machines are usually stacked with dryers to conserve space. You can perform a careful lean, and some creative yoga positions, while the clothes are tumbling, but you can’t exactly maximize the vibration effect.

And while the thought of throwing your girlfriend down on the washing machine and going at it with abandon may seem like a fantasy right out of the “Stepford Wives,” some guys seem to have an irrational fear of the spin cycle.

As we considered taking the plunge into appliance sex, my partner in crime, already skeptical of the communal laundry room in my basement, raised another concern.

“Men don’t like things that vibrate,” he said matter of factly. “We are scared of them.”

Why is that?

“We just don’t want them anywhere near our (privates)!”

And that was the end of that. Ladies, if you want to get it on on the Maytag, move to the suburbs and find a guy who isn’t afraid to give his boys a shake.

Though, come to think of it, the woman who works at the drop-off Laundromat is probably the cheeriest lady on my block. Maybe there is something to it.

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Gary McKinnon, a British computer expert, claims he’s just fascinated with UFOs. Using his home computer and a modem — how WarGames! — he infiltrated military networks and accessed thousands of computers trying to find evidence of alien contact. Now caught and having lost an appeal with the British courts, he’s awaiting extradition to the United States to stand trial, accused of the “biggest military hack of all time.” The full list of his computer-exploiting prowess:

Using his own computer at home in London, McKinnon hacked into 97 computers belonging to and used by the U.S. government between February 2001 and March 2002.

McKinnon is accused of causing the entire U.S. Army’s Military District of Washington network of more than 2,000 computers to be shut down for 24 hours.

Using a limited 56-kbps dialup modem and the hacking name “Solo” he found many U.S. security systems used an insecure Microsoft Windows program with no password protection.

He then bought off-the-shelf software and scanned military networks, saying he found expert testimonies from senior figures reporting that technology obtained from extra-terrestrials did exist.

At the time of his indictment, Paul McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said: “Mr. McKinnon is charged with the biggest military computer hack of all time.”

If found guilty, McKinnon could be jailed for 70 years and fined as much as $1.75 million.

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Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq. A new Government Accountability Office report looks at Iraq’s spending patterns and its windfall oil revenues. The agency notes that Iraq’s government has run massive budget surpluses over the past two years and outlines some difficulties local officials have faced in trying to spend these funds on capital improvements.

Actuaries Advocate Raising Social Security’s Retirement Age. The American Academy of Actuaries recommends an immediate increase in the retirement age to help alleviate strain on the Social Security system. The professional organization attributes the crunch to an increase in longevity over the past several decades.

Screening for Prostate Cancer: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts convened under government auspices, issued new recommendations about who should be screened for prostate cancer. The new advice discourages screening for men over 75.

Kids’ Meals: Obesity on the Menu. The Center for Science in the Public Interest evaluates the nutritional content of children’s menus at 25 popular fast food and restaurant chains, finding, unsurprisingly, that many choices are high in calories, fat, and sodium.

One Year Progress Report: the Department’s Comprehensive National Security Oversight Initiative.

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Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq. A new Government Accountability Office report looks at Iraq’s spending patterns and its windfall oil revenues. The agency notes that Iraq’s government has run massive budget surpluses over the past two years and outlines some difficulties local officials have faced in trying to spend these funds on capital improvements.

Actuaries Advocate Raising Social Security’s Retirement Age. The American Academy of Actuaries recommends an immediate increase in the retirement age to help alleviate strain on the Social Security system. The professional organization attributes the crunch to an increase in longevity over the past several decades.

Screening for Prostate Cancer: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts convened under government auspices, issued new recommendations about who should be screened for prostate cancer. The new advice discourages screening for men over 75.

Kids’ Meals: Obesity on the Menu. The Center for Science in the Public Interest evaluates the nutritional content of children’s menus at 25 popular fast food and restaurant chains, finding, unsurprisingly, that many choices are high in calories, fat, and sodium.

One Year Progress Report: the Department’s Comprehensive National Security Oversight Initiative.

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They’re the most talked about siblings since Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger were paired up in a certain 1988 movie.

Indeed, the first photos of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline may have sold for almost as much money as the above-referenced film, Twins.

People Magazine reportedly shelled out $14 million for the following pic of Brangelina’s babies. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are giving the money to charity. Yes, on top of being gorgeous, these actors are model humanitarians.

Enjoy the shot of Knox and Vivienne after this article’s jump…

Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline

Pick up a copy of this week’s People for 19 pages of Brangelina baby photos!

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Since a secret emergency meeting of computer security experts at Microsoft’s headquarters in March, Dan Kaminsky has been urging companies around the world to fix a potentially dangerous flaw in the basic plumbing of the Internet.

Dan Kaminsky, a Web security specialist, showing a list of servers and whether they are patched.
While Internet service providers are racing to fix the problem, which makes it possible for criminals to divert users to fake Web sites where personal and financial information can be stolen, Mr. Kaminsky worries that they have not moved quickly enough.

By his estimate, roughly 41 percent of the Internet is still vulnerable. Now Mr. Kaminsky, a technical consultant who first discovered the problem, has been ramping up the pressure on companies and organizations to make the necessary software changes before criminal hackers take advantage of the flaw.

Next week, he will take another step by publicly laying out the details of the flaw at a security conference in Las Vegas. That should force computer network administrators to fix millions of affected systems.

But his explanation of the flaw will also make it easier for criminals to exploit it, and steal passwords and other personal information.

Mr. Kaminsky walks a fine line between protecting millions of computer users and eroding consumer confidence in Internet banking and shopping. But he is among those experts who think that full disclosure of security threats can push network administrators to take action. “We need to have disaster planning, and we need to worry,” he said.

The flaw that Mr. Kaminsky discovered is in the Domain Name System, a kind of automated phone book that converts human-friendly addresses like google.com into machine-friendly numeric counterparts.

The potential consequences of the flaw are significant. It could allow a criminal to redirect Web traffic secretly, so that a person typing a bank’s actual Web address would be sent to an impostor site set up to steal the user’s name and password. The user might have no clue about the misdirection, and unconfirmed reports in the Web community indicate that attempted attacks are already under way.
The problem is analogous to the risk of phoning directory assistance at, for example, AT&T, asking for the number for Bank of America and being given an illicit number at which an operator masquerading as a bank employee asks for your account number and password.

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The transition from “Hannah Montana” to Miley Cyrus at the top of the album sales chart has been completed.
Cyrus’ “Breakout” (Hollywood) not only debuted at No. 1, its first-week sales surpassed the tallies registered by the two “Hannah Montana” soundtracks, which also debuted at No. 1. The queen of tweens’ “Breakout” sold 371,000 copies in the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Soundscan data.
That first-week number bested the 326,000 of “Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus” last summer and the 261,000 for the first “Hannah Montana” in late 2006. The first one has sold 3.6 million copies; volume two has moved 3.1 million.
The “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert” pic grossed $65 million during its theatrical release, which started in February.
At No. 2, Sugarland’s deluxe version of “Love on the Inside” (Mercury Nashville) sold 314,000 copies, registering the biggest sales week of the year for a country act. The duo’s 2006 release, “Enjoy the Ride,” peaked at No. 4 on sales of 211,000.
Release is a rare example of a deluxe edition preceding the release of a standard edition. Album with five fewer tracks went on sale Tuesday.
The “Mamma Mia!” soundtrack nearly doubled its sales for a second week in a row, moving 168,000 copies and staying put at No. 3.
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Last Sunday, Terry Childs, a network administrator employed by the City of San Francisco, was arrested and taken into custody, charged with four counts of computer tampering. He remains in jail, held on US$5 million bail. News reports have depicted a rogue admin taking a network hostage for reasons unknown, but new information from a source close to the situation presents a different picture.
In posts to my blog, I postulated about what might have occurred. Based on the small amount of public information, I guessed that the situation revolved around the network itself, not the data or the servers. A quote from a city official that Cisco was getting involved seemed to back that up, so I assumed that Childs must have locked down the routers and switches that form the FiberWAN network, and nobody but Childs knew the logins. If this were true, then regaining control over those network components would cause some service disruption, but would hardly constitute the “millions of dollars in damages” that city representatives feared, according to news reports.
Apparently, I wasn’t far off the mark. In response to one of by blog posts, a source with direct knowledge of the City of San Francisco’s IT infrastructure and of Childs himself offered to tell me everything he knew about the situation, under condition that he remain anonymous. I agreed, and within an hour, a long e-mail arrived in my in box, painting a very detailed picture of the events. Based on this information, the case of Terry Childs appears to be much more — and much less — than previously reported.
A Man and His Network
It seems that Terry Childs is a very intelligent man. According to my source, Childs holds a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert certification, the highest level of certification offered by Cisco. He has worked in the city’s IT department for five years, and during that time has become simply indispensible.
Although Childs was not the head architect for the city’s FiberWAN network, he is the one, and only one, that built the network, and was tasked with handling most of the implementation, including the acquisition, configuration, and installation of all the routers and switches that comprise the network. According to my source’s e-mail, his purview extended only to the network and had nothing to do with servers, databases, or applications:
“Terry’s area of responsibility was purely network. As far as I know (which admittedly is not very far), he did not work on servers, except maybe VoIP servers, AAA servers, and similar things directly related to the administration of the network. My suspicion is that you are right about how he was “monitoring e-mail”; it was probably via a sniffer, IPS, or possibly a spam-filtering/antivirus appliance. But that’s just conjecture on my part.”
Like many network administrators who work in the rarified air of enterprise network architecture and administration, Childs apparently trusted no one but himself with the details of the network, including routing configuration and login information. Again, from the source’s e-mail:
“The routing configuration of the FiberWAN is extremely complex. Probably more so than it ought to be; I sometimes got the feeling that, in order to maintain more centralized control over the routing structure, [Childs] bent some of the rules of MPLS networks and caused problems for himself in terms of maintaining the routing.
“Because the system was so complex (and also because he didn’t involve any of the other network engineers in his unit), Terry was the only person who fully understood the FiberWAN configuration. Therefore, to prevent inadvertent disruption of this admittedly critical network, he locked everyone else out. I know most of the networking equipment … does use centralized AAA, but I get the impression he may have configured the FiberWAN equipment for local authentication only.”
Childs’ attitude toward other administrators is by no means unusual in the IT industry. This is generally due to the fact that admins who are tasked with constructing and maintaining networks of this size and scope care for them like children, and eventually come to believe that no one else could have the knowledge and skills to touch the delicate configurations that form the heart of the network.
Sole Administrator
A key point made in the e-mail is that Childs’ managers and co-workers all knew that he was the only person with administrative access to the network. In fact, it was apparently known and accepted in many levels of the San Francisco IT department. Again, quoting from the e-mail:
“This is where it gets tricky for the prosecution, IMO, because the localized authentication, with Terry as sole administrator, has been in place for months, if not years. His coworkers knew it (my coworkers and I were told many times by Terry’s coworkers, “If your request has anything to do with the FiberWAN, it’ll have to wait for Terry. He’s the only one with access to those routers”). His managers knew it.
Other network engineers for the other departments of the City knew it. And everyone more or less accepted it.
No one wanted the thing to come crashing down because some other network admin put a static route in there and caused a black hole; on the other hand, some of us did ask ourselves, “What if Terry gets hit by a truck?” If a configuration is known and accepted, is that “tampering”?”
My source appears to believe that Childs’ motivation was the antithesis of tampering, and that Childs did everything possible to maintain the integrity of the network, perhaps to a fault:
“He’s very controlling of his networks — especially the FiberWAN. In an MPLS setup, you have “provider edge” (PE) routers and “customer edge” (CE) routers. He controlled both PE and CE, even though our department was the customer; we were only allowed to connect our routers to his CE routers, so we had to extend our routing tables into his equipment and vice versa, rather than tunneling our routing through the MPLS system.”

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  • The 31 Places To Go This Summer

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  • The 31 Places To Go This Summer

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