Priceful.

MasterCard International Identifies Security Breach

PURCHASE, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 17, 2005–MasterCard International reported today that it is notifying its member financial institutions of a breach of payment card data, which potentially exposed more than 40 million cards of all brands to fraud, of which approximately 13.9 million are MasterCard-branded cards.

The rest of the release is blamesmanship and self-congratulation for finding the problem, etc. etc.

Via Wall St. Journal news alerts.

America! FUCK YEAH! (from the Guardian)

We are all the Tuskegee Syphilis Study now.

US agency ‘giving green light’ to human toxin tests

“In violation of ethical standards, the experiments appear to have inflicted harm on human subjects, failed to obtain informed consent, dismissed adverse outcomes and lacked scientific validity,” the report found. “In many of the experiments, the subjects were instructed to swallow capsules of toxic pesticides with orange juice or water at breakfast.”

The “informed consent” forms were often loaded with jargon, hard to understand or deliberately misleading about potential health risks. Some studies dismissed unfavourable results. In one test, all eight subjects became sick after exposure to a pesticide, but in the report their symptoms were discounted and attributed to “viral illness”.

I guess now that everyone else has announced

wedding
What with everyone getting engaged and married lately, it’s just been a dizzy whirl of wedding rings, Saturdays in June, giddy relatives, and Rule #6. It’s as good a time as any to announce mine. As of two days ago, my right hand and I are affianced. We haven’t set a date yet, but we’re probably going to have an autumn wedding, probably in the mountains somewhere pretty or maybe just in the shower again.

We’ve had our good and bad times over the years. Once or twice it looked like I might abandon my own right hand for some so-called “woman”, and there was that brief dalliance with the left hand during the tendinitis crisis. We’ve both agreed to leave the Jerking Strike of 1991 behind us.

The fact is, we’re always going to be together, and we’re always going to have each other. And we like it that way. Getting engaged is just our way of telling the world what we already know in my heart and my phalanges: this love is forever.

Details to follow, and I’ll try to get a better shot of the ring.

update

There was also a 2.0 basically under my house a few minutes before, and I thought it was a plane or a heavy truck:

Map of it, quake link.

VIctoria & Pomona was shaking, that must have annoyed the whores and the coke dealers.

Edit: Now that quake has disappeared from the site. Maybe it really was just a big truck or something. WTF? Probably the government was testing their new pain and fear broadcaster over in West Costa Mesa and it blew up and they’re concealing it all.