Cody Taylor

holy_calamity writes “The FBI has released images of some of the kit that will be deployed to safeguard Obama’s inauguration, including mine-proof armored trucks like those used in Iraq to protect against IEDs, and a large armored chamber that any bombs will be shoved inside to be transported away and perhaps detonated inside. Interesting, even though the really good stuff is presumably being kept under wraps.” Relatedly, necro81 writes “The Inauguration of Barack Obama tomorrow is expected to put considerable stress on the cellphone network around Washington, DC. The expected crowd could top two million people, and many of them are expected to call, text, tweet, photo, and blog their way through the event. In response, the major wireless carriers in the area have spent millions of dollars upgrading their local networks and will bring in extra ‘cells on wheels’ (COWs) and ‘cells on light trucks’ (COLTs). They are also requesting that attendees limit their usage during the event, and avoid bandwidth-heavy activities — like uploading photos — until afterward.”

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From Tiger Woods to Muhammad Ali, Dave Winfield to Dikembe Mutombo, a sports world that has paid more attention to politics than usual wants to be part of the party when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s first black president on Tuesday.

RUSH: I got a request here from a major American print publication. “Dear Rush: For the Obama [Immaculate] Inauguration we are asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency.

GeoEye-1, the powerful imagery satellite that is perhaps best known as the “Google satellite” will be focusing its lens on the Inauguration of President Obama next week. The company notes that while there will be plenty of cameras covering the event on the ground, and some in the air, GeoEye-1 will be the only one offering a perspective from space.

Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III will be joined by his family in the nation’s capital as guests at the inauguration Tuesday. The pilot’s wife, Lori Sullenberger, is flying to the East Coast with her daughters today to meet with the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, Danville Mayor Newell Arnerich said.

theodp writes “Barack Obama apparently didn’t return CmdrTaco’s call. BusinessWeek reports that the choices for the first US CTO have narrowed, and it’s now a two-horse race between Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO, and Vivek Kundra, who holds the same title for the Government of the District of Columbia. Two very different resumes — which would you advise Obama to pick?” I just know I was #3 on the list.

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CurtMonash writes “The New York Times reports on President-Elect Obama’s continued commitment to electronic health records (EHRs), which on the whole are a great idea. The article cites a number of legislative initiatives to deal with the privacy risks of EHRs. That’s where things start to go astray. The proposals seem to focus on simply controlling the flow of information, but from a defense-in-depth standpoint, that’s not enough. Medical care is full of information waivers, much like EULAs, only with your health at stake. What’s more, any information control regime has to have exceptions for medical emergencies — but where legitimate emergencies are routine, socially-engineered fake emergencies can blast security to smithereens. So medical information privacy will never be adequate unless there are strong usage-control rules as well, in areas such as discrimination, marketing, or tabloid-press publication. I’ve provided some ideas as to how and why that could work well.”

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Tools for grabbing videos from YouTube have existed for some time now, but Google’s video portal began experimenting this weekend with allowing users to download a high-quality H.264 version directly from a video’s site. The feature appeared first on the Obama campaign’s ChangeDotGov account, and it is expected to roll out to the rest of YouTube ..

Presidential fitness hasn’t always been characteristic of the nation’s commander-in-chief. Here, a retrospective of some of the least healthy presidents in American history. President Barack Obama knows a thing or two about fitness. His well-documented gym habits and disciplined diet, has the media heralding Obama as the new face of presidential he

“When Obama won, my colleagues played a practical joke on me — they made me wear a suit, a tie, and took pictures of me posing as Obama,” said Ilham.