From the mind-numbingly exciting category: Braintaxer – “the mentally taxing game show from the IRS”
I couldn’t make this stuff up 🙂
From the mind-numbingly exciting category: Braintaxer – “the mentally taxing game show from the IRS”
I couldn’t make this stuff up 🙂
Activist update from the ACLU:
LAST CHANCE TO STOP DANGEROUS ANTI-TERRORISM BILL
Late Wednesday, the Washington House of Representatives passed Senate Bill
6704, the anti-terrorism bill formerly construed as House Bill 2879, and which
includes the language of the wiretap bill, HB 2416. The vote was 70 – 23, yet
it collected more "no" votes than last time the anti-terrorism bill
was before the House, and one of the "no" votes was actually mistakenly
cast but could not be changed.This bill is now back before the Senate and we need your help to make sure
that it does not pass there! It seems likely at this time that the Senate is
prepared to vote "not to concur" with the changes the House made to
SB 6704. This Senate vote is scheduled for sometime on Saturday.TAKE ACTION
We need all E-mail Activists to telephone and e-mail all of the Senate Democratic
leadership listed below, and any other Senator you know, or who directly represents
you. Please start making your calls and e-mails late Friday afternoon and continuing
on through Saturday morning.Your brief message should be: "Please do not concur with the House amendments
to Senate Bill 6704. The House wiretap and terrorism language is overbroad and
dangerous to civil liberties." . . .
Read on for more
Interesting observations:
This presents an interesting conundrum for the DOC-ICANN MoU, notwithstanding the pesky issue of who gets to determin what content is “kids-safe”–and how.
Consider:
* ICANN rejected four .KIDs applications in its new TLD process
* New Net launched a .KIDS in its first round of alternative TLDs
* A .KIDS TLD already exists in the parallel root server system http://root-dns.org/VueDig/VueDig_tld.php?record=NS&tld=kids&submit=SubmitAll hail “Internet stability”.
“Scientology” as a search phrase analyzed by the VisIT softare – interesting article, if just from a web design/search engine standpoint. Before you make any judgements about Scientology, however, please note that this guy is a very ardent critic of it.
The ideology of radical libertarianism is both mistaken and harmful?not least, to legitimate free expression in the service of truth. The error lies in exalting freedom “to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values….In this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and ‘being at peace with oneself’ There is no room for authentic community, the common good, and solidarity in this way of thinking.
Ouch. As a Catholic this harsh criticism from the Church concerns me. They seem to be having as much trouble as anyone adjusting to the changes brought on by the net.
New Scientist has a very nice article about the latest from CoDC, the people who brought us the inimitable BackOrifice.
I’ve sworn off updates until the weekend, because I have a big competition coming up this Friday. Going for the gold 🙂
Photoshop 7 leaked information – the healing brush looks very interesting. I can’t wait to play around with this once it comes out. Thanks to Kel for the tip.
“It’s a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer,” – open relays are bad. The people running the ISPs in question do have some valid complaints though, such as the manuals not being written in their language. It should be interesting to see where this story goes and if politics end up playing a part in it.
Arab Americans Call on President to Insist Ashcroft Clarify Offensive Remarks
Given your dedication to tolerance and greater understanding, it is with some concern that we write to you about a matter of serious import. During an interview with syndicated columnist and radio personality Cal Thomas, Attorney General John Ashcroft is quoted as having made anti-Muslim remarks that could only serve to incite the very hatred you have worked so hard to combat. Commenting on faith, Attorney General Ashcroft reportedly said, “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.” This, of course, is a horrible distortion of Islam.
emphasis mine
Last Wednesday something strange happened. The American population was instructed to panic. Place themselves, that is, on a state of highest vigilance. Some cataclysmic act of terrorism would happen – within hours. But nothing terrible happened. Something creepy did. On Thursday there was an inconspicuous news item. John M Poindexter had been appointed to head a new agency “to counter attacks on the US”, such as Wednesday’s no-show. It is equivalent, in British terms, to Jeffrey Archer being made chancellor of the exchequer.
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Hello — Just wanted to inform you that we have completed the patch we promised,
and we have implemented the changes so that PrivaSec users can now turn off JavaScript
on their browsers and still have some functionality when surfing the Web anonymously.
This solves all problems pointed out in the paper by Martin and Schulman.Regards,
====================
Sandra Song
Communications Director
SafeWeb, Inc.
(510) 601-8855 x108
sandra@safeweb.com <mailto:sandra@safeweb.com>
Nice followup to a previous entry.
When evaluating logical operators, put the constant on the left so you have no chance of forgetting that extra =. For example:
if (5 == $id)
{
do stuff
}
Think about it; it’s very logical and if it even saves you a single bug in your code it’s worth it.
Well at least you can’t say Microsoft isn’t helpful.
Jef Raskin is suprising honest in a Business Week article on how Apple should “Think outside the pretty box”. I think his comments that there hasn’t been many fundemental changes in terms of user interface in too long, but you must admit that Apple has done some pretty cool things lately.
You may remember the variety of interesting comments the DOJ got concerning the Microsoft case, well they’ve gone ahead and picked 47 from the mess that are relavent to the proceedings. Read on for list, or check out the original.
It seems I’ve managed to contract a case of the flu right around the most romantic day of the year. I spent most of the day in Methodist Hospital with a nasty fever, and the rest at home getting a suprising amount of work done. Actually it was probably my most pleasant hospital visit ever, as with the miracles of modern technology they were able to subdue my fever (103+), headache, dizziness, and nausea.
It seems yet another journalist/economist/muckraker has decided to attack Paul Krugman for his alleged involvement with Enron several years ago. I think Krugman’s blanket FAQ covers most of the issues reasonably. If you’re interested in more about Krugman, I suggest his excellent article There’s something about macro
I faintly remember a year or two ago seeing the ads talked about in this article, but I never actually emailed one of the addresses listed in them. Looking back over the summary of the ad campaign is fascinating, and it has a BMW Films touch to it that it doesn’t directly sell anything, and it doens’t even try to brand, it just is.