August 2002 Archives

Seeing as how I'm in Chico, there isn't a whole lot going on, so WAGHOTD is probably the only thing that will be here this weekend. Thank Zeus for MT, I can post 'from the road' now.

Today's winner: 2002 email addresses of used fridge in germany

Sure it's a page 4 hit, but it's still pretty whacky!

The runner up is: "she could kick my ass"

Today's winner: howard bush colonoscopy cartoon

I don't even want to know...

Alan Dershowitz Wants 'Torture Warrants'. Plastic::Politics::Law: The right to remain silent? When it comes to accused terrorists, Dersh prefers the right to be beaten with a rubber hose. [Plastic: Most Recent]

Sometimes, even the "bad guys" know that physical torture won't get you what you want/need, as Nice Guy Eddie from Resevoir Dogs will tell you:

If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire. Now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!

Can you imagine Ashcroft dancing around a bound and gagged John Walker Lindh with Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle with You' playing in the background? A creepy grin oozes across his face as he douces Lindh in gasoline and then grabs his straight razor. "I don't give a good fuck what you know or don't know, I'm going to torture you anyway," Ashcroft explains to the helpless Lindh.

Why, oh why would you use torture when there are more effective ways of getting information from somebody? Why don't you use that NASA brain scanner instead?

Most of us missed last week due to the EFF event and the DNA Lounge.

This week we had:

• Adam
• Champ
• Jerry
• "Josh"
• Pat
• Py

We finished pretty far from the money this week. 46 points with the money cut-off being at 51. We missed lots of history questions for some reason. We usually could get down to two possible answers, and then choose the wrong one. Oh well, we'll get 'em next week.

Man, it's not even 10a.m. and I already found today's winner!

spanish models naked save the environment

This one is dedicated to "Kuch".

Runner-up: Funky Rumsfeld Quicktime download

But no matter what, you just gotta love that cowboy!  Any similarities between the crowd and any living persons is completely unintentional and I blame the Wacom, and that's the story I'm sticking to. [Golabutron 3000]

Quite a cool piece there Josh! I declare this work of your "copyright violation" free! ;-)

Bush May Request Congress's Backing on Iraq, Aides Say. Administration officials said that they expected President Bush to seek some sign of approval from Congress before launching any campaign against Iraq. By Neil A. Lewis with David E. Sanger. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

"0wnz0red". Programmers who hack their own bodies don't need exercise and never get sick: A new short story from one of science fiction's bright young stars. [Salon.com]

A great story from "Cory". Prepare yourself for some techy/hacker speak though!

Filesharing Of A Different Kind: RIAA Website Hacked. Plastic::Media::Music: The RIAA website had a slightly different tone last night, endorsing file-sharing and linking to MP3s. Heh, hacking might be juvenile, but who better to receive the treatment? [Plastic: Most Recent]

"Where can I find information on giant monkeys?"

As defacements go, this was pretty clever. In case you are wondering, no this will not make the RIAA see the errors of their ways, nor will it stop them from trying to get the legal clearance to screw with your computers. It's too obvious.

Can you believe that riaa.org is still running IIS 4.0? Gee, how did the ever get hacked running that? The mind boogles.

An Aussie Dream Pommy scientists have finally found a worthwhile use for technology and placed a pub-detecting global positioning system inside a wristwatch.

Gotta love that technology! It's almost too good to be true...

John A. Wheeler. "If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day." [Quotes of the Day] [ModWheel]

I have no shortage of whack-ass things on my street...

But I'll toss in my own quote for the day:

"Are trying to tell me you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people?" [ sample in Your Mind Belongs to the State from the Meat Beat Manifesto album Satyricon ]

So my little weblog got a huge boost from google when somehow I got to be one of the top hits for listen4ever. It was the mp3 website that was based in China that spawned the RIAA v. The Internet Backbone Providers. The site is gone and so is the suit at this point. Now I'm getting indexed on a regular basis and I'm getting a lot more hits from google searches. So, now I'm like every other weblog that gets indexed by google. The daily and monthy archive pages make it pretty easy for me to be a likely hit for a huge number of searches.

Of course, most people who maintain weblogs probably don't dream of getting 90% of their hits from random google searches. They want a reader base. The usual gang so to speak. I'm pretty sure I can count my readers without having to take my shoes off ;-)

So today I introduce a new "feature" that I hope will be as daily as I can make it. The Whack-Ass Google Search(s) of the Day.

Today's search is: chico state middle nowhere

Yes, yes...this will screw with google even more now that I link directly to the search terms. Oh well...

A patent/copyright flame up on irc today. I had to dig up a Forbes article titled Patently Absurd. It's a good read. Fear IBM and their army of patent lawyers.

"OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

Sick and twisted google searches: dick cheney nude

Mozilla 1.1

RedHat is not Microsoft via /.

Josh sums up my mood in a wonderful drawing.

Four Years of Federal Budget Deficits Are Expected.

Apple sold 100,000 copies of 10.2. Not bad.

Finally, in case you didn't see it on Fire Ashcroft, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has told Ashcroft & Co. to ram it on secret deportation hearings. Indeed, democracies do die behind closed doors.

Now playing: Pop Will Eat Itself - Bulletproof (Extended Adrian Sherwood Mix) Yeah! Uh huh uh huh. Is everybody 'appy?

I have a friend who, when I haven't seen her in a long time, I remember very fondly. She lives in another city, and when I get a chance to see her, I'm very happy. However, whenever we get together, the first thing out of her mouth is always something that just sets me off. Then we pick on each other all evening. Just when I think I've had about enough of her and I never want to see her again, I say, "It's been so fun! We HAVE to do this again!" The strange thing is, I mean it. [She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe]

I have a similar, yet completely different situation. I have a friend back in my home town that I like to see, but we seem to have grown so far apart that there is nothing to talk about. It's always very awkward for both of us.

I know it's mostly my fault because of the way I make friends. I just find the people I want to hang out with, and hang out with them. Eventually they befriend me or tell me to take a hike.

My friendship with this person was no exception. His family moved from back east to California during his junior year of high school. He hated being out here on the west coast, mainly because all his life-long friends were back east. They were running through orchards with BB guns and ski goggles plinking each other, and he was in the California central valley heat wave.

His dad was keen on him having friends, so he was always very friendly to me. At times it was too much, as they would hold me up for comparison as to what he should do with his life. That was never a good time to be around.

We ended up working on the school news paper together. We had some great times. But a part of me wonders if he only put up with me because I had a car I could use any time, cable TV, or that he simply didn't have the heart to tell me to take a hike. I doubt it was the cable TV because we didn't spend much time at my house at all.

Little Leaguers Discover They Are Winners After All. The Harlem Little League All-Stars were greeted by more than 500 people as they arrived home on Monday afternoon. By Andy Newman. [New York Times: Sports]

Inbetween the stories about soccer mom killing sprees and hockey fathers cracking open skulls, you really need a story like this to remind you that the felon parents are a teeny, tiny minority. Most parents are out there just supporting their children, hoping whatever they are doing helps them become a more well-adjusted adult. Although after seeing a friend's dad kill a guy, you have to wonder what we are adjusting them to.

I'm sure this is another area in the decline of civilization where we can blame the media. I bet if you look at the data, if any is even kept on the subject (and you know it is...by somebody), that parent violence at children's sporting events is down to historic lows, just as school violence is and kidnapping as well.

Sure the events that do happen seem more horific, not only for the death toll, but also due to intense media coverage. Go no further than CNN and their handling of the al Queda tapes. I can only imagine the talks that went on behind the scenes...

Producer 1: People love dogs. 85% of people in our target demographic respond positively to the image of a dog.
Producer 2: Well, there it is, we play the 'dog getting gassed' tape.
Producer 1: 65% of people in our target demographic like monkeys. Should we dig up that U.S. government footage of the monkey getting it's skull crushed?
Producer 2: Johnson you idiot! We want footage of the other guys experimenting on animals.
Producer 1: Oh yeah...that was us wasn't it? Sorry, my bad.

I'm almost starting to think that AOL/Time Warner might be the real hawk in this whole Iraq mess that's about to happen. A war on terror is only good for the ratings when you get to show something being blown up ever so often.

But then it's back to us. The war consumer. If we didn't watch it, they wouldn't put it on. Blaming the media is the cop-out excuse. We should just face the facts that we are the sickos in this deal with our TV and stop throwing hissy fits about it.

Hrm. Back at the top I started on about something positive, didn't I? Oh yes, way to go Harlem Little League fans! Don't let you kids watch CNN or Fox News and then should be just fine.

This Modern World. We've got to attack ... something. [Salon.com]

Don't forget Ted Rall either.

The Who Follow Pearl Jam's Lead, Release 'Encore Series'. Plastic::Music::Music:Rock: In an attempt to stymie bootleggers, the Who will release live discs of every show of their tour three weeks after the concert date. [Plastic: Most Recent]

Wow. Imagine that. Somebody at a record label just got to the chapter about supply and demand.

Yeah, neither would I...

Thanks to Jaime for putting up these wonderful pix and a great recap of what went down.

Update: I just realized that I'm never going to get paid for acting like a jack-ass when I keep doing it for free...

Kuch wonders how you tell if Quartz Extreme is in use. Why you use Quartz Extreme Check of course.

The Transporter. Something about this movie just looks fucking cool. Definitely one for the view list. [rebelutionary]

D'oh! If you had read Vertical Hold you could be way ahead of the game.

Patrick Berry: The authority on action movie previews.

;-)

Iraq Said to Plan Tangling the U.S. in Street Fighting. According to Pentagon officials, Saddam Hussein will use the threat of urban warfare if the Bush administration moves to attack. By Michael R. Gordon. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Ha ha! He has fallen right into our trap. With Bush and Rumsfeld not getting their death quota in Afghanistan, Iraq is the next logical target to tally up some more corpses. Street fighting? Awesome! Not only will we get military casualties, but we will get lots of "collateral damage" as well. Man, can things get any better?

Looks like they can:

• Bush advised he's free to act on Iraq [San Francisco Chronicle]
• Bush Aides Say Iraq War Needs No Hill Vote [Washington Post: Front Page]

War baby! Yeah! Keep Bush in office with a war! Woo00OO! Kill Shrub! Kill!

Oh, and while you're at it. Why don't you destroy North Korea and put them out of their misery. All that starving and stuff is starting to depress me. Maybe a few stray cruise missile could fall on Tehran as well? Oh and don't let me forget Saudi Arabi...huh? What? They are allies? Oh...never mind then.

Bing! Another brilliant idea! To make Ann Coulter happy, why don't we kill everybody with glasses. People with glasses are intellectuals, and mostly likely liberals. Huh? Already been done? Fark! Stupid China. They always think of the good ideas first. Well, China and Stalin... Okay, okay. There has to be a better way to kill some liberals around here. You know...so they know that they can be killed too. Those damn liberals are always trying not to kill people. When will they learn?!?! The only way you get your way is to kill everyone else that doesn't like your way. Morons.

Think they'll let me hang with Rummy now?

So last night Kat and I went to the Flatiron Sports Bar for what Howard had billed as a sports trivia night. I double checked the time, and sure enough the 49ers were playing the Raiders. Trivia was scheduled to start at half-time of the game.

Now the Flatiron is a nice place, but it's a pretty hardcore sports place. I didn't really see how trivia was going to fit it, especially with the game on. Howard has owned Thursday nights at the Mayflower for so long, maybe he forgot how hard it is to break in at a new place where the usual gang isn't there to see you.

My fears weren't unfounded. There was a large table with lots of large drunk guys. They made a big stink about the volume on the game being turned down, then a big stink about playing trivia, and then a bigger stink about paying for trivia. Things didn't look promising. There were only four teams, and lots of people had left.

Howard was at a disadvantage in that he didn't have a microphone. No loud booming voice to keep the mob inline. Things quickly went downhill and the large drunk guys were loudly answering the questions. Howard is down on this, since it's supposed to be a contest, team vs team. One guy just started yelling out answers. It wouldn't have mattered except that they were the right answers.

Then the moment I had feared flared up. Howard confronted the biggest guy and was about to get pummeled. I don't know why Howard fell into the whole macho posturing bit with this guy who would have killed him. Literally. Luckily his drunk friends probably knew that he would kill him and they would have to do the whole police/witness/crime scene thing and decided to help break it up.

Oh yeah, Kat and I did horrible score wise, but we managed to come in fourth...out of four teams. There were too many "before I was born" questions for us to really compete. Oh well, normal Gonzo Trivia resumes this Thursday.

What Do I Know After personally being pretty ticked off about the upgrade price, I can easily say it's well worth the price of admission, especially with so many free returns coming soon.

This seems to be the prevailing thought about 10.2. Also see Mark's Huge List-o-links for Jaguar goodness. You can also wander over to ModWheel for Kuch's take and a story about waiting in line.

"Josh" made the switch and bought a mac. I'm very jealous...a dual 867 with a 17" cinema studio display.

Welcome to the fold. Thanks for drinking the kool-aid. Have another glass. It's good for you.

Confessions of a Mozillian Test your knowledge with this set of movie quotes. I'll be back in a couple of days with the answers.

Without using the Internet Movie Database I managed to get 6 right. I should dig up 20 of my own. This list was too hard ;-)

Georgians Strike A Blow For God. Plastic::Work::Religion: "Facing a lawsuit from the ACLU over its requirement that science textbooks contain disclaimers stating that evolution is 'a theory, not a fact', the Cobb County school board has voted in a policy which requires schools to provide students 'balance'" [Plastic: Most Recent]

Let's be perfectly clear that this policy is not about balance. Evolution is a theory, but does theory really mean what you think it means?

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

The above quote was taken from an online Scientific American article title 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense. It's a good read.

Back to the balance bit. This is clearly nothing more than a ploy to get their religious views in the public schools. If it were really about balance there should be an entire class, not in the science curriculum, about all of the many stories of creationism from around the world. It would be a very interesting class and I wouldn't mind taking it.

Again, let's be clear that creationism does not belong in a science class. At all. Period. It is not science. It's not even bad science. Creationism has devolved, no pun intended, into a million hair-brained schemes to try and debunk evolution.

Granted, there are a few scientists out there that are creationists, but they at least play by the rules of science, the scientific method, and they focus on very small parts of evolution.

Attacking the idea that there is change over time makes you look like you have no ability to see the facts. Pointing out that evolution isn't completely explained or even understood yet doesn't make it go away.

Creationism is not science, so let's not put it in science classes.

Last night was the EFF CAFE 2002 at the DNA Lounge. Thanks to "Josh" and beej for joining us at the VIP party.

Josh was even so bold as to crank out some art just before the party. WESLEY CRUSHER VS. BARNEY - 08/22/2002.

Yes, I got to talk with Jaime. No, I didn't make fun of him for Xemacs. It was a joke, I swear! As I expected, Jaime was an amazingly nice person. Most people I've know who have gruff online personas always turn out to be softies in real life. Jaime was no exception. I'm not saying he couldn't kick my ass with his steel-toed boots or anything, it's just that he's a nice guy. He also has a kick-ass staff that "gets shit done" quick, fast, and in a hurry! Now I just hope I can find my bag that I left back in the staff area today. It has my Canon S110 and my Palm Vx...not to mention a pair of dress shoes and socks. You never know when you might need dress shoes.

Wil Wheaton was also a real pleasure to meet. I went to great pains to not mention anything Star Trek or 'Stand By Me' related. He was more than happy to just geek out and and talk about networks, linux, and technology in general. His wife was also very cool. I felt really bad when they stopped by the office and she nearly gagged from the stench of our street. I hope the fact that they got somewhat of a royal treatment made up for it.

It all went better than I could ever have imagined. Thanks to everyone that helped and special thanks to everyone who showed up!

I've had a few people offer to buy Lessig's book for me. No thanks. I would read excerpts of it if it were available for free on the Web. See the irony of that for what it's worth. [Scripting News]

Irony: 1. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).

Are we supposed to see irony in Dave not wanting to read a book about copyright? I don't get it...is there a joke there that I'm missing?

So today has been very crazy. I had to go shopping for a dress shirt to go with my suit. Why a suit you ask? I'm playing an 'evil' lawyer in the EFF benefit celebrity boxing thing tonight. There is a funny story behind my shopping experience, which will have to wait.

I also spent about two hours in a full-on rehersal. Wil Wheaton was very nice and came by our office, even though our street has lots of poo on it. Now I have to catch up on email and the website, then I'm off to the DNA Lounge for the main event tonight.

Maybe I'll get to meet Jamie Zawinski and make fun of him for Lucid (X)emacs. ;-)

For those that don't stalk me around the Internet, I'm now a contributing blogger to Forwarding Address: OS X. I feel both humbled and privileged to join such a fine group of writers. Thanks Cory! I promise to spell check and proof-read everything, well...at least more than I do here. ;-)

Bush, Citing Fire Hazards, Wants Logging Rules Eased. President Bush will ask Congress to relax environmental laws so that the cutting of national forest land can be accelerated, senior administration officials said today. By Douglas Jehl. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Now thinning forests is not only a very good way to prevent rampaging wild fires, but it makes for a healthier forest overall. Notice I said thinning, which entails taking out dead and dying trees to make growth room for the young healthy ones. It's a sound idea.

The problem is I don't see the Bush administration handling it in an effective way. I see them clearing the way for more clear cutting. This is a bad idea. It makes for an unhealthy environment. Plenty of profit can be made from thinning. But I know they will take it too far.

So now I'm stuck, having to support an initiative that I know will be twisted into something that I will eventually have to oppose.

I've always loved this tale. Ben has some amazing stories. Maybe someday he will have a PBS show or something.

Note From Larry. In any case, the revolution will be here only when it leaves your screen, and registers and votes.[Lessig Log]

It's too bad Larry had to take time out of what he's doing to convince Dave that they are on the same side fighting for the same end. Of course, Lessig certainly doesn't pull any punches.

Gotta love Larry for getting in an EFF plug any place he can.

Assigned Reading on Koran in Chapel Hill Raises Hackles. A federal appeals court refused on Monday to halt a program to expose new students at the University of North Carolina to information about the Koran. By Kate Zernike. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Grrr. It was an option to read the book. There were many other options, as Slate already pointed out.

Luckily most of the students understood what the assignment was supposed to be about:

"I don't believe that intolerance of other religions is the guide that Christ set before us to follow," said Maggy Lampley, a junior, who was sitting behind a table encouraging students to join Campus Crusade for Christ. "He wanted us to show that he was the way and the truth, but not through ignorance and intolerance. I think reading books like this is a good way to make people more open-minded."

Of course, the people behind the lawsuit equated a book about the Koran as the Koran and insisted that they should read the Bible instead. Brilliant. Obviously they are pro-Koran people who know that protesting will only increase interest in the book!

..for your isolation. It's called PWEI-zation!

"kat2" will be happy to know that, once again, PWEI-zation came up in "random" play in iTunes.

...beaming out a message across the nation

Fighting Spam with Haikus. [Oblomovka]

Oh my...this may actually work! Copyright the haiku, and let non-spammers put it in their headers as a mark that this isn't spam. Then spammers who use it get their asses handed to them in court.

Leave it to a lawyer to come up with a wonderfully devious plan like this...

Update: Oh, that's why it won't work...

So not only do I have my own comic strip today, I have my very first published interview.

It's all so surreal...when will I wake up from this crazy dream. Thanks to "Josh" and "Kuch" for all the kind words.

Speaking of crazy dreams...yesterday Kat and I went to spend a bunch of money to help prop up the fake economy. Anyway, and "kat2" will laugh at me for this, I bought two Erasure CD singles. Well, a 2 part CD single set for the song Freedom from the album loveboat. The copyright is 2000 so I'm way out of touch I guess. I managed to keep up with the Pet Shop Boys, but Erasure slipped by me somehow.

Oh well, it's good stuff...if you like Erasure.

information wave technologies::news::august 19, 2002 The placement of this policy is not intended to hamper the RIAA's privacy elimination agenda or advocate Internet piracy, but to ensure the safety of our customers' data attached to our network from hackers or corporate espionage hidden by the veil of RIAA copyright enforcement.

Ha! Now the RIAA is the mole in the 'Whack-a-mole' game and they will have to move IPs and then they will get blocked, rinse, lather repeat.

I like their honeypot idea. Set up a huge, fake mp3 archive, fire up a GNUtella client and then watch anyone who tries to haxor their way in, and ban them.

riaa.org has already suffered some nasty DoS attacks.

 CLICK FOR THE EXTREME PATENT EXCITEMENT! (40k)

Uh oh world. Watch out! Josh has produced another fine icon-based comic strip...or is it a graphic-strip? Who knows. Josh rocks, and now that I've seen it, and posted about it, I can go to bed...

Maybe tomorrow comment links will go up...just another feature to confuse all those google users.

Champagne toast. It starts, as is tradition, with a champagne toast. This is tradition, and tradition is this. Most people do not drink all of the champagne, but I am not most people. It should be noted that this is a deceptively large amount of alcohol right off the bat. (724 words) [dive into mark]

Reading the bit about the DJ playing songs you told her not to play was deja vu all over again. The good thing is that I don't remember hearing "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" being played. The bad part is all my friends keep reminding me ;-) The only solution to the DJ problem is to have it be somebody you know. But that's hard since you want people you know to be having a good time and not working their butt off.

It's just part of the wedding...

I have recently been to a "dry" wedding and I had just as much fun. It's all about the people. Unless you don't like them, in which case you should bring your own booze just in case.

It's all about entertainment today.

Attention "kat2"! What would you say about a movie written by Luc Beson, directed by Corey Yuen, and stars Jason Statham?

You get The Transporter.

Yeah, I'm so there too!

You can always tell which restaurants have lawyers. If they sing 'Happy Birthday' to you, they don't have a lawyer. If they sing some made up song, then you know they have lawyers who have explained that it will cost them money to sing 'Happy Birthday.'

Fun facts, I know...

Oh, and happy birthday to "Dale" as well.

So I just checked out the most requested DVD list at Amazon.

Lucas would make money on 6 of the top 10. Can we have the Indiana Jones and Star Wars 4-6 on DVD now please?

Lessig asks "What have we done about it?" in re technology patents. Here's what we can do and are doing. Develop new ideas and don't patent them. That's the most any developer can do. How about a conservancy for developers who don't take patents. Get people intellectual credit for their creations to balance the proprietary credit they are not demanding. Lessig is so damned irritating. He says "We've not done anything yet." Arrrrgh. Incorrect. He's not done anything yet. Perhaps his friends haven't done anything yet. Does Dr Lessig understand technology any better than Rep Coble? [Scripting News]

It's funny that right under this post on Dave's page are links to the RIAA v. Backbone Providers. All hail the DMCA.

Dave is thinking as a software developer and Lessig is thinking as a lawyer. The laws are on their side. That is what Lessig is trying to say. That won't change until we do something about the laws. Making free or Free software may become a lot harder if we don't. Making software doesn't get the DMCA repealed. When Lessig is asking what have you done, he means what have you done about getting the laws changed.

Tell me how Napster changed the DMCA. Tell me how Listen4Ever got the DMCA changed. Tell me how DeCSS got the DMCA changed. Tell me how bnetd got the DMCA changed. Tell me how "Radio" changed the DMCA. Every line of code I have written has done exactly nothing to change the DMCA. This is not to say that software development isn't an important part of the fight, it's just not where we are going to win the war. Even if we win the software battle, we will have lost the war in the courts.

The battle is not on the developer front. It's on the legal front. Don't like that? That's too bad, because that's where the battle is. That is what Lessig is doing. He is helping to wage the legal battle and trying to convince people that this is the front we need to fight on. That is what Lessig doing.

Remember the refrain:

• Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
• The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
• Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
• Ours is less and less a free society.

Now that I have that off my chest...yes I work for the EFF and yes I'm a Lessig fan-boy.

Think he'd wear one? Neither do I.

Image courtesy of Barcodes Inc.

Bush rents out rooms in the White House. I guess that's what he meant by restoring dignity and integrity to the office.

Bush is going to listen to Republicans who say a war with Iraq might not be such a hot idea, even though he has painted himself into a political corner on the subject. Sure he is.

Baseball players are going to strike. Oh well, the Giants weren't going to make the playoffs anyway.

As I mentioned yesterday, the RIAA is going to destroy the Internet.

"Flangy" is back from his trip back east. Mmmmm, donuts.

Heh. So I clicked on the image before reading the story and was all set to out Josh for being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan, only to find out that he has already done it himself.

"Josh" you're a thoughtless goon!

Record Labels Want 4 Internet Providers to Block Music Site. A group of record companies asked a judge to order four major Internet service providers to block Americans from viewing a China-based Web site that offers thousands of copyrighted songs free. By Amy Harmon. [New York Times: Technology]

Ah yes, invoking the DMCA, the Swiss Army legal tool...

• Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
• The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
• Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
• Ours is less and less a free society.

Thanks to the kind folks at O'Reilly for getting Lessig's speech transcripted.

Do something about it, even if you only join the EFF Action Center and use it to send letters or faxes to your elected representatives. What I mean to say is that it isn't just about giving money or making protest signs. It's letting the people who make the laws know that we want this to be a more free society instead of a less free society. Even bumper stickers help ;-)

Unless you want a less free society, in which case you should do absolutely nothing.

Linux makes a run for government - Tech News - CNET.com Sources familiar with events said that aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. "Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software," said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified.

Pardon my French, but HFS! I honestly didn't think a company like Microsoft could push the NSA around. My god. The power this company has is amazing, and scary. I would love to know the dirty details of how they pulled it off. I have to say that it isn't too shocking considering how Microsoft-friendly the Bush administration has been.

In attendance:

• Adam
• beej
• Jerry
• "Josh"
• Pat
• Py

As Josh said so eloquently, we got our asses handed to us. Okay, it wasn't quite that bad. We had 48, some dispute that we should have had 50, and the cut-off for the money spots was at 52.

The one that there is some dispute over is about Princess Anne in the Olympics. We put steeple chase, and Howard was just looking for "Equestrian events" since she didn't actually compete in the steeple chase event. So once again we shot ourselves in the foot by being too specific...and not listening to Adam over Jerry about where Martina Navratilova was born.

We did pretty well in the music thanks to Josh because he knew the title of the Simon and Garfunkle song and the title to the Madonna song. Go Josh!

Next week I will be at an EFF event. I don't know if anybody will be representing for Team Gonzo next week. I guess I should send out an email or something...

On an completely different, yet somehow related note, our favorite waitperson Ellen (who is very Scottish, and yes, the W, Q, P, and the H are silent) is on vacation in...Scotland. Yes, imagine that. So of course since I didn't call in and double check our reservation it got screwed up. It wasn't really anybody's fault, but since we tend to tip really well, I think they booted some other group of people to a crap table or put them at the bar. You see, we usually leave a very large percentage of any winnings we take in, in addition to the standard 15%. It pays to be a well tipping regular patron, that's for sure.

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision [Daypop Top 40] I'm posting this because it is important that the maximum number of people see this story. Few people read this weblog, but keeping it ontop of Daypop will increase the visibility hopefully. Every American should read this. It's oppression at a heinous level. [ModWheel]

Kuch answers Lessig's question about what he has done to protect against infinite copyright:

I helped put on a tour for an musician who puts out stuff through his own label and not through the majors. I turn out passable music in mp3 form on my music website Mutant Audio. I attend live shows by artists you probably have never heard of.

That's not entirely true...I've heard of Iron Maiden... ;-)

In case you were curious about how effective the BlogSnob text ads are:

On July 24, 2002, at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, Lawrence Lessig announced this would be one of his last talks. Fortunately for you the audio and slides have been captured and combined into this flash movie [8.4MB, Flash 5 required].

Oh, you don't like Flash? How about just audio in an mp3 [7.2MB, 31'40, 32kbps mono]?

In it, Lessig bluntly asks of the audience, "What have you done?"

Me? I went to work for the EFF.

Ultra-liberal RSS locator. One of my biggest pet peeves about the current generation of news aggregators is that they don’t work very hard at finding RSS feeds. The other side of this coin is their stubborn insistence on making RSS visible. RSS should be completely invisible. (558 words) [dive into mark]

Oh man this is cool. With Mark's RSS parser and locator, all the hard backend work of my News Aggreagator is practically done. I should sketch up a real design for the database and get to work this weekend. Of course, this is all assuming that I finish JogLogger for Kat before the weekend.

For a while, there was a feeling that speaking out against the Bush administration wasn't a smart thing to do. Well, the Bush administration has gone so far off the deep end that the gloves are coming off. I hope it isn't too late...

• Fairy God Ashcroft by Stuart Carlson
• Just say no to international Criminal Courts by Tom Toles

Please note that these are titles that I made up for the purpose of having some linking text instead of a bare URL. Hat tip on the links to Josh.

Better living through regular expressions. I’m now using Brad Choate’s excellent MT-Macros plugin to automate marking up acronyms, and to make apostrophes and quote marks curly. Here’s how to do it. (285 words) [dive into mark]

Just when I got used to doing Radio style shortcuts with Brad's regex plugin, Mark takes it to the next level. You can even download Mark's list of macros which is a huge time saver. Thanks Mark!

MP3 Player Does Double Duty as a Spare 20-Gigabyte Drive. The Odyssey 1000, the latest MP3 player looks quite a bit like the trendy white music box from Apple, but it's different. By Mark Glassman. [New York Times: Technology]

It may have the same storage capacity, but it's USB.

It has some non-Apple features which are very cool though, like an FM tuner, voice recorder, and voice recognition software.

They may still be looking at a lawsuit because they copied the form factor of the iPod. The eMachines people certainly didn't fare too well against Apple's lawyers...

But then what do I know about Look and Feel lawsuits... Still it's too bad that they went through all the trouble to make a cool product and then just went with what Apple did for the look of it. That and it's USB so you are going to be waiting a day and a half for transfers. I get annoyed at the time it takes to transfer 64 MB onto my Rio 500! I can't even imagine the pain and suffering of a 20 GB transfer!

So Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was on The Daily Show to chat with Jon Stewart. What an amazing conversation!

He was well spoken. Jon asked very good questions to help put things in context for the Comedy Central audience. It was a great interview. Of course, he pretty much said that this upcoming war with Iraq was a load of crap.

<coulter>
Of course he was on since he opposes a war on Iraq. It's a clear showing of the liberal bias of the mainstream media! The Daily Show isn't for real Americans. Real Americans watch Fox News Sunday and read my columns!
</coulter>

When The Daily Show won the Peabody Award for their coverage of the Republican National Convention in 2000, I really wondered what kind of effect it would have on the show. It has had a great effect on the show. They have been able to book very interesting people and give very interesting interviews. If nothing else they are showing the human side of a lot of people and events.

After Bob Dole and John McCain went on the show I had a new found respect for them as people. I still didn't agree with their politics on most points, but they had taken the time to show that they could smile, laugh, and make jokes. You know, the things that help make us human...

Bush, Campaigning in Midwest, Presses His Economic Message. President Bush today campaigned for Republican candidates and defended his stewardship of an economy that he said would remain strong. By David Stout. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Okay. For the first time I can remember President Bush spoke about the economy and the Dow Jones Industrial Average went up. It went up 260.92 to be exact.

It's pretty bizarre though. United Airlines may file for Chapter 11. The Fed told people looking for more interest rate cuts to ram it. Today was D-day for many CEOs to sign off on their cooked, err, financial books. Through all of this, greed still won out and the bargain hunters drove up prices.

Amazing.

Further reading:

Shares Rally, but Wall St. Shows No Sign of Direction. A day after registering their disappointment over the Federal Reserve's decision not to cut interest rates, investors sent stocks sharply higher late Wednesday. By Jonathan Fuerbringer. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Licensing quiz. Take the Free Software licensing quiz and test your knowledge of the GPL and LGPL. [dive into mark]

Mark got 7 out of 9. I don't know if that's good or bad. Mark is a really smart guy and he missed two. Does this mean that the "GPL" and "LGPL" are too hard to understand for everyday developers? I know for goalPOST I didn't want to worry about it, so I went with the BSD license.

kat2 got a fresh new domain name. Cool.

Kuch had a job interview at Apple. Cool.

Josh has a drawing of me that he was teasing me with today. Cool.

Spent the morning working the EFF booth at LinuxWorld. It was interesting to say the least. "Hey you guys giving away money?" Yes, it was an actual question.

Lately I've been leaving my laptop at home instead of taking it in to work. That was the point at which I pretty much stopped using the "Radio" news aggregator on a regular basis. My entries became more of my writing than just posting 5 or 6 "NYT" entries a night and trying to put some witty lines below them.

But I started to miss getting all my news from BigCo news sites all on one page. So I poked a hole in the firewall and left "Radio" running on the laptop at home all day and connected whenever I wanted some news. The end result was that I got my news, and immediately started posting a bunch of "NYT" entries. I gotta cut down on that, really I do. Of course I should probably also cut down on incomplete sentences and typos too.

Which also begs the question, should I even start on doing my own web based aggregator? I could use the RSS parser Mark wrote. I haven't even finished the small project I'm working on for Kat...

Argh. Oh well. I guess it's better to have stuff you can put off than to have nothing to put off at all. It's better to have procrastinated and not finished a project than to never have procrastinated at all. Or something like that...

A few weeks back Kat's parents brought us a new carpet remnant for our front room. The old one was nasty and had been generally abused by the dogs as something to catch their drool while they chewed on rawhide. If that sounds disgusting, you probably don't have any dogs.

The one problem was they didn't bring the pad down with the carpet. It only took about a week before Kat decided we were going to lay the new carpet over the old carpet until we could get to Chico and get the pad.

So out went all the furniture in the living room and we rolled the new carpet over the old. It looked pretty good and the old carpet made a pretty good pad. It was all good, except for the fact that the remnant was too big, so there was some excess carpet rolled up at one end of the living room.

Well this weekend we were in Chico and finally got the pad back to San Rafael. So tonight we started all over again with the moving of heavy objects. We moved all of the furniture out of the living room. Then we took up the old carpet and cleaned extensively in preparation for the new carpet being laid down. I cut the pad to fit, and then cut the carpet to fit. Finally we moved all the furniture back in.

I'm tired, my back hurts, and for all intents and purposes the living room looks exactly like it did before we started. The one big plus is that Kat is happy now. When Kat is happy, we're all happy.

It really brought back memories of my summer job in a carpet warehouse all those years ago. I never forget those days, no matter how hard I try.

Kat and Josh will like this;

Profile of They Might Be Giants at CNN. [ModWheel]

The real people I know are all inconsistent, with fuzzy motivations, and they never seem to be there just in the nick of time when I'm being chased down by a gang of alien thugs. Some friends you all are! [Golabutron 3000]

Bah! What about last week when I saved your ass twice from alien thugs? Ingrate...

Economic Outlook Is Positive, Bush Tells Texas Forum. President Bush said that he was optimistic about the long-term health of the beleaguered American economy at a forum created to showcase his concerns. By Elisabeth Bumiller with Edmund L. Andrews. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

President Bush talked about the economy today. The DJIA closed down 206.5.

Hello Mr. Card, please tell the President to stop talking about the economy. Please. We really need this favor.

Further reading:

President Says Economy Will Overcome 'Problems' [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]

As a sidebar, now that I think about it, things have't changed that much over the years (have they, Pat and Daryl?).[She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe]

kat2 talks about dividing time spent at friends houses based on how bad ass their entertainment center was. Obviously kat2 is telling me I need to upgrade my entertainment center so she can hang out at my house more. ;-)

New tune

http://homepage.mac.com/telecaster/bacon.mp3

it's called "bacon". [ModWheel]

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow Afterthought: since Coulter's misrepresentations and outright lies certainly outnumber any of Robert Fisk's perceived sins by a factor of about a thousand to one, a suggestion to the blogosphere-- why not retire that tired and self-congratulatory "giving (blank) a Fisking" nonsense and replace it with more accurate nomenclature, i.e., giving someone a Coulter? As in, "Boy, he really got Coultered!"

Sounds like a good idea to me. I hope Ashcroft gets Coultered!

Israeli Denied Seat Over Gun Papers, Airline Says [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]

The person they booted from the flight was Israel's deputy foreign minister, Michael Melchior. It was over paperwork for a firearm too. But wait, it gets better...

Melchior, who was being escorted by State Department officials, told Israel Radio that he waited on the plane Thursday for more than an hour before the pilot evacuated it, saying there was a security risk.

When Melchior disembarked, he said he was told he was not allowed to get back on the plane.

I don't think he was very happy about the incident either.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington had taken up the matter with the State Department, Melchior said.

You know...because the Israelis don't know anything about airport security...

Golabutron 3000 Just an experiment everybody has to try out I guess. What do I think I look like, rather than the haggard stranger I see in the mirror every morning and those poor souls at work have to look at every day... apparently I have no face. [Golabutron 3000]

That's a self portrait of Josh, so don't be confused by the 'me' arrow. ;-) Maybe I can get Josh to do an updated Mtn. Dewd now as well. Come on Josh, you said you wanted pressure to draw stuff, so get to work slag!

Maybe someday I will get up to speed with J2EE, move to Australia, and try to get a job with "mcb". All the stuff he writes about sounds like a ton of fun. Of course the slacker didn't come over for LinuxWorld. Maybe I could start running a Bed n' Breakfast for Australian conference visitors. ;-)

MTMacro Sometimes it's nice to get a lot for a little. Macros let you do that. Instead of typing laborious HTML as you write your entries, a macro can do all the work for you so you can concentrate on writing. Perhaps you want to use a set of icons within your posts but don't care to write <img> tags all day long. Or maybe you'd like to link up to Google queries without having to type out the full URL. This plugin allows you to do that and much more.

Oh sure...just when I finally get his regex plugin going with all my homemade shortcuts Brad releases a full blown macro plug-in. Thanks a lot! ;-)

Just to test it out. Kuch. Mark. Flangy. kat2.

dive into mark/August 13, 2002 Now that I’m experimenting with a homegrown RSS-to-email news aggregator, so am I. You see, most RSS feeds suck.
http://diveintomark.org/projects/misc/rssparser.py

Right on. This could come in very handy...

Hacker Obtains Shuttle Design Files, Baffling NASA. NASA investigators want to know how sensitive design data got into the hands of a hacker, and then into the hands of a reporter. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology]

Maybe it's time to have some networks not hooked up to the Net?

Yes, yes...I'm well aware that you can get into private networks any number of ways. I still wouldn't be suprised if this was a hack from a public network though.

Blockbuster Fallout at Netflix. Netflix, which lets viewers rent DVD's online and receive them by mail, saw its shares nose-dive on word that Blockbuster had begun testing a competing subscription service. By Bob Tedeschi. [New York Times: Technology]

Hopefully they don't just crush NetFlix out of existence. It would be nice to see them both deal with some competition for a while. Hopefully since NetFlix has a foothold online already they will always be a few steps ahead of Blockbuster. We shall see if NetFlix can come up with enough service or value added on to survive.

"CSS"

Yippee! Thanks to Brad Choate for his groovy Regex plugin for MT.

Now I can automate my typos. Sweet.