March 2004 Archives
EFF now has Deep Links and for those that are watching their figure, miniLinks. Me? I'm a glutton, so I ordered both.
So today in my mailbox (the real one, out near the street -- where dead tree come with my name on them) I got two identical letters each from the DNC and John Kerry.
If you are getting double mailing please call them and tell them! Each letter they send is not only more wasted paper, but money they don't need to spend.
- DNC: (202) 863-8000
- John Kerry: (202) 712-3000
Calling both organizations and getting one of my entries off the list took me less than a minute. There was no waiting on hold, there was no voicemail menu from hell run around. It was quick and painless.
One of Donald Rumsfled's underlings forgot his talking points at his local coffee shop. Oops. It seems real and I have no reason to think that The Center for American Progress would pull an Onion on us.
But a couple of points that a friend and I were flushing out on irc: They need to not modify the document if they are going to distribute it. The redacted map of Rumsfeld's house is fine of course. Don't insert your own comments in-between the lines.
Coolest. Flash App. Ever This week.
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Found on What Do I Know - Enjoying
The Spamhaus Don't Route Or Peer List
DROP (Don't Route Or Peer) is an advisory "drop all traffic" list, consisting of stolen 'zombie' netblocks and netblocks controlled entirely by professional spammers. DROP is a tiny sub-set of the SBL designed for use by firewalls and routing equipment.
DROP is currently available as a simple text list, but will also be available shortly as BGP with routes of listed IPs announced via an AS# allowing networks to then null those routes as being IPs that they do not wish to route traffic for.
The DROP list will NEVER include any IP space "owned" by any legitimate network and reassigned - even if reassigned to the "spammers from hell". It will ONLY include IP space totally controlled by spammers or 100% spam hosting operations. These are "direct allocations" from ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC, and others to known spammers, and the troubling run of "hijacked zombie" IP blocks that have been snatched away from their original owners (which in most cases are long dead corporations) and are now controlled by spammers or netblock thieves who resell the space to spammers.
When implemented at a network or ISP's 'core routers', DROP will protect all the network's users from spamming, scanning, harvesting and dDoS attacks originating on rogue netblocks.
Spamhaus strongly encourages the use of DROP by tier-1s and backbones.
I'm sure it will never be abused to block people with dissenting views. I'm sure it will maintain a spotless record, much like all the black hole spam lists. I'm sure that if a block is accidentally put on the list it will be easy for them to get off of it.
There is no cost too high to prevent spam and/or DOS attacks. You are either with the block list, or you are with the crackers.
Satire is dead, or as Ryan likes to say, "no longer necessary." And, yes, I understand that this is completely voluntary. But will ISPs make their usage of this public so that customers will know if they are potentially not seeing part of the Internet? I doubt it.
Federal judge denies hospital abortion records to Ashcroft Dear AG Ashcroft, DENIED! Love, The Judicial Branch. PS, Why do you hate women?
Virginian Republicans for High Taxes This will happen more and more as people who are elected locally and their constituents are hurt by the looting going on at the federal levels.
Paying Attention to Florida Voting Problems At least we know their tricks and are being proactive this time.
The Gadflyer now has RSS feeds
Audible.com has free downloads of the 9-11 Commission Hearings. The downsides are that you need an Audible.com account and that you get DRM'ed files that should be Free. I know it will show up in a better format soon and I understand that Audible is making them available not as a public service but as a loss leader to get people to make accounts and maybe get an up-sell or two.
Eventually the 9-11 Commission site will have the video archive, and they have the written testimony from the 8th session (the juicy one with Powell and Clarke, etc.) in PDF right now. The video is archives in Windows Media format now and they claim Real format is coming soon. Oh joy.
The good news is that, and I could be wrong, the hearing is public and free of copyright. So we can take what we want from the government's site and transcode everything. Not so much with the Audible format since I'm pretty sure they can copyright their "performance." Again, I can and probably am wrong about this so don't take this as law or anything. I'm just sayin'...
The latest Get Your War On has some gems from the 9/11 testimony of Donald Rumsfeld.
I was in San Francisco getting ready to go to Australia. Where were you?
Sometimes it's fun to play games with the "blogosphere." That vaporous group of people who think they are more important than they really are, myself included, that like to weigh in on issues with their penetrating intellect. SixApart are smart folks. I can't imagine they didn't know exactly the types of ridiculous arguments that would be made against their as-yet-unreleased TypeKey.
Luckily I was gone for most of the weekend and missed all the shenanigans. Luckily Mr. Pilgrim was nice enough to give a mocking rundown of said shenanigans. Being associated with the "blogosphere" is enough to make you want to stop weblogging.
The blowback against Movable Type and anything SixApart related is quite striking. A real "eat your own" culture has developed in the weblog community around tools. Nobody is allowed to break away from the pack. If you try, they will pull you back in and make sure you never get too far ahead. I'm sure a large part of it is fighting the commercial whoring of weblogs. Guess what...too late. Look around and tell yourself that it hasn't happened. Denial can be a very happy state to be in.
Granted MT powers this site so you could claim bias. My bias, real or imaginary, should only really matter if I was making a coherent argument. Instead I'm just droning on about what a strange and stupid beast this "blogosphere" is. I also tend to use MT in most of my new projects that need some sort of content management ability. I like it. I use it. I buy it.
But as I mentioned, Mr. Pilgrim's run down is quite a hoot to read. You should always remember that the answer is LOAF. It doesn't matter what the question is.
This weekend Kat and I trekked down to San Francisco to catch the Dropkick Murphys play the Warfield. We, and by "we" I mean myself, Kat, the SF in-laws and the Gibbbanator, had balcony tickets, because we're old. It's just as well, moshing with glasses isn't a very good idea.
The first band was The Ducky Boys. They sounded a lot like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Which is fine. The next band was pretty bad though. Blood for Blood was funny, but not in a good way. They continually ranted against "society" and let us know how much society hated them, and how much in turn they hated society. I'm not sure if drinking Bud or sporting new Adidas sneakers really sells the hatred though. Also half the people chanting along with them checking their voicemail during the show didn't really convince me of their devotion to hating society.
Anyway. Let's go Murphys! They rocked the house. It was a blast. They played a ton of songs and a good time was had by all. Even when they were playing 'Teenage Wasteland' from The Who and some of the crowd was clearly unsure exactly where that song came from.
I'll probably not go to a concert again for quite some time. Unless it's the Pixies, or Flogging Molly, or Orbital, or some other band I haven't seen yet that I just have to see.
Hidden away in a cute little flash piece instead of in cut and pastable text:
- FACT: Bush cuts key education programs by 27%.1
- FACT: Bush slashes job training by 24%.2
- FACT: Bush cuts child care for 365,000 kids.3
- FACT: Bush guts first-responder funds by $800 million.4
- FACT: Bush cuts clean water funding by nearly 40%.5
1 President's FY 2005 Budget
2 House Budget COmm. Dem Caucus, 2/06/04; Federal Funds Info for States, 2/04
3 CBPP, 2/5/04; Children's Defense Fund, 2/6/04
4 CQ Online, 2/2/04; Washington Post, 2/5/04
5 Federal Funds Info. for States, 2/04
In what was pretty much the only good news I saw yesterday, Jon Stewart signed on to do four more years of The Daily Show.
Right on.
Spinsanity refs a "debate" between Al Franken and Rich Lowry. Interesting stuff! Al is funnier of course.
Rich said on C-SPAN that Democrats had sissified politics; I challenged him to a fight in my parking garage; he demurred like a little girl; I wrote about the incident honestly in my book; he wrote a column that gave his readers a totally misleading characterization of my book, which he later admitted he hadn't read; I challenged Rich to another fight; he demurred again, but challenged me to a contest of ideas. So here we are.
Heh.
You have a choice, you can lie or you can do interviews. You can't do both at the same time anymore.
This NYT article on the Girl Scouts and their cookies is just too weird. First, the poor kids/parents stuck with excess aren't supposed to use eBay to recoup their losses because the whole cookie selling ordeal really is all about learning "social skills and confidence from the experience." And by "social skills" they mean dealing with surly customers. To drive the "it's not about the money" point home it seems that the "boots on the ground" don't get to keep much of what they take in as the profits are skimmed at the top.
Mr. Berger says he is frustrated by the slow earnings rate of the cookies, especially compared with the rate for popcorn and peanuts that his son's Boy Scout troop sells each year. "The Boy Scouts here keep 35 percent of the purchase price," he said. "The Girl Scouts keep only 17 percent. So what are they teaching the girls — that it's O.K. to work just as hard and make less money?"
Sounds like a hard lesson of the "real world" to me. Don't worry though, you can find Thin Mints on eBay.
So at a party last night a guy was ranting about how out of whack the legal system is since you can sue for spilling hot coffee on yourself or breaking your leg while trying to break into a building to rob it, and win.
I knew there was more to the coffee story, but I could remember off the top of my head, so I let it go. Well, there is more to that story. There had been over 700 injuries from the coffee. I'm saying the suit was right or wrong, just that there is more to the story than 'some old lady sued for hot coffee and won.'
I'm still searching for the other case...
Cory's Eastern Standard Tribe got a review in Entertainment Weekly (March 19, 2004 p. 70). I would like to the review but EW has decided it's better for their business to wall off their content. Of course you don't have to trust EW's B- rating since you can go read EST online right now.
Did I beat you to it Jason?
Joshua Marshall thinks that Bush can win on national defense and that it is friendlier territory for the president to be campaigning on.
The president cannot win this election on the economy. Barring a rapid change of circumstances over the next three months the data and people's experience of the economy is as best too muddled for the president to run on it successfully.
But he can win on national security. And that's the reason Kerry should engage him on this issue now -- at a moment when the White House seems to be having great difficulty reacting to quickly changing events and shaping the direction of the campaign debate. This is the one issue on which Kerry cannot allow himself to be pigeonholed or adversely defined.
Does this take the debate onto more friendly territory for the president? Perhaps. But the shift will come eventually. And it's difficult to imagine a more propitious moment.
I think there is a disconnect on national defense. There is what we have been told, that President Bush is strong on defense, and then there is what I like to call "reality." While Iraq was sold as a important step to secure the US against "evil," I don't know if anyone will argue that what it really did was distract us from the job of catching bin Laden. You remember him right? He's a terrorist. The War on Terror™ anyone? Why in the world would you give that guy two years and counting to continue to be "out there?" So what if he is on the run. He is out there.
Is going soft on Pakistan, the largest nuclear proliferator we have yet to see, really making the US safer. Well, if you make nuclear weapons for the US I guess it does. All hail the military industrial complex for it is our only savior!
Is going all cowboy on North Korea really helping? I don't care what Madeline Albright says, Kim is off his rocker, a few cans short of a six pack, etc.
You know what? Screw it. Read Atrios' post instead.
Get this take on how gay marriage will destroy the western world:
There will be problems in the western world because then we've broken down the family. We're no longer producing children. And yet in other countries, where there is an agenda to affect America they are going to be producing children with a agenda to hurt the United States. So there's a concern. There's a fear there.
Pam Flannery
Dude...wtf? If we allow gays to marry, the family will be destroyed and thus nobody will choose to have children anymore. That's not even in the ballpark of logical. It's not even the same freakin' sport! Ah but Pat, you forget Faith supersedes logic. Oh yeah, never mind.
That's not even the scariest part either. The thing that really scares me is that this person feels that we need to have children because they will form the armies that will fight "evil" in the years to come.
Boy, evangelicals, I don't know...
Searchable Calvin and Hobbes online database. Coolest. Database. Ever. How long before the C&D letter shows up? I doubt the pleas on the "About" page will hold the lawyers at bay. Use it while it's up. Via, of all places, Brad DeLong.
Yup, it's been C&D'd out of existence. Not really that shocking considering it was a complete reproduction of every strip. Still, a very cool resource for Calvin and Hobbes fans is gone.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Today, we are all Spanish'
The terrorist attack in Spain was a horrible tragedy. Let's hope democracy can survive the attack. Be strong Spain.
I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised to see djb have a page of post hoc fallacies. It's still pretty funny though, in that old, bearded, unix crank kind of humor of course.
Of course, I doubt djb would flip anybody a nickel to buy a new computer.
President: After it, therefore because of it. It means one thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other. But it's not always true. In fact it's hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke. Do you know when we lost Texas?
C.J.: When you learned to speak Latin?
President: Go figure.
Miami police put tabs on rappers
US police have put some of the biggest names in hip hop under surveillance.
Officers in Miami are secretly watching and gathering intelligence on rappers like 50 Cent and P Diddy when they are in the Sunshine State, Florida.
Miami's police chief said the move was necessary to prevent violence but critics say the operation is intrusive.
Dear Florida, wtf mate?
Obesity set to become No 1 killer in US
Obesity and lack of exercise will soon overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in the US, scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday.
House Passes Bill Blocking Fat Lawsuits
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill on Wednesday that would bar lawsuits blaming the food industry and fast-food restaurants for making people fat.
Whew...just in time!
A long time ago, when Greg kept a weblog, he interviewed me. I dug it up and post it here for my own vanity.
Do some good today and sign the petition to call on President Bush to fire Rod Paige for his comments on the National Education Association.
I have a lot of mistrust of both major parties. Why the RNC is always trying to win more of my distrust is beyond me. Their latest ploy is to try and scare TV stations from running the MoveOn.org TV spot.
Nice guys. Real nice.
Or at least they are touring again. They are playing close to here but word is the tickets sold out in 5 minutes.
I've kissed mermaids, rode the El Nino
Walked the sand with the crustaceans
Could find my way to Mariana
On a wave of mutilation
Besides being on the worst questions in the Democratic debates, it totally obscures the true meaning of the word.
- Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
- Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
- Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
- Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
Wow, those all seem like really bad things. Especially in the United States. That's right folks, the world considers our entire country liberal. So the next time you think of using it as a slur on somebody, you might want to find some other word to do your dirty work. But wait, it gets worse!
- Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.
- Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.
See, there is an 'e' in potatoes.
Federal prosecutors charged Bernard J. Ebbers, the former chief of WorldCom, with helping to execute the biggest accounting fraud in the history of American business.
Ex-WorldCom Chief Is Indicted by U.S. in Securities Fraud
New York Times
March 2, 2004
Check out Mr. Businessman
Oh, ho ho
He bought some wild, wild life
On the way to the stock exchange
Oh, ho ho
He got some wild, wild life
Break it up when he opens the door
Whoahoho
He's doin' wild, wild life
Talking Heads
Wild Wild Life
From the EFF Press Wire:
EFF encourages the public to speak out for fair use rights by participating in the week-long campaign led by 321 Studios, makers of the popular DVD backup software recently enjoined by a California district court. "The public's rights to fair use of copyrighted works should not disappear in the face of technological restrictions," said EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer. "To bring back copyright's balance, we encourage individuals to write to Congress and the entertainment industry about their expectations when purchasing movies and other media." For more on 321 Studios' "Protect Fair Use" campaign, visit their website, ProtectFairUse.org.
Much as I hate to admit it, it appears increasingly likely that Florida is Bush country and will stay that way.
