31 Jan 2008
RIAA Wants $1.5 Million Per CD Copied

The RIAA greedy? Naw, can't be! Say it ain't so ...!

Not content with current statutory damages, the RIAA is pushing for higher damages for infringement, damages that would total $1.5 million for copying a CD with ten songs. It's all part of debate over the proposed PRO-IP Act. William Patry, a lawyer who wrote the seminal seven-volume reference on US copyright law, called it the most "outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US."

(link) [Slashdot]

07:26 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Lawmakers hail death sentence for journalist

Apparently we didn't get rid of the Taliban - we just made sure they got "legitimately elected" ...

Afghanistan's upper house of parliament lauded the death sentence handed down against a local journalist who was found guilty of insulting Islam, an official said Wednesday.

(link) [CNN.com]

07:24 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Mukasey won't call waterboarding torture

Well, maybe he just needs some personal experience. Perhaps if we tied him to a board and "simulated" drowning him, he would have a clearer mental picture of the practice.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey's refusal to discuss the legality of the "waterboarding" interrogation method could raise tensions Wednesday during his scheduled testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(link) [CNN.com]

07:07 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Jan 2008
New Navy Test of Railgun

Well, the teaser's a bit misleading: you don't generate megajoules of power without fuel, but it'sd still a pretty fascinating technology.

The Office of Naval Research tests a ship-to-land gun that uses no fuel.

(link) [New York Times]

20:40 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Weird Weather

I've lived in Indiana nearly all of my life, and even when I wasn't living here my family was and we stayed pretty close. And I have never seen or heard of such weather in January in the Hoosier state. Two hours ago the temperature was 52°F - it's now 28°F. And we just came out from under a tornado warning - straight line winds with the storm were clocked in excess of 70mph by the NWS at the Indianapolis airport.

The high temperature tomorrow is supposed to be 14°F.

This is insane.

20:39 /Home | 1 comment | permanent link

28 Jan 2008
Huckabee Endorses Hell-Fearing Christian YouTube Competitor 'GodTube'

And I'm supposed to vote to put this guy's finger on the nuclear trigger? And millions of my fellow citizens have already done so...

I wonder what Greenland's immigration policies are like?

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee endorses a fire-and-brimstone video site called GodTube, to counter the myth that "Christians ought to keep to themselves in the church, and never get outside."

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

21:16 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Jan 2008
Google Battles Domain-Name Tasting

Working the system, playing games with other peoples money. Why am I not surprised about the advertising industry's latest tricks?

Google says it will work to make it less lucrative to tie up millions of Internet addresses using a loophole in a practice known as domain-name tasting. It plans to keep those domain names from legitimate individuals and businesses.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

07:35 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

RFID Tags: A Threat to Privacy in the Near Future?

Excellent article, but they haven't figured out the half of it: somebody needs to tell this reporter about NAIS...

Radio frequency identification technology, which enables objects, pets and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly, is likely to be ubiquitous in the not-so-distant future. Almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

07:32 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Jan 2008
Yet More SPAM from the Insane Asylum
SPAM

Once more the efficacy of my SPAM blockers has been called into question, and I have received SPAM From the Insane Asylum. This one did have a dead link somewhere it in - not reproduced here, but otherwise no sales pitch.

At 7am, this was nearly enough to short circuit my brain.

Goedendag,

Of course, is that his is that pure felicity of it was not for fame, nor for wealth, nor from handed the two dollar note and the three ones by means of that tree, a hundred and five of them pacify thyself. having said this, o lord of men, nearly human. Through the underbrush the trunk tell him that aswatthaman has been slain in battle form. The evidence should be whether the defendant fire (called bhrig) and hence he came to be called friend who is of a righteous disposition, when.

07:45 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

School Cop In Trouble for Porn Link on Friend's MySpace Profile

Insanity ...

A police officer at a Florida middle school faces a state criminal probe because one of the 170 people on his friends list had a link to an adult website in his or her profile.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

07:30 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

25 Jan 2008
Subsidies and High Crop Prices

Well, duh!

Not everyone is a fan of the commodity boom. Some blame federal policy for higher feed and food bills.

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

06:55 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Microsoft: Vista Earns High Marks for Security in Its First Year

Having run Vista for about 9 moonths now at work, I can believe this. But I think that the real reason may be a bit at odds with M$ claim of sound engineering: the system is so clunky, slow and downright unusable that even hackers don't want to take it over and tie it to a botnet...

A report penned by one of Microsoft's top security experts argues that Windows Vista had fewer known security flaws in its first year of release than other major industry operating systems. On the blogs, skeptics abound.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

06:53 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Jan 2008
Afghan 'blasphemy' death sentence

Let me see if I get this: we went into Afghanistan to eliminate the religious fanatics who encouraged the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and to free the Afghan people from their oppressive grip.

It seems as though, nearly seven years later, we've not accomplished either goal.

A journalist in Afghanistan is sentenced to death for distributing blasphemous material.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

07:15 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Learning From Failure

It's easy to look at the headlines (and the shelves in stores) and see the success stories of the technology world. But it can be real instructive to look back on products we forgot, or almost forgot (everybody remembers the infamous Newton, even though hardly anybody owned one), and see where things went wrong.

The Apple Macintosh, 24 years old as of Jan. 24, is one of the great computer success stories of all time. But Apple has had its share of duds and flops, as this gallery of failed Apple products shows.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

07:12 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Jan 2008
Computer Issues

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, but my main Windows machine is slowly dying. Haven't quite diagnosed the problem, but it could very easily be something simple like a power supply fan. On the other hand, it could be something more serious, in which case it's new CPU time. We'll see.

20:10 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link