Posts from — December 2006

In case you missed it…

Who did the Democrat’s appoint to the Intellectual Property Subcommittee? Hollywood’s own Howard Berman! A huge portion of his contributions come from media companies and law firms.

So what?

Lawrence Lessig stated it well:

As everyone knows, one issue critical to those who are making the Net interesting (for politics at least) is IP reform. Not “reform” in the sense of the last decade (e.g., Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, DMCA, NET Act, etc.), but real reform designed to make IP laws work sensibly in the digital age. Real reform — not the piddly full-employment-act-for-lawyers reform proposed by the Copyright Office for “orphan works,” or the puny reform suggested for digital libraries. Instead, reform that tries to fit the legitimate objectives of copyright — to assure that artists have the incentives they need to create great new work — into the contours of digital technology.

To craft that reform would require real work. I don’t think anyone has a clear picture of what would be best yet. But what is clear is that the war on technology of the last decade must come to an end. And the efforts by content holders to leverage their power over rights they can’t even prove they own (see, e.g., the Google Book Search battle) into control over the architecture of the net must be stopped. No one should defend “piracy.” But no one should believe that the way the law currently defines “piracy” makes any sense at all.

Oh well. I’m not terribly surprised, this is business as usual, but some Democrats have better records with issues dealing with technology than most other politicians, so I was hoping for something better. Al Gore comes to mind, since he actually did play a role in the development of the Internet. The intersection of politics and technology doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon.

While playing Apples to Apples earlier tonight, one high school student said, while putting down cards listing various names:
“John Philips Sousa… who’s that? … Ooh! Britney Spears!”

From the things-you-didn’t-know-you-needed department: Tiny Animals on People’s Fingers

Most Outrageous Right Wing Comments of 2006 is a (somewhat) fun read. A lot of them you’ve probably heard already (classic Coulter lines, etc), but there are some other gems in there. My favorite section is the one at the end with the Fox News captions:

• “All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?”
• “Attacking Capitalism: Have Dems Declared War on America?”
• “Dems Helping the Enemy?”
• “A Lamont Win, Bad News for Democracy in Mideast?”
• “Have the Democrats Forgotten the Lessons of 9/11?”
• “Is the Democratic Party Soft on Terror?”
• “The #1 President on Mideast Matters: George W Bush?”
• “Is the Liberal Media Helping to Fuel Terror?”

The article cites lots of sources, too, which is nice.

Anyone have a favorite quote? I can’t choose. Also, I was trying to think of who would be on the equivalent list for Outrageous Left Wing Comments… Cindy Sheehan probably has some good ones, but I can’t think of many more specifically.

Yahoo Mail’s spam detection is TERRIBLE. Lehigh’s spam detection is better, as is gmail’s. The following message was not marked as spam:

Subject: cheapest meds..... gjynmlkvhyugdbepxnbw
Body: vw3jfmoRcgF24gpL1DYxX

yumlakmctnasfuvwyxdoyjwljhudduhnoyrxqxss

This is a regular occurrence.. I probably average around one getting through per day. Granted, my yahoo account gets a lot of spam because I use it for signups I don’t really trust, but the false negatives I’m seeing aren’t ones that look close.

I’ve been reading about Ruby (the programming language) for the last few days. So far, I really like what I’ve seen. I especially like how it takes a lot of the cool features from Smalltalk (true object-orientation, really useful iterators and code blocks). It also has a lot of the ease of perl (but more readable)… I certainly welcome the fact that regular expressions are graceful and perl-like as opposed to just about every other language. I’m hoping to make something with Ruby on Rails at some point, though I have a lot of Runstoppable work to do before that.

Top 10 Google Myths… some of them are good, others pretty obvious.

And now… stupid uninformed internet post of the day:

One other VERY important point to keep in mind; should you choose to use Google…. every e-mail you send or receive will be indexed.

I personally refuse to resond to G-mail for anything other than the most superfulous comminications

His emphasis, then he continues:

I have an insanely popular website.

I get 2-3 hundred SPAMs a day.

My #1 writer uses Gmail I don’t want the contents of our e-mails published…Sadly they are ALL Google indexed.

Google spiders IGNORE my robot text… I find that indescribably intrusive and very BAD… even though Google promised to never do anything BAD…

Disregarding my robot.txt is BAD

Microsoft respects my privacy and doesn’t publish any and everything I do on the net!

Google signed an agreement to allow AOL to always rise to the top of their pages… AOL counter MS and asked if they would give them the sam consideration. Microsoft said it was unethical and refused.

Bottom line is don’t do business with pond scum … if it costs a little more to do business with a reputable company………. pay the toll. it’s worth it.

These quotes are from here. Sorta funny, but the funny that makes you die a little inside.

Given that a CD is the #30 seller on amazon.com, you’d think I’d be able to find it in one of the 6 music stores I’ve checked in this area… apparently not.

I don’t know why I’m still amazed by stuff like this: Congressman Criticizes Election of Muslim

In case you’re too lazy to click the link:

In a letter sent to hundreds of voters this month, Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, warned that the recent election of the first Muslim to Congress posed a serious threat to the nation’s traditional values.

And perhaps the best pair of quotes:

“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” said Mr. Goode, who vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office.

“I’m not an immigrant,” added Mr. Ellison, who traces his American ancestors back to 1742.

I was cleaning out stuff in my room and somehow I had a copy of the class of 2002 senior skit from band. I have no idea how I got that..