November 30, 2004
Scrobbling the iTunes shuffle
As some may have noticed, Boris and Ado (he doesn't have a very good sense of humor, but he tries) are fiddling with including my the recent songs I've played on my sidebar taken from my last.fm profile. I've turned scrobbling on so that it picks up the songs I'm playing now. When I'm scrobbling, I realize that I skip stupid songs so they don't end up in my profile. Now I have to take a shower. I'm going to leave iTunes on in shuffle mode. I sure hope it doesn't play anything too stupid or embarrassing while I'm away.
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Today's links
Just finished my RSS feed and didn't find anything I felt I needed to comment on so I'll give you my two favorite links from today.
From the mistress of the cute/cool thing, Andrea Harner, comes modernpooch.com.
Warren Ellis over at die puny humans informs us that:
Warren EllisIt's a glum day for optimists. After 24 years of community service, the Quakertown Optimists Club is calling it quits. They're holding their last meeting on Thursday, citing declining interest."I feel sad," club president Bernard Kensky said.
"Four or five people would come to meetings and only two or three people would help out with the activities. I don't know why people stopped getting involved."
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Humming waiters
I just arrived in Cape Town. I've had some tea and dinner and many of the waiters were humming tunes when they did stuff. Even the person who was putting candles on the tables was humming a tune. So far, people seem... happy. I wonder if it's the weather. The weather is BEAUTIFUL. Or maybe it's the contrast to Paris, where the weather was terrible and considering how wonderful the city was, generally speaking, people seemed a bit unhappy...
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November 29, 2004
Bouncing spam and virus messages
Please please stop setting up scripts that bounce virus and spam email back to the sender. You're doubling the spam. Usually the sender or the "from:" is forged. My mailbox is getting filed with people bouncing email back to me that did not originate from me. (I DO check the IP addresses in the headers to makes sure.) What triggered this message was from an ignorant ass who bounced a message to me saying:
Your mail was rejectedChecking the header showed that it came from an IP address of a network I've never been on.You are crimer
So please. Stop it.
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November 28, 2004
C'est moi qui l'ai fait !
18:04 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Eating and Cooking
Pascale Weeks joined us for dinner last night. She has a French language blog called "C'est moi qui l'ai fait !". She blogs about her cooking with wonderful pictures, recipes and a very down-to-earth style. It's great seeing people like Pascale who are extremely passionate about blogging who also possess the ability to create a lot of great original content. I only wish someone would translate her blog to English... or maybe I should just learn French.
One thing for sure though... if you like talking about food, clearly you must learn French. The food was amazing and the discussions about food were very enlightening... even if dinner DID take over four hours last night. ;-)
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November 27, 2004
US Closed for the Day
15:35 UTC » Movies - US Policy and Politics
via Dvorak
I watched The Terminal on the flight to Paris because I knew it was about Merhan Karimi Nasseri stuck in Charles de Gaulle Airport. I didn't realize that the movie was set in the US and the story totally "rebuilt". I enjoyed the movie, but it was definitely Hollywoodified and wasn't based on the Merhan Karimi Nasseri story, but rather just inspired by it.DvorakPhoto sent in by the ever-travelling Paul Saffo with this note: “I encountered these machines on a recent trip, and couldn’t help but note that their message says it all. And no, it is not retouched or photoshopped.”I’m thinking of the Tom Hanks movie, Terminal, where Hanks is told the country is “closed.”
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Ukrainian revolution blog
15:24 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Global Politics
Nice on-the-ground reporting from a blog from Ukraine - The ukraine_revolution blog.
via Loic
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Slow Food
09:25 UTC » Activism - Eating and Cooking
A few of us had dinner with Mike Tommasi from Slow Food France. Slow Food (as opposed to fast food) is a semi-political movement originating in a protest against the entry of McDonald's into Italy and formally becoming an organization in Paris. They focus on a variety of gastronomy issues. They care about the impact of industrialization of food on farmers, diversity, cataloging endangered food, teaching children about food, finding produce that can be brought back or preserved and help create new markets and for slow food. They have successfully found a variety of slow foods including cheeses and meats and have brought them back and created markets for them in sympathetic restaurants. They have a magazine, a Slow Food Guide for Italy (Good slow food restaurants for under 30 Euros), and conferences where they invite farmers from around the world to share ideas. They are not against science, but are against science used to destroy food culture. They now have 80,000 members in 100 countries with offices in Switzerland, Germany, the US, France and Italy. Although it was originally founded by people from the Italian Left wing, it is recently more politically neutral. Being a movement originating in Italy, founded in France with an English name makes it unique as well. Their web site has a lot of interesting stuff on it.
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The Parisian postal shrug
We were sitting in a cafe in Paris today having a meeting. The service was somewhat rude and as we sat around, a waiter came and said he wanted us to either agree to stay for lunch or leave to make room for people coming to have lunch. (Even though there were a lot of extra tables) My friend mumbled something and shrugged. The waiter walked away. He explained that when you go to the post office in Paris and you're really in a hurry, but the postal worker really doesn't feel like worrying about your problems, they shrug and sort of ignore you. He said he perfected this body language and it seems to have the effect of making people give up on you. It seemed to have worked, although I doubt I could do it...
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November 26, 2004
New Technorati This favelet for IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Sifry says: New Technorati This favelet for IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Put Technorati in your browser and get a cosmos wherever you are.
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Dolphins save swimmers from shark
I love stories like this. The contrast between stories like this and all of the stories of humans hurting humans amazing.ReutersGreat Animal Story...WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Reuters) - A pod of dolphins circled protectively round a group of New Zealand swimmers to fend off an attack by a great white shark, media reported on Tuesday.
Lifesavers Rob Howes, his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper and Helen Slade were swimming 300 feet off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when the dolphins herded them -- apparently to protect them from a shark.
via die puny humans
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November 25, 2004
Turkey tips
10:29 UTC » Eating and Cooking
If you're cooking Turkey today. Please make sure you read my post from 2002 on cooking Turkey.
I'll be in Paris, but Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans!
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Creative Commons needs Flash help
10:24 UTC » Creative Commons - Flash
Flash/AfterEffects/Video Design Person WantedIf you can help or know someone who can, please pass this info on. Thanks.Submitted by Glenn Otis Brown on 2004-11-24 07:21 PM.
We'd like to produce a short, new animated/motion graphics film, and we need a great designer and/or animator to help us do so on a fairly tight deadline. You should know how to animate in Flash or After Effects (or both) and have experience with any necessary drawing tools, like Adobe Illustrator. You should have the confidence and skill to help us produce a film of at least the caliber of our previous pieces. No need to be a writer (we'll collaborate on the script) or an audio engineer (though if you are one or know one, that's great). Location in the Bay Area and enthusiasm for the work of Creative Commons are big bonuses. Send an email ASAP to press@creativecommons.org if you are interested. Please include (1) a CV, (2) a list of the animated or graphic design pieces you've done, (3) a link to any such pieces that are now online, and (4) all your contact information. Thanks!
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Longish trip ahead
I'm off to Paris today for some meetings, to Cape Town for the ICANN meeting, SF for some meetings then Boston for the Votes, Bits and Bytes meeting at Harvard Law School. As usual, my schedule is on my wiki. Also, my apologies to the environment...
PS My trip to SF is VERY short trip. I'll be back for a more leisurely visit in January and will hook up with everyone then.
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November 24, 2004
Fear of lists
In Airport 'Pat-Downs' and Fear of Retaliation, Dan Gillmor links to a New York Times story about U.S. airport screening and women who are humiliated but afraid to retaliate. This is how profiling and lists will begin to inhibit our actions and free speech. What's your national ID # again?
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November 23, 2004
Japanese copyright collectors crack down on clubs
15:20 UTC » Intellectual Property - Japanese Policy - Music
Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) just won a case against the karaoke bars and is now going after clubs.
Lawsuits as a communication form seems like a common practice in this industry these days...asahi.comCHANGING ITS TUNE: It's closing time"I thought it was a new kind of fraud," said Naoki Kasugai, who runs Daytrip, a nightclub that offers live music in Nagoya. He received a letter from JASRAC in summer 2003 along with an invoice for a monthly charge of 28,350 yen in copyright fees, covering the entire time his bar has been open since 1997. It totaled a whopping 2.32 million yen.
Kasugai was shocked and puzzled. He had never heard from JASRAC before. He figured someone was trying to con him.
But after receiving a second invoice from JASRAC, he called to find out what was going on.
A JASRAC official came by in person to explain: "The bands you hire have likely played covers of songs by other composers. We want you to pay the copyright fees on those songs."
"How many cover songs does this account for?" asked Kasugai.
"We don't know how many copyrighted songs were played here," the official replied. "So we are not charging for each of them. Instead, we are charging on a monthly basis."
[...]
But JASRAC is ready to rock and roll, even resorting to court battles.
"Lawsuits in themselves are an effective way to spread our message," a JASRAC official says.
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Kevin Sites blogs about Falluja shooting video
I'm sorry I'm a bit late in picking this up, but blogger and journalist Kevin Sites is all over the news for the video he took of a US Marine shooting what appeared to be an unarmed prisoner in Falluja. There is a post on his blog that you must read about his position and the circumstances around his taking and releasing the video. There is article on the front page of today's IHT about this as well, but I can't seem to find it online.
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David Weinberger at Library of Congress
14:21 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Information and Media - Wiki
I just watched this the video that Jon Husband points to in comments on this blog of David Weinberger at the Library of Congress.
For an interesting take on this subject, involving a sizeable audience of (I'm assuming) senior librarian types at the USA Library of Congress, watch David Weinberger trace knowledge from Plato and Aristotle through Descartes to the clash between official objectivity and personal subjectivity, moving deftly to the power and believability of human voice on ... of all things ... blogs (especially those with comments capability, which I think must be well in the majority ;-)More formats on David's blog. Classic Weinberger. Excellent stuff. Even the bonus seeing Derrick de Kerkhove make the introduction. ;-)
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November 22, 2004
Skype Echo Test Service
UPDATE: Her name is Kerli.
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November 21, 2004
Poor librarian immerses self in irony
14:59 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Humor - Information and Media - Wiki
Funny anti-blog anti-Wikipedia article by a librarian Greg Hill who manages to mangle the spelling of Dan Gillmor and Dave Barry's name while trying to argue that "librarians abhor using reference sources that don't have established credibility editorial rigor..." ;-)
I don't usually like to link to stupid articles, but this one's too ironic to just ignore.
via Dan Gillmor
Truely unbelievable.Dan GillmorUPDATE: Trudy Schuett posted an extraordinary exchange of e-mails with the Alaska librarian, who has the nerve to say he knows of "no typos or mis-statements in that column, unless they are those of the sources I cite, and every point in my column stemmed from multiple sources. As a rule, there's not enough space in a 700-word column to list multiple sources, but I can readily produce them."No, he can't. He can't possibly produce a citation that explains misspelling my name and Dave Barry's. He might alibi getting the name of my book wrong, because he quotes an early working title that I used in blog postings here. But even there, a tiny amount of due diligence would have produced the correct title.
I worship librarians as a rule, but I'm going to make an exception in this case.
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Video of French soldiers shooting civilians
13:18 UTC » Media and Journalism - Video - Warblogging
There is an interesting discussion going on on MetaFilter about a very graphic video of what appears to be French soldiers shooting at civilians in Cote d'Ivoire. The discussion starts with understandable outrage, but some people begin to question the authenticity of the video and question whether it might be propaganda from the Gbagbo government. There is more and more political video on the Internet and it clearly is more emotional than text. Well respected groups such as Witness have been using video to expose human rights issues for awhile now. It will be interesting to see if/when/how not so respectable groups begin using video on the Internet for political issues or to spin the truth.
I can't conclude either way about exactly what is going on after watching this video. (Warning 100MB and very graphic.)
via Ethan
UPDATE: tao posts a link to an interview of French military on Swiss TV in Real Video format. http://clubidf.free.fr/rm/CI-carnage.rm Can someone who speaks French tell us what they are saying?
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Someone sabotaging EFF at WIPO
12:33 UTC » Activism - Technology Controversy
Cory blogs from the WIPO meeting about position papers from IP Justice, EFF, and the Union for the Public Domain being repeatedly stolen and thrown in the trash. Someone is obviously upset about their position on the Broadcast Treaty. Cory quotes Gandhi, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Good luck Cory!
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Just say no
12:17 UTC » Software - Wireless and Mobile
It really is hard to say no to Microsoft. Most people will say you're being arrogant, stupid or insane. Many of my friends think that Microsoft will eventually take over mobile devices too, but it's nice to see that DoCoMo can afford to say "no"... for now.Mike Masnick @ The FeatureCan DoCoMo Say No To Microsoft?NTT DoCoMo made a splash by announcing a new common platform for its 3G FOMA offering that only works on Symbian and Linux phones. The lack of Microsoft isn't just a timing issue -- DoCoMo purposely shunned the software giant. Will they be able to keep it up?
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November 20, 2004
Mailinfo
Ariel has started a service called Mailinfo. It looks pretty interesting. It's a plugin for Outlook that lets you see when people have read email that you've sent. Too bad it doesn't work on OSX yet. With all of the spam filters and "gee I wonder if he read my email..." stuff going on, this might be a good tool to unbreak email. Ariel! Hurry up and write a plugin for Mac users. ;-)
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Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight
10:01 UTC » Humor - US Policy and Politics
Found on Craigslist by Kelly Sue -- "Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m":
I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.
via die puny humans
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My first Sony Walkman
Boris blogs about his first Sony Walkman.
I remember my first Walkman. It was the Sony TPS-L2 (thanks to the Vintage Walkman Museum). I was in 9th grade. I remember my favorite song was "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. I was living in Tokyo and just started going to discos and nightclubs. I had just moved to Tokyo. The Walkman was part of the "coming of age", becoming independent, asking a girl out for the first time and becoming Japanese part of my life.
I remember the feeling of having music thundering in my head as I walked to school. It made me feel all subversive inside. I also remember the little orange button that turned on a microphone so you could hear what people were saying. These days, we just pull off our headphones. Now with my in-ear earphones, I wish my iPod has a button to turn on a microphone so I don't have to extract the earphones just to listen to someone trying to say something to me.
The Walkman also represented a period in gadget history where companies like Sony could create cool new gadgets based on some great idea by the founder. It seems like Apple is the only company that can really pull that off these days and even then, it's really a redesign of a good idea, not a brand new idea. I miss the feeling that I had when I got my first Walkman.
I think this "meme" started with Nika
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Looking for a blog post...
08:35 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Search
I remember someone posting a graphic of how an idea spreads across blogs. the image had a "gray area" of instant messenger and email that couldn't be tracked as easily. I've asked a few people who remember seeing the post, but now no one can find it. Does anyone remember it and have the URL? It's amazing that we remember it, but can't find it or remember who posted it...
UPDATE: Found! Thanks tarek! Amazing. That was less than one hour after I posted this question. I had been googling for it for a day or so.
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Croatian diplomat fired over blog comments
07:39 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Global Politics
I guess this makes sense. It's interesting to think about the line between private and public comments. I'm sure he wouldn't have been recalled for sharing these thoughts in private or with his friends. Of course posting stuff on the Internet is not "sharing in private" but if only a few people are reading it, it is effectively somewhat private. On the other hand, if you get reported in Reuters, your private conversation quickly becomes public... collapsing your context. Maybe he should have had a password protected blog.DMeurope.comCroatian diplomat fired over blog comments17/11/2004 by John Tilak
The Croatian government has recalled an official from its Washington embassy after he apparently wrote on his blog that the diplomatic meetings were boring and that there was no difference between President Bush and the Democratic candidate John Kerry, according to a report from Reuters.
Third secretary at the Croatian embassy in Washington DC, Vibor Kalogjera, 25, had been narrating his experiences under the pseudonym "Vibbi".
He is said to have violated state laws on foreign affairs and civil servants.
via Francesco
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November 19, 2004
Ooops
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November 18, 2004
Abuse in the Russian army
I just had dinner with a friend who served in the Russian army awhile ago. He said that at the time, they started recruiting from prisons so "prison rules" were common. Basically, new recruits had to listen to the old-timers or they got the shit beat out of them. People regularly were killed or died and accidents were unreported. When he had first been recruited, a somewhat senior recruit got upset and and threw a bayonet at him which pierced his leg. He was patched up, but the assailant was not reprimanded nor was he taken to a hospital. (He showed me his scar.) On another occasion, a young recruit was told to remove a rope between two armored vehicles. The vehicle being towed popped the clutch and crushed the head of the young recruit. There was a funeral, but no formal investigation or report. His theory was that suicides and deaths have been common in the Russian army forever and recent transparency is just beginning to reveal the extent of the abuse.die puny humansMore members of Russia's armed services committed...In October, Human Rights Watch published a detailed study of what it called "horrific violence" against new conscripts in the Russian army.
The international organisation highlighted a ritual of organised bullying known as "dedovshchina", which allegedly involves senior soldiers being able to treat juniors as little more than slaves.
The report claimed hundreds of soldiers were killed or committed suicide as a result. Tens of thousands ran away, while thousands more were left physically and or mentally scarred...
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ICANN Strategic Plan 2003-04 to 2006-07
The ICANN Staff and President and CEO have recently made a strategic plan available. It's quite complete and probably interesting for anyone interested in ICANN. It's a 70+ page PDF. Any comments or opinions about it would be greatly appreciated.
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Put it all online
I had the opportunity of sitting with Ismail Serageldin, the director of the Library of Alexandria at a session at the STS Forum. He told me a story about a fellow educator and librarian who was dismayed that students were only citing things that they could find on the Internet and were no longer using physical libraries. Ismail said that he disagreed. He told me that he felt that students using the Internet were correct and that it was the libraries that needed to make more material available online. I totally agree. (He also said he was a fan of Wikipedia.) So it's good news that:
Matt Haughey @ CC Blog30 Million newspapers to be put onlineGreat news for the public domain: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Library of Congress are putting 30 million newspaper pages online, dating from 1836 to 1922.
It'll take until 2006 to complete the project but the Library of Congress has put up a sample from The Stars and Stripes, an armed forces paper, posting every issue from 1918-1919.
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November 17, 2004
Tons of phones
23:09 UTC » Wireless and Mobile
Today I was on a panel at a JETRO conference with Hong Liang Lu. He has some amazing numbers about telephones China. Chinese are buying 90M new mobile phones a year. (Compared to 80M total mobile phones in Japan.) Japanese are about to make pre-paid mobile phone illegal because they are being used in crime. 80% of Chinese cell phones are pre-paid because of collection issues. PHS (Personal Handy Phone) which was developed in Japan (and I thought was a dead standard) is heavily deployed in China with 70M subscribers vs. only 5M subscribers in Japan. Minutes are as cheap as 1 cent per minute in China. China has 300M land-line phones and 300M mobile phones now.
I knew telecom was going crazy in China, and many of you may know these numbers, but they are stunning none the less.
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Tons of Carbon
Sorry about the light blogging. I was participating in an interesting conference in Kyoto called Science and Technology in Society with a very interesting international mix of scientists, politicians and business people. There were lots of really interesting presentations from some really smart people. I'll try to post more later, but here are some notes from a lunch speech by Sherwood F. Rowland, Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth Systems, University of California at Irvine and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1995).
The population of the world is about 6B now and it is expected that it will stabilize at around 9B in the middle of the century. We've grown from 3B to 6B in the last half century so we've done this before. We output about 6B tons of carbon dioxide. That's an average of 1 ton per person. In the US the average is about 5 tons per person and in India and Nigeria it's about 0.2 tons per person. If you added the US and population to India's population, it would be about 1.4 tons, or approximately the rate at which Albania creates carbon dioxide. 85% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, coal, gas and oil which create carbon dioxide. These are green house gasses. In 1800 there was about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide and 800 parts per billion of methane in the air. Today we are at about 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide and 1750 parts per billion of methane.I was scribbling notes during lunch and I may have mangled some of this. Please let me know if I've misquoted something and I'll fix it.A calculation of the natural greenhouse effect of the earth is 32 degrees centigrade. The enhanced greenhouse effect puts us at more like 33 to 37 degrees centigrade. The average temperature of the earth has increased 6/10th of a degree in the last century. The warmest days since we have begun recording temperatures about 150 years ago have all been since 1990. In order to stabilize the increase in carbon dioxide (at a much higher level than it is now), we would need to cut back 60% of our output. Conservation can help, but it is unlikely that conservation itself can take us to a sustainable situation. Alternative carbon free energy sources like solar, nuclear, and wind must be explored, but we must understand that we are in a situation that requires immediate action.
One important "take-away" from this meeting was that global warming and the risk did not seem like some sort of disputed theory as some politicians seem to lead us to believe. All of the scientists involved in energy and ecology that I heard speaking seemed to believe that our earth was immediately at risk and that we had to act now. The combination of the increase in population and our addiction to energy would not allow us to stabilize at any sustainable equilibrium without drastic changes in the way we make and use energy.
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November 16, 2004
The AOLer Translator
02:42 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Humor
IM is sweeping the world but it's a whole new vocabulary. Feeling old and out of touch? Try the AOLer Translator.
via Sean
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November 15, 2004
The Blogger Corps
18:37 UTC » Activism - Blogging about Blogging
Rebecca suggests starting the Blogger Corps.
Count me in Rebecca. I've been doing my own share of Johnny Appleseed evangelism, but I think a more organized approach where we can share information and coordinate activities would be great. I think we should start a wiki page. ;-)Rebecca MacKinnonBloger Corps?... For early blog-adopters, blogging was an end in itself. For the activist community, blogging has to be an effective means to a concrete end.
In the final wrap-up session of Bloggercon III, I suggested that socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a "Blogger Corps." Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies.
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November 14, 2004
The graves in Jerusalem
One thing that Yossi, our tour guide in Jerusalem, showed us that was interesting was all of the Jewish graves at the foot of Mount Olive. According to the Jewish scripture, the Messiah was to come to earth and those in the graves at the foot of the mountain would be the first to come back to life. The legend says that they would then go to the Temple of the Rock to be the first to pray there. The problem is, the front gate of the Temple of the Rock has been sealed and along the wall facing the Jewish graves is a whole section of Muslim graves. According to legend, the Sons of David can not enter these graves and would not be able to go directly to the Temple to pray. I'm sorry if I'm mangled the story or names, but this is what I understood from the explanation.
I can see how the Muslims might want to make it difficult for the first reborn Jewish to reach their Temple, but isn't intentionally putting Muslim graves in the way a sort of recognition that the Jewish Messiah is real? It seemed a bit contradictory to me.
Does anyone know anything else about this legend and this topography? It's quite interesting how the various religions in Jerusalem seemed to acknowledge each other's legends and prophets, but just believe their own more strongly... or maybe I'm missing something completely. If someone could shed some light, I would greatly appreciate it.
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November 13, 2004
Off to Kyoto
Blogging from the bullet train on my way to Kyoto to chair a panel at the STS Forum. I usually don't moderate or chair panels so this will be an interesting experience for me. I guess the key will be to shut up and listen.
I still haven't shaken this bronchitis, but I think I should be better by the time I'm up. I did see a doctor and got some proper medication. I asked my doctor again whether I was contagious. He said, "not that contagious, but it depends on the person." Not very reassuring. So if you're feeling weak, don't shake my hand. ;-)
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Japanese government bans Ejovi's talk
08:49 UTC » Computer and Network Risks - Japanese National ID - Japanese Policy - Japanese Politics
Ejovi was prevented from giving his talk by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Ejovi did the security audit on the local government system connected to the Japanese National ID system (Jyukinet) for the prefecture of Nagano. I audited his audit and wrote an opinion for Governor of Nagano last December. It does suck that they blocked is talk, which I think would have been fair and balanced as Ejovi says. However, I can easily imagine the government taking a hard stance on this considering all of the trouble they are having controlling the spin. Anyway, welcome to my world Ejovi. Ejovi, if you really want to give this talk, I think you need to do it with some political backup like Nagano or another local government.
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November 12, 2004
Govt. Responds; Indymedia Seizure Order May Have Come from Italy
19:53 UTC » Privacy - Warblogging
So do I. Read the entire EFF post for lots of good details. I have been fighting against MLAT and other transborder law enforcement treaties for years arguing that cases just like this would occur. Most of the arrangements seem to assume that all law enforcement can be trusted and call for special powers to combat cybercrime because it is particularly multinational. These special powers often trump local laws, including in the case above, the Bill of Rights. I can imagine a future where agencies "share" databases of citizen activities and use these databases to create profiles forDonna Wentworth @ EFF Deep LinksGovt. Responds; Indymedia Seizure Order May Have Come from ItalyThe US government has responded (PDF) to EFF's motion to unseal the mysterious government order that resulted in the seizure of two servers hosting more than 20 Independent Media Center (IMC) websites. The reply, which argues that the order should remain secret, contains details that suggest that the order may have originated in Italy.
In the reply, the government contends that the seizure order should be kept sealed because (1) EFF and our Indymedia clients lack standing to contest the seizure, (2) the request for confidentiality came from an unnamed foreign government pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), trumping the Bill of Rights, and (3) disclosure would imperil "an ongoing criminal terrorism investigation."
EFF strongly disagrees.
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Story on Cobb County Creationism Case
It has always puzzled me that educated people can actually not believe in evolution. What percentage of the US does not believe in evolution? Are the belief in evolution and faith in God mutually exclusive?Mark Frauenfelder @ Boing BoingStory on Cobb County Creationism CaseGary Peare sez: "I have a modest proposal regarding the following story:"
A federal trial began today in Atlanta over evolution disclaimers in Cobb County schools. A group of parents backed by the ACLU argue that the disclaimers in science biology textbooks are a government endorsement of religion."The county put stickers with the following text into the books:"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."So here's my proposal. Let's allow the religious right to paste their stickers in all the biology texts they want so long as they affix the following text to each and every one of their Bibles:""This book contains material on Judeo-Christian theology. Judeo-Christian theology offers insight into the origin and meaning of life and is the basis for several of the world's great religions. But it does not encompass the full range of religious beliefs held sacred by members of our diverse American society. Moreover, this material is based on ancient texts, and significant errors may have been introduced through subsequent translations and omissions. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
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November 10, 2004
Back to Tokyo
It's been a great experience meeting all of the vibrant people of Tel Aviv and visiting the holy city of Jerusalem. Special thanks to Yossi Vardi for his incredible hospitality. It looks like I must have caught some some sort of throat infection on the plane when I was weakened by the influenza shot. Since I have no fever or flu-like symptoms, my doctor doesn't think it's too bad or contagious, but I have a nasty cough. I wish I wasn't sick or I would be on the beach right now. I am not looking forward to the long flight back. Coughing Asians aren't usually very welcome on planes, although it's better than during the height of the SARS fright. I'm going to keep my cough syrup close.
Anyway, see you later Israel and thanks for all the falafel!
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November 9, 2004
The three big Jewish brands
22:38 UTC » Humor - Religion - Social Software
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