H.R. 1256

So it used to be that most places prevented me from smoking cloves.  Then legislation went through so that no one could smoke indoors.  And now Obama is trying to prevent me from smoking cloves at all.  Since it is obvious that our government has given up all pretense of freedom, I guess it is time we give up pretense of caring what they think...

So if anyone knows of any speakeasy opening up, let me know.

News from the Net

Info on HR811 (The Holt Bill).

It seems that anyone can get materials to make bombs. Of course, what do we expect when we accidentally leave all our intel laying around?

IBM opens up some of their patent portfolio.

Evidentially, the FBI exceeds its authority again.

Water found outside our solar system.

An intact baby mammoth found.

This is a job for SuperGoogle! Actually, I just suggested it to them.

The Surgeon General says that the Bush Administration censored him.

Games Workshop / Warhammer is trying to get boycotted. I'm sorry, if you authorize me to make something, and then I spend $40k on it -- you better not tell me I am no longer allowed to do it.

Korea decides to start cloning drug-sniffing dogs.

Now remind me - why did I stop smoking?

Autism and Robots?

Sounds like Guiliani finally got his check from Bush.

Google acquires Postini.

New Hampshire tells Homeland Security to f'off too.

Too bad I am not running M$ Office, or I'd install this.

News from the Net

A student at Boston University challenges the RIAA.

House to vote on voting/elections bill.

If you haven't heard yet, the ISS is having computer problems after switching to solar.

Internet2 spans East-to-West.

The EU follows Hillary Clinton.

Oops, it appears we may not have "junk dna" after all. Hope you weren't needing that.

Microsoft gets another patent to charge big brother for. Vocal caller-id (without warning caller). Of course some other company got a patent on location-based searching. When oh when can we eliminate the infernal patent office? Maybe this will help....

AT&T has decided to work with the RIAA and MPAA.

$200k for 90-minute space flight.

Some of you may remember the Discover episode in the 80s when they hooked plants to EEGs (or what is EKG?) and they responded differently to water and scissors? Well, it appears that they respond differently to siblings as well.

You think you will be one of the million people the FBI will contact?

Some interesting interstellar stuff. I think I need to do a blog entry just about that.

A man in North Carolina is fined for using vegetable oil for fuel.

So once again the police show that they are allowed to videotape you but not the other way around. In the words of NWA, Fuck da Police.

Sony shoots themselves in the foot by targeting 1/2 their customer base.

Can't get funding for your research? This guy got private funding for time travel research instead.

More states tell Homeland Security to F'off (re: RealID). This time New Hampshire and Oaklahoma.

Oooh self-healing plastic skin... although, didn't we hear about that a few months ago?

RIAA uses Beaverton police officers to do their dirty work!!! And to think that we said they were corrupt for the whole judge lying and the cop saying that traffic laws don't apply to them.

Planning on blogging about some sport event while you are there? Probably not.

Interesting. US Intelligence budget for 2005 around $60 billion... Good thing no one wants their kids educated.

H.R.964

I am sending the letter below to my representative. I highly recommend you contact yours as well. You can copy the text from below, or, ideally become informed on the text of the bill (click the title of this post) and come up with your own views on why it should not pass.

---

Dear (insert representative),

I am contacting you to inform you that I oppose H.R.964, also known as the "Spy Act".

While the Bill is being presented in an effort to protect the public, the wording of the Bill specifically prohibits such protection.

Specifically:
SEC.5.b.1: This section exempts from compliance the very companies the public has been asking for protection from.
SEC.5.d: This section allows companies to knowingly provide non-compliant 3rd party software.
SEC.6.a: This section preempts any state law that is more proactively protective than HR964. At no point should introducing HR964 reduce the protection the public is given.

Thank you,
(insert name and contact info)

---

SE Asia and The US may soon have a direct internet connection.

Ok, honestly, the only part of how Google collects Earth images is the model airplanes.

Court rules that ripping DVDs is LEGAL. Maybe that is why the MPAA now says they are fine with it.

Looks like I am not the only one who thinks that voting online could be more secure than Diebold.

Verio censors Cryptome and shuts them down.

I am sure you knew that Scotty was shot into space... Did you know that about 200 other people were too?

Evidentally, there is a direct link between cancer and vitamin D deficiency... Does that mean that the soil around yew trees has vitamin D? I'm telling you, more and more I am thinking that various so-called diseases are caused by vitamin/mineral deficiency and/or intolerance.

Ontario builds a 40MW solar power plant.

For those of you who still are naive enough to think that the RIAA aren't so bad -- they are now saying that they get to collect royalties for artists that are not signed up with them. Need that re-explained? Let's say you are a garage band and go out of your way not to sign with a big label (or any label for that matter) -- the RIAA says THEY get the royalties, not you.

We've got some more advances in Carbon Nanotubes. This could help further solar power as well.

Hehe. Slashdot played a role in an RIAA case.

MIT took 28 years to realize that the Dean of Admissions lied about their qualifications.

This is the MOST creative Mac vs Windows comparison I have ever seen.

Computer simulation of half of a mouse brain.

What is more surprising? That there is more oxygen in the universe than nitrogen (though it is the reverse on Earth) of that the Sun produces oxygen via nuclear fusion?

MySpace assists China is censorship.

Micro$oft NBC wants to ensure that their presidential candidate is only shown in good light.

DARPA is working on a Plasma Shield.

Scientists realize that Black Holes and Wormholes may look the same to us.

It seems the problem with bees is caused by a fungus.

A student was arrested for writing an essay that disturbed his teacher. Good thing that teacher wasn't in charge of my fiction writing class!

What a shocker. Apparently the Diebold system can't handle a lot of concurrent accesses.

The RIAA is once again trying to be exempt from the law. They also won the case against University of Wisconsin-Madison, forcing them to release information.

Are you one of those people who still thinks that the US leads the charge for the internet? India is going to provide 2mb broadband to all residents in the next 2 years.

Once again, a judge bitch-slaps Jack Thompson.

Europe tries to criminalize sites like YouTube as well as "hate" pages. I wonder if that counts pages about me hating Bush, Jack Thompson, et al?

Wow! If I ever loose a limb, I think I want this approach to deal with it!

The evil overlord of the MPAA died at age 85.

The Internet2 approaches its theoretical limit.

The RIAA faces a lot of opposition in Oregon... I really like the laundry list: "Electronic Trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Invasion of Privacy, Fraud, Negligent Misrepresentation, the tort of Outrage, Deceptive Business Practices under Oregon Trade Practices Act, and Oregon RICO"

Here's some interesting science...er, geometry?... er astronomy??

Adobe open sources Flex.

HR333 (1/2 of 666?) submitted to impeach Cheney for High Crimes.

A major Anti-SPAM lawsuit gets filed.

The news (TV) says that Pandas now have a future thanks to Panda P0rn. Evidentally it gets them in the mood enough that they are starting to procreate.

Acer is recalling a lot of Sony batteries.

Potential start of a fix for global warming.

Looks like the RIAA wins against Ohio University.

Oooh. Water as a liquid solid?

As a partial followup to the crap the schools are teaching today -- the UK is encouraging students to drop math altogether.

Would you like an Offline Wikipedia CD? I'm downloading it now.

More Earth-sized planets.

HR964 (Spy Act bill) is designed in such a way to allow spyware to be installed on your computer.

Oooh, now that is a nice processor :)

India joins the space race.

Wow. When it comes to Election Fraud, this is really big!

News from the Net

HR 811 looks like a pretty good idea... except the fact that it bans the use of the Internet, which was one of the primary mechanism of my idea.

Ok, the quote is kinda funny: in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots,"

Oh look, they finally listen. Children showed no change in behavior due to violent video games. Huh, who'd a thunk?

America gets Swedish government to break the law.

Sega stops repair service for Dreamcast and Saturn, even though new games were released this year.

Are you a Type O donor? No? Well, you will be now.

Canada wants control or blockage of US Sites (like YouTube). How about this -- those of you who don't like our broadcast can just not type in our addresses? How's that? Everyone happy?

I haven't tried Guitar Hero, but for those of you who have, you may enjoy this.

Planning on buying an XBox360 to play HD DVD? Good luck, it appears not to work.

So now that someone has patented the GWT concept right from under Google, you think they will buy them out or rip them a new one in court?

It appears that the WTO sides with Antigua against the United States (in regards to online gambling)... Can I have my Texas Hold'em back now?

And this is why everything on the Internet should be decentralized.

A science fair project exposes lies about a drinks contents.

Faux Klingons in the Whitehouse

Dino provided the link to the video in case any of you actually missed it

BTW: David Wu is OUR representative ;)

News from the Net

If you are a fan of the Mozilla products (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) perhaps you would like the new version of the entire Seamonkey suite.

I would have much rather had this surgical nanobot than actual invasive surgery.

Ok, let me get this straight... An RFID signal that let's you trackle cattle and military personnel up to 4 feet away... And why won't the enemy be able to read the RFID signal of our troups hiding 4 feet away? Of course, if they had this robot, it wouldn't matter.

The New Horizon's probe snaps some new pics.

I've never tried it, but I know some of you (Tony?) would like to know that there is a new version of Ruby on Rails.

Yesterday, I commented on the evil bill trying to make us register as lobbyists. Not only did it fail, but evidentally only Democrats voted for it.

FBI arrests two more executives for the online gambling bit, and now Neteller closes all gambling to US players. In case you are pissed off and want to make your own site, maybe you'd like to see what they were apparently arrested for:

with the creation and operation of an Internet payment services company that facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds

Well this is interesting... Although I have no desire to run Vista, it appears Microsoft will let people legally download it on Jan 30th - the same day you can start buying it in retail stores.

So some of you in your early 20s think it is OK for the government to keep kids from playing violent video games, right? Well, they want to keep you from doing it to. New York is considering requiring you to be 30 to play violent video games.

A single-pixel camera was developed. Didn't we discuss this before?

Hmmm, to get or not to get the Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles? On one hand, I really like Oblivion. On the other hand, I think I really prefer playing multiplayer games (at least with Dino).

The RIAA is now going after DJs that make mix tapes. Ummm, hello? Artistic expression? DJs like Soulwax do an awesome job of mixing two different songs together. Down with the RIAA!

FedEx gets anti-missile defense. Just in time for China to test their anti-satellite weapon.

Could this be the beginning of the end for MySpace?

News from the Net

Fish enzymes that kill the Bird Flu?

I didn't even know Sega was still making Dreamcast games. Or at least, they were.

Political riots in SecondLife?

Germany tries to get the EU to ban violent videogames. Guess Germans aren't as hardcore as we thought, eh?

Does your blog get more than 500 readers? If so, the government wants you to register with them as a Lobbyist. And what if it is Senate Bill S.1 we are fighting against?

Pharmacom doesn't want to produce the cancer vaccine because they won't make a profit. What a shocker.

Here's some info on the Navy's rail gun.

OpenSolaris to soon have the Stink of Evil upon it.

Methane rockets appear to be a success.

Hard drives get faster -- 15000 rpms.

Upon on Netscape breaking RSS. They have fixed it - until July 1st when they publicly break it on purpose.

Quote from here:

In the first movie, "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" will bring a conclusion to the primary storyline of the past two seasons of the SG-1 television series. More thrills and action-packed scenes are planned for this special event movie, which will be directed by Cooper. The suspense will end as fans will see the conclusion of the epic Ori saga.

In the second movie, "Stargate: Continuum" the SG-1 team is now free to embark on new and exciting adventures throughout the endless Stargate universe.

Flash player available for Linux.

Thanks to a Google employee, OSX now has NTFS support.

NASA to be cutting Earth observation... as least publicly....

Largest Twin Primes so far...

Worried about your li-ion battery exploding? Maybe try these instead... in a few years...

House Bill HR5293: Instant Runoff

I have not read the entire thing, and probably am missing some vital pieces, but this bill was sponsored in conjunction with that last one I posted.

At first reading, it appeared that the idea was to eliminate 3rd party votes from counting. Further down, I started to think that this was done in response to Nader. Basically, the idea (as I saw it) was to have people rank their candidates instead of just choosing one. That way, if their 1st candidate does not win, their vote goes towards their second candidate. I can definitely see the logic here. In fact, it would also give us a way to say we want to vote for anyone BUT Bush (or whoever) by simply giving him the lowest ranking.

House Bill HJR 109: Abolish Electorate College

Finally, a House Bill to allow the popular vote to determine the President.

Since it would most likely encourage a 3rd party candidate to win, I doubt it will pass, but....