Lots of posts today, as I'm sitting around here in San Diego... This one from the American Street caught my eye.
WASHINGTON - June 3 - Three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.
This is a good example of the misuse of the PATRIOT act and how it isn't helping us be more secure, just less free. (Via the American Street.)
Better be careful, software writers, what you allow to be done with a mouse. Les reports that Micro$oft has just patented the double-click. Les does point out that the patent seems to focus on palm-sized devices, but I believe that will provide little to no protection against misuse of this (IMHO) illegal patent. With computing devices becoming smaller and smaller every day, more and more technology will come under the focus of this patent. Once again a company steps outside of the free market to use the government in an effort to extort money out of honest businesses. Repeat after me, kids, "the patent office is hideously broken and needs to be reformed."
Hello, everyone. Updates have been moving at a blindingly slow pace here, but I have managed to post an HTML version of the updated 8th Edition Magic Rulebook. This time, rather than cleaning it up by hand, I ran it through HTML Tidy; therefore it lacks the nice cross-references and other cool features of the previous version I posted. But it is up-to-date and it took a lot less time to make. HTML Tidy is nice.
Okay, perhaps I am parnoid, but has anyone but me noticed that the new Federal Do-Not-Call Website has a signup process that boils down to a federally maintained database mapping email addresses to phone numbers? If you register online, Your email address is stored (remotely it says) and associated with your phone number. This lets them email you to confirm that your number is on the list. They also go on to say that they will share their information with law enforcement agencies.
Sound like a new era of wiretapping abuse? Mr. Ashcroft and his band of lazy goons should have a field day with this one. Don't feel like doing real work to catch the boogie-men out there? Just wiretap everything and watch everyone. With no oversight in law enforcement, are we to trust them?
So it goes without saying, register via the phone and avoid mapping your email address a phone number. And use encryption. Have a nice day.
Updated some links in this entry.