Boing Boing: Senators figure out the Broadcast Flag, curse it as an abomination!

2 US Senators, one of whom knows whereof he speaks, curse the broadcastflag as an abomination!
OK, maybe they don't although Sen. Stevens is, as I said. all over the abomination issue.

CBC - Canada Votes 2006 - Candidates and Ridings

Oh no, Ms. Bulte, I expect you to dielose your re-election campaign. Props out to Michael and Cory who brought attention to this example of reprehensible democracy.

melvin - lockpicker

A business card made of metal. A business card made of lockpicks.

New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill Would Freeze Fair Use

For your viewing pleasure, while I still can, I present an EFF article concerning yet another attempt to limit what you do with content. This latest draft legislation wants to allow "customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law." How very generous of them. All that stuff you used to do? We guess you can keep doing it. All those cool new ideas? Bugger off.

Freedom to Tinker » Analog Hole Bill Would Impose a Secret Law

So the Sensenbrenner/Conyers Analog Hole bill requires almost all analog video devices to comply with 2 technologies: CGMS-A and VEIL. What are these technologies that a new law will be required in your TV and your PC? Nuh-uh, not telling.

After some discussion, the company helpfully explained that I could get the spec, if I first signed their license agreement. The agreement requires me (a) to pay them $10,000, and (b) to promise not to talk to anybody about what is in the spec. In other words, I can know the contents of the bill Congress is debating, but only if I pay $10k to a private party, and only if I promise not to tell anybody what is in the bill or engage in public debate about it.
Worse yet, this license covers only half of the technology: the VEIL decoder, which detects VEIL signals. There is no way you or I can find out about the encoder technology that puts VEIL signals into video.

Reason: Inside the Puzzle Palace: A Reason interview with NSA whistleblower Russell Tice

Julian Sanchez interviews with NSA whistleblower Russell Tice. Much is said.

It's not about child pornography people!

edit: Prof. Palfrey and I discussed this over email, and the Red Herring will correct the article to say

And certainly, protecting children from online pornography is an important public issue that we need to work together on to solve.

So Prof. Palfrey is definitely one of the good guys.

Despite what John Palfrey, a clinical law professor and executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and quite a few others reports are saying, the government's request for data to Google is to support research that they are doing to reword COPA, the Child Online Protection Act - a piece of legislation that has been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court and that is intended to protect children from having finding/seeing pornography when they use the internet. Google Blogoscoped has a round-up of people who get the child pornography thing wrong.

Patriot Search

Are you a patriot? If so, then this is your search engine!

PS - if you are are a terrorist-lovin' commie-pinko tree-hugging treason surrender monkey, you might give Clusty (different) or Scroogle (scraped). Note that I think Daniel Brandt of Google Watch is a bit off base about Google. Apparently Google Watch Watch does too :).

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

Tuna Casserole
Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish

Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustated.

BBC NEWS | Education | Science 'not for normal people'

At least we are not hated.:

Teenagers value the role of science in society but feel scientists are 'brainy people not like them'

Science and innovation are the engines of prosperity. Governments that look to a more prosperous future should be working to counteract mass-media marketing to the lowest common denominator and the anti-itellectual backlash that began in the 70's. How to do this?

• Invest in education
  • especially math and basic sciences from the earliest levels
  • develop new curricula that make science more engaging and less rote memorization
  • teach memorization techniques that allow more people to retain information for those large swathes of detail that need to be memorized
  • more science and engineering scholarships and co-op programs
• Advertising
  • direct
  • co-marketing sponsorships such as tax credit for advertising or media that show science and scientists as being average and then above average in desirability (this one is tricky - it is government propaganda hidden in TV shows, not sure how I feel about that)

In which the government goes on a fishing expedition

It seems that the US Gov't, in their quest to prove that the interweb is full of pr0n and that children's delicate sensibilities are being irreparably harmed there-by, has asked for truckloads of data from major search engines. Boing Boing notes that although Google said no, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN said yes. More on the Google situation at The Mercury News.

Lately

I have been very busy working on a nutritional info web-app that my startup is making. We finalized the kiosk prototype version on Tuesday - so hopefully I will be back up to averaging at least a post a day.

DND drapes veil of secrecy over missile shield

Your tax dollars at work. Where you = {Canadjuns}.

Michael Geist - The Sad Reality of Copyright Policy in Canada

A good summary of Sarmite Bulte, political donations, and copyright policy during our election.

BusinessWeek - The Patent Epidemic

I like it when my peeps on Wall Street help to spread the Good Word.