[Quote:]

Don Rogers wanted to make a statement. A 32-foot credit card statement, to be precise, one he hopes will help him win a long-simmering privacy feud with his bank and at the same time nab a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

The 62-year-old retired city councillor from Kingston, Ont., paid his $230 Visa bill last month in 985 instalments, often pennies at a time, to protest against the fact that his bank outsourced some of its credit card processing to a U.S. company. Mr. Rogers said he asked Vancouver-based Citizens Bank of Canada several times to end the practice, because U.S. authorities could potentially gain access to his personal information under the wide-ranging Patriot Act, a piece of legislation designed to crack down on terrorism.

When the bank refused to take action, he decided to employ what he describes as his “creative solution” — paying down his Visa in tiny increments over the Internet and generating a statement that was 35 pages long and a half-inch thick.

The manoeuvre created a considerable headache for the account folks at Citizens Bank, who were forced, he says, to process some of his payments manually after the system jammed.

Here is the site of the artist that created this dress.

Sisyphus III is a computer crontrolled sand plotter.

[Quote:]

At a time when the music industry appears intent on pitting itself against digital music fans, at least one artist is staking out the opposite end of the spectrum.

Jane Siberry is a Canadian singer-songwriter, probably best known for the song “Calling All Angels,” which featured kd lang and appeared on soundtracks for Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World and, later, Pay It Forward. She’s enjoyed considerable success in both Canada and the US, has more than 10 albums to her name since 1981, and is often compared to Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell.

Her new download store, recently unveiled at her site, is a model of what the music downloading world could be. All of her songs are available as plain MP3s, which means they will play on your iPod and are not loaded with DRM restrictions (much less evil rootkits).

And you pay whatever you like for them. Yes, you set whatever price you like. Options include:

• free (“gift from Jane”);
• a standard price (CAN$0.99);
• self-determined price – pay now; or
• self-determined price – pay later (to facilitate try-before-you-buy).

When you purchase the song, moreover, you can select up to 5 people to whom you can email a link to the song.

I just saw her perform in concert here in SF, and she summed it up this way: “I want to treat people the way I’d like to be treated. I don’t like being treated like a child, so I won’t be doing that to other people.”

This is so blindingly, obviously right on so many levels, it demonstrates how far the “authorized music services” like iTunes Music Store and eMusic have yet to come.

The new spin is turning out to be that the Republicans are going to withdraw next year, and it was their idea all along and it’s so nice that the Democrats are finally going along with it.

I wish I was joking…

I can’t think of a decent summary for this story. It’s too bizarre. Just read it.

[Quote:]

One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing’s death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army’s leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

[Quote:]

I’m always amused at how cable news, in attempting to simulate political discourse, holds debates on issues by airing non-budging, diametrically opposed viewpoints rather than two reasonable folks who actually hear one another. Fox News’ John Kasich, for example, brought an atheist in to argue in favor of removing “God” from our currency and from the Pledge Of Allegiance. My question is, why choose an atheist? Can’t they find a churchgoer who feels the same way? Or do they assume that those with spiritual beliefs shouldn’t object to any theocratic measures taken by our government?

The argument is always the same: Right believes the phrases “In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God” are healthy and American because they declare to the nation and the world that we are a citizenry that acknowledges a higher power. Left believes the two expressions are unhealthy and un-American because they endorse a religious belief in direct violation of the First Amendment. The atheist made a compelling point, however, that the original motto on the money, “E Pluribus Unum”, is a much healthier one because it’s all-inclusive, meaning “out of many, one”, whereas the modern, God-infused version potentially alienates those who aren’t all that sure that there is one. Kasich responded with “I hope we can convert you someday.”

Who exactly “we” is was not made clear, but the message was. It was never about coming to any kind of understanding or conclusion, it was about converting.

[Quote:]

Malaysian government and opposition politicians have called for the country’s deputy police chief to quit.

Musa Hassan defended a police officer who was filmed forcing a female detainee to strip naked and squat repeatedly while holding both ears.

Mr Musa, the country’s deputy inspector general of police, said the practice was standard procedure.

The video of a naked Chinese woman being humiliated in police station has caused widespread outrage in Malaysia.

But Mr Musa has made it clear he believes the real culprit is the person who filmed the incident.

[Quote:]

A film apparently showing a Royal Marine being beaten unconscious has been widely condemned.

The footage obtained by the News of the World appears to show two naked men being forced to fight each other.

One of the men is then kicked in the face, allegedly by one of his superiors in 42 Commando.

Ex-Commander of UK forces in Bosnia, Col Bob Stewart, said it “shocked him to the core”. The Ministry of Defence said bullying would not be tolerated.

It said it was “very far from an official training exercise” and that it was trying to establish what lay “behind” the video.

An Iraqi policeman secures the site where a suicide bomber ploughed into a petrol station on the outskirts of Samarra in northern Iraq, setting it ablaze and killing at least five people and injuring 16, police said.(AFP/Dia Hamid)

A man grieves near the dead body of his relative killed by a suicide bomber who drove his pickup into a crowded gasoline station in Samarra, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005. Twelve people were killed, Iraqi police said.(AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)

Travis Jay Grigg’s father, Barney Grigg, center, touches the American flag that had just draped his son’s casket Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005, at the Highland Cemetery outside Inola, Okla. Army Pfc. Grigg, 24, was killed Nov. 15 by a roadside bomb in Taji, Iraq. (AP Photo/Tulsa World, Robert S. Cross)

[Quote:]

Attention, travelers with nipple piercings: If you plan to fly out of Pittsburgh International Airport this holiday season, bring your pliers.

Otherwise, you might miss your flight.

[Quote:]

“The term ‘enemy combatant,’ ” according to a Defense Department order last year, includes anyone “part of or supporting Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or associated forces.”

In a hearing in December in a case brought by detainees imprisoned in the naval facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge questioned a Justice Department official about the limits of that definition. The official, Brian D. Boyle, said the hostilities in question were global and might continue for generations.

The judge, Joyce Hens Green of the Federal District Court in Washington, asked a series of hypothetical questions about who might be detained as an enemy combatant under the government’s definition.

What about “a little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization that helps orphans in Afghanistan but really is a front to finance Al Qaeda activities?” she asked.

And what about a resident of Dublin “who teaches English to the son of a person the C.I.A. knows to be a member of Al Qaeda?”

And “what about a Wall Street Journal reporter, working in Afghanistan, who knows the exact location of Osama bin Laden but does not reveal it to the United States government in order to protect her source?”

Mr. Boyle said the military had the power to detain all three people as enemy combatants.

[Quote:]

A “trophy” video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.

The video, which first appeared on a website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.

The road has acquired the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the world because of the number of suicide attacks and ambushes carried out by insurgents against coalition troops. In one four-month period earlier this year it was the scene of 150 attacks.

In one of the videoed attacks, a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In the last clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop.

[Quote:]

Seven people were arrested for criminal trespass while protesting consumerism at Christiana Mall in Newark, Del., on Black Friday.

The protesters, including three sisters who were also arrested at the mall last year and a man dressed as Santa Claus, were urging shoppers to curb their consumerist urges as part of “Buy Nothing Day,” said Anna White of Washington, D.C., one of the participants.

All seven, including one teenage boy, were issued criminal summons for third-degree criminal trespass and released, Delaware State Police said.

White and her sisters, Laura and Rachel, were arrested at the mall for the second consecutive year. Charges against them stemming from the previous arrests were dropped in April after a prosecutor said she was unable to produce her trial witnesses.

Friday’s arrests were made because the protesters violated the mall’s policy against solicitation, said Sgt. Melissa Zebney, a police spokeswoman.

“The mall security management had asked them numerous times to leave the business under a no-solicitation policy. They approach people asking them not to spend money or shop on this particular day,” Zebney said.

White said, however, that mall security gave no reason for asking them to leave. She said she and her fellow protesters were aware of the no-solicitation policy and were careful not to approach anyone, instead letting people come to them. They wore T-shirts saying “Ask me about nothing” and carried empty bags with “free samples.”

“As they were walking through the mall, people would ask for free samples, and they would give out free samples of nothing,” White said. “Most people think it’s funny.”

The adults charged were identified as Anna White, 31; her sisters Laura White, 29, of Newark and Rachael White, 26, of Washington; Alan Muller, 55, of Port Penn; John Cannon, 54, of Newark; and Michael Berg, 60, of Wilmington.

Anna White said she and her sisters were not expecting to be arrested again this year, because they planned to exit the mall as soon as they were told to leave by police. Instead, police led them to a substation within the mall and arrested them there.

“We were going to wait until the police told us to leave and told us why we were being asked to leave,” she said. “Unfortunately, that never came.”

[Quote:]

Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday.

“People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein’s time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison,” Allawi told British newspaper The Observer.

“People are remembering the days of Saddam,” said Allawi, a secular Shi’ite and former Baathist who is standing in elections scheduled for Dec. 15. “These are the precise reasons why we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things.

One of the better features on Flikr is taggin. Take for example macysthanksgivingdayparade.

yes: tracking comments would be nice

[Quote:]

The US military ran a Guantanamo Bay-type detention centre in Kosovo, a top Council of Europe official said.

The Council of Europe’s Human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles said he had been ‘shocked’ by conditions at the barbed wire-rimmed centre inside a US military base, which he witnessed in 2002.

The camp resembled ‘a smaller version of Guantanamo’, he told France’s Le Monde newspaper, referring to the US centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of terrorism suspects remain detained without trial.

Gil-Robles told the daily he had inspected the centre, located within the US military’s Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, in 2002, to investigate reports of extrajudicial arrests by NATO-led peacekeepers.

Gil-Robles said he had no evidence that Camp Bondsteel was linked to the alleged CIA operations.

‘But I do believe that an explanation should be given for this base in Kosovo, as for other potentially suspect sites’ in Europe, he told the paper.

Here is a QTVR panorama (with sound) of the Large Hadron Collider ATLAS experiment at CERN

Here is a list of what is claimed to be the 46 best Freeware utilities. In reality, of course, it’s a Windows list.

Read it and weep. Windows is in a sad state when 8 of the top 10 are anti-malware apps, and in the total list about half deal with spam, spyware, and other forms of crap rather than getting real work done..

If it was a mac list, 10 out of 10 of the products would be useful and enjoyable.

[Quote:]

Tony Blair has been accused of undermining decades of British campaigning for international human rights by using the war on terror to give a “green light” to torture. Amnesty International is to launch an unprecedented global campaign tomorrow against the British Government after ministers admitted they would use information gained by torture to prevent attacks on the United Kingdom.

Mike Gapes, the Labour MP and chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, hit out at the Government after Ian Pearson, the Foreign Office minister responsible for human rights, said evidence obtained under torture could not be ignored if it might prevent an attack.

He said: “The fact the Government now seems prepared to use evidence obtained under torture sends a worrying signal and may mean that while we say we condemn the use of torture, other countries might feel they have a green light to use torture to get evidence on terrorism.”

[Quote:]

Internetaanbieder Lycos moet de persoonsgegevens van een klant afgeven aan een benadeelde particulier. Dat heeft de Hoge Raad vrijdag bepaald. Het hoogste rechtscollege in Nederland bevestigde een uitspraak van de rechtbank en het gerechtshof.

De klant van Lycos beschuldigde de Tilburgse postzegelhandelaar A. Pessers op zijn internetpagina anoniem van oplichting. Lycos wilde de privacy van de websitehouder beschermen en betoogde dat hij de vrijheid heeft om anoniem informatie te verspreiden. De Hoge Raad acht die bezwaren ongegrond.

Ook wees Lycos aansprakelijkheid van de hand. Volgens de Hoge Raad is dat argument niet van toepassing en ongewenst. ‘Veel benadeelden zouden praktisch gesproken geen actie kunnen ondernemen tegen eventuele onrechtmatige anonieme activiteiten’, staat in de uitspraak.

Als je nog anoniem wilt internetten in nederland, doe het dan via een zuid-koreaans open proxy…

[Quote:]

Vrijdag 25 november 2005 staat voorlopig te boek als de dag met de langste avondspits in de historie van de Nederlandse snelwegen. Op de A2 stond vrijdag in de avondspits de langste file met 90 kilometer in zuidelijke richting. Volgens de ANWB stond er rond zes uur in totaal 802 kilometer file.

[..]

Rond middernacht stonden er nog een hoop files op de snelwegen. De grootste problemen waren in het oosten van het land. Op de A50 tussen Apeldoorn en Arnhem stond in beide richtingen files van ruim 20 kilometer. Ook op de A1 van Apeldoorn naar Hengelo stond 15 kilometer file. In totaal was er rond middernacht nog 200 kilometer file. Volgens de ANWB is dit nog nooit voorgekomen.

De files op de snelwegen losten vrijdagavond maar langzaam op. Rond 22.00 uur stonden er volgens de ANWB nog 25 files met een totale lengte van 300 kilometer. Overdag werd al een filerecord gehaald: 802 kilometer, rond 20.00 uur was dat geslonken naar ruim 500 kilometer.

[..]

De landmacht helpt vrijdagavond de gestrande automobilisten op de A1 en A50. Een zegsman liet weten dat acht jeeps worden ingezet om hulpgoederen aan de reizigers uit te delen.

[Quote:]

Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week’s UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, the software giant admitted on Friday.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is unhappy that the document was changed and claims that even though it was on the panel discussing the document, it was not made aware of Microsoft’s changes.

The document, known as the Vienna Conclusions, discusses issues around IT and creativity. The original draft of the document discussed how the free software model is changing the way people do business.

“Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example,” stated the original document, according to the FSFE.

But the final version of the document contains no reference to free software. “Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents,” states the final version of the document.

Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, asked for this section to be deleted as “it contains only a one-sided perspective on the ICT industry.”

“The rationale for this is, that the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product,” he added.

Lutz’ comments were posted on a conference blog, but Georg Greve, the president of FSFE, who was involved in drafting that section of the document, claims that no-one on his panel was aware of the blog until last week.

Greve criticised Lutz’ comments as “Microsoft propaganda”.

“This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets � which is what Free Software really aims at,” he said, on his blog.

The paper might have originally described how free software works but what was done clearly shows how proprietary software works.

There were also some DRM remarks inserted. For those of you who are interested in the entire story and its background, here are the links:

• 16 November 2005: The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence
• 22 November 2005: The next Vienna Conclusion: So it WAS Microsoft that asked to delete Free Software
• 22 November 2005: And the price for DRM promotion goes to…
• 23 November 2005: Vienna manipulations in the press
• 25 November 2005: More news about the Vienna Manipulations
• 25 November 2005: Microsofts implementation of democracy

The best overall analysis and description of the situation so far was written by Germanys largest IT news provider, the Heise Verlag. They have the story online in both English and German.