[Quote:]

The political firestorm over former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s salacious instant messages hides another issue, one about privacy. We are rapidly turning into a society where our intimate conversations can be saved and made public later. This represents an enormous loss of freedom and liberty, and the only way to solve the problem is through legislation.

Everyday conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it. Of course, organized crime bosses worried about phone taps and room bugs, but that was the exception. Privacy was the default assumption.

This has changed. We now type our casual conversations. We chat in e-mail, with instant messages on our computer and SMS messages on our cellphones, and in comments on social networking Web sites like Friendster, LiveJournal and News Corp.’s MySpace. These conversations–with friends, lovers, colleagues, fellow employees–are not ephemeral; they leave their own electronic trails.

We know this intellectually, but we haven’t truly internalized it. We type on, engrossed in conversation, forgetting that we’re being recorded.

I wish I could quote the entire thing. Go read, and here’s a spoiler for the concluding paragraph:

Without legal privacy protections, the world becomes one giant airport security area, where the slightest joke–or comment made years before–lands you in hot water. The world becomes one giant market-research study, where we are all life-long subjects. The world becomes a police state, where we all are assumed to be Foleys and terrorists in the eyes of the government.

[Quote:]

Reading the Windows Vista license is a bit like preparing for breakfast with Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen: You should be ready to believe at least six impossible things about what users want from software.

It is unlikely that a home user looking for a computer operating system has any of these “features” of the Vista EULA in mind: The Red Queen

1. Self-limiting software
2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation
3. Removal of media capabilities
4. Problem-solving prohibited
5. Limited mobility
6. One transfer only
and a bonus,
7. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video

[..]

4. Problem-solving prohibited. “You may not work around any technical limitations in the software.” Microsoft might be referring to anticircumvention of technical protection measures here, but since it’s often hard to tell the difference, from the user’s perspective, between a TPM and a bug, this reads as a prohibition on user debugging and problem-solving. After all, down-rezzing HD content or refusing to allow users to copy quotes from an e-book don’t strike most people as wanted features. Can you work around a document’s failure to save properly?

[Quote:]

Scads of right-wing bloggers are scandalized and outraged today because it has been reported that GOP social conservative Senator Larry Craig routinely engages in anonymous sex with men. Why, they are just furious that anyone would introduce issues of someone’s private sexual affairs into the public arena, and particularly can’t believe that someone would try to use a person’s homosexuality as a political weapon. Most movingly, they lament that exploiting private sexual behavior this way will drive good people out of political life.

If “monica” is the only word that comes to your mind, I urge you to click through and read about the many other instances that makes this outrage complete hypocrisy.

[Quote:]

A Kane County Board candidate charged last week with molesting two teenage girls died Tuesday when his speeding car slammed into a concrete bridge pillar — a crash authorities said appeared to be intentional.

Brent K. Schepp was killed about 10:35 a.m. when his 2006 Dodge Charger struck a bridge support on Eola Road near Diehl Road on Aurora’s northeast side, police said.

The crash occurred four days after the 36-year-old Aurora man was charged with sexually abusing two girls last year. Schepp, who was running as a Republican for a seat on the Kane County Board, would have faced a minimum 34-year prison sentence if convicted.

[Quote:]

Space: no longer the final frontier but the 51st state of the United States. The new National Space Policy that President Bush has signed is comically proprietory in tone about the US’s right to control access to the rest of the solar system.

The document makes a serious point about our growing dependence on satellites, the military threats to them and ways of protecting them. But America has rejected the desire by 160 other countries to have United Nations talks about banning an arms race in space, an extravagantly unilateral approach whose appeal you might have thought would have been tarnished by its experience in Iraq.

Its vision of the space programme, military more than scientific, is also undermined by its taste for manned missions — and the breathtaking cost.

Bush signed the document on August 31, and the White House released the text this month in the late afternoon of the Friday of a holiday weekend. So the first full revision of space policy for ten years has provoked controversy abroad as much as at home. The eyecatching declaration is that the US asserts the right to deny access to space to anyone “hostile to US interests�?, although it gives no basis for that right. It also rejects arms control talks that would limit future US actions in space.

[Quote:]

Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

“They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

[Quote:]

But Chertoff added that it “would be very, very hard to detect” a “lone wolf” terrorist, who trains and plans alone before carrying out an attack.

“The hardest thing to determine is the purely domestic, self-motivated, self-initiating threat from the guy who never talks to anybody, just gets himself wound up over the Internet,” Chertoff said.

Next up: comprehensive internet wiretapping, mandatory keystroke loggers, and this T-Shirt is not going to help you.

[Quote:]

There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula — a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. “There is no native criminal class except Congress,” Mark Twain said — a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

“The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment,” says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. “I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles — and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House.”

Again, take your time to read the whole thing…

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You know you’re in an incredible political environment when you’re at an event where egomaniac Ralph Nader is wandering around, and not only is no one paying attention to him, but Ralph Nader himself doesn’t even expect anyone to pay attention to him. That was the scene earlier today in Hartford, CT, where five candidates went at each other, or mostly at Joe Lieberman, for the Senate nomination in a debate. I wasn’t feeling so good about this race a few weeks ago; it had stagnated, and the polling reflected that and will still reflect that for a week or so. Today, I think there was a decisive shift both in the dynamic of the race and in the tone of the political environment.

It’s not that Lamont has overperformed, or that Joe has melted down, it’s that Connecticut Election 2006 has gone off the deep end. It’s not your normal white picket fence suburban election, with attack ad facing attack ad. No, this is more like a white picket fence election that suddenly gets bored with life and decides to live in the forest, take a bunch of LSD, trout-fish naked, and taunt a bear cub before ending its life suddenly and with total and inexplicable resolution on November 7. Well not really, but there’s no analogy that I can think of summarizing what’s going on. What has happened is that Joe Lieberman competed in a Democratic primary, lost, and is now competing in a Republican primary, and is losing again. Meanwhile, Lamont is finally picking up renewed steam and getting back on track as a candidate. There’s energy here, real energy.

How often do you get a three-way race in which the Democrat is supporting the Republican while fighting against the Democratic infrastructure, the Republican party is supporting the liberal New England Jew instead of the right-wing millionaire, and the Republican nominee is running against the Republican party?

[Quote:]

The women and children who formed a line at Camp Pendleton last week could have been waiting for a child-care center to open or Disney on Ice tickets to go on sale.

Instead, they were waiting for day-old bread and frozen dinners packaged in slightly damaged boxes. These families are among a growing number of military households in San Diego County that regularly rely on donated food.

As the Iraq war marches toward its fourth anniversary, food lines operated by churches and other nonprofit groups are an increasingly valuable presence on military bases countywide. Leaders of the charitable groups say they’re scrambling to fill a need not seen since World War II.

Too often, the supplies run out before the lines do, said Regina Hunter, who coordinates food distribution at one Camp Pendleton site.

“Here they are defending the country. . . . It is heartbreaking to see,�? said Hunter, manager of the on-base Abby Reinke Community Center. “If we could find more sources of food, we would open the program up to more people. We believe anyone who stands in a line for food needs it and deserves it.�?

The base’s list of recipients swells by 100 to 150 people a month as the food programs streamline their eligibility process, word spreads among residents and ever-proud Marines adjust to the idea of accepting donated goods.

So that is what all those “Support our troops” yellow ribbons are for!

[Quote:]

The Republican Party’s hopes of holding on to the Florida 16th District seat of resigned Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley are greatly hindered by the fact that Foley’s name, under state law, must stay on the ballot — even though votes cast for him will be counted for state Rep. Joe Negron, the replacement candidate picked by GOP officials.

And the GOP endured another hit Wednesday when a state judge, ruling on a lawsuit brought by Democratic activists, barred state election officials from posting signs at voting locations and delivering notices about the ballot situation to 16th District voters.

Second Judicial Circuit Judge Janet E. Ferris ruled that a state-run information campaign to inform voters about what critics argue was an internal Republican Party foulup would do “irreparable injury�? to Democratic nominee Tim Mahoney and his supporters.

Ferris wrote that elections supervisors are “ordered not to post the proposed notice, and may not deliver the notice to individual voters posing questions about the race in question.�? Negron’s campaign and the secretary of state’s office, headed by Republican appointee Sue M. Cobb, have told local news outlets they will appeal the decision.

[Quote:]

IE7 will be available as a free download beginning Wednesday evening. Next month, the company also will begin delivering it to Windows XP users who have signed up to automatically receive security fixes. Hachamovitch said that’s because the product makes major security improvements.

So very true: Microsoft will feel far more secure when Firefox has to compete against IE 7 istead of IE 6.

What? That’s not what you thought security meant? Silly you….

[Quote:]

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived as people in fear.

And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before—and we have been here before led here—by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,�? most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.�?

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Click through and read the rest – Olbermann is at it again.. great stuff.

Video is here.

[Quote:]

De hulpverlening voor de gewonden leek woensdag langzaam op gang te komen bij de rampoefening op de achterste perrons van station Utrecht Centraal.

Ongeveer 50 minuten na de door terroristen veroorzaakte explosie verschenen de eerste brandweermensen en medewerkers van ambulancediensten bij de getroffen treinpassagiers. De ‘slachtoffers’ maakten intussen hun nood kenbaar door vanuit de donkere trein om hulp te roepen.

In en rond de opgeblazen trein probeerden vijfhonderd personeelsleden van hulpdiensten, gemeente en vervoerbedrijven, gesteund door acteurs die de gewonden speelden, de situatie zo echt mogelijk te maken. De oefening richtte zich niet alleen op de directe hulpverlening. In het Utrechtse stadhuis oefenden communicatiemedewerkers met pers- en publieksvoorlichting.

En deze akteur ging in afwachting van de hulpdiensten maar een patatje halen:

[Quote:]

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is “a time when accidents can happen,” said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

[..]

Another Willett parent, Celeste D’Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. “I’ve witnessed enough near collisions,” she said.

And then, when they’re 18, send them off to war.

[Quote:]

A video clip from Jay-Z’s live concert in June at Radio City Music Hall is popping up on all sorts of illicit music-sharing hotspots. But Jay-Z isn’t upset.

That’s because the rapper, at the request of Coca-Cola Co., agreed to allow distribution of the eight-minute clip — which included promotions for Coke — on the peer-to-peer sites, using technology usually used to thwart music pirates.

The unusual alliance demonstrates a new tack being taken by the music industry to deal with the challenge posed by widespread music piracy. For years, the industry has been suing individual downloaders and file-sharing services, hoping to discourage the practice. In a tactic little known outside the music industry, record labels have also started to hire outside companies to plant “decoy,” or fake, files on the sites. (One such company, ArtistDirect Inc.’s MediaDefender, says it has deployed decoys for as many as 30 of the top 100 Billboard songs at any given time.) The decoy files frustrate users because they fail to download even though, thanks to the companies’ technical expertise, they often claim the top spot in search results for a tune.

But now there’s a growing recognition among some record executives and performers that the people who are downloading illegally are frequently huge music fans and that marketing to them may be more desirable in the long run than suing or otherwise harassing them.

Did you see that? Almost! They are this close to realising that downloads can increase their sales.

And how about this:
“But judge, the only way I could get the exclusive pre-release video of [hyper-hyped band/singer-songwriter/pretty face] was to steal random music from a P2P service. I didn’t want to, I obey the law and have never stolen anything in my life. But [record label] would only hide the must-have exclusive video in fake song files. I didn’t know which songs they were, or which ones were fake or real. So I had to download several thousand of them to finally find the video.”