Stream of Consciousness
2006-07-25
I came across this today, and really enjoyed it:
95 Theses of Geek Activism.
Perhaps it helps that I identify as a
hacker in the manner described in the first thesis.
Geek Activism is really all about being smart, thinking for yourself and not simply accepting what others say just because they happen to be on TV or run the corporations or government (the differences between these are fading).
Read them. Follow the links.
2006-06-08
My wife and I are eagerly looking forward to seeing the movie
An Inconvenient Truth - we'd have seen it already if we had baby sitting lined up, and have arranged for this on the 19th of June. I'm confident that the movie will move us deeply. I just read
a colleague's blog post on the movie, and I received the list of links below from another close friend.
2006-04-26
I've just added the
Great News Network to
my news bookmarks.
What a treat to have some good news for a change!
2006-04-26
From the virtual desk of Declan McCullagh:
Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill (CNET):
For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.
2006-04-25
This is chilling: decisions being made now will shape the future of the Internet for a generation. Before long, all media &mdash TV, phone and the Web — will come to your home via the same broadband connection. The dispute over net neutrality is about who'll control access to new and emerging technologies.
From
http://SaveTheInternet.com:
Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment.
2006-04-12
Found on
Digg:
3 convicted of jamming phones to a Democratic get out the vote campaign in New Hampshire. Turns out there had been more than 2 dozen calls between these guys and the White House, all within 3 days of election day 2004.
2006-04-08
Yesterday Harry Taylor rose at one of those "Bush town hall" forums in North Carolina to tell President Bush that he's never felt more ashamed of the leadership of his country. He said Bush has asserted his right to tap phone calls without a warrant, to arrest people and hold them without charges and to revoke a woman's right to an abortion, among other things.
2006-03-22
I have watched in great sadness as well as some very real fear for my profession as I've seen software - and worse: process - patents gain hold in this country driven by forces of great wealth and power aimed at maintaining their wealth and power at the cost of innovation. I was in the software labs of the late '70s when things like object oriented programming, bitmapped displays, email, and modern operating system theory were being developed and nothing was even copyrighted.
2006-01-20
The U.S. Government is suing Google for non-compliance after the DOJ requested Google users' search records. AOL, MSN and Yahoo all complied with the DOJ requests, which were couched in terms of the fight against child porn. This is being reported by ZDnet, Bloomberg and other sources.
2005-12-18
I regularly read SlashDot, which is a geek news site that gives paragraph intros to a linked full story and then people can comment on it. One section of their site, called Your Rights Online recently published this article reporting about a Dartmouth student being visited by the SS after requesting a book that contains information contrary to the state.
