The British government uses terrorism as an excuse to roll back civil rights by a century. The Home Office wants to be able to deport people to countries with strong torture records (apparently, following the lead of America — which has in several documented cases sent terror suspects captured in America straight to police torture […]
While browsing the July 23rd-27th edition of The Economist (I know, it’s pretty old), I noticed an interesting advertisement on page 87. Among all the ads offering MBA’s and offshore accounts, I noticed the following gem:
HM Ambassador to the Holy See
Salary range: £42,640-£60,405
Apparently, the British government paid Capita Resourcing to find them a replacement […]
The recent Hot Coffee mod controversy had inspired a number of (mostly Democrat) politicians, including Sen. Clinton, to attack the computer game industry. They call for federal studies on the effect of games on children’s mental development; they are trying to start Congressional inquiries; they are wooing the crowds with “think of the children”. In […]
Xioayun Wang is a professor at Shandong University, China. She is one of the leading cryptographers of today; she helped break (well, not quite break, but drastically reduce the complexity of) MD5, SHA0, and SHA1 hash functions. Thanks to her, projects that currently rely on MD5 and SHA1 for verification of data (like BitTorrent, Portage, […]
A humorous but accurate (warning: pdf) explanation of why apache’s config files are not everyone’s cup of tea. (Not that I have a problem with them — but that is purely thanks to Gentoo and Debian providing sensible and self-documented default config files for their users to build on.)
One of deviantArt’s founders has been forced […]
First conviction under UK’s anti-modchip law. I personally found it to be very odd. The guy was selling XBoxes with a bigger hard driver full of pirated games — yet instead of nabbing him for massive copyright infringement, he is found guilty of installing modchips. Insane! There are a few cases where laws limit what […]
Why PHP sucks (and couple more articles on the same theme). I agree — PHP is the Visual Basic of the open source world. And yet, this blog runs on PHP… (Of course, Wordpress’s constant security issues — Gentoo had it masked as insecure for a few months this year — doesn’t help PHP’s cause […]
The US has decided to keep permanent control of the root DNS servers. Several years ago, it had announced that the root servers would be transferred to ICANN, the internet’s governing body; now, ICANN has been relegated to the role of a “technical manager”.
There are a number of aspects to this story. First, for […]
Interesting, and long, explanation for how to make teenagers love Linux. I mostly agree with Cacophony: the desktop needs to be a bit more useable, and multimedia (including semi- or completely illegal use thereof) really needs to be easier to set up.
Iran is implementing its own version of the Great Firewall of China. The most […]
In 1841, Thomas Babbington Macaulay made a speech in the British Parliament against an act that would have extended copyright terms to 60 years after an author’s death. In 2002, a kuro5hin member posted the speech online. Today, I’ve finally read it, and would make some comments.
Macaulay argued from three points. First, that a long […]
UF has a short and cute debunking of BSA’s methods for calculating world piracy levels.
I did not know that there is a gun on board every Soyuz spaceship. It has three barrels — two for shotgun ammunition and flares, one for rifle rounds — and apparently is very well-balanced. I suppose that if one misses […]
Another Supreme Court decision: today, the Supreme Court of the US ruled in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster. Grokster, a notorious for-profit p2p network, claimed that its right to produce p2p software was protected by the Betamax decision, because Grokster had some uses that did not involve copyright infringement. However, in a 9-0 decision, the Court ruled […]
Today, the Supreme Court of the US ruled in Kelo vs. New London. The Court decided that local governments have the right to seize private property through eminent domain for whatever purpose the local government might wish. In this particular case, the private property was seven houses (including one belonging to a Mrs. Dery, who […]
In 1998, Russia’s security services introduced SORM-2 (Система оперативно-розыскных мероприятий 2), which forced Russian ISP’s to purchase and install “black boxes” for comprehensive monitoring of internet communications. These regulations were roundly criticized, buth in Russia and by foreign governments and organizations; some went as far as to say that Russia was becoming a police state. […]
Apparently, US Congresspersons have finally heard of the infamous July 2002 Blair memo, and are holding an unofficial (but public) hearing about it. I am surprised that it took more than a month for news of the memo (revealed by the Sunday Times in early May of this year) to cross the Atlantic. Still, better […]
The Dept. of Commerce wants to treat foreign researchers’ access to scientific technology as export to hostile nations. Which is to say, if you have the misfortune of being an Indian student or a Russian scientist, and you want to say, use a microscope, you will need to fill out a request (complete with your […]
The Sunday Times has published a memo describing a meeting between Tony Blair, his advisors, and senior members of the British Cabinet, that took place on July 23, 2002. You can read the Sunday Times’ own analysis if you wish, but the memorandum speaks eloquently and for itself. By mid-2002, the US had made a […]
If Hannibal is right, US leaders want to destroy the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review; the short-term effect being political and/or financial gain for the fuckers currently in office, and probable long-term effect being the demolition of the system of checks and balances, and of the edifice of US democracy that is built on […]
It’s official: if you are a Democrat-supporting scientist, you are not fit to represent American science abroad.
I have no words.
OK, I have some words. The last time American citizens were banned from scientific bodies for their political party affiliation was during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s. However, McCarthy at least had a […]
Found a fascinating account (via a /. comment) of doctored police video evidence used in the trials of those arrested during the Republican National Convention in New York. Basically, an innocent man gets caught up in the demonstration. He asks a cop for a way out of the riot zone — and the cop arrests […]