It not being PC probably isn’t the only reason you don’t say to yourself, “There goes a nice piece of elbow!”  But after taking this quiz, you might start.  Ass or Elbow?

Thanks Laura.

India is considering a “pre-emptive war” against Pakistan to counter its alleged support for “terrorism.”  And Pakistan says that India has WMDs therefore is a fit case for “pre-emptive strike.”  I guess if the USA can rationalize it, they can too.

Condensed from http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_04.shtml#001063

The EFF has an easy way to lobby congress to label CDs that are copy protected.  It’s a first step to at least know if what you’re buying won’t work the way you want.

There’s a humor e-mail going around with some of these poems.  It started at Slate, which compiled a collection of Rumsfeld’s poems. They are the exact words of the defense secretary, as taken from the official transcripts on the Defense Department Web site.  Here’s an example:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

— Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Say what?  Here are the rest of them.

A Psychic Mind Reader that knows what number you’re thinking of, and it works.  Go figure out how.

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Like I’m surprised.  Found it in a couple of placed:  The Independent, Daily Times

Please make me stop watching television.  Thanks Jillian.

http://www.cameltoe.com/

I think we need a little Face Time.

MoveOn.org has a nice 60 sec. movie about current events.

Sign up now.

Thanks for the inspiration, Jim

Verizon Corp. must reveal the identities of two high-speed Internet subscribers accused of illegally trading music online, a federal judge ruled today.

Verizon had first argued that turning over subscribers’ names would violate their constitutional right to privacy.  They said that it is unfair for the music industry to be allowed to obtain subpoenas without judicial approval, but U.S. District Court Judge John Bates threw out that argument in a January ruling.  Verizon then turned to its argument that the DMCA is unconstitutional.

“The case is not over and we intend to immediately appeal the decision and seek a stay in the U.S. Court of Appeals,” Verizon’s Associate General Counsel Sara Deutsch said.  “It’s virtually unprecedented in U.S. law that someone can use a form to find out your identity without any judicial process.”

Verizon argues that record labels should be required to get permission from a judge, rather than a clerk, which would add another legal hurdle to any copyright investigation, and that such a move is necessary to protect user privacy.  Without it any copyright holder — or anybody claiming to be a copyright holder — could easily obtain the name and address of any Internet user, giving easy access to any stalker, sexual predator, con artist or identity thief.

Story Link.

A federal judge ruled today that companies providing peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, such as Morpheus and Grokster, cannot be held liable for copyright infringement by users of the software.  In making the ruling, P2P was compared to “home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights.”

Story Link.

Isometric illusory art was created as early as 1934 by Swedish Artist Oscar Reutersvärd with the impossible arrangement of blocks shown here. I always considered all that type of stuff Escher Art, but apparently he wasn’t the first one with it.

It also seems that many of those impossible triangles and stairs and such have names like the “Penrose illusion” and “Mach’s figure”.  See them described here.

What’s worse: Having an affair with an intern or child pornography? Clearly, a prominent Republican fund-raiser was confused.  (the short story)

He once said former President Bill Clinton was “a lawbreaker and a terrible example to our nation’s young people,” but pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court to production of child pornography. Trying to one-up Clinton, so to speak, I guess he was trying to show them a better example, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

The full story: http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.delgaudio24apr24,0,5369464.story?coll=bal-local-headlines (probably only good for two weeks) or http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27774-2003Apr23.html

Thanks for the link, Rick.

The “Health Care for All Californians Act”, SB 921, was amended earlier this week. The new text is here.

More info about the act is here.

Moral Depravity. Financial Ruin. Substance Dependence. Aching Hearts. Vanquished Souls.
Damn, It’s Good To Have The Blues.

On September 5, 2002, the United States Congress proclaimed the year 2003 as the “Year of the Blues”.

Hey, it’s more productive than renaming French Fries. Sort of.

The phrase “shock and awe” was coined by military strategist Harlan Ullman in a 1996 publication. He used it to describe a tactic of pressuring the enemy to give up with little fighting. Coined, but apparently not trademarked. Oops.

A day after U.S. allied forces marched into Iraq, Sony applied for a trademark on “shock and awe” for use as the title of a video game, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Sony has since backed down, describing the move to capitalize on the catchword as “an exercise of regrettable bad judgment.”

But Sony was not the only company hoping to profit from the phrase. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has more than a dozen recent applications for its uses, including for fireworks, lingerie, baby toys, shampoo and consulting services.

My favorite is from Michael Knight of Irving, Texas, who has applied for a “Shock & Awe” trademark on pesticides and herbicides.

The original Mosaic browser, born in the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, turns 10 this year.  ZDNet has a nice history article, which reminds us that “in 1995, Netscape’s Navigator owned 80 percent of the browser market but by 2000 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had reversed the numbers.”

The original IE 1.0 browser code was licensed from Spyglass, which was a commercial arm for the NCSA Mosaic browser work.  As usual, MS bought a technology and then modified it.

This tabled history of when the various browser versions were released reminds me of all the rewriting I’ve had to do of this web site.  When it was started, the compatibility issues were with Netscape 1.0, IE 2.0 and Mosaic 2.1, and new versions were coming out monthly.  Now, with IE have 95% of the market and MS rarely making any significant changes, things are much easier.

The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on a pornographic spam operation that it says has grossed more than $1 million in commissions and nearly 50,000 consumer complaints from a recent bulk e-mail campaign.  Two sources:  News.com and The Mercury News.

Also interesting is a discussion on slashdot.  Well, most of it isn’t interesting, it’s the usual bunch of people calling each other names and making feeble attempts at humor.  But there is at least one comment on it (from somebody that has more time on their hands than even I do) that is worth reading.  He says that the FTC is saying that “They don’t even have to prove that the business being advertised by spam paid the spammer. If someone benefitted from the spam, the beneficiary is liable.” Which will make it a lot easier to sue da bastards.

Thanks for the heads-up Terry and RickC

No sooner do I put up the Musical Mayhem post earlier today, than I learn that the site is up for a Webby Award. If only I had gotten around to it last week.

This year’s nominees are listed here.

Flying Viking Kittens want to take you to a Gay Bar, but We Like The Moon better because the Kittens are too cute.