Castro; Dead, Zombie, or Animatronics?

The news is out that “It’s official: we can unequivocally declare that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to assume that there isn’t reason to not believe that Fidel Castro may or may not be dead (maybe)” Which is how the headline was submitted on Fark
If you want to keep up on what’s going on in [...]

Heritical Thoughts About Science and Society

This article makes for some good food for thought. Caution! If you are a Anthro-Global Warming zealot you may not like it.
HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
By Freeman Dyson
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the [...]

Dumber and Dumber-er: Sheehan to Challenge Pelosi

Posted by: Idiocracy

Sheehan Launches Pelosi Challenge
Anti-War Activist Cindy Sheehan Announces Plan to Challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Sheehan, who turned 50 on Tuesday, stunned fellow anti-war activists in May by announcing that she would sell her 5-acre Crawford protest site. She said then that she felt her efforts had been in vain and that she had [...]

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn’t sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are [...]

Profile: America’s worst president

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?.

Profile in Incompetence; A Ten Part Series on the worst President in American History.
In this exclusive 10-part series, Investors Business Daily takes a hard look at Jimmy Carter’s administration and compares it to that of George W. Bush, which Carter has called the worst ever.
Installments [...]

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”

Via Oikeuden edessä and slashdot:

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”. [...]

09 f9: A Legal Primer … or … What is the AACS-LA’s Legal argument?

The AACS-LA made some news yesterday. Read about some of it here, here, and here, as well as the following from the EFF Deep Links section:
What is the AACS-LA’s argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA’s ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person [...]

FTC official: Let’s imprison spyware distributors

FTC official (William Kovacic) says “Let’s imprison spyware distributors”
Steep fines are nice, but one of the best weapons against spyware purveyors is locking them up, a federal regulator told senators on Tuesday.
At a morning Senate Commerce Committee hearing here, Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic said most wrongdoers [...]

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The “Global Warming Consensus” house of cards is beginning to collapse…

UPDATE: There is quite a bit of fallout from this movie:
Scientists threatened for ‘climate denial’
Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.
Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of [...]

Net Neutrality

save the internet

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Launched

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. Read more here. Via: /. & BoingBoing.

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

On June 16, 2006, Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at the Center for American Progress entitled “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net.” This talk was the second in a series of three. The first talk [...]

Stockholm Syndrome For Millions

Via discarded lies and Dances With Typos
An excellent article by James Lewis…

The Left’s identification with murderous aggressors

Look at the behavior of the Left since 9/11, both in this country, Europe, and even Israel. Rather than feel righteously angered by the terrorist mass murder of 3,000 innocent people, large parts of the Left have [...]

China Announces Massive Online ID Database

Via SlashDot:

China provides access to ID database to curb fraud

Anyone can now send a text message or visit the country’s population information center’s website, to check if the name and the ID number of a person’s identity card match. If they do match the ID cardholder’s picture also appears, said the Ministry, adding [...]

Has your video been removed from YouTube based on a bogus Viacom takedown?

Unfairly Caught in Viacom’s Dragnet? Let the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) know!

Well, with its 100,000 DMCA takedown notices aimed at YouTube users, now it’s Viacom that is netting its share of dolphins. Among the 100,000 videos targeted for takedowns was a home movie shot in a BBQ joint, a film trailer by a documentarian, and [...]

Seething the Light

Nuke is having fun at the hardware store.

Nike, Burger King , and now Feit Electric?

While perusing the website of recent commenter, Jon, my keen blogger’s instinct recoiled in horror, as I discovered a photograph of the GE Feit Electric flourescent light bulb which … wait for it … contains similarities to the arabic spelling of [...]

Global warming ethics, pork and profits

This caught my eye…

Global warming ethics, pork and profits

Global warming alarmism generates political and financial incentives

The ink has barely dried on its new code of conduct, and already Congress is redefining ethics and pork to fit a global warming agenda. As Will Rogers observed, “with Congress, every time they make a joke, it’s a law. [...]

Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy

50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood
As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or “camcording,” is taking place in Montreal movie [...]

A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Read more here at On The Fence Films

Our Techno-Utopian Future: Fallacies and Predictions

David Veksler waxes philosophic (as is his custom) on the subject of:

Our Techno-Utopian Future: Fallacies and Predictions

What’s the ultimate destiny of our civilization? Are we destined to become “living batteries” a la the Matrix, refugees in a post-apocalyptic radioactive desert landscape, or peons of a totalitarian surveillance state? Or, can be look forward to a [...]

Is Web 2.0 Communism’s Crowning Glory?

Here is an excerpt from a interesting Op-Ed piece on Bit-Tech:
The People’s Republic of Web 2.0

Karl Marx is famous for thinking up a system where everyone had a voice, where everyone was equal, and then went on to associate it with a political system. I suppose you can’t blame old Karl for the [...]

How the Democrats Stole the 2006 Elections

Just some random thoughts about hacked voting machines, “Fixing the Vote” and rampant Vote Fraud …
Vote Fixing as taught by Huffington Post with video describing exactly how to actually do it. Nice of Marty Kaplan and HuffPo to give the Dems step-by-step video instructions. It looks like those instructions were followed [...]

Banned by GooTube

Well one of my GooTube uploaded videos has been relegated to the bit bucket. And I didn’t even get a “strongly worded letter” from the GooTube management.
All Americans should be free to express themselves in song! Satire is a form of political expression and speech such as this should be protected, never suppressed or censored!

More “Fizz” Than “Pop”

A toast to good foreign policy gone bad!

U.S. officials doubt Korean test was nuclear

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast’s readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.

“We’re [...]

YouTube Tags Political Video as “Inappropriate”

Wasting no time joining those champions of free speech, Google; YouTube has also now gotten into the business of censoring political speech. But they don’t limit the censorship to China.
First amendment? What’s that?
This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube’s user community.
Well the video will make you [...]

Jihad on Apple Computers!

MEMRI is all in a tither over the Apple Store in New York!

Apple’s “Mecca Project” Provokes Muslim Reaction
On October 10, 2006, an Islamic website posted a message alerting Muslims to what it claims is a new insult to Islam. According to the message, the cube-shaped building which is being constructed in New York City, [...]

Fight DRM: Ten things you can do today

“If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed” - Disney Executive.

Defeating DRM is all about awareness.

The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Today we are asking you to let the people around you know that DRM is bad for our society. [...]

DefectiveByDesign.org Takes Another Bite at the Apple

Taking another bite at the Apple

With 100,000 DRM warning labels now distributed, it’s time to start the action. Join one. Start one.

Join us in New York and London.

On Saturday, September 30th, hazmat suited DefectiveByDesign members will gather at the flagship Apple stores in New York and London, These high profile events will kick-off awareness for [...]

Free-Market Science vs Government Science

Free-Market Science vs. Government Science By: George Reisman
In a free market, science originates in the minds of individual scientists, who have studied and thought about problems that interest them and who from time to time arrive at new insights, which they develop further and verify. State-sponsored science is the destroyer of science. If science is [...]