FFEJWORLD:

Bruce Schneier on Dept. of Homeland Security fear mongering:

“These countries understand that security doesn’t come from a scared populace, and that true counter-terrorism occurs behind the scenes and away from public eye. For earthquakes, the long term security solutions include things like building codes. For terrorism, they include intelligence, investigation, and emergency response preparedness.”

A security flaw in WinAmp.

Talking to ronald reagan jr. in front of video cameras could get you busted:

“Joshua Kinberg: I was arrested while Ron was interviewing me about my invention– a bicycle that prints text messages on the street in water-soluble chalk. While we were conducting the interview, the police stopped me and asked for my ID. After I produced identification, the police waited for their sergeant to arrive before placing me under arrest without stating the charge. I was doing nothing more than describing my invention to the media and explaining my disagreements with the Bush administration.”

justice department censors supreme court quote:

“The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

“Bea Arthur sparked a security scare at Logan Airport in Boston this week when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocketknife in her handbag.”

“The “Golden Girls” star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife – a strict no-no following 9/11.”

Newsweek op-ed piece on TSA abuse of the elderly.

While I’m trying to streamline the whole post-by-cellphone method, I’m going to do a big catch up post this morning. This is going to read like a quikies post from heck. Mea culpa. The new system will have 1 day lag, since it involves me gathering news by wifi through the flakey connection at the nexus around 6pm, and then posting via callphone. This method will cease when Hairball finishes his move and shuts down his network. By that point i’ll probably be back sleeping on the el platform, so another workflow will be needed.

First off, Dan Gilmor and the Register report on the Skokie, Illinois community blog. The site was set up by a few Medill School of journalism students who have since moved on, you get get the link to their report from Gilmor’s post. Gilmor reports it as a success, Orlowski at the Reg reports it in his usual blog bashing whimsey as a failure that has caused the village to dissapear. The site itself is still up, and full of new posts cast by readers of the aforementioned articles.

Bush still hasn’t rebuked the swift boat ads. Gilmor has a post that deals with the myriad connections from the “Swift boaft Veterans for Truth” to the Bush campaign. And there’s this from the washington post (linked to in Gilmor) about the co-author of the book:

(out and out lie anyone?)

Misha Shebesta has updated her web site, new material and a complete top to bottom redesign. It’s not just about painting anymore. So dig in.

John Unger has updated his blog, and is quoting the cluetrain manifesto. I consider John one of my blog children, and it’s fun to watch him play with things i posted. John is also a better writer then i will ever be.

Neil Verplank has overhauled his site as well, adding new travel articles on a month long trip to South East Asia, on visiting Burning Man in 2003, and on a week spent with Paolo Lugari, founder of Gaviotes. In addition he’s added an Online Store, so you can buy the pieces he’ll be showing at Depart-Ment. September 3-5. (For those of you who thought that Neil’s recent email plea on my behalf worked in any way shape or form, he informs me that exactly bupkis was collected.)

I dislike RealNetworks for their data mining, abusive marketing, hiding of their free player, crappy user interface and making their users jump through hoops and squeel like pigs. In the past year as M$ has begun to steam roll them, they’ve begun whinging about monopolies, unfair business practices and they’ve embraced open source (kind of) with Helix. Recently they pronounced themselves the saviours of pay to play music downloads fighting the good fight for the little guys by cracking Apple’s Fairplay DRM with their Harmony technoology. As Wired reports, RealNetworks still sucks. The article details how they’ve lied, used the DMCA against others who tried to do to them what they’re doing to Apple, and how their Rapsody service doesn’t work with OS X. Follow the links to why NPR is moving away from Real to M$ (ugh, but GS should be real happy).

Daring Fireball has a post on Apple finally parlaying one platform into another with the Mac, windows, iTune, iPod and ITMS. great analysis, and one which slams Real and Sony over proprietary formats and real lock in.

The creators of South Park have a new movie in the works, Team America: World Police.. It’s done with marionettes, like the original Thunderbirds or Fireball XL1. They claim it will piss everyone off. One can only hope.

Locus has a portion of an interview with Neal Stephenson online as a teaser to buy the magazine.

The People’s Guided to the Republican National Convention. Extremely useful info for fighting the power, complete with map and calendar of events (dead tree or download).

• visitors and natives alike seeking to navigate the city during a hectic time
• visitors looking for places to eat and shop
• people seeking to engage in legal protests and political activity
• visitors seeking to attend the many concerts, parties and cultural events
• media seeking to cover protests and events

Another Democaratic congressman, John Lewis, has popped up on the no fly list.

“Lewis contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in a so-far fruitless effort to get his name off the list, said spokeswoman Brenda Jones.

Instead, Lewis got a letter from the Transportation Security Administration that he can present to ticket agents indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency. But the letter warns he might still be subject to extra security checks before being allowed to fly.”

World smallest flying robot. I’m trying to get one for Ben and Karey, but Epson isn’t returning my emails.

Canon has introduced not one but 6 new models for my birthday. It’s traditional for them to refresh the G series on or near my birthday, and the new G6 does so at 7.1 megapixels, with a completely redesigned case and controls. Nice of them to throw in the new A models and the new 8 megapixel EOS 20D. Now if Canon would send me some review units of the 20 or G6, I’d be really happy.

This is an french ad for a sexual lubricant. Why it’s named after my grandmother’s favorite PI show is beyond me. but the ad makes it’s point wonderfully.

Yes, I got mugged. Yes they had weapons, yes I’m ok. Yes, I filed a report. No, the cops didn’t get them. No they didn’t get my bag. Don’t believe me if i tell you they sliced up my pants. I did that after i was mugged. I still don’t know how that happened. Yes, I’m in the market for another pair of black jeans.

i’ve been having touble hitting my site, or trying to update it. strange. I can get almost anyplace else. Must be some new virus screwing up the route tables.

happy birthday to me.

me and my last $5 should be drinking coffee at the nexus tonight.