Although I’m sorry we had to hash this out in court, we finally did: Intelligent design cannot be taught in the science curriculum of United States schools.
So, y’know, thank goodness… we’re no longer going Medieval. Jesus.
Update (12/22): This article has a great review of the ‘delicious bits’ of the judge’s decision.
Interesting article about how Bush is angry that he’s not a dictator.
Oh, wait… he’s angry because he’s being portrayed as an evil dictator in the media. My favorite two bits occur right at the beginning of the article:
At a news conference, Bush appeared most angry that the programme ed the programme of spying on American citizens without going through the courts] had been revealed in the press. He said it was an effective tool in disrupting terrorists and that whoever leaked details to the media had committed “a shameful act”.
Bush is upset that his spying program has been revealed to the public. He’s upset that he can’t spy on American citizens anymore because it was an “effective tool in disrupting terrorist…” How effective? Any metrics on that? Nope, because that would give out more info which would be an even more shameful act than the initial reveal was. Give me a break.
On another issue, Bush acknowledged that the pre-war claim that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction complicated the US ability to confront other potential emerging threats such as Iran.“Where it is going to be most difficult to make the case is in the public arena,” Bush said. “People will say, if we’re trying to make the case on Iran: ‘Well, if the intelligence failed in Iraq, therefore, how can we trust the intelligence on Iran?’”
Bush states it very well himslef: If the intelligence failed in Iraq, therefore, how can we trust the intelligence on Iran? How about this, George: Don’t be upset that the “public arena” will castigate you… be upset that you falsified information and then blamed it on the intelligence agencies in the lead up to the war on Iraq. Naturally no one trusts the intelligence agencies that you maligned.
In this other article on the same site which teases Bush about mixing up Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden (c’mon, everyone has a slip of the tongue every once in a while) there’s my final interesting bit:
“In the late 1990s, our Government was following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone and then the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak,” Bush said.
So we should restrict the press in an effort to make ourselves safer. Bush is saying that he is against the transparency of government in the pursuit of “liberty” from dark forces on foreign shores that mean us harm. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Poor President George Bush: it’s been a rough week.
First he has to back down on his previous position and say that we shouldn’t torture people ... and now it’s been revealed that Bush let the NSA spy on US citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Not a good week at all.
Because of the misconception that anti-war is somehow anti-patriotic (and possible terroristic) we have to endure the trampling of our civil liberties in the pursuit of some imaginary safety. If we would only give up those pesky freedoms we would be so much easier to “protect.”
What a miserable failure.
At last, a MMORPG worthy of my complete attention, worthy of the exercise of my not-inconsiderable skills... lo, this game is ProgressQuest!
Do not let the austere and minimalist façade of the website fool you: indeed, this game has a depth of gameplay that I have not heretofore seen in any computer game.
And, if the intensity and complexity of the shifting, interleaved strands of high-fantasy story and gritty, realistic ethical dilemmas leaves you feeling a bit bewildered you can always glance at the strategy guides for help.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to blog about this earlier.
I’ve been following the Sony rootkit story since it came out on the great Sysinternals website. And, finally, after dodging the issue and trying to pretend like it had done nothing wrong, Sony has caved and is doing a recall.
Fuck that. I hope the class action lawsuit suceeds. Normally I’m not a very litigious person and I, in fact, hate it that people can be sued because other people don’t have any common sense… but this is reckless endangerment. Sony is selling CDs that actively work to hide malware from you. Viruses have already come out utilizing this technology. Godammit, is this the future of DRM?
I think it could be. I think we’ll see more and more draconian tactics being used in the interests of “protecting the artists” and “fostering innovation.” Innovation isn’t fostered by maliciously tampering with people’s property and then attempting to hide the damage from them. Artists aren’t well-served by angry, angry fans returning droves of CDs because the CDs destabilize the most prevalent operating system on the planet.
Wake up. It’s only going to get worse.
Interesting article on Wired proposing an economic model for secure software… Some jackass had said that we should make coders liable for security holes and open them up for lawsuit by users. The Wired article says make the company liable.
Ever actually read a EULA? The company isn’t liable for anything that happens to you because of the software, nothing, not a penny… and the software doesn’t belong to you anyway and usually can be removed from your leaseship with a word from the manufacturing company. Time to end all that.
Or is it? Can you imagine the class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for, say, the Slammer worm? Would the result of that lawsuit put Microsoft out of business? Where would that leave all of that shareholder money dumped into R&D? Do the benefits of accountability really justify the near-certainty litigiousness in the early 21st century United States?
I’m up for it and think we should not only try this but use some of that legal momentum to re-examine the standard EULA, too. By all means, don’t make the coders liable or you’ll just have really fast turnover on programmers and no real change in the status quo. If the companies were liable for the products they produce (what a concept) then they might start taking user needs seriously.
Microsoft has a patent application out there foolishly patenting the ‘is not’ operator.
Let me write this another way: this patent is full of shit.
Join me in this Google bomb… please. ( =