Monday, February 18, 2002

Someone asked me, "Any idea when the press started calling guys blowing up bombs in Israeli restaurants 'militants'?" It's a good question. I've noticed there's an anti-Israeli bias in the media, certainly, but I can't say how long it's been there. Certainly at least since the 1980's, but I don't remember if they called terrorists "militants" back then. comment () trackback ()  11:16:18 PM     As part of my ongoing experiment with e-gold, I tried buying some gold using a credit card. Normally credit cards are used for their convenience when purchasing things over the Internet, but in this case the convenience wasn't there. It seems that credit card fraud is a huge problem for a digital currency, so the few companies that accept credit cards at all have very impressive anti-fraud measures in place. I bought from GoldNow, and it took eight days for the transaction to go through, including a verification phone call to prove that I'm not a crook. I do appreciate all the security, though, and I'm told that if I should wish to use that card again the verification won't be necessary. comment () trackback ()  2:23:25 PM     Freedom in America: it's real isn't it?. Dorothy Anne Seese - Freedom in America: it's real isn't it? - are we facetious yet? Would be funny if it weren't so true. [kaba] I do know that as long as I stay inside my condo unit, obey all the laws, do whatever the government says, and fill out all the forms I'm asked to fill out and tell the truth, then I'm free to sit in here and read, or cook, or even work at the computer. Freedom is easy when you just do as you're told! [End the War on Freedom] comment () trackback ()  1:57:08 PM     NY Times: "Record companies have said that it's the artists who lose with services like Napster. Under the labels' new Internet services, however, the performers still don't get a dime."  [Scripting News] Of course they don't. Did anyone really believe that the record companies ever cared about the artists? comment () trackback ()  1:42:36 PM     dslreports.com - Spam and web-visible email addresses. Bait a spammer and see the results A while ago, as an experiment, we buried a link in these web pages that would generate a unique email address on a blank page when visited. The reason the link was hidden was to reduce the hit count of the page to manageable proportions, so we could be sure that future email to this unique address could be uniquely matched to the IP address doing the scooping. [Privacy Digest] Spammers don't just harvest addresses from the web, though. I've had (at various times) Earthlink, MediaOne, and Hotmail email addresses. I never used any of those addresses for anything, and yet all of them received several times as much spam as my main email address (which I use on Usenet posts and hasn't changed for years). If you want to avoid spam, it's not enough to keep your address of the web and out of Usenet, you also have to avoid using a major ISP or "free email" service. comment () trackback ()  1:19:35 PM     Mideast Violence Leaves Seven Dead. Palestinian militants staged a series of attacks Monday, leaving seven dead as Yasser Arafat praised a tentative proposal in which the entire Arab world would make peace with Israel in exchange for a total pullout from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. [AP World News] The problem with this, and all other Mideast peace proposals, it that there's no reason to believe that the Israelis will actually get peace in exchange for a pullout. On the contrary, there's considerable evidence that accepting this proposal would only increase terrorist attacks. comment () trackback ()  12:56:29 PM     Martina Wilson of the Los Angeles Newton User's Group has created a Radio weblog. comment () trackback ()  12:45:22 PM

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