Thursday, January 08, 2004

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - US Treasury to Post Previously Private Email Addresses Online. An anonymous reader writes "After receiving around 10 thousand comments about a government proceeding and after promising not to reveal personal info from those comments online, the US Treasury department decided to post email addresses of those who commented online. Sounds like they don't want any more comments about government proceedings. The email harvesters are going to have a great time." [Privacy Digest] When I heard about this I had the same reaction as the anonymous reader. 10:22:35 PM    comment () Powell Refutes Think-Tank Report on Iraq [AP World News] Now there's a headline sure to get you invited back for the next press conference. In fact Powell did no such thing! To refute the report that Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction," he would have had to offer some sort of evidence to disprove it. Of course he did not offer any evidence. 10:21:13 PM    comment () TREMBLE FOR YOUR COUNTRY. Yet again, events force me to hammer on themes I've discussed before: here, about the dangerous precedent the Bush administration wishes to set by means of the Padilla case; and here, about the dangers of censorship (and this related post also concerns censorship). As I noted in the latter entry: In her essay "Collectivized 'Rights'" (in The Virtue of Selfishness), Ayn Rand identified the defining characteristics of any dictatorship: "There are four characteristics... [The Light of Reason] The Star Chamber, thought to have been disbanded in 1641, is alive and well in America. 6:34:39 PM    comment () HP to make iPod-based players. Apple's desire to see the iPod remain the leader in the digital music player market got a big push on Thursday when Apple and HP announced that they have formed a strategic alliance to put HP-branded digital music players based on the iPod. The news came at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. [MacCentral] Between this, RealNetworks' decision to adopt AAC, and the announcement of GarageBand, it seems like Apple is trying to become the Microsoft of digital music. 3:40:54 PM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:58:58 PM.