Sunday, August 11, 2002

Bush Walks and Talks Softly -- Where's the Big Stick?. Unlike his predeccessor, Theodore Roosevelt, President George W. Bush has not fought hard enough against corporate wrongdoing. The Republicans often claim the mantle of TR, but on this issue, Bush has failed to do little more than manipulate public opinion. [kuro5hin.org] 3:07:04 PM

SJ Mercury: End user licenses keep getting more intrusive. Dan Gillmor. Impenetrable EULAs are nothing new in the tech business. But they're getting more intrusive and less fair every day. The latest anti-innovation is the vendor's claim of a unilateral right to change the function of the product you've already purchased. [Tomalak's Realm] 3:03:55 PM

Another Day, Another No-Penalty Microsoft Settlement [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 2:54:56 PM

Settling With F.T.C., Microsoft Agrees to Privacy Safeguards. Microsoft acknowledged that it had not properly protected the privacy and security of people who provided personal information through the company's online identification services. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology] Yet another instance of Microsoft doing bad things, getting caught, the federal government investigating, concluding that Microsoft did indeed do bad things...and slapping their wrist. 2:54:02 PM

Joe Conason's Journal. Does "Slander" end in a Freudian slip? Plus: Tom Ridge's Edison Schools deal gets investigated. [Salon.com] 2:52:53 PM

Trio of bugs bite MS Content Management Server. Buffer overflow, SQL injection and malicious interaction flaws [The Register] 2:52:13 PM

WorldCom Finds $3.3 Billion More in Irregularities. WorldCom, which sought bankruptcy protection last month, said that it had uncovered $3.3 billion in additional accounting irregularities. By Barnaby J. Feder and Seth Schiesel. [New York Times: Technology] 2:51:28 PM

Reality smacks DOJ uptop the head, TIPS to be toppled. The infamous TIPS program, a President George W Bush idea for transforming the United States into a police spy state has been effectively castrated. In theory it was to provide a national call in number for people to call in "suspicious" activity. Originally designed to turn 1 in 24 Americans as citizen spies for the "war on terror", it would have led to a higher proportion of Americans spying on Americans than even the infamous Stasi had in the former East Germany. [kuro5hin.org] 2:43:47 PM

SJ Mercury: We must engage in copyright debate. Dan Gillmor. Average people are not part of the conversation, not in any way that matters. To the cartel and its chattel in the halls of political power, we are nothing but ``consumers'' -- our sole function is to eat what the movie, music and publishing industries put in front of us, and then send money. [Tomalak's Realm] 2:39:27 PM

Forbes.com: Lawmakers ask Ashcroft to target online song swappers [Daypop Top 40] Oh, yeah, this is the biggest problem we have in America these days. Thank god we have John Ashcroft to tackle the big problems. 2:38:06 PM

Hot pursuit of a nonstory. Grandstanding members of Congress, abetted by the celebrity-obsessed news media, are blowing Martha Stewart's stock trade way, way out of proportion. [Salon.com] I can see it now, high-priced Republican strategists sitting around the table, trying to figure out how to keep the public from asking more about Harkin Energy or Haliburton. "I know. Let's get Martha!" 2:17:37 PM

Microsoft Gets Away With One. To those who dislike Microsoft, the company is guilty of a multitude of sins. Abusing its market position, producing buggy software, stealing ideas from others, overcharging its users...the list goes on and on. How many other companies have a webring devoted to showing the world that Microsoft is evil and must be stopped? With all these people out there who dislike Microsoft on general principle, you would think that genuine unethical behavior on the part of the company would raise a hue and a cry. In fact, such behavior was recently revealed. But paradoxically, nobody seems to care very much. [kuro5hin.org] Microsoft breaking the law? The federal government letting them off with a slap on the wrist? Why does this sound familiar? The only thing new is this time it's their accounting. 2:07:29 PM

UNC Sued For Assigning A Text on Islam to Freshmen. The Washington Post reports that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "finds itself besieged in federal court and across the airwaves by Christian evangelists and other conservatives" for assigning incoming freshmen a book about Islam. The Post reports that Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly "compared the assignment to teaching 'Mein Kampf' in 1941 and questioned the purpose of making freshmen study 'our enemy's religion.'" [kuro5hin.org] Ah, jingoistic, imitation "patriotism" rears its ugly head again. You gotta love the open-mindedness of evangelical "Christ"ians... 2:02:08 PM

Joe Conason's Journal. The mystery of the disappearing Dick Armey quote. [Salon.com] An interesting article about how an unflattering quotation by a Republican got retroactively edited out of an AP news story. The best quotation was a definition of "compassionate conservatism in a nutshell: the upward redistribution of wealth, preferably accompanied by psalm-singing." 1:53:50 PM

The back Dorr. The president sneaks an appointment -- with old ties to the Bushes -- past Congress. [Salon.com] 1:43:33 PM

The Pentagon's internal war. The career military and their civilian bosses at the Pentagon are at odds over weaponry, Saudi Arabia -- and Iraq. [Salon.com] 1:42:00 PM

Why we should invade Iraq -- right now! [Daypop Top 40] In less than two minutes, you too can understand that the Dumbya administration is pushing a war with Iraq because...well, just because. 1:40:24 PM

© Copyright 2003 Michael Alderete.