licentious radio

Wednesday, February 20, 2002
[2:04:39 PM]

One fun feature of MS Word, is that it inserts your name into documents you create. Clever police have tracked down software virus creators this way. It also means that when laws and regulations are written by lobbyists, the lobbyists should be a little careful to keep their names out of the document. According to eurolinux.org, the European Commission's proposal to allow software patents appears to have been written by the Business Software Alliance's director of public policy. It is, of course, common for businesses to write the laws.

Meanwhile Joe Conason [nyobserver.com] points to the tracking number used to track campaign contributions by industry sector. Public policy becomes a matter of simple math.

[1:38:12 PM]
observer.co.uk: "The main provider of [IRA terrorist] funds was, of course, the USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in America? It's a big place and it's by no means certain that a small country like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job." [Thanks, Dad.]