Thursday, July 04, 2002

Happy Birthday: To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Sometimes it is worth going back and reading the original documents. Here are some excerpts from the Declaration of Independence. Some of them sound pretty timely. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. .. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses; ... Full text available. Permalink  11:45:39 PM   Google It!  What do you think?  [] comments.

Microsoft claims right to put updated software on your computer. Just ran across an amazing story in the Register that I somehow missed. According to the story, when you download the latest security patch for your buggy Microsoft product, the End User Agreement that you have to click on to download it states: "You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management ('Secure Content'), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer..." Basically, to get Microsoft's bug fix, you have to agree that Microsoft can download software of their choosing onto your computer. Very Scary. Tip o' the hat to Jeremy for the link. Permalink  11:22:25 AM   Google It!  What do you think?  [] comments.

Very funny lawyers I don't know if this is real or a spoof, but this is the funniest lawfirm home page imaginable. Check it out. Tip o' the hat to Cory for the link. Permalink  10:29:30 AM   Google It!  What do you think?  [] comments.