I realized some stuff about myself, and work, and life today that are personal enough that normally I wouldn’t blog them, but they matter a lot to me and on the off chance that there is someone else who needs to hear them as bad as I needed to realize them, I’ve put them online here.
Month: January 2005
Microsoft: Our Bugs ARE our DRM
The Bryan-College Station Eagle > Associated Press Headlines says:
“Microsoft Corp. plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes.”
On the one hand, this is completely irresponsible because Microsoft’s security flaws, as exploited by worms and viruses, are dangerous and costly and waste untold internet resources every day.
On the other hand, you have to admire the creativity involved — now, Microsoft’s bug-ridden crapware is its own “DRM”! It’s like shareware which cripples itself if you don’t pay, but it’s pre-crippled at the factory!
Please, Johnny… Make It Stop
Via Mefi, the most disturbing Johnny Carson clips ever.
This is taken from a public access show, and there’s a kind of outraged young man introducing the clips. Ignore him.
You can take this to be about Carson, as the narrator does, or you can take it to be a little picture into what American media and attitudes were like in the mid 70s, in case you’ve forgotten or weren’t born yet. The 70s are supposed to be *after* America stopped being all racist, but there’s this transitional period where people haven’t yet learned how not to make asses of themselves about racial issues or make really uncomfortable racial jokes.
We’re better about that now, right?… right? I guess our children will be the judge of that. :)
A Brutal Iraqi Regime
(Human Rights Watch, 26-1-2005)
Methods of torture cited by detainees include routine beatings to the body using cables, hosepipes and other implements. Detainees report kicking, slapping and punching; prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, including the earlobes and genitals; and being kept blindfolded and/or handcuffed continuously for several days. In several cases, the detainees suffered what may be permanent physical disability. Â
Â
Detainees also reported being deprived by Iraqi security forces of food and water, and being crammed into small cells with standing room only. Numerous detainees described how Iraqi police sought bribes in return for release, access to family members or food and water. Â
Saddam Hussein’s tactics? No, those are all things that our good friends and partners, the Interim Government have done on our watch.
But hey, at least they’ll respect our copyright regime and sell their oil in USD rather than Euro. The people of Iraq can take comfort that in those respects they are now free. In terms of not being subject to arbitrary torture and detention by an evil regime, well…. not so much.
Link via MeFi, though I’m sure this is going to be all over the American media, because they’re so liberal.
Fafnir AND John Waters’s Head!!!
Talk about brushes with greatness. On the same night I find out Sara stared from a distance of mere inches at the back of John Waters’s head throughout a movie, and Nate somehow (perhaps through a typographical error gone horribly wrong?) got himself blogrolled by Fafblog, a blog-status-symbol than which no greater can be conceived. (It’s Anselmian, that linkage. Wow.)
I am now two degrees of separation both from Fafnir and from the back of John Waters’s head.
The mind reels!