Month: February 2002

Bush offers plan to curb emissions. President Bush has unveiled his plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions –
but critics say the proposals bow to big business. [BBC News: sci/tech]

This critic says the proposal bows too much to “environmentalists.” It’s important to have all the facts before making major decisions, and we aren’t even close on this subject. What if those greenhouse gas emissions are the only thing holding off the next ice age?

Bizarro World. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com –

Bizarro World – the topsy-turvy world we live in today where
Richard Bizarro can face 20 years for taking a pee. [grabbe
market]
bq.
For this he’s facing 20 years? Ah, but urination without authorization
is just the beginning of his crimes: according to one of the witches
disguised as flight attendants, Bizarro not only “ignored her orders”
but also “stared at her for about a minute before returning to his
seat.” The Fox News story also ominously adds that Bizarro is
“6-foot-2 and 220 pounds”

NRA Will Take Shays-Meehan Bill To Supreme Court If It Passes. Jeff Johnson at CNSNews.com –

NRA Will Take Shays-Meehan Bill To Supreme Court If It Passes –
good for them. [geneice]
bq.
David Mason, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC)
told CNSNews.com Wednesday that the provision is almost certainly
unconstitutional and definitely unenforceable. He says such a
“blackout” would only create a window for incumbents to introduce
controversial legislation with little fear of criticism.
[End the War on Freedom]

Even the head of an organization charged with protecting incumbents thinks the Incumbent Protection Act is unconstitutional. That really shows just how far this bill goes beyond what the bureaucracy thinks it can get away with.

Open your minds for another bomb. David Brown is using Radio as a Python IDE. Yah. Aha.  [Scripting News]

This looks like a nice idea. The screenshots show it working with OS X, and there’s a mention of Windows as well, but does it work on the Mac? I’ll give it a try when I get home.

2nd day of home search yields 150 legal guns [Arizona Daily Star]

After a man had a stroke, a cop went into his house for a blanket and saw part of his gun collection. Even though there was no sign of anything illegal, the cops threw his neighbors out of their homes, stole his gun collection, and tore his house up looking for something illegal (which they didn’t find).

America: A 21st-Century Soviet Union? Supporters of the Bill of Rights should be horrified by what’s happening in America. Our government’s reaction to criminal behavior has been to turn America into a police state. It really doesn’t matter who the criminals are — Militant Islamic terrorists, greedy Enron, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen executives or possibly Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Unfortunately, Mom, you’re right. Sadly, we are well on our way to becoming a twenty-first century Soviet Union. [FrontPage Magazine]

Money in your mobile. Vodafone customers in the UK could soon be using their mobile phones to settle online and offline bills. [BBC News: sci/tech]

e-gold apparently has a WAP interface too. Since I don’t have a cell phone with WAP capability, I can’t test it.

More market share numbers, PalmOS down, Pocket PC up [PDABuzz.com]

The “all other PDAs” category has just as much market share as the PocketPC, though. I think this trend will continue–Microsoft is at least trying to improve their OS. The Palm OS is basically stagnant.

Chris
Double suggests using a dynamic IP service to deal with the changing IP
address problem of my cable modem. It’s a much easier idea than what I came
up with, so I’ll look into it when I get home. I might as well pass along my
idea as well, though.

My home network is connected to the cable modem via a Linksys router. The
router is controlled through an HTML interface–just type in the IP address
of the router (as seen from inside the local network) to access it. It
occurred to me that Radio could access the status page of that interface,
which shows the current “outside” address. I could right a script which
would check that address and, if it had changed, email me the new address. I
don’t know if this is practical yet, I’ll have to check Radio when I get
home to be sure it has the necessary verbs. Presumably it does.

This solution (if it works) won’t be nearly as useful as the dynamic IP
service method–it’s inherently limited to situations where a Linksys router
and Radio are in use. Fortunately, that’s my situation!

Amusing comment on annoying San Francisco bicyclists spotted on a mailing
list (by John Groth):

bq.
I have always subscribed to the following traffic principle:

M * V^2 = R, where

M=Mass
V=Velocity
R=Right-of-way