History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly.

I couldn't help but think of copyright extensions when I read this passage.

After Credentials

Acidus wrote:
You trying the Ubuntu thing again?

I never actually switched to ubuntu the last time I declared OSX my nemesis. Basically, my mac came back from the shop and I kept using it and didn't have time to switch. Recently, I installed ubuntu on a box in order to investigate something. So far, I'm very happy with it. It automatically downloads proprietary drivers for hardware devices, making it arguably easier to setup than Windows. Everything seems to work properly, so I've actually been using it. With PC laptops available at a fraction of the cost of macs, this is a very reasonable option at this point.

My only real complaint so far is that is that MemeStreams' fonts look terrible on it. Ghastly. Thats probably my fault, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

U: Setting subpixel smoothing with full hinting seems to have improved things considerably, but the text still seems to be rendered smaller that it ought to be.

RE: Bookmarks not saved - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek), Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time) and The Seattle Times (plans to save $1 million with a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers). There are also many midsize and small companies trying such tactics.

Three points:
1. Hopefully this non-structural cost cutting is intended to be temporary.
2. If its not, this might be how we get to a 30 hour work week.
3. You can expect companies doing layoffs to continue to lobby Congress for H1B under the pretext that they cannot find people to fill jobs.

naked capitalism: Wage Deflation Underway

If changes to bookmarks are not being saved after restarting Firefox 3, reset the browser.places preferences to the default settings: [1] [2] [3]

Had this problem out of the box on Ubuntu. All these said "user-set" but I had not set them. Strange.

Bookmarks not saved - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

The city has partnered with Agnes Scott College, City Schools of Decatur, Columbia Theological Seminary and the Downtown Development Authority to build a citywide wireless network.

Decatur Muni Wifi

Not one to be outdone by the likes of PlayStation Home, World of Warcraft, or even that cesspool of flying dildos Second Life, the city of Decatur, Georgia might be going virtual.

The virtual city, or "Virtual Decatur" as the fine elected officials of Decatur are calling it, would be a networking hub for the city as part of a greater overall effort to boost the economy.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Virtual Worlds: City of Decatur, Georgia Mulling Virtual World Interface

It's good to have a plan, but if something extraordinary comes your way, you should go for it.

I'm enjoying Noteworthy's summary of various MemeStreams discussions from this year in the linked thread.

A Noteworthy Year

Child pornography is illegal even if the pictures are drawn, a federal appeals panel said in affirming the first conviction under a 2003 federal law against such cartoons.

Dwight Whorley is serving 20 years in prison, convicted in 2005 of using a public computer for jobseekers at the Virginia Employment Commission to receive 20 Japanese cartoons, called anime, illustrating young girls being forced to have sex with men. Whorley also received digital photographs of actual children engaging in sexual conduct and sent and received e-mails graphically describing parents sexually molesting their children.

This case has been bothering me.

1. This guy ought to be in prison as there was real child porn involved. That fact might make it easy to overlook the rest of this case but I think that is a mistake.

2. 20 years is an extreme prison sentence. It seems overzealous here.

3. How much of that prison sentence was the product of the obscenity convictions? In my view, there is absolutely no place for obscenity laws in modern society. They were tossed upon the pyre of history in the 1960s alongside such barbarism as segregation and their resurrection by the federal government in 2005 is nothing less that social regression. It is a crime to posses and distribute real child pornography because those pictures violate the privacy of the children depicted. A cartoon has no privacy rights. This is pure thought crime. Its also a hole that has no bottom. If obscenity prosecutions are ignored in this context they'll spread to other contexts, consuming and banning as much as they can until their progress is halted.

4. Because there is no limit to what obscenity laws might prevent, WE have to decide where to draw the line. If we are unwilling to express offense at convictions for obscenity in this context, when and where will we express offense? In my view, there is a bright line that you can draw that says that ideas themselves, no matter how offensive, should not be a crime to express. I'm comfortable with that line. Holding that line means opposing this conviction. A conviction on child pornography possession ought to have been enough here. The overzealousness here serves no good.

Child porn cartoon conviction upheld - MSNBC Wire Services- msnbc.com

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

This is completely mind boggling. They went on to charge the girl and her father with resisting arrest... because they fought back when three plain clothes men tried to drag her into an unmarked van...

More here...

Houston - Hair Balls - Police Get The Wrong House In Galveston, Allegedly Assault 12-Year-Old Girl

This collection is very interesting. Don't miss part 2 and part 3.

The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com