Trillions and Zillions of Ideas.

Consciousness is a Ball.

Ideas are like fish. Originality is just the ideas you caught.

David Lynch, on Ideas (and TM)

Rogers Cadenhead tells THREAT LEVEL on Monday he has taken down works from his Drudge Retort blog that The Associated Press has deemed an infringement of the nation's oldest and largest newsgathering operation's copyrights.

The AP recently sent seven takedown notices to his social news site for the offense of reposting a few sentences or more and reprinting their headlines, sometimes linking those sentences and headlines to the full stories generated from the New York-based media concern.

Drudge Retort Episode Highlights 'Fair Use' Uncertainties | Threat Level from Wired.com

Both men had ample warning they were prime candidates for heart attacks. Russert had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease, his doctor told MSNBC. Fixx had a terrifying family history, including a father who had a fatal heart attack in his early 40s.

And both took steps to reduce their odds of the same fate. Russert's doctor, Michael Newman, prescribed medication and exercise. He told MSNBC that Russert performed well on a stress test in April. Fixx, who reached the height of his fame before cholesterol-lowering drugs were widely available, changed his diet, laced up his running shoes and ate up the miles.

Russert death shows massive heart attack isn't easy to predict - USATODAY.com

In America we are currently living in a Kindergarchy, under rule by children. People who are raising, or have recently raised, or have even been around children a fair amount in recent years will, I think, immediately sense what I have in mind. Children have gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments, their right relationship with parents and grandparents. For the past 30 years at least, we have been lavishing vast expense and anxiety on our children in ways that are unprecedented in American and in perhaps any other national life. Such has been the weight of all this concern about children that it has exercised a subtle but pervasive tyranny of its own. This is what I call Kindergarchy: dreary, boring, sadly misguided Kindergarchy.

This is an interesting, if long, perspective. It seems fogeyish sort of. We seem to be near the opposite end of the spectrum from 1970, when latch key kids were mostly left to their own devices. Both extremes produce bad results.

The Kindergarchy

ubernoir wrote:

Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files.

For years, both kinds of Web surfers have paid the same price for access. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.

VERY good discussion of this on the Interesting People list right now. See recent posts particularly the ones with "interesting" in the subject line.

RE: Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

The suicide of a man who was forcibly returned to China by Australian immigration authorities has prompted calls by refugee advocates for better treatment of people seeking protection visas.

China dissident commits suicide after forcible deportation - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Insiders are not, after all, the main threat to networks, a detailed new analysis of real-world data breaches has concluded.

Verizon's 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, which looked at 500 breach incidents over the last four years, contradicts the growing orthodoxy that insiders, rather than external agents, represent the most serious threat to network security at most organizations.

Seventy-three percent of the breaches involved outsiders, 18 percent resulted from the actions of insiders, with business partners blamed for 39 percent -- the percentages exceed 100 percent due to the fact that some involve multiple breaches, with varying degrees of internal or external involvement.

I've been wary of "business partners" for years... which is why they ALWAYS get firewalled onto their own segment. However, many companies who claim to be security vendors, advocate allowing them directly into the internal and server segments. Scary... and stupid.

PC World - Business Center: Insider Threat Exaggerated, Study Says

This really is a $499 ethernet cable. Yes, the stupid little cord you plug into the back of your computer to get online. These, however, are for audiophiles, a demanding client vector requiring the suspension of all faculties of reason. It contains "high purity copper."

This is why we have a housing bubble.

Ak-dl1: The $499 Ethernet Cable

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE
Circa 2nd Century A.D.
Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with a distinct symbol on each of its faces

Whow. The Ancient Romans had D-20s.

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE

China denied accusations by two U.S. lawmakers that it hacked into congressional computers, saying Thursday that as a developing country it wasn't capable of sophisticated cybercrime.

There are no infidels in Baghdad!

China denies hacking into US computers - Yahoo! News