The reason that you've having trouble is that you don't know anything and you're not working very hard.

How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

Well, its that time of year again. MemeStreams is now handling about twice as much traffic as we where in 2003. There was a large, sustained jump of traffic around the Mike Lynn/Cisco fiasco. Some of this probably consists of actual readers, but a fair amount relates to the increase in our page rank due to inbound links from prominent websites.

Unfortunately, more page rank means more attention from referral spammers. A lot of our traffic consists of robots attempting to show up in aggregated statistics pages like the one linked here. These guys have been hitting us for years to no avail, and they just keep on coming.

You'll also notice a bunch of interesting new statistics that Rattle set up after he made session layer changes in mid-year to support them. They might tell you something about how much traffic your individual blog generates, if you are one of the top posters.

Happy New Year!

Statistics for memestreams.net (2005)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Want some advice for 2006? Well, look no further. Illegal Art placed suggestion boxes in California and New York and invited passers-by to offer a word (or two) of guidance.

A selection:

NEVER give a gun to a duck

Fish closer to the shore

Listen to some old school PUNK ROCK

Your Suggestion Here

What really blows my mind is how simple and obvious MakeBot is. In short, MakeBot is an IM chat bot - it looks like any other IM buddy.

John Battelle's mind blows over hackerish IM bots that talk to RSS feeds. I'm not sure how mind blowing this is, as people have been doing this stuff on IRC for years, but maybe it will inspire someone out there to do a project.... It might be a nice way to avoid dealing with crappy web browsers in phones, but MemeStreams works rather well on my sidekick...

John Battelle's Searchblog: What Happens When You Mashup RSS, IM, and Publishing Services?

Former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has harnessed the Internet in his long-running feud with the UK Government. A forthcoming book covering his time as ambassador is currently being blocked by the Foreign Office, which has demanded he remove references to two documents from the book and his web site. Murray has responded by publishing the documents in full there, and by encouraging bloggers to disseminate the documents as widely as possible.

Boing Boing: Ignoring UK ban, bloggers publish leaked torture memos

Within months of the government-run "Association of Kazakh IT Companies" getting control of Kazakhstan's internet domain, it shut down the website of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen (best known as Ali G). The site at www.borat.kz featured another of Cohen's comic creations, Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist. It was removed from the Internet.

Why? The president of the organisation said it was so the comic "can't bad-mouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name". If you want an example of government-owned and run censorship on the internet, you'll be hard pushed to find a clearer example.

In principal I think governments should control their ccTLDs, but this is what happens. I think Kazakhstan is in the wrong, but its to be expected.

Linked in this story is another story about Iraq's ccTLD that is interesting. The previous owners of the domain were sent to prison for selling computer parts through a broker to Lybia and Syria. They really got nailed because one of their investors was Musa Marzuq, who is connected with Hamas. The U.S. alleges that this computer company was intended as a funding source for Hamas. Google provides a thick and interesting web here. The Council on American Islamic Relations called the convictions unfair, but there seems to be a number of direct links between them and the computer company. The people running the company also seem to have been connected to charities that were funnelling money to terrorist organizations.

Check this bio of one of the company's founders. A well educated technology guy who has been in the US for decades. Someone you could imagine doing business with... And apparently his business paid someone who planned terrorist attacks in Israel!

It is amazing and troubling to ponder how deeply integrated some of these people are into our society. Did this guy know about all of the activities of the charities he helped start? Did he realize his cousin and co-investor was married to someone who was planning terrorist attacks? Did he contemplate the fact that by generating money in his business he was helping fund her husband's activities? If this guy hired you to do consulting work would you have suspected this connection and turned him down? Why would someone who spent so much of his life developing communications tools that contribute to understanding get involved in business with someone who is killing innocent people?

ICANN and ccTDLs: For great justice?

What police found inside this Trousdale County cave led to the biggest pot bust in Middle Tennessee history.

Underground drugs cave pictures

It's time to relive 2005's biggest spoken gaffes.

Wired News: 2005 Foot-in-Mouth Awards

I read Daily Kos only occasionally, so I just came across the post "A Little Bit of Monarchy" by Armando on the NSA surveillance program that includes some criticism of my long post last week. Armando's post is a week old, but the Daily Kos gets a jazillion readers, so I thought I would respond and explain Armando's misunderstanding. (Plus, I believe Charles Krauthammer may have had the same misunderstanding, so maybe it's a widespread misconception.)

Apparently, partisans across the spectrum have failed to understand Orin Kerr's analysis of the NSA surveillance program, so he has posted a clarification. I'm posting it here both because it seems to be a response to Krauthammer's nutball essay in the WaPo that I flamed, but also because who knows who else has missed this point (either accidentally or intentionally).

Here is my shortened but extended explanation:
No, the words legal and constitutional do not mean the same thing.
Yes, its possible for something to be illegal and constitutional at the same time.
If its illegal, its illegal, even if its constitutional. Its still illegal.
Doing something illegal is not quite as bad as doing something unconstitutional, but its still bad.
In this case there is an arguement that the law making the action illegal might be unconstitutional, but that arguement is very weak.
There is an arguement that the action might not be illegal, but that arguement is also weak.
Anyone who trumpets this analysis as a clear vindication of the President isn't paying attention.

The Volokh Conspiracy - No Monarchy Here:

This is horrible! To the best of my knowledge, the Nun-Bun is Nashville's only relic. Not to mention, BongoJava is my primary Nashville hangout. I take this as a personal affront.

We must catch the culprit(s). For great justice!

"My gut feeling is that it's destroyed," said Bob Bernstein, the owner of Bongo Java coffee shop, where the bun had been on display for nearly 10 years. "Someone took it, destroyed it and it's the last we'll hear of it."

Someone broke into the Belmont Boulevard coffeehouse yesterday morning, apparently with the sole purpose of stealing the pious pastry. Bills and loose change in charity-donation containers near the bun's glass display case were untouched, Bernstein said.

"They went right for the bun," he said. "What the heck they are going to do with it, I can't imagine. It's sure not something anyone would eat. I hope they do eat it. It will teach them a lesson."

"It's weird," Bernstein said. "You laugh about it a little bit, but it's an empty feeling. It's like the end of an era."

BongoJava Nun Bun stolen!