Elonka wrote:
Works for me. If they want a timetable, there should be a timetable. If they want us to stay, we stay. If they want us to leave, we leave. It's their country, and if the democratically-elected leaders make a request of us, we should honor it. It's their call.

This is one of the most rational things I think I have ever read thus far about the Iraq war. Frankly, they are our allies now. If they request our assistance in dealing with the insurgency then we would be remiss to fail to offer it. We may not have been in the right to create this mess in the first place. However, as they are a democratic government, its now a different deal. The Iraq War just became something it hasn't yet been ... moral.

RE: CNN.com - Iraqi leaders call for withdrawal schedule

Last week OSM (Open Source Media) launched to what some are calling an odd start. Most notably naming a controversy has ensued with Christopher Lydon's public radio show Open Source, a production of Open Source Media, Inc..

This is kind of entertaining.

Christopher Lydon runs a NPR program called "Open Source Radio." It is produced by Brendan Greeley, who ran the podcasting panel at BlogNashville.

They have a trademark on the term "Open Source Media."

This is a bit troubling. Open Source is a generic term referring to a type of software. I can see how in the context of the radio dial a show called "Open Source Radio" might be unique, but you are taking a generic term and recontextualizing it. If you go back to the original context (I.E. the net) you're going to cause confusion and conflict. This is particularly true if you are trying to be the only guy on the entire Internet calling yourself "Open Source Media" or publishing podcasts with that name. Not to mention the fact that trademarking that term kind of misses the point.

It was, of course, inevitable that someone else would come along on the Internet and try to make something else called "Open Source Media." As it turns out, its Glen Reynolds and his merry band of Republican bloggers. (I don't think his project is designed to be partisan but it remains to be seen how it will pan out.) Reynold's "Open Source Media" also happens to have nothing at all to do with software, and at the outset apparently had some unfriendly copyright terms associated with it as well, which kind of misses the point.

So of course a battle ensues between "Open Source Media" and "Open Source Media" over who is allowed to use that name, not on the radio, but on the net, where the term is in common use and really has little to do with anything either of these people are doing. You'd think, you know, these guys would have bumped into each other at BlogNashville or online at some point before all this went down. Whats more, one wonders what the hell either FM radio and "Carnival of trying-to-increase-the-Google-Rank-of-my-partisan-allies" has to do with real many to many media. The end result is a lot of people trying very hard to look savvy and failing very miserably at it.

Read this article on the Open Source Media launch party. Its worth it.

Slashdot | 'Open Source Media' vs 'Open Source Media, Inc'

People don’t engage with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other.

Douglas Rushkoff on Memes

"They're avoiding what the Supreme Court would say about American citizens. That's an issue the administration did not want to face," said Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor who specializes in national security. "There's no way that the Supreme Court would have ducked this issue."

They charged him. Fine. Thats what I wanted.

However, by raising the specter of "I don't have to charge him" for so long, and then being unwilling to haul that claim before the court for analysis, the door is open. I'm not particularly worried about detentions today. I would have liked a precident that clarified that this was not legal today, so that it can be referenced when the day comes that I am concerned about the detentions. I won't have that. Those future inappropriate detentions will reference this episode, and they may do so in front of a court which is more sympathetic to executive power.

The administration has presented a platform for tyrants to stand on. I pray it doesn't have legs, but it will be a very long time before anyone knows the answer to that question.

Administration blinks on Padilla

Search is big business, and search functionality increasingly shapes the information society. Yet how the law treats search is still up for grabs, and with it, the power to dominate the next generation of the online world. How will this potential to wield control affect search engine companies, their advertisers, their users, or the information they index? What will search engines look like in the future, and what is the role of regulators in this emerging market? This symposium will map out the terrain of search engine law & policy.

If you're out in the tri-state area this might be worth a look.

Yale Information Society Project: Regulating Search

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.

There is a new case up on Papers Please. This is probably the most cut and dry of the three.

Papers Please : Deborah Davis

Delko witnesses a bank robbery and the CSIs soon discover that the culprits are playing out the action from the videogame "Urban Hellraisers" on the streets of Miami. As they score points for each crime committed, the CSIs must discover what consists of getting to the next level in the game in order to stop the culprits before they strike again.

On the one hand, I think this will be a fun episode. On the other hand...

U: Oh my god that sucked so much. I'm terribly sorry for anyone who bothered to watch it based on my recommendation.

CSI: Miama tonight is based on GTA

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with two leading national class action law firms, today filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs.

EFF sues SONY

Best domain names ever!

The Volokh Conspiracy - There's a Reason That We Put Breaks Between Words:

Gross observes that the changes recommended by a commission appointed by the President will have much greater negative effects on taxpayers in Democratic regions. Its as if the tax changes are a form of economic gerrymandering whose impact will be to significantly reduce the net take-home pay of (surprise!) Democratic donors.

The politics of taxation