Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don't want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that's under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

Security experts familiar with the cards' radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, described by Chase as "contactless functionality," expressed some concern over the devices' security strength. Some have suggested that they may make it easy for perpetrators to commit fraud or identity theft.

Saw an add for ChaseBlink tonight. This ought to be interesting... Contactless credit card purchases. No signature. No pin. Just waive it over the reader. I can tell you how I'd have designed it, but I would be suprised if there were no vulnerabilities here.

While this is rather elaborate, a computer controlled rfid device connected to increasingly common cellular wireless internet systems relays the transaction to another reader, maybe taped to a chair in a shopping mall foodcourt.

CRM News: RFID : Chase Bank Rolls Out Contactless Credit Cards

We had to do something to honor our friend and co-conspirator Dr.
Gonzo and last time we checked the sign out front said brewery,
so it seemed only right to unleash a tribute beer.

Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo Tribute Beer

Acidus gives Elonka a run for the money. Way to go Acidus!

How scary. And how refreshing.

Make, a new quarterly put out by O'Reilly Media, is a throwback to an earlier time, before personal computers, to the prehistory of geekiness - the age of how-to manuals for clever boys, from the 1920's to the 50's.

The technology has changed, but not the creative impulse. Make's first issue, out in February, explained how to take aerial photographs with a kite, a disposable camera and a rig of Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Silly Putty. It also showed how to build a video-camera stabilizer - a Steadicam, basically - with $14 worth of steel pipes, bolts and washers; how to boost a laptop computer's Wi-Fi signal with foil from an Indian take-out restaurant; and how to read credit card magnetic stripes with a device made with mail-order parts and a glue gun.

Congratulations to Acidus on being the first MemeStreams user to make the New York Times op-ed page. And on a Sunday, no less! (14:59, 14:58, 14:57, ...)

A New Magazine's Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty!

Some day, God willing, the streets will flow with the blood of people who use one of a multitude of unicode apostrophy characters instead of a simple ascii apostrophy in english text. Until that day, we must continue our struggle.

My recent Unicode fix was not sufficient. I converted characters coming in from the bookmartlet into a format which displayed properly in the edit box. Some of these characters managed to make it unmangled from the edit box through the browser form submission and into the database. Others, unfortunately, were lost, somewhere between the browser's form processing code and the perl CGI subsystem they were martyred.

In order to address this I've managed to find a way to trick web browsers into not mangling these characters. They should show up as ampersand codes in the editor, and the correct characters in your blog.

This should eliminate most of the annoyances with unicode characters in memes. It also means that you can meme foreign text such as Polish (ehm, Elonka) or Japanese (see below) and it will look right.

The lame thing is that its really hard to tell what the hell you are editing when you are dealing with foreign language text in the editor. However, as we don't currently have many non-english users this is a problem I'll save for later.

Anyway, as always, lemme know if there is a problem.

(If you are going to steal japanese text from somebody you might as well do it from these guys:)
特許庁ホームページ

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based US Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

"What's changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you. This gets to the importance of the war of ideas."

I'm very happy to see an approach like this to the WoT.

Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Effort

How to make a million dollars is: a) something students are interested in, and b) something I am qualified to talk about.

How to Make a Million Dollars, by Marshall Brain

Intel is fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft has no innovation that drives what Intel must have, which is a use for more processing power. And when they did have one with the Xbox, they went elsewhere.

So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market.

Cringely has a radical vision of the Apple/Intel deal involving cheap commodity Macs...

PBS | I, Cringely . June 9, 2005 - Going for Broke

This is interesting.

Traffic Rank for memestreams.net: 456,843

Not very good...

People who visit this page also visit:

Their list is fairly accurate. I wonder where they are collecting the data...

Related Info for: memestreams.net

This video is a little slow to start up, but worth the wait. Watch it full screen, because you won't believe your eyes otherwise.

Basically, some people have come up with one of the scariest arcade games ever, and are simply waiting for new victims, er players, to step and stick in some coins.

Proof that british people have a strange sense of fun