] By an 8-0 vote, the justices overturned a controversial
] decision by a U.S. appeals court in California that
] reciting the phrase amounted to a violation of
] church-state separation.
]
] The ruling by the justices was based on the technicality
] that Newdow could not bring the case before the court
] because he did not have legal control over his daughter,
] on whose behalf he was arguing.

Bullet dodged...

Supreme Court Decides Pledge Case on Technicality

] Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to
] politics and technology.

I don't agree with that assertion at all, but Politech has seen quite a redesign...

Politech completely redesigned as a weblog

] Jerusalem used to be the direction in which the prophet
] Muhammad and the first Muslims turned to pray. In time,
] Muhammad changed the direction, or qibla, and Muslims
] began to pray facing Mecca, as they do today. All the
] Bush White House did was change the qibla of American
] Middle East policy from Jerusalem to Baghdad. While the
] present clique of White House ideologues assumed that a
] safe, stable, and democratic Iraq would reshape the
] region, Zinni, Brzezinski, and company still maintain
] that the peace process is the key. They don't know more
] about the Middle East than the Bush White House; they're
] just angry that someone replaced their absurd reductive
] paradigm with another, equally absurd reductive paradigm.

Good article.

Palestine Policy Paralysis - Face it: There is no -key- to Middle East peace.

Playlists made from free music and audio files...

Webjay - Listener Created Radio

] The UK-based vehicle licence plate manufacturer, Hills
] Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and
] readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in licence
] plates that will automatically and reliably identify
] vehicles in the UK.

More on the license plate tip.

The reference to encryption is interesting. Some digging revealed that these tags have a battery. My assumption was that they are simply choosing codes from a sufficiently large data space such that they are hard to guess, but it looks like I might be wrong. An encryption system could be used such that the tag never provides the same number twice. This would eliminate identity theft by scanning, and it would require that anyone who wanted to use the codes for anything else (parking garage access, toll paying, etc...) would need to subscribe to a network service that would decrypt the tags (thus generating revenue, and a choke point, for the government).

It would be much easier to implement such a system in a license plate then in a drivers license. You can put tags in drivers licenses, but they'll be static, and much easier to steal/fake.

There is a lot of convenience to be had from this technology. There are also "minor" hassles such as getting a warrant check run everytime you drive your car. If they want to find a car in the United States they'll be able to pull up a big screen and see it located. You won't be able to hide. If you steal a car it will get tracked fairly quickley. And good luck borrowing one from a friend. PIs can currently track relationships between people. They'll be watching all your friends cars too...

I think it might be interesting to get an RFID reader and start playing around with the tags in tires. For example you could set up a scanner in your neighborhood and start collecting tag numbers that frequently drive up and down your street. If you get a new one either someone got a new set of tires or someone new is in your neighborhood. I wonder if you can tell anything about the manufacturing date of a tire from its RFID tag? Does anyone know where to get a cheap linux capable RFID scanner?

RFID-enabled license plates to identify UK vehicles : RFID News

] It is commonly said that we are a nation of laws, not
] men. And we are. But beyond the laws, we are also a
] nation of men and women with a common ethic. Some things
] are not American. Torture, for damned sure, is one of
] them.

Whether or not anyone is listening, and probably several years late, a pubic political debate about torture has, in fact, ensued.

A Plunge From the Moral Heights (washingtonpost.com)

] Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago,
] but advances in technology since then have eliminated
] whatever arguments remained. Central planning didn't work
] for the Soviet Union, and it's not working for us. The
] FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good.

Declan's perennial libertarian ranting, but I have to admit that the FCC has made many decisions recently that I don't like.

They should have told the FBI to ask congress about tapping VOIP, and they should have ignored Janet Jackson...

I'm not even so concerned about protecting the "public's" access to the airwaves, as the internet is a far more effective communications system and community organizers who aren't moving to it aren't moving forward at all.

However, I remain unconvinced that such a radical change is going to come out well on all accounts.

Why the FCC should die

] Morale among IT workers has dipped to an all-time low,
] even though demand for certain skills is rising,
] according to a new study from Meta Group.

IT morale drops to all-time low | CNET News.com

] The state plans to test a system on the Ohio Turnpike
] that uses optical scanners to catch criminals and look
] for stolen cars.
]
] The Ohio State Highway Patrol will use two scanners on
] turnpike gates and two scanners in patrol cars for four
] months. The system recognizes license plates registered
] with a national crime database that tracks stolen cars
] and serious crimes.

The license plate ambles closer to it's destiny. Just wait until they put RFID in your driver's license.

nbc4columbus.com - State Tests Anti-Crime Turnpike Scanning System

] VisitorVille employs a graphical, urban metaphor to
] present information about customers' real-time
] Web-traffic flow. A company's entire Web presence is seen
] as an urban or suburban neighborhood, with each
] individual Web page presented as a building. The more
] visitors on a site, the taller the buildings, and the
] brighter the lights on each floor.
]
] Continuing the metaphor, visitors who have found a site
] using popular search engines arrive in the "city" on
] virtual buses emblazoned with their logos.

This is neat. Really neat. Worth looking at. Unfortunately it works by using a web-bug. Their website is slow. Really slow. I don't want to tie the performance of my site to theirs. I don't want their server holding complete logs for my website. I also don't want to pay bling bucks host their software. Nor do I want to put their bug into all of my pages. You'd think they could handle Apache logs. Apache has something like 60% of the market.

Wired News: Website Analysis Isn't a Game