The best code in the world can be foiled by a single bug. One careless line of code can crash an entire program.

Lawrence Lessig calls laws "East Coast Code," and it only takes a few buggy laws to strangle freedom and innovation in technology. Laws like the DMCA, the Hollings Bill, and the CDA threaten to put the American technology juggernaut up on blocks.

AOTC has researched the sponsors of eight bad Internet laws and compiled a list of their most prolific campaign contributors. These laws were written and sponsored by a tiny handful of lawmakers, backed by a tiny handful of wealthy financiers. These bad coders and their backers have done more damage to computing, the Internet and freedom than all the virus authors, spammers and crackers combined.

The laws that will define the information age

] "The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday over the
] constitutionality of a California sentencing law that put
] a man who shoplifted children's videocassettes in
] prison until 2046 and gave another man a life sentence
] for taking three golf clubs. Their sentences are due to
] California's three-strikes-you're-out law,
] which has been challenged as cruel and unusual
] punishment. The law requires tough sentences for repeat
] offenders."

Justices debate three-strikes law

Stowbari wrote:
] I got back home from Nashville late last night and now I have
] to tell everyone about it! In case you didn't already know, I
] went to the PhreakNIC hacker convention. There were some great
] talks and plenty of computer stuff to look at, but the best
] part was the people.

Phreaknic was really great. Its so awesome to have so many friends in the same place at the same time. It was quite cool to walk into the con on Saturday morning and see Tron playing silently on the big screen behind someone giving a talk. Mad style points for that, whoever is responsible. There was some drama and theft lameness, but overall I had a blast.

Old-school Memestreams people will note that there are a lot of new users. I gave a talk on the site at the con and passed out 200 buttons. I hope that the new people find the site interesting. Its a little much for the existing community to get a major code update and a large influx of new people at the same time, but hopefully the chaos here will subside in a week or so. I'm very busy, but I will post details about the new features as soon as I can.

RE: 11/4/02 - Back from PhreakNIC

] What I really need you to do is to talk to your constituents and
] find out where the American people want that line between security
] and liberty to be.

I'll modify this post after I've had time to think about this.

NSA director's testimony to the joint intelligence committee

You should see new features everywhere. I was really in a hurry to get this code working before Phreaknic, and I cut a few corners. I'll be uncutting them over the next week. If you find bugs, please tell me.

I will post more about the new feature set on Monday. For now, check stuff out and play with it. Most of it should be self explanetory.

"He's a guy that goes around the world 80 million times, comes back and still works at the studio right there in Queens. That says it all right there."

MTV.com - News - Friends Remember Jam Master Jay

This is why no one ever throws out an Apple ][.

Strongbad is haunted by his old computer...

" This Halloween, Dracula and Frankenstein's monster seem positively cuddly. To inspire some real fear, try dressing up as one of these current and former chief executives. Click on the images for a full-size, printer-friendly color mask. Now that's scary. "

Forbes.com: CEO Halloween Masks

"The fact that we're having this discussion at all is a symptom of the polarizing effect that Bush and his top dogs have had on the United States since assuming office and even more so in the hard-right free-for-all that followed the Sept. 11 attacks."

Ted Rall IS the mainstream voice of American communism, and as with all political extremes, unsubstantiated paranoid conspiracy theories are par for the course on ANY day, regardless of any "polarizing effect" offered by the current environment. The radical left is almost indistinguishable from the radical right, especially in this regard.

Having said that, I *LOVE* paranoid conspiracy theories, and this is a particularily GOOD one. A political link to the Ron Brown plane crash! A missing black box! This is the stuff that the Art Bell show is made of! So, I heartily recommend this one. Imagine if its true! What can we expect come 2004? Oh, the drama!

Yahoo! News - THE (POSSIBLE) ASSASSINATION OF PAUL WELLSTONE

"What do you call the act of covering a house or area in front of a house with toilet paper?"

A vaugely interesting survey of dialect differences. What is really lacking is interpretation. Some are starkly north/south issues. Others are hard to say. Some might be related to particular european groups or particular marketing campaigns. (Freeway??)

I read an interesting article a few years about about class differences in the US impacting dialect. Do you have a living room or a den? Do you do the laundry to do you do washes? I didn't see either of those in this survey.

Dialect Survey Results