] President Bush and everyone in Washington should screen
] Michael Moore's controversial anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit
] 9/11," a group of military and 9/11 families said
] Wednesday.

I would pay to see a documentary based around Bush and his cabinet watching this movie. The pressuring to get them to watch it, the reactions of their faces during the film, and so on.

[ Good call... that would be truly something. I bet you'd catch W asleep. -k]

1010 WINS: Families Call On Bush To See Moore Movie

Bahahahahaha! I'm about as likely to downgrade to their mp3 player as I am to go back to a PC. Ain't gonna happen Mikey...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL - news) is running a promotion that gives customers $100 off on some of its Dell Digital Jukebox music players if customers send in to the No. 1 personal computer maker their old Apple iPods to be recycled, the company said on Wednesday.
The mail-in rebate offer applies to Dell's 15-gigabyte music player, which carries a regular price of $199, said the Round Rock, Texas, company. The player has a battery life of about 20 hours, about two times that of Apple Computer Inc.'s (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) market-leading iPod, Dell said.

[ Indeed. I hear people deride the Cult of Mac psychology and the way in which Mac users tend to see their Apple kit as part of a lifestyle, whereas the pragmatic PC users treat their systems as tools. I'm no zealot... i believe in the right tool for the job, which isn't always gonna have an apple on it. But for me, it *is* a lifestyle choice. It's me saying, "I value style, design and the experience every bit as much as i value the end product of my efforts." It's why i'd have art on the wall of my home, if i could afford it, and nice stylish furniture... because i desire more than the plain pragmatic use of a wall as a separator. Maybe I'm pretentious, but it's a quality of life thing, and yeah, my computer, which i use for a very noticable percentage of my life, needs to reflect those same features, if it's within my means. Fortunately, my powerbook gives me great pleasure to use, beyond getting the basic task done. -k]

Dell Offers $100 Rebate for Old Apple iPods

"Do you boys have any idea what part of town you're in?"

Nice to see Phreaknic is returning to the land of hookers and drug dealers.

Remember You *must* deliver the package

Phreaknic: Ghetto Hotel part II.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A California man who collected 1 million pennies for a bet is having a hard time cashing in on his $10,000 fortune.

Ron England has amassed 3.6 tons of copper in his garage in the Los Angeles suburb of Granada Hills after making a bet with his brother 30 years ago that he could collect 1 million pennies.

But neither the U.S. Mint, the U.S. Comptroller of Currency, coin collectors nor the local bank is interested in cashing in his stash -- at least without a charge.

"I've been working seriously for the past two weeks to get rid of these pennies," England, 60, told the Los Angeles Daily News. "It's kind of frustrating. Nobody will take them without charging me."

What's worse. England is still waiting for his brother to honor his side of the bet -- a meal in Paris.

"I don't remember making the wager. Am I still good for it? I'm not going to answer that question," Russ England told the Daily News.

Penny for your thoughts? How about a million pennies?

] Authorities charged Councilman with violating the Wiretap
] Act, which governs unauthorized interception of
] communication. But the court found that because the
] e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM,
] of the defendant's computer system when he copied them,
] he did not intercept them while they were in transit over
] wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even
] though he copied the messages before the intended
] recipients read them. The court ruled that the messages
] were in storage rather than transit.

[ Is this total bullshit, or should they have gone after this guy under a different guise? What if the guy had a clickthru when people signed up that any email coming to that address may be read and that they have no expectation of privacy on that system?

Seems to me like he should have done the latter, if indeed he didn't, and that this interpretation of the law is exceedingly narrow, and wrong. But, of course, I'm no lawyer. -k]

E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

] One friend I know describes working in the media as
] shoveling coal for Satan. That's about right. A worker in
] a tampon factory has dignity: He just uses his sweat to
] make a product, a useful product at that, and doesn't lie
] to himself about what he does. In this business we make
] commodities for sale and, for the benefit of our
] consciences and our egos, we call them ideas and truth.
] And then we go on the lecture circuit. But in 99 cases
] out of 100, the public has more to learn about humanity
] from the guy who makes tampons.
]
] I'm off on this tangent because I'm enraged by the
] numerous attempts at verbose, pseudoliterary, "nuanced"
] criticism of Moore this week by the learned priests of
] our business. (And no, I'm not overlooking this
] newspaper.) Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible
] to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the
] facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he
] wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of
] us had any balls at all.
]
] If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush
] press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it
] might have made a difference.

[ Awesome. Taibbi lays down some smack on lazy journalism, pulling no punches. Hear hear. -k]

NYPress: SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN: Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft, calls Moore a coward.

] This quality-control breakdown has resulted in agencies
] classifying too much information and, in some cases,
] classifying information that by law shouldn't be stamped
] "secret" in the first place. Implying that the government
] classified the reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to
] cover up the scandal, Leonard says:
]
] [I]n no case can information be classified in order
] to conceal violations of law or to prevent embarrassment
] to a person, organization or agency. %u2026 Specifically,
] "exactly from whom are we keeping the information
] secret?" In the case of detainee abuse, we are obviously
] not keeping it secret from the detainees%u2014they
] experience the abuse and interrogation techniques first
] hand. And I assume we do not expect them to sign a
] nondisclosure agreement upon their release from custody
] based upon the premise that they had been exposed to
] classified information when they are subjected to abusive
] techniques.

Our Privacy Czar says the classified system is breaking down in both directions. Link to full speech: http://tinyurl.com/3d3jh

[ Interesting article...

I converted the link to the full speech to a tinyurl, because it was buggering the width of the page... tinyurl is your friend. -k]

Too Many Secrets, Says the Secrecy Czar - J. William Leonard frets about the breakdown of the classification system. By Jack Shafer

This report presents a summary of a workshop held to explore how nanotechnology might enable advances in sensing and locating technology. It includes an overview of security technologies, and discussions of systems, natural chemical/biological tags, passive chemical/biological tags, and radio/radar/optical tags.

Nanotechnology for the Intelligence Community

An off-duty MTSU Police officer says he was injured Wednesday trying to stop a shoplifter.
Sergeant Matt Foster knows he is lucky to be alive after he was dragged several feet by a car. 
The MTSU Police officer left work Wednesday afternoon and went shopping at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on South Rutherford Boulevard in Murfreesboro.  He was still wearing his uniform. 
...
Since Foster was off duty, his employer cannot pick up his medical costs.  And Wal-Mart told him it will not pay those costs either.  So, for now, Foster is paying for anything not covered by his insurance.   
He hopes to return to work in a couple weeks but it could take much longer.

Nice appreciative company that Wal Mart.... Just one more reason I am glad I don't give them ANY patronage. Big impersonal retailers that price cut to push out any small business competition are a part of many problems with this company. In this case, you get what you pay for... Nothing.

[ Hear hear. Fuck Wal Mart. -k]

MTSU Police Officer Dragged By Shoplifting Suspect's Car

] Leading experts are meeting this week to take a longing
] look at the idea of a space elevator. The idea is a
] stretch, no doubt, with plenty of work to do before
] travelers have push-button, top floor access to space.

[ I've wanted to see one of these since the first time i happened across one in a scifi novel, when i was maybe 12. Even then, it was obvious that we'd never see it with conventional tech, concrete, steel, etc. But that was before nanotubes. As the article states, there's a lot to do, and some serious tech advancments needed, but the payoff is absolutely enormous. Here's to the diamond age. -k]

Space Elevator: Momentum Building