AHAHAHAH!

Awesome!

Coming Soon : Whores of Warcraft

it would seem Steorn, claimers of such an absurdity, has already launched a PR campaign to circumvent naysayers such as ourselves. In fact, the Irish tech company issued an ad in The Economist announcing a challenge to 12 of the worlds' finest scientists -- to be chosen by them (hey, is Hwang Woo-suk available?) -- to step forward and disprove their infinite clean energy technology. And once their technology isn't disproved -- and they obviously believe that it won't be disproved -- they'll begin licensing it to the world's energy companies (and charitably freely licensing it for rural water purification and electricity generation).

Bullshit ahoy!

Steorn: inventors of infinite energy, destroyers of laws of thermodynamics? - Engadget

“Consequently, the court finds defendants’ arguments that they cannot defend this case without the use of classified information to be disingenuous and without merit,” she wrote.

NYT article linked for brevity. Full decision here.

The decision basically follows the contours of the open letter to Congress from prominent legal scholars from February.

Some favorite quotes:

All of the above Congressional concessions to Executive need and to the exigencies of our present situation as a people, however, have been futile. The wiretapping program here in litigation has undisputedly been continued for at least five years, it has undisputedly been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title III, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The President of the United States is himself created by that same Constitution.

Basically she is saying that FISA balances Article II and Amendment 4, and the President's argument that Article II makes FISA unconstitutional, or, at least, ignorable, disregards Amendment 4, and thus is obviously incorrect.

I also like this:

As Justice Warren wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967):

Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending
those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would
indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would
sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile. Id. at 264.

Perhaps this point of view is now considered "liberal." Conservatives tend to define the republic in personal identity terms rather then in terms of the system it implements.

Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping - New York Times

Just check out the pic.

Nice.

The Katherine Harris Campaign, Summed Up - Wonkette

Here are the new rules for passengers in the United States:

* No liquids or gels are allowed in carry-on baggage. This includes beverages, shampoo, toothpaste, lotions, sunscreen, or creams. Such items should be put into checked luggage, consumed or discarded.
* Exceptions are granted for infant formula, breast milk or juice for infants traveling. Prescription drugs and insulin are also allowed with proper identification.
* The government recommends that passengers pack light to speed up the process of going through security. Long delays are being reported.
* Carry-on bags are being checked at the gate.

[ Sounds like my DC flights this past weekend could've ended up a lot, LOT more annoying.

I tend to travel with nothing *but* a carry on. I don't like to fuck around checking bags unless it's truly necessary, so me and my REI pack is pretty much how I roll.

Of course, that means my toiletry kit, including, of the items on this list : shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, toothpaste, contact solution, and sometimes a bit of hair gel or mousse.

So apparently now I'm supposed to buy all that stuff at my destination. That's super. Also, that last bullet seems to indicate that the bags are getting gate checked regardless... that's another delay to tack on and one I don't quite get if you've already rejected all liquid-carrying bags. *shrug*

I have 3 definite flights coming up in the next 4 months... I guess I better leave that nice toiletries kit in my closet.

I hate to say it, but they're winning in some ways. Everyone's afraid... what more is there to say?

Liquids banned from carry-on bags - MarketWatch

Wow. now that's critical stuff...

Elect Daniel 'The Wig Man' Vovak For United States Senator In Maryland, Republican 2006

Decius wrote:
This font pkg makes ansi fonts work in the terminal.app of osx. Hello my name is timball and I'm addicted to irc.

Put the ASCII.ttf into /Library/Fonts/ then in the terminal.app:

Terminal - Window Settings...
[Display]
Set Font...
All Fonts - New - Regular - 11pt

Set as default if you want it that way... I know I do.

--timball

Decius: Thank You! If someone had done this, say, 20 years ago macs might have actually been useful for BBSing and apple might have been in a better place in the market.

[Hm. I guess I might try it. I use courier new, and don't seem to have any problems with much of anything. I'm not that heavy a terminal user, however, to be fair. And I don't use it for IRC.

I do use Visor, because having a terminal at the touch of Command-~ no matter what app i'm using is pretty damn awesome.

-k

RE: ASCII Font

[ Anyone else recall me proposing just such a utility, oh, say, a month or 2 ago?

Yeah. Beat to the punch.

Guess I'll be paying Apple come spring.

*sigh* -k]

Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek - Time Machine

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.) and Apple® today announced that hit programming from CNN, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network is now available for purchase and download on the iTunes® Music Store (www.itunes.com). The new content features such favorites as Cartoon Network’s “Johnny Bravo,” Adult Swim’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and original episodes of the award-winning documentary series “CNN Presents,” all available for viewing on a computer or iPod®.

At $2 a show is this reasonable? Yes, actually, I think it is. If I add up the cost of my Tivo subscription and full cable, and divide by two, I think the resulting number is higher then the amount of television I watch a month. As more programs get added to this thing, I can just pay per view whenever I'm bored and I want to watch something. Television, for me, is now dead. I might miss it on days when, like, airplanes have hit the world trade center, but I'll bet I'll find other ways to get the information I want.

Only real thing that I'm waiting on is MTV. I want my MTV. Not bullshit MTV with the Real World and all that crap. The old MTV. With music videos all the time, and the occaisonal extremely strange animated feature. Maybe what I really want is MuchMusic. Whatever. I want it to just stream to me all the time. I don't want to pay per click or choose things from a menu, and I don't want to have to install a satellite system in order to watch it. Where is my MTV? Why is there no market for this? Kids these days. God!

New TBS, Inc. Network Programming from CNN, Adult Swim & Cartoon Network Now Available on the iTunes Music Store

Could you write a good image recognizer for a 100 MHz mobile phone processor with 1 MB heap, 320x240 image, on a poorly-optimized Java stack? It needs to locate and read two-dimensional barcodes made up of square modules which might be no more than a few pixels in size. We had to do that in order to establish Semacode, a local start up company that makes a software barcode reader for cell phones.

God Damn It!

[I'm confused. Why are you angry? Because you wanted to do this? -k]

Semacode - Image recognition on mobile camera phones