Fucking awesome. I had no idea there were water ducts over 800 feet down.

Cool exhibit.

New York Underground @ nationalgeographic.com

Google took a temporary retreat today in its plan to make available for free countless thousands of copyrighted books without the copyright holders' permissions. It's started displaying the contents of books from its Google Print book-scanning project --- but it's not showing the contents of copyrighted books.

Jesus H. Monkeyballs, shut the fuck up Preston Gralla. This dude's on a crusade as if Google's planning to post the full text of each book on a web page. There is simply NO FUCKING WAY someone's gonna reconstruct whole books out of this. And if they do figure out a way, *FINE* then we have a problem.

He's not even arguing that it's a misuse because they plan to profit off of someone elses work (although i think that's kind of a stretch of an argument in the first place). He's actually concerned that this is like a Napster for books where no one will ever have to buy anything ever again.

Totally asinine. Fuck the authors guild and the major publishers for the same reasons that I say Fuck RIAA and the MPAA. Rather than finding some common ground with new technology they want to cement the current business stucture for eternity. It won't fucking work, and the longer and harder you fight, the worse off EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is.

Networking Pipeline | Blog | Google Retreats In Book Scanning Project

He said the natural "arrogance" of second-term presidents is exacerbated by a fundamentalism under Bush that causes many of his supporters and those who work in his administration to believe that "I am right because I am close to God (and) anybody who disagrees with me is inherently wrong, and therefore inferior."

Carter acknowledged that both he and Bush proclaim their Christian faith as part of their governing philosophy, but the similarity ends there.

"I don't have any doubt that he is very sincere about his Christian faith," Carter said of Bush. "There are some differences in interpretation. ... I have a commitment to worship the Prince of Peace, not the prince of pre-emptive war. I believe that Christ taught us to give special attention to the plight of the poor."

Bush, he said, "has committed himself to extol the advantages of the rich."

Jimmy Carter drops some science, so to speak.

USATODAY.com - Breaking tradition, Carter rips Bush's policies

This flickr user wrote a little program to merge 50 random images that match a specific tag... In this one i memed, he shows four such merged creations, generated with "winter", "spring", "summer" and "autumn". Click thru all 12 though... it's a really interesting set.

50 people experience the seasons

On January 7, 2005, President Bush announced the establishment of a bipartisan panel to advise on options to reform the tax code to make it simpler, fairer, and more pro-growth to benefit all Americans.

The Advisory Panel will submit to the Secretary of the Treasury a report containing revenue neutral policy options for reforming the Federal Internal Revenue Code as soon as practicable, but not later than November 1, 2005. These options should:

* simplify Federal tax laws to reduce the costs and administrative burdens of compliance with such laws;
* share the burdens and benefits of the Federal tax structure in an appropriately progressive manner while recognizing the importance of homeownership and charity in American society; and
* promote long-run economic growth and job creation, and better encourage work effort, saving, and investment, so as to strengthen the competitiveness of the United States in the global marketplace.

The report is out. I haven't read it. Memeing to start some discussion once people have some relevant analyses. -k

President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform

Security company F-Secure says it is expecting to see viruses exploiting the rootkit technology used in Sony's DRM software anytime now.

F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypp�nen said that the company was already in discussions with Sony before the news broke on Monday, but because of the huge security risks that this information poses those talks were behind closed doors.

'We didn't go public with the info at the time as we were worried with the implications (especially with the info on how outsiders can hide files which have names starting with "$sys$"),' he said. 'We're waiting for the first virus which uses filenames like that.'

[ And we move one step further... now Sony feels they have the right to root my box in order to keep me from ripping audio tracks. This is all going to end badly for everyone. There's gonna have to be a compromise at some point, because the road paved with heavy duty DRM leads to the utter destruction of the industry, in my opinion. And that's not just the music industry, but the better part of the entire entertainment industry unless lessons are learned. Ridiculous. -k]

PC Pro: News: Sony rootkit DRM to spark copycat viruses

1 Some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection.

2 It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate.

3 Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards.

4 Access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network.

5 Supervisory across to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords.

6 The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy.

7 One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail.

8 GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel.

Holy shit!

Daily Kos: Nonpartisan GAO Confirms Security Flaws in Voting Machines

Danger Mouse and MF Doom are two of the hottest names in indie hip-hop right now, so it's saying something that their collaboration, "The Mouse and the Mask," is every bit as good as it was expected to be

It is a *lot* of fun. Hip-hop interacts with Adult Swim characters.

[ I've been spending a good bit of time listening to this one... it's great. The indie rap scene is great these days, and this record is as good an example of any. Clever beats, intelligent lyrics and lots of entertainment. -k]

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Audiofile

Its worse than we could have every imagined.

Legal experts consider the 55-year-old Alito so ideologically similar to Justice Antonin Scalia that he has earned the nickname "Scalito." (Profile of his legal resume)

In 1991, in one of his more well-known decisions, he was the only dissenting voice in a 3rd Circuit ruling striking down a Pennsylvania law that required women to notify their husbands if they planned to get an abortion.

He also wrote the opinion in 1999 in a case that said a Christmas display on city property did not violate separation of church and state doctrines because it included a large plastic Santa Claus as well as religious symbols.

Oh, wait, no...that's about what I imagined.

Regrettably, I was not able to meme the original version of this story in which poll results about American's desires for the next justice were explained. 46% said that overturning Roe V Wade was a bad idea. Here's a guy that thinks Mormons are living the good life, and he can't possibly represent the 46% of people who don't want to chuck Roe V Wade.

[ Is there any more doubt that Miers was a sacrifice nominataion? A bright, flashing, distracting, well-orchestrated diversion? This is the candidate that was always going to be nominated... they just needed to play with the news cycles a bit first.

And yes, he's not so great. -k]

CNN.com - Bush nominates Alito to Supreme Court - Oct 31, 2005

Ok, let’s go over this together. The Institute for Bank Innovation (ibi) in Germany has developed PSYLock — a biometrical means of identifying us based on the unique way we type on a keyboard.

I actually don't care about the technology, byt why the hell is their logo flipping me off? Jerk.

PSYLock identifies you based on your unique typing skills - Engadget - www.engadget.com