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"0-9, but it looks like a win to me." - rattle

I read over the justices opinions this afternoon. This was a good ruling.

In short, the warez interface is illegal. If you pin one onto a file distribution protocol, you will be liable for contributory infringement. Everything important about the Sony Betamax case was upheld.

You can can't market your product as an infringement tool without being liable for third-party infringement using your tool. That's reasonable.

[gavel sound]

Court Opinion: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.

Metro cops use confidential informants to target gay chat rooms and lure homosexual men into trading and selling drugs. This undercover operation changed the life of one man who may well be innocent.

Shady informants being used in selective enforcement of drug policy primarily targeting a minority group. Imagine a police department doing that... Shocking.

I think as a partial remedy, they should make the cops continue the operation, but have to do all the phishing themselves. Picture this: A Nashville Metro cop getting caught by another cop at the station while looking at gay dating websites, then promptly getting in a huff and going on about how it was "for work"...

nashvillescene.com | 'Policing Gays'

A camp site is flooded on the first day of the Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, southern England, June 24, 2005. As many as 150,000 people are expected to attend the three-day event which begins on Friday and will be headlined by White Stripes, Coldplay and Basement Jaxx.

... scenes from the music festival from hell.

Glastonbury Music Festival on Yahoo! News Photos

The Edit Profile form has been updated to be less confusing.

A new Change Password form has been added to the site and is available from the configuration menu.

A problem with column width in certain user's profiles has been fixed.

Some of the new user registration pages have been tweaked for clarity. If you don't have an account here at MemeStreams, make one.

This paper by Steven Huybrechts won the National Defense University President's Award for Excellence in Writing in 2004. It's an interesting fusion of influences, many of which may be familiar to the MemeStreams community.

In a sentence, the basic message is that human genetics precludes world government.

Perhaps the best way to encourage you to read the paper is to highlight some of the footnotes.

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976.
Plato: "only the dead have seen the end of war."
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
The National Security Strategy of the United States
The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue (JSTOR subscription required)
Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell (New York: Perennial, 2003).
Robert Upshall, Antibiotic Resistance (United Kingdom: Whinfield, May 1998).
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. (article), (chapter 1).
Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees
Robert Kagan, America's Crisis of Legitimacy, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004, 65-87.
Sisterhood is hungry: An egalitarian society of ants, The Economist, 23 August 1997
Joseph Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
Alison George, "March of the Superbugs," New Scientist, 19 July 2003, S1.
Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994.
Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Errol Morris, The Fog of War. Sony Pictures Classics, 2003.
Joshua Blu Buhs, The Fire Ant Wars, 2004.
Natalie Angier, "Is War Our Biological Destiny?" New York Times, 11 November 2003.

The Biology of Conflict [PDF]

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

In a bitter dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the majority had created an ominous precedent. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," she wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private property, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

"As for the victims," Justice O'Connor went on, "the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

Justice Stevens was joined in the majority by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Justice O'Connor's fellow dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development - New York Times

I've updated the bookmarklets for Internet Explorer. The new IE bookmarklets do not pop up a window, thereby avoiding the annoying problem with IE's pop up blocker. As always, let me know if you have any trouble.

MemeStreams Update for Internet Explorer users

Do you think the Recommend and Discuss Bookmarklets should pop up a new window?

IE's pop up blocker can't tell the difference between a pop up ad and a bookmarklet, so I've had to make new bookmarklets for IE that don't pop up a new window. In truth, the IE bookmarklets work in Firefox, and the Firefox bookmarklets work in IE (assuming you disable pop up blocking) so its possible for users of each browser to use the kind of bookmarklets they prefer.

I prefer to have a new window pop up because I like to refer to the original article while I'm editing. However, I'm wondering what the rest of the site thinks. One might reasonably ask why I don't just let users choose which bookmarklets they want to install. The reason is that MemeStreams is intimidating enough to new users without having to ask them to make a decision about that when first joining the site.

So what are your thoughts? Pop ups good or bad?

Survey Question for MemeStreams Users