] This Tuesday, the US Senate is scheduled to vote on the
] implementation of a national ID card system. The Real ID
] Act is nothing less than a Real National ID Act.

Fresh from his somewhat kinda victory in the RFID passport debacle Bill Scannell is at it again on the national ID card.

Now, the interesting thing about this proposal is that it is not vulnerable to the one security related objection I've heard for this, which is that if there is only one ID card you have to fake then all of the resources in the country devoted to faking IDs will be devoted to faking THAT id, and so everyone will be able to fake it very well, where as today people tend to fake a multitude of state IDs poorly. As each state will still have its own ID under this system, it won't create a single focal point for forgers.

As all the state databases will be linked, the first thing that will occur is annoyances. People attempting to drink underage or dodge traffic tickets will find life more difficult. People with out of order paperwork may find themselves in jail, as a friend of mine did recently because his social security card has a different name then his drivers license. (Yes it was their mistake, and no they didn't really think twice about booking him anyway.)

It is inevitable that all the data the government has about you is going to be connected, tied to your banking and medical records, and biometrically identified. Objections of the ACLU and the Conservative Christians aside, we are going to do this. It is only a matter of time. We do not understand why we shouldn't as we expect perfect law compliance. This is a step in that direction.

This will be coupled with increasingly cheap and automated surveillance of public space. Ultimately, the IDs WILL go wireless so that they can easily be scanned by the government without having to approach a suspect. You already have a license plate, right? Ultimately the Supreme Court will concede that its not unconstitutional to require every person to carry such a card. That will be the last straw. I put it 40 years out unless there is another major terrorist attack. I'd be willing to make a long bet on this.

Its easy, its cheap, and it will make you safe. As law enforcement becomes perfect, the fairness of laws becomes vital. Our Mass Media driven government does not produce fair or reasonable law. It produces reactionary, fad and interest driven law.

This is simply going to cause a lot of people a lot of pain, and I feel like complaining about it is pissing against the wind. I really think we're going to learn this the hard way. We ought to know better but we're gunna run right into this wall at full speed.

UnRealID.com

] Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site

neat.

Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site

] MIAMI May 7, 2005 %u2014 The family of a severely
] brain-damaged woman who died after her feeding tube was
] removed in March said Friday they still have not been
] told where her remains will be laid to rest.

Her ashes should end up on ebay. It would be the only fitting end.

ABC News: Schiavos Don't Know Where Terri's Ashes Are

] The poster didn't mention that the 5-foot-9, 135-pound
] Claxton relied on a wheelchair, that police no longer
] considered him a serious threat and that he had no
] further sex offenses. But the flier's creator saw fit to
] add something incendiary. At the bottom of the page, in
] bold block letters, were the words "CHILD RAPIST."
]
] Four days after the fliers appeared, 38-year-old Chuckie
] Claxton was found dead, an empty bottle of scotch, a bag
] of pills and one of the posters beside him.

The fact that the media seems to be gathering sympathy for sex offenders seems odd to me. Not that I think the Public Notification Laws are a fair way to deal with the issue, but you'd figure sex offenders would be less fucking squeamish. What did they expect raping women and children was going to do for their rep in the first place?

ABC News: Sex Offender's Suicide Raises Questions

] WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - The man who was in charge of
] emptying parking meters in the town of Mount Kisco has
] been accused of stealing more than $30,000 in quarters.

Meter Man Allegedly Steals $30G in Coins - Yahoo! News

] Cats can be trained to take themselves to the bathroom
] and use the toilet like humans, says the inventor of a
] pussy potty.

The picture is great.

News in Science - Plastic potty helps pussy pee - 02/05/2005

... just what the title says.

"Ma'am, we're not going to go down there and enforce your Western Bacon Cheeseburger."

Recorded off Howard Stern show.

California women calls 911 over Burger King drive-up mistake [MP3]

Better search engine...Dog.

Gizoogle - Fo all you beotches who wanna find shiznit

] The destruction of the Jedi Temple is devastating.
] Accusing Separatists of the attack, Emperor Palpatine
] declares martial law on Coruscant. As the Imperial
] presence spreads to most systems, Palpatine calls the
] scattered Jedi order ineffective. Their protests are
] denounced as treason, and all Jedi are declared traitors
] and are now fugitives of the Empire.
]
] Looking for a way to turn the tide in this battle, both
] the surviving Jedi and the Empire are looking for a
] mystical Jedi artifact said to give the bearer great
] power.

Might possibly be better than episode III. Especially considering it was made by fans for 20K.
The production website is here:http://www.panicstruckpro.com/revelations/revelations.html

TheForce.Net - Fan Films - Short Films - Revelations

] Solipsis is a pure peer-to-peer system for a massively
] shared virtual world. There is no server at all: it only
] relies on end-users' machines.
]
] The shared virtual worlds of nowadays MMORPG strongly
] rely on privately owned servers. These servers are an
] expensive bottleneck that limits their scalability. In
] addition, these servers bound the freedom of the virtual
] world inhabitants and the imagination of the
] world-builders and developers. Solipsis solves these
] problems with a free and open-source system.
]
] Solipsis is a public virtual territory. The world is
] initially empty and only users will fill it by creating
] and running entities. No pre-existing cities, habitants
] nor scenario to respect...
]
] Solipsis is open-source, so everybody can enhance the
] protocols and the algorithms. Moreover, the system
] architecture clearly separates the different tasks, so
] that peer-to-peer hackers as well as multimedia geeks can
] find here a good place to have fun !
]
] The best approximation of what could be Solipsis in a
] near future may be Neal Stephenson's Metaverse.

Interesting.

Development is being lead by France Telecom's R&D division.

Solipsis: A peer-to-peer system for a massively multi-participant virtual world