Another Word for Nerd

On Tuesday, October 17th, the President will sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.

This bill:

* re-establishes President Bush’s military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional
* legalizes U.S. war crimes committed before December 30, 2005
* disallows any person harmed by the U.S., in violation of the Geneva Conventions, from filing a claim in U.S. court
* strips legal residents of the U.S. of their right to challenge their detention in court if they’re accused of being “enemy combatants”
* abolishes the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention, which in effect pre-judges all of them as guilty
* approves the “CIA program” that allows waterboarding and other forms of torture
* names any individual, including citizens, as an “unlawful enemy combatant” if they provide “material support” to those engaged in hostilities against the U.S.

It was nice living in a free country, while it lasted. Now, you can’t even criticize the Vice-President without getting arrested.

After seeing this, I decided to make my own Macbook laptop sleeve instead of spending $30-50 for one.

News 8 Austin is definitely showing where their priorities lay today.

As much as I dislike sappy “NEVAR FORGET” stories, they chose to completely ignore what happened five years ago, and talk about FOOTBALL instead!

If you’ve got an OpenPGP-compatible email program, you can submit a Freedom of Information/Privacy Act request to the National Security Agency via PGP-signed email or normal postal mail.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/10/domestic.spying.ap/index.html

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.”

Some useful links:

Zfone – Secure Encrypted Voice over IP
The GNU Privacy Guard – Public-key encryption
OpenSSH – Secure shell / machine-to-machine data transfer
Tor – An anonymous Internet communication system
TorPark – easy Tor setup for Windows

(from here via BoingBoing)

I saw this tonight:

and couldn’t help but think of this:

People who want to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s famous “I Have a Dream” speech now need to pay money if they want to hear or use the speech in its entirety, as his estate holds the copyright and considers it a profit center.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Dr. King intended.

My mother made it safely back to Oklahoma this evening.

A couple of nights ago I had a strange dream – about trying to find a “lambda” key on an Apple Extended Keyboard II while reading The Little Schemer (which is strange, as I’m currently deep in Practical Common LISP), and at the same time, watching CNN footage of the President dancing around like a monkey.

Yeah, I’d say I definitely need more sleep.

“Voters tied the knot Tuesday with a constitutional amendment cementing marriage in Texas as being solely between a man and a woman and barring communities from legalizing same-sex unions.”

I’d thought that the state I lived in wasn’t as backwards as its reputation. Apparently there are enough closed-minded people still left to prove me wrong. “Oh no, the queers will rise up and kill us all, better vote against it!”

What’s wrong with letting someone marry who they want? What harm does it do to anyone else? Don’t our legislators have better things to worry about than what goes on between two consenting adults that want to spend their lives together?

Update: At least it’s not Kansas, where they no longer believe in the theory of evolution.