There seems to be something of a flap on in the spam/spyware/hackware category: Chicago Tribune | Experts Study Developing Internet Attack We ran Ad-Aware just now because everything was running slowly, with a lot of unknown activity. AOL Communicator and AOL were going nuts. Hmm. I ran Norton after David left because I ran across this somewhat more authoritative article in the Trib than some of the blog entries I noticed about the problem. May be something in it.
Monthly Archives: June 2004
Gee, Senator Leahy, F-U!
Our esteemed Veep in charge of war profiteering and feathering the nest of his “former” firm Halliburton/KBR had this to say on the floor of the Senate: either “Fuck off,” “go fuck yourself,” or “fuck you.”
Yes, that is Vice-President of the United States of America and President Pro Tem of the Senate Richard “Biggus Dickus” Cheney, in a heated and “frank” exchange” with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
There’s your goddamn family values for you. As there is some confusion as to the precise wording, we’ll all have to wait until the official Senate transcript is released. Right.
Shiny Firefly: Serenity Blog
Ooh! Look at the pretties! This blog operates as kind of a digest of castmembers’ posts from something called the “original board” and also from the Fireflymovie.com fan site. It points to yet ANOTHER blog that is hosted on the official SerenityMovie site. It’s a mite confusing keeping all the kinblogs and message boards straight but if you’re a fan of Joss Whedon’s short-lived Firefly television series (and soon-to-be Big Damn Movie coming to a theater near you), you’ll have to read it all.
I don’t know who’s doing it, but I hope they got permission for all the reposts… on the other hand, it’s a lot more readable this way. Hope things don’t get messy with henchmen minions and torture and bad (very bad) hats.
Later on, I’m going to have to download something called “The Message of Bonny Portmore” (a fan produced video of some kind) from FireflyFans.net. “Bonnie Portmore” is a classic Celtic song that is best known from renditions by Loreena McKennit on “The Visit,” or by a singer called Laura Creemer on a Highlander: The Series episode called “Homeland.”
Why? Well, short version: I got married in Boulder to the strains of “Bonnie Portmore,” played by a local Celtic group called Colcannon, because it was a beautiful song and it had a Highlander connection, and of course getting married was all because of the stupid Highlander show, and several people who had been at the Highlander convention when David and I met were there, and yadda Highlander blah blah Highlander show’s over Highlander why are we still talking about this old Highlander show? And all the Highlander fans cried when they heard the song start, and all the non-fans said “Oh, this is a pretty song.” Heh. And that was the short version.
SO… all I’m saying is that stupid television shows sometimes have the damnedest consequences on peoples’ real lives, and I can see that there are a lot of people all working together to keep fan interest high for the Serenity movie, and it’s a cool and good thing to see that fans actually have some input and weight in whether a movie project gets crucial early support.
And aww… I am positive that out of all this fan-community thing that’s going on in the Serenity-verse (which I’m just catching little whiffs of, mind you) there will be not a few marriages and life partners matched up.
The Case Of The Pumped-Up Judge
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Oklahoma’s attorney general wants a state judge removed on suspicion he frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, a spokesman for the office said on Thursday
This brings an unpleasant image to mind when thinking of the judicial branch.
The weirdest part: he actually admitted in court (in a murder trial, no less) that he had a penis pump under the bench, but claimed it was a gag gift.
Gag? it’s positively gag-alicious.
Orrin Hatch: STFU
BoingBoing notes: Earnest Miller savages savages Orrin Hatch’s grotesque new law.
Such beliefs seem common among distributors of so-called peer-to-peer filesharing (“P2P”) software. [“So-called,” indeed. Hatch isn’t about define what P2P software is because it would end up including things like e-mail, IM, VoIP, HTTP and plenty of other internet protocols. P2P is how much of the internet works.]
“So-called” indeed. That’s Orrin’s way of saying “I dont want to acknowledge an entity I find morally distasteful, so I’ll put it in quote marks so you know that it’s evullll and I disapprove.”
Ugh, I hate that guy. Moralizing little P***k. You may take that one of several ways.
Earnest, you rokkk. The annotations on your website are very helpful.
SG-1 Spoilers!
Stargate spoilers here.
Go Speed Racer!
Vince Vaughn has pitched his take on the proposed live-action Speed Racer movie, based on the Japanese animated series, with himself cast as Racer X…
Heads up, David! This may be coming to a theater near us.
So THAT’s why I got so much spam on AOL
A software engineer for America Online stole the Internet provider's customer list � some 92 million names � and sold it to an on-line marketer, setting off a torrent of unsolicited commercial e-mail commonly known as spam, federal authorities said today.
You know, I'd say this wasn't the first time this happened. I used to have a volunteer job on AOL answering mail questions, and they were just so drag-assy about spam blocking, like it just wasn't that big a deal. And meanwhile, I was getting more spam than anything on my AOL account, I still have an AOL account, which readers can figure out if they sits and haves a good think. And I read it behind AOL Classic's own somewhat not-sucky spam filters, and then behind AOL Communicator's somewhat more robust and trainable filters, and THEN behind a Bayesian filter thing-doodad David has running. And I STILL get spam on the AOL account… most days, it's all that's in my inbox. Although I will say that traffic on the Highlander mailing list HIGHLA-L has picked up again. Dear old Amanda, people love to talk (and argue) about her. It's nice to see something other than mystery meat in the old inbox of a morning.
Who Would Jesus Call?
More proof that some people think they have a direct line to God: combine a cell phone mast with a crucifix, stick it on a church steeple, and have unlimited anytime minutes for prayer in your local calling area. It could also be taken as a commentary on how much passion and sacrifice is needed in order to get decent coverage without excessive drops… or possibly on what a person goes through when attempting to get to level II on a service call.
Strangely enough, we actually kicked this idea around at Holy Moly, because our steeple already looks like a cell phone tower, and we’d realized there would be a financial benefit for allowing a cell service provider to use our building as a tower base. As I’ve said, we already look like a little power substation, so it wouldn’t change the look that much… except this design is probably a little too “crucifixy” for our place, we’re more into minimalist ironmongery.
Still, it’s probably worth bringing it up again in a future Bishop’s Committee meeting.
Swiped via Boing Boing.
This Won’t Be An Episode on JAG
Last spring, a group of military lawyers known as judge advocate generals warned that civilian lawyers within the Bush administration were creating “legal ambiguity” on how international treaties should be applied to people in U.S. detention. Many JAG lawyers say their advice was disregarded as the White House sought to tweak the laws of war for political ends.
I’m betting that in spite of the custom-made angle, this won’t show up as a “ripped from the headlines” episode on JAG because it’s not very complimentary to the current administration (okay, the usurping administration, I’m annoying like that).
But “boo-yah” to the real-life JAGs, for doing their duty to the administration they’re sworn to uphold. They tried.