Hi, folks. I’m ba-a-ack. It was a long 10 days, but worth every bit of pain to see the parts of the country that I did. Internet service was spotty in DC and non-existent in Utah, so I’m playing catchup today. One thing I’ve learned is to check for ‘Net access when I check out hotels, for which purpose Geektels fills the bill.

Now, here’s a bunch of stuff you should have been reading while I was incommunicado, instead of wasting your time clicking on this blog to see if I had posted anything new.

• Fight the Man – Disable AutoRun on your Windows machine. (Engadget)
• Very cool geek news: The next version of Safari – to be included with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) will include an RSS reader. (Boing Boing)
• Wired has more Tiger coverage here
• Tinted Lenz – INDUCE Act is crazy… like a fox! It’s also grotesquely stupid. (Boing Boing)
• Via Atrios, the dust continues to be kicked up in Iraq, yet the Right Wing apparently can’t wait to get their hands on North Korea.
• An excellent source of insight and analysis on Supreme Court decisions can be found at SCOTUSblog. Check out the two recent court rulings upholding pornography as protected free speech and obliterating the White House’s claims to unlimited war-time powers. (Eschaton)
• A new Trojan Horse can read your keystrokes while you’re online at one of 50 major banking websites. Lesson: Don’t open suspicious email. Better yet, don’t use Internet Explorer (CNet News). Better yet, don’t do Windows. (MacMove)
• Interesting fluff piece over at PC World takes down a few computer myths. (Engadget)
• Can we get Carole Coleman a job on CNN or something? It’s so refreshing to see a grownup interviewer, especially because it makes Bush look more like the desperately grasping, talking-point-spouting, featherweight of a political puppet that he is. His arrogance and condescension look all the more embarrassing when he faces a reporter who is ten times as smart, perceptive, and informed as he is. IMHO. As defensive as W gets when Coleman tries to engage in a discussion and not just a dumb show, it makes me think that he’s actually rehearsed these answers (!) and has no capacity for changing course midstream. What a surprise. (Boing Boing) Also, as Kevin Drum points out in this Washington Monthly post, the foreign press are used to treating their politicians as if they’re simply another citizen who’s required to account for [their] actions.
• The most excellent Brad DeLong gives us the following: a Campaign Desk excerpt that exposes the press for the high school clique they really are; a scathing Paul Krugman op-ed on the Iraq Occupation; an analysis of how to get ahead in the blogging biz without really trying; an (in my opinion quite excellent) hypothesis of why we have such a piss-poor press corps (shorter DeLong: they don’t know enough about what they’re reporting on and people lie to them); a philosophy test that asks us to consider whether Dick Cheney is a psychopath a perspective on war and the press and a musing on the disappearing economists of the Bush Administration.
• Watched the Daily Shows recorded in my absence (gotta love MythTV). John Stewart’s getting sassy with the guests. (The Poor Man) I like it.
• Kevin Drum has a post that shows just how this nation’s poorest benefited from Clinton’s economic policies. Also, there’s this about the torture memo, and this about HHS scientists being prohibited to participate in UN meetings unless they’ve been personally approved by the administration. Also, last week he mentioned Paul Krugman clucking his tongue at John Ashcroft, which can never be bad (NYT, registration required), and a couple more tongues clucking over the Failure in Iraq, and this great post on Leadership (I’m really starting to like Joe Biden).
• More Ashcroftian high-jinks by way of Atrios.
• Just watched the new Bush/Cheney campaign ad called Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-Eyed. As The Poor Man points out, it’s pretty much a self-parody. Don’t know about you, but I get ill thinking that people actually buy this guff. (By the way, in case you don’t read The Poor Man, the Kerry-supporting ad comparing Bush to Hitler was not sponsored and has been denounced by MoveOn.org.)
• The Poor Man links us to what qualifies Porter Goss to replace George Tenet as head of the CIA.
• Adam Felber feels liberated by Dick Cheney’s F-Bomb.
• Whatever you think of Michael Moore, he makes a pretty good point here about the media’s utter failure in the run-up to the Iraq War. (Eschaton)
• The RIAA continues its relentless crusade to sue its customers out of their fun money. (CNET News)
• Slashdot has a disturbing tidbit about Microsoft-funded think tanks that purport to be independent but somehow only seem to bash Big Redmond’s competitors. Also, a post with links to some P2P-related articles and a bit about fooling fingerprint scanners
• Ariana Huffington highlights the problem with the Cheney Doctrine. Also, the utter failure of the Bush Doctrine.
• Some insights on blogging from PressThink to Bill Gates.
• Congress continues to consider crushing copyright law.
• The Nation’s Editor’s Cut tells us that the Speaker of the House should be brought up on charges without DeLay.
• The natural advantages of P2P to promote artists who don’t get airplay start bubbling to the surface. (Boing Boing)

• Bruce Schneier ponders the dangers of the police state. (Boing Boing)

  Whew! See y’all tomorrow.

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  Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 @ 1:18 am Nothings
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