Archive for February, 2003

This is interesting: “State computer

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9 years ago
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This is interesting:
“State computer with confidential medical data put up for sale.
A state computer put up for sale as surplus contained confidential files naming thousands of people with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the state auditor said Thursday.”

I’ve been trying to buy up some old hardware from Texas A&M’s surplus auctions myself. Wonder what info I’ll find…

Microsofts and standards compliance…

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9 years ago
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Here is a quote from an email I sent out on the Brazos Valley Web Design listserv regarding Microsoft’s lack of compliance with the W3C standards:

I think that it’s helpful to realize that Microsoft’s browser is in effect a de-facto standard, which by overwhelming user preference is preferred over the W3C-compliant Mozilla. If you think of MS as the U.S. and W3C as the U.N., it’s easy to see that the “consensus” of a bunch of undemocratic, oppressive regimes is not any more valid that the individual judgment of the freest, richest nation on earth. The analogy is better than you might imagine, since both the US and MS are being derided precisely because of their virtues (freedom and successful products) by nations/companies that are failures precisely because of their flaws (tyranny/bad products.)

The Antitrust Racket

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9 years ago
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Check out this blog from initium:

In 1977, Congress passed the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, a law intended to make life easier for FTC and Antitrust Division officials in deciding which mergers to prosecute and stop. Under HSR, all mergers worth at least a certain value (approximately $50 million under the current law) must be reported to the government prior to consummation. This “pre-merger notification” grants the government a waiting period to decide whether they wish to act against the merger. In most cases, the waiting period is terminated early, and no official action is taken. In a handful of cases-less than 2%-the FTC or Antitrust Division will seek conditions to allow the merger or attempt to stop it outright. Such official action generally results in a “consent agreement,” where the merging companies agree to surrender a portion of their assets to a third-party chosen by the government.

Every Hart-Scott-Rodino “notification” must be accompanied by a filing fee. For mergers valued at less than $100 million, the fee is $45,000; for mergers of more than $500 million, the price is $280,000. The fee is non-refundable, and the monies collected from said fees are what finance the $330-plus million of the FTC and Antitrust Division budgets not financed by direct appropriation.

In other words, the government is forcing businesses to pay for the very antitrust enforcement that is targeted directly against their interests. This is a classic racketeering scheme. A business is forced to pay protection money to a thug who could turn against them at any time.

On Columbia

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9 years ago
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It seems like every single blog on the internet has an ode of some sort to the downed space shuttle. Not all are positive — Laurel things that it’s time to privatize (i.e. close) NASA because it’s a waste of taxpayer’s money. I think it’s important not to confuse the spirit of discovery that allowed man to go to space, and the particular method by which that is being done today.
The International Space Station, (whose massive cost overruns may well have caused maintenance failures that caused Columbia to blow up) is a perfect example of the wrong approach to take to space exploration. The ISS is a typical result of multinational bureaucracies trying to make a political statement (under a scientific cover) and I could have told you with near certainty when this plan was just an idea that the true cost of the ISS was wildly underestimated. In an age when space tourism has become practical (as the Russians have shown) and commercial satellites are launched on a regular basis, a government-run space agency should stick to military applications, and leave the space exploration to businessmen. Skeptics will complain that there is not enough research money for a private version of the ISS, but I bet if the government allowed private enterprise to decide which areas research should go to I am sure that the results would be much better, even if a private ISS takes longer to build.

Gotta love the UN

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9 years ago
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Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post has written a great editorial about the U.N. He mentions how Iraq has been chosen to Iraq to Chair U.N. Disarmament Conference (with Iran as co-chair) while Libya, that great utopia of individual rights was elected to the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
Can the U.N. possibly become any more hypocritical? Next, I suppose North Korea will be selected to chair the Democracy Conference, and China to lead the Religious Tolerance Committee, and Cuba to chair the Economic Development Forum. Then, the five chairs can pass a resolution condemning the U.S. for terrorism, hostility to Muslims, human rights abuses, and trade restrictions. (And the libertarians, those great defenders of non-aggression would probably applaud the resolution for pointing out U.S. “imperialism.”)

bleh

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9 years ago
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My internet access (most of the city’s in fact) was down because Cox Internet messed up. Grrr…this just isn’t my week. I went to my ECON class today (more on that later) and realized that I had somehow forgotten to go to last Thursday’s class…I’ve missed many classes during my 22 years, but I’ve never, forgotten about one.

I think I need a “mood” indicator….today’s is “Highly Irritable”

hacked

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9 years ago
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Someone hacked my server today. No, they didn’t deface my homepage with some porn — they got into my arg gallery and “ATH” decided to delete my collection of paintings by Tamara de Lempicka. Sadly, I didn’t have a backup since that was it was recently added. How pathetic is that? Some peope hack Microsoft, IBM, CIA, etc, but these punks decided to go after my art. Anyway, with the database file safely out of the way (something I should have done as a precaution), this shouldn’t happen again. Just shows that you can never be too carefull about your mission-critical…online art gallery.
Edit: They struck again, exploiting a vulnerabilty in the gallery code. I traced the attack to Montevideo, Uruguay (IP: 200.149.0.209) If anyone want’s no snitch to ISP (yo no hablo espanol) it’s http://www.telemar.net.br/

Arght!

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9 years ago
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I lost my keys today. I got off the bus and unlocked my bike on my way to get some food but when I got to Taco Cabana for some burritos, the keys were gone. I retraced my path, but someone had definitely taken the keys in the five minutes it took me to come back to the bike rack. Needless to say, I was pissed. I was locked out of my apartment, unable to leave my bike anywhere, and my roommate doesn’t come home till late at night. When I got home, I climbed on the rails of my second story balcony, removed the net, and forced the window open, jumped to the ledge, climbed up, opened the window, and barely managed to avoid breaking the computer I landed on inside. It took me five minutes just to clear of my desk enough to step on it, but thankfully, none of the neighbors called the cops for me. Unfortunately, I am still going to have to get new locks for my bike, and keys/locks for my door and bike. Grrr. Lets hope whoever has my keys doesn’t use the Net much

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