Sometimes it's worthwhile just to share some of the goings on in the outer world that have either caught my eye or been brought to my attention...
From News.com an article on a mass revolt among livejournal bloggers after an overenthusiastic use of the shotgun approach in attempting to deal with the admitted evil of pedophiles and child pornographers. The revolt is interesting in that it delineates how truly little control blog and similar services have over postings on their servers once they open the gateway, not unlike the recent revolt over at Digg.com.
Whether you favor it or not, in recent months online and PC privacy have taken several significant steps forward through encryption, date stamp modification, and a variety of other techniques once only employed by techno-sophisticates but now available as handy user-friendly kits (timestomp, anyone?) - excellent article over at CIO magazine for those with forensic interests in such matters.
In other news, Nissan reveals a new "feature" for their more upscale vehicles with electronic keys - you can kill the keys with the average cell phone by making or taking calls in close proximity to said keys - wonder if it'd work to quietly ensure a chemically altered friend was off the road for the night.
Another product "feature report" reveals that Microsoft is reworking the Windows Vista version of their Halo game to deal with issues of partial nudity to avoid government intervention.
A moderate mind-bender, a gay pub in Australia wins the right to bar women and straight males from its' demesnes, as those groups allegedly cause gay male customers to feel threatened. Hell, I thought that fell under basic property rights - ban whoever you want, and if you ban enough folks, you go broke.
In a related vein, we see the Paris opening of a Gay Male Bridal Shop...and the sky has not yet fallen, nor has the earth opened up and swallowed the city as a den of iniquity.
And finally, the Swedish have invited the Mayor of Moscow who ordered Gay Pride organizers in that city beaten and arrested to their Amsterdam events, in hopes he will observe a distinct shortage of brimstone and salt pillars.
One piece of good news, Dell is now shipping Ubuntu Linux as the operating system on desktop and laptops for home users, with prices beginning at $549.00 - the Ubuntu distribution includes at no extra cost OpenOffice (think MS:Office or WordPerfect Office), Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution (an Outlook replacement) all your favorite IM clients or equivalents, and is invulnerable to Windows viruses. The integral firewall is a nice touch, and Linux anti-virus software is readily available as well.
Depart the Eeeeeevil Empire!
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