22. March, 2002 - the news makes me grumpy
- Gun Owners of America -- Ridge and Mineta Thumb Their Noses at "Armed Pilots" Law, telling us they'd prefer to have unarmed victims flying planes than pilots who might stop a hijack.
- Google bows to Scientology's DMCA request, yanks critics' site. The interesting thing is that google said they would only put back the links if the material is removed. There's nothing in google's letter what happens if the material is deemed non-infringing. Guess the actual merits don't matter under the DMCA, eh? Shocking. But the very next day, Google Restores Web Page Critical of Scientology. Good. If google had started censoring links like that, they'd have quickly lost a lot of respect. I've already heard rumblings from folks who are looking for a better search engine. [librarian, google news and flutterby]
- Senate backs changes to campaign finance laws. It's just waiting for Bush's signature. Then the constitutionality challenges will begin. [google news]
- The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act is Senator Hollings' (D - Disney) new attempt at outlawing today's computers. Interestingly enough, on top of contributions over over a quarter million dollars from the entertainment industry in the 2000 election cycle, this bill bought the democrats an unprecedented $12 million in two donations recently. Convenient, since the Incumbent Protection Act of 2002 will prohibit this sort of thing come November 6, 2002. [endwar and instapundit]
- Bars, convenience stores, and others are Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses. And while it's true that a bar could write down all the information they get by scanning a card, that would take time. I doubt any bar would write down (or Xerox) the 1.3 million customer records mentioned in the article. [cam]
- But A feel-good tale of greenbacks and spam gives me some hope. Harold Hickok of Portland, Oregon sued, and when the company tried to offer him a settlement on the cheap, he raised his asking price and got everything he'd initially asked for. It helped that he was a lawyer and Oregon allows discovery in small claims cases. I wonder how a similar suit would do here in Minnesota... [fark!]
- Speaking of spam, I was going to point to spamgourmet, but their site crashes IE 5.1 Mac (on MacOS 9).
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Sat, 23 Mar 2002 10:18:31.