Yeah, I know I’m kinda all over the map today, but it made sense when I was pulling the links together…
- Patriot Act II Resurrected? Geez. This time Orrin Hatch is trying to resurrect Patriot II, throw in some language linking the war on drugs (how’s that going, anyhow?) with the war on terror, outlaws hawalas, and legalizes government thugs coming into your home and kicking your puppy. Well, okay. That last is a bit of hyperbole, I think. [scott mcgerik]
- Liquor license limits near U? There will be if Paul Zerby has his way. I wrote a letter to him, but his idea of letting there be no more on-sale liquor licenses between 35W and St. Paul, between the River and Hennepin Avenue seems one of the most misguided I’ve ever heard. His reasoning is that he wants to prevent a recurrence of the hockey riot that happened last spring, but the felons involved in that weren’t of legal drinking age in the first place, so not having more bars isn’t going to help the problem. But hey, prohibition worked so well last time around, and it’s doing a bang-up job in the war on drugs, so what the heck, let’s try it again!
- Speaking of bars, I’ve been having trouble deciding what to do with my evenings lately. I’ve been in the habit over the years of going out to various bars on Friday and Saturday evenings, but lately that hasn’t been as much fun. See, most of the bars near me now have some sort of live music on weekday evenings (or seven days a week in a few cases) and while I like listening to music, much of what they’re offering doesn’t appeal. Last Tuesday, after the Neighborhood Association meeting, I stopped by Dub’s, and got chased out by open-mike night. The alternative was getting on-stage myself to perform John Cage’s 4′33″ and for some reason I didn’t think that would go over with the crowd (but if someone has a score I could copy, I wouldn’t mind having it on hand, just in case). But listening to some girl drone on about something or other with a chorus of
It sucks, it really sucks, it fucking sucks.
(the audience was supposed to join in) isn’t my idea of fun, either. That’s why I ended up at Whitey’s on my birthday. There were a bunch of other places I’d thought of going, but they all had music scheduled, and I wanted to sit and talk with a few friends. Maybe that makes me a crusty old fart, but I’m starting to think it’s time to find new watering holes. Or, like the Friday evening when I’m writing this, just sit at home and write something that needs writing. - Marketers Say They Intend to Join Effort to Fight Spam. And why are they doing such a thing? Well, so they will be able to email you crap about their products in the future. Yeah, I’m betting they’ll be putting together some real effective proposals.
- Hey, cool. There’s OS Fingerprinting in OpenBSD’s PF Firewall as of 3.4-current (which is available now, though the 3.4 release isn’t quite done yet. It allows the firewall to detect which OS is talking to (and through) it, so you can do things like redirect users of an old version of windows to a page telling them to get the latest service pack, rather than staying vulnerable to viruses. Handy, eh? And since it uses Passive Fingerprinting, you don’t have to send anything to the remote machine, just look at the packets it’s sending you. [openbsd]