This Slashdot story lead me to check out Matt Blaze’s site. (I have geek jealousy of his domain name.) Matt’s a CS prof who specializes in security issues, and in addition to the safecracking paper, there’s lots of other interesting bits on his pages. I suspect I will be reading stuff there for several days at least. Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Start reading the top IP law blogs in less than five minutes
One of the areas of interest to me as a concerned liberal is the area of intellectual property–I am concerned about copyright extension and the erosion of the public domain, I’m concerned about software patents and the stifiling of innovation, and I’m perhaps most generally concerned about the way our various governments seem to put the short term economic good… Read more →
Need a happy
After that last post I need a happy. And here is one. It appears that the same people responsible for that monster Complete Far Side collection that everyone was talking about–did anyone actually buy one?–are also producing another collection that I must own. Details. I have wanted this for years. The pricing is ridiculous, but hey, I have disposable income… Read more →
Ritalin
Look, I have always hated the idea of Ritalin. Hearing Henry Rollins do his spoken word bit about his experiences with Ritalin just confirmed all my uninformed prejudices. But, today I have seen something that I think is the most perfect, and most heart-rending, argument against it ever. Make with the clickie and see for yourself. The convincer. Read more →
Sweet Home Jesusland
So, I’ve been sitting on a few things for a while, as I was too busy to do much posting. You may see a bunch of slightly dated stuff appearing over the next few days as a consequence. Anyway, for many years now I’ve thought of Tennessee as the spiritual home of American religious idiocy, dating back to the Scopes… Read more →
It’s all about rejecting Authority…
I had posted earlier on the Times report about Hollywood removing the anti-religiosity from the movie adaptations of Pullman‘s “His Dark Materials” books, implying that the changes upset me, but trying to be reasonable about it. Well, Jessa over at the irreplacable Bookslut notes today that Pullman has something to say about that article, and it makes me feel somewhat… Read more →
Chris Moore on NPR
While I was wandering in blizzards, Christopher Moore was doing an interview with NPR nominally about his latest book, The Stupidest Angel. I’m a big Moore fan, although I think his most recent two (Fluke, and The Stupidest Angel) don’t live up to his previous work. They just seem somehow slighter than the other stuff, which is an odd complaint… Read more →
BabyTour 2004: Maybe Biff Is Right…
So, I am writing this from a hotel in Fredericton. I was supposed to be home today… We left Ontario yesterday, and we don’t really need to be back until tomorrow (I return to work Wednesday), but we had high hopes for doing the whole trip in two days–in the pre-Sarah days we would normally do a 12-hour leg the… Read more →
Baby Tour: Weather in Ontario
So, two days ago it was -30 Celsius. Today there is a storm of doom. Later this week, when we’re supposed to be at Mom’s they are calling for almost -40. Meanwhile, at home in Halifax it’s 11C. Madness. This is what we saw this morning outside our hotel room: Read more →
Baby Tour 2004
Blogging will probably be sparse until Dec. 29th or so, as we are currently in the middle of Baby Tour 2004, an eleven day road marathon where we will cover more than 5000 kms in order that everyone can meet Sarah. Next year they can all come to Halifax. Read more →
The essential question
“¿Quién es más macho…?” Read more →
Making Light Of Gerald Allen
I was getting pretty depressed about the whole Gerald Allen story (which I had previously commented on) and then I read Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s take on the piece. She skewers him so thoroughly that I felt immensely better. (Later on, of course, when I start wondering why the mass of Americans, and the Administration in particular, doesn’t see what she… Read more →
Like unto a God among my people
Have I mentioned that Bruce Schneier is like unto a God among my people? I mean the deep geeks, like me, are into him because he’s a leading cryptographer–his Twofish algorithm (which I actually implemented in a product at the last company) was an AES candidate–and he’s written interesting technical books on cryptography. However, he’s also a writer on more… Read more →
Do you not understand how this looks to the rest of the world?
I just spent a week in Boston. While there I read the Globe. And I saw this article about the plans to return people to Fallujah now that the “insurrection” is over. Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing… Read more →
Should I laugh or cry?
According to the Times, in an article I saw on Locus, it doesn’t bother Pullman, who seems to be taking the Alan Moore philosophical approach to what Hollywood is doing to his books, but I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry… THE Hollywood adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, in which two children do battle with… Read more →
