So why wouldn’t you want to visit a site full of 80s TV commercial jingles? Especially since it has a variety of other TV theme songs, too? Sweet. (via Daimnation,…
So why wouldn’t you want to visit a site full of 80s TV commercial jingles? Especially since it has a variety of other TV theme songs, too? Sweet.
(via Daimnation, who’s abandoned BlogSpot, huzzah!)
UPDATE: Scott has a fine link to the Feeling Retro site, specifically groomed for folks in my, ahem, age bracket. I’m having serious cartoon/toy/game flashbacks here …
The Pentagon is busy assuing folks that the Total Information Awareness program — wherein big government computers link to everyone else’s databases about you and collate it into a dossier…
The Pentagon is busy assuing folks that the Total Information Awareness program — wherein big government computers link to everyone else’s databases about you and collate it into a dossier of activities that is just as accurate as your credit record and your alumni association bio — isn’t really a threat to Americans — at least not real ones.
If deployed, the system would be set up in a way that would prevent investigators from indiscriminately rummaging through personal records, the report said.
“Safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of Americans is a bedrock principle,” the report said.
While specific safeguards have not been established, possibilities mentioned by the report included audit trails to keep track of who is using the system, access controls to limit what data they see and filters to hide individuals’ names unless investigators had a court warrant to reveal them.
Riiiight. Because we all know how well those sorts of access controls work at the IRS and police and private industry.
Once the data is there, it will be abused. We can try to restrict that, we can try to control that, we can try to punish it, but pretending that it won’t happen is disingenuous.
It’s that disingenousity that worries me more about the TIA proposal than its fundamental nature. I’m not too much of a privacy nut, and I assume that there is data collection and correlation already going on that we don’t know about, and it doesn’t bother me — too much. But I get my hackles up when I sense someone’s trying to sell me something …
… and part of selling is packaging, which may be the Pentagon is renaming TIA to mean, instead, “Terrorist Information Awareness.” If it only held information on terrorists, I think folks would feel a bit less concerned.
(via BoingBoing)
Wow. Sometime today (along about here) I hit the 4,000 posts mark in this blog. Yay, me. And with that, I think it’s time for bed….
Wow. Sometime today (along about here) I hit the 4,000 posts mark in this blog.
Yay, me.
And with that, I think it’s time for bed.
I wrote up my Nobilis character’s Ennoblement story today (which, in Nobilis terms, is when my character Siân was selected from the herd by one of the Imperator/Angels/Gods to be…
I wrote up my Nobilis character’s Ennoblement story today (which, in Nobilis terms, is when my character Siân was selected from the herd by one of the Imperator/Angels/Gods to be one of his Domain Nobles. It’s too complicated to go into much further than that, but think of it as the origin story and you’ll do fine). It’s an odd mix of Welsh history, Ripperology, Greek mythology, and Christian theology. I’m enjoying the character more and more as I peel back new layers on her (or him, in this tale). I’ve done (and am doing in one PBEM) the Grim, Driven, Killing Machine sort of character, and I’ve found some different hooks in Siân to make her interesting.
Anyway, it’s up on Doyce’s newly redesigned Nobilis campaign page. Those who enjoy that sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they enjoy, to paraphrase Lincoln.
I’ve been, slowly but surely getting some writing done, besides the posts here. The daily Oneword exercises help, as has my ever-so-slow progress on Catspaw. Doing logs and the like for my Nobilis character (it being a story-telling sort of system anyway) is another good thing.
I haven’t heard of a story like this in the US — yet — but the sentiment and logic behind it is sadly familiar in these days of shooting-finger-suspensions and…
I haven’t heard of a story like this in the US — yet — but the sentiment and logic behind it is sadly familiar in these days of shooting-finger-suspensions and nailclipper-confiscations.
Police officers have reprimanded a mother-of-two for allowing her seven-year-old son to leave his plastic toy sword in her car.
Karen McFarlane, 38, has been told she could face charges for having an offensive weapon after two officer spotted the toy while her car was parked in Swindon.
Police told her the 30-inch sword might cause panic if it was spotted by a passer-by, reports the Daily Mail.
[…] A Wiltshire Police spokesman said they had no record of the incident, and admitted anything can be adapted into an offensive weapon, “even a rolled-up newspaper, depending on how you use it.”
Well, we have freedom of the press here, so it’s not likely that rolled-up newspapers will make the confiscate-or-arrest list. Soon, at least.
(via Sgt Stryker)
Oh, for the love of God … I am so tired of clicking on a BlogSpot blog link and (a) having the archive come up as not found, or, today…
Oh, for the love of God …
I am so tired of clicking on a BlogSpot blog link and (a) having the archive come up as not found, or, today especially, (b) having the frelling site simply never, never, ever load.
People, if nobody can read what you’re writing, you’re not getting a very good deal, even if it’s free. You get what you pay for, and they should be paying you.
So, hell, I’m willing to cut a deal similar to Andrea, and for the same reasons. If you are a BlogSpot user, and if you are in my blogroll (that would be you, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you), and, of necessity, if you read this message*, I am willing to host you, and build an MT blog for you, and allocate a subdomain for you (yourblog.hill-kleerup.org — if you want a full-blow domain, we can figure that out, too) for only the cost of the disk space you need (I’m running close to my limit).
Offer void whenever I get so aggravated by BlogSpot that I drop you off my blogroll. Operators are standing by. Call today.
*Unlike Andrea, I’m not going to e-mail these folks personally, since they’ll either see it here if they read me, or they if they don’t they won’t and won’t know me from Adam and aren’t likely to do it, either. But, then, Andrea has bigger juevos than I do.)
A nice chapter here on-line from the book Don’t Make Me Think about how people use web pages — which is, in fact, quite a bit different from how so…
A nice chapter here on-line from the book Don’t Make Me Think about how people use web pages — which is, in fact, quite a bit different from how so many web page designers design pages to be used.
When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.
What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at.
We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”
Worth reading.
(via Scriptygoddess)
It’s last week’s Friday Five:…
It’s last week’s Friday Five:
Charming. While the Bush Administration is willing to fudge or fail to push for confirmation or withdraw from international treaties they find objectionable, they apparently don’t have any problem with…
Charming. While the Bush Administration is willing to fudge or fail to push for confirmation or withdraw from international treaties they find objectionable, they apparently don’t have any problem with signing treaties that bind Congress’ hands regarding the DMCA.
But the FTA is also the first of its kind in another sense, as well. It is the first international trade agreement to demand that the signatories implement anti-circumvention provisions similar to those of the hotly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).
By pursuing anti-circumvention measures in a bilateral trade agreement, the Bush Administration had taken a new step in the progression by which the ownership and use of intellectual property have been increasingly politicized in recent years.
This step will have international, as well as domestic consequences: If Congress approves the FTA, it will not able to alter the DMCA without violating its obligations to Singapore.
And it’s fast-tracked, too. Swell.
And it gets even better.
Unless and until the FTA is enacted, courts will be able to narrow the DMCA’s scope to respect free speech and the public domain. After the FTA, however, that will be impossible: it is not the judiciary’s role to decide whether the United States should honor its treaties.
If Congress promises, in the FTA, to stick to a harsh version of the DMCA, the judiciary cannot renege on that promise. Again, this dynamic would be less troubling if we were dealing with straightforward legislation relating to ordinary products and goods – not legislation that implicates serious constitutional issues because it relates to intellectual property.
If the FTA is ratified, the judiciary will be out of options when it comes to ameliorating the effect of the fair-use-stifling DMCA. Congress will then have only one option: vote to override the treaty, a complex and wide-ranging trade agreement that regulates commerce between two nations.
(via BoingBoing)
I could have used the validation myself. (Heck, I still do.)…
I could have used the validation myself.
(Heck, I still do.)
Hence This-or-That:…
Do you have a backup of your blog? Shouldn’t you? What if it got hacked? What if your host went under (or had a hardware failure and realized that their…
Do you have a backup of your blog?
Shouldn’t you?
What if it got hacked? What if your host went under (or had a hardware failure and realized that their backups sucked)?
How much effort, how much of your life would you lose?
Remember this next time you’re running late for your flight and someone at the security checkpoint pulls you aside to take off your shoes and rifle your suitcase. WFAA Channel…
Remember this next time you’re running late for your flight and someone at the security checkpoint pulls you aside to take off your shoes and rifle your suitcase.
WFAA Channel 8 in Dallas aired Monday night a shocking report about security at the giant and enormously important Dallas/Fort Worth airport. They got video of construction workers gaining access to the site without showing their badges; of unmarked trucks, including a fuel tanker, motoring onto the site; and of an unsecured perimeter.
Way to go, guys.
(via InstaPundit)
This tale from Anadandy is improbable in our household solely because we don’t have taupe paint anywhere….
This tale from Anadandy is improbable in our household solely because we don’t have taupe paint anywhere.
He fights crime! Well, no, actually, he doesn’t. Do you feel guilty about plying gullible reporters with false stories? Nope. If the international press can be that gullible about this,…
Well, no, actually, he doesn’t.
Do you feel guilty about plying gullible reporters with false stories?
Nope. If the international press can be that gullible about this, then it does beg the question what else gets printed based on such unreliable information? We never set out to make them all look chumps. They just kept coming back asking for more, and they were duly fed.
(via GoaF)
It’s a bit of comic relief after driving in to an NRP article on sexual knowledge and activity among 12-14 year olds, that I ran across this article by the…
It’s a bit of comic relief after driving in to an NRP article on sexual knowledge and activity among 12-14 year olds, that I ran across this article by the Real Live Preacher.
It also helps that it’s a definite front-runner for “Strangest Opening Line in a Religious-Themed Weblog”:
Gather round, my friends, and I will tell you the story of how I came to believe that a woman’s vagina was on the back of her leg.
For those who wonder what a Nobilis game log looks like — well, it looks a lot like other game logs. Imagine that. Anyway, Doyce has my most recent one…
For those who wonder what a Nobilis game log looks like — well, it looks a lot like other game logs. Imagine that.
Anyway, Doyce has my most recent one up.
At Lancaster High School in California, a school assembly was held for white students alone. Only white students were invited, and non-white students (and a non-white staff member) who tried…
At Lancaster High School in California, a school assembly was held for white students alone. Only white students were invited, and non-white students (and a non-white staff member) who tried to enter the auditorium were turned away (administrators later said that was a misunderstanding).
“The meeting we had Thursday (April 17) was not meant to be exclusive and to shut doors,” Lancaster High Principal Bill Appleton said. “It was meant to be inclusive, to be sure we address the needs of a subgroup on campus [whites].
“There was a misperception of the meeting and that’s unfortunate,” the principal added. “The purpose was to address issues that are specific to a cultural group [whites], so they would be able to hear without feeling any degree of intimidation from anyone else [non-whites]. … I don’t think we ever anticipated that anyone else wanted to attend.”
Oh, wait. My mistake. I got the race wrong. The morning assembly was a meeting of the Black Students Union, for its members and other black students at the high school to “address issues specific to black students.” But it does make you wonder what the reaction would have been if it was a whites-only assembly. As it is, it certainly seems to have raised at least some fuss.
I was reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman on my lunch hour today, and read, in a few sparse paragraphs, something that made my blood run cold. No, I’m not…
I was reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman on my lunch hour today, and read, in a few sparse paragraphs, something that made my blood run cold. No, I’m not going to quote it, just talk about it.
Trust.
Katherine turns three on Sunday. She’s beginning to figure out more and more about the world, and be able to articulate what she’s figured out, but … she still trusts things. She trusts that the world is pretty safe, that people are good and kind, that her parents can and will protect her. She trusts that reality is here to amuse her, entertain her, make her happy and content and joyful.
If a group of people around her start laughing and applauding, even if she doesn’t understand why, she’ll do the same thing. Her face will light up in a great, big smile, and her hands will slap together, and she’ll even jump around. She sees others being happy, and she gets happiness from that, just in participating in their happiness, even if she doesn’t understand its source. And she sees that they’re happy at her happiness, so it’s all good.
I know that won’t last. The world isn’t there just to amuse and entertain her, to make her happy and content and joyful. Even now, she encounters bits of it that trouble her. She understands “No.” She runs into little kids who won’t just give her the ball because she wants it, or who tell her she can’t do something with them. Lessons, all the time. Sometimes it’s a lesson that I applaud, as it chips away at her naturally self-centered nature. Sometimes it’s a lesson that makes my heart sink, as it chips away at her effortless joy, her trust in others.
She’ll learn about pain. Not the pain that happens when you bump up against a wall, or want something you can’t get. But the pain that happens when someone is mean, thoughtless, cruel, manipulative, uncaring, intentionally hurtful. It happens. It will happen. It even has to happen. But it’s gutwrenching to see, and I know it will hurt her over and over and over again, no matter what I might do or want or accept.
And all I can hope is that enough of that childish wonderment, that joy, that trust that she has with her today, can tide her through those times. All I can hope is that Margie and I can teach her enough about love and caring. That we can teach her how, even if you can’t always trust others, you should always try to be someone who can be trusted yourself. That she won’t respond to the hard knocks, and hard people, of life with anger and hatred and hurtfulness herself. I can only hope that she’ll respond instead by trying to build happiness and contentment and trust around her, toward others. And that she’ll get as much joy from seeing others smile and clap then as she does now, only with an understanding of why.
For those of you tired of the “traditional” Purity Tests, I present you an RPGing Purity Test. And, yes, it has just as many mind-numbing questions. As for me ……
For those of you tired of the “traditional” Purity Tests, I present you an RPGing Purity Test. And, yes, it has just as many mind-numbing questions.
As for me …
| Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score | ||
| Category | Your Score | Average |
| Hacklust | 48.11% Will kill for XP | 52.6% |
| Sensitive Roleplaying | 53.16% “But what’s my motivation for this scene?” | 49% |
| GM Experience | 53.62% Puts the players through the wringer | 65.8% |
| Systems Knowledge | 90.82% Played in a couple of campaigns | 88.4% |
| Livin’ La Vida Dorka | 54.02% Has interesting conversations in public | 58.3% |
| You are 62.2% pure Average Score: 65.6% | ||
Scary.
(via SfAD)