Author David Brin makes the case more cogently than most.

Oh, after berating the LP delegates for a solid hour, poking at several dozen classic sacred cows, I expected either to be lynched or to get a standing ovation.

Guess which happened.

Enjoy!

A new version of the Freenet software, a program based around wholly anonymous Net publishing and distribution, is due out Monday after long silence from its mostly volunteer developer community.

This is the RIAA’s worst nightmare!

The developers have spent considerable time building in a level of encryption and anonymity that ordinary peer-to-peer services can’t provide, noting that their aim is more to allow global, uncensorable free speech than to facilitate the distribution of such things as music or movies.

Yeah, but it’s going to get used that way, and the record industry will have no way to fight back!

###This is the key

Freenet works by having each person involved dedicate a portion of their hard drive to hold content uploaded to the network. This is encrypted, so no person will know what is in their cache at any given time or be knowingly responsible for hosting any particular piece of content.

Nobody will know what’s being shared, by whom, or where.

This is an earlyl test screening review of “Shanghai Knights”. Hopefully this will be the movie that brings [[Jackie Chan]] back to his greatness.

My jaw kept dropping at Chan’s fight and stunt work in this scene, and my jaw hasn’t dropped like that since I saw DRUNKEN MASTER II or the rooftop fight at the end of WHO AM I. Yes, this is Chan’s best stuff since DRUNKEN MASTER II.

That is some **very** high praise indeed. If this is even half that good, it’ll still be better than any of his American releases yet!

Jeff Jacoby has some more thoughts on why we should pass Question 1.

Enacting Question 1 would not wipe out state government. It would cut a $23 billion budget to $14 billion, or roughly where it was in 1993 – not exactly the Dark Ages. In so doing, it would administer a badly needed rebuke to a Legislature that routinely treats the public with contempt and thinks the best answer to every question is new taxes.

It’s funny how the truth just as a better sound to it, isn’t it?

Question 1 would abolish the state income tax. Why should you vote for it?

We have high income and property taxes; the total per capita tax burden is the fourth highest in the nation with correspondingly high per capita spending. Yet as soon as there is a slight revenue shortfall, the first move by the Legislature is to cut services for the handicapped, then start drafting a new tax package.

This drives me crazy. I’ve been saying for quite a while now that the state legislature has no respect for the people. We pass a proposition to roll back the income tax, and they basically just ignore it.

In fact, it’s worse than that. They treat us like children that they are going to punish. Have you ever noticed how the first response of the establishment is fear mongering? [According to Paul Guzzi and Michael Widmer](http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/299/oped/Vote*no”to”avoid*fiscal_chaos+.shtml,) rolling the state budget back to **$14 BILLION** would throw the finances of state and local governments into chaos. Don’t believe it.

Don’t you get the feeling that every time they are forced to cut a tax, they choose the spending to cut that they know will be the most emotionally disturbing to the general populace? It’s all about taking **our*’ money and controlling it for what ”’they”’ want. It’s time to say ‘*enough is enough**!

I remember this!

Here is a sample of my Macromedia Flash programming. Flash was designed as a vector animation tool for the web. Lately, however, it has developed scripting capabilities similar to its sister program, Macromedia Director, which is my native language.

I chose to recreate Atari Adventure with all its bleeps and bloops and chicken-looking dragons. As a kid this program fascinated and enticed me to become a programmer. It’s a joy to be able to re-create it. Note that I took the liberty to rearrange a couple of items.

Adventure was the first of its kind, the mother of all graphic adventure games from Ultima to Zelda. It was also the instigator of hidden backdoors and easter eggs (now staples in every video game).

**YEAH!**

Now, if only I can remember how to solve this [[:-)]]

Not only is it hard, it’s NP-Hard.

Technically, it’s ‘NP-hard,’ meaning that there is no efficient way to calculate the necessary moves to “win,” even if you know in advance the complete order of pieces, and are given all the time you need to make each move. At least there’s one geek classic that refuses to fall to the scrutiny of mathematicians.

Now why didn’t I think of that for a graduate thesis???

Linux will be the main operating system for IBM’s upcoming family of “Blue Gene” supercomputers–a major endorsement for the operating system and the open-source computing model it represents.

###Very cool news

I’m really pulling for Linux to succeeed, because everything that gets done to make Linux better indirectly helps the Mac and OSX.

**Yeah!**. Just one more!!!!

Bonds put San Francisco on the brink, hitting an RBI double that sent the Giants zooming to a big lead that not even these pesky Anaheim Angels could overcome, winning 16-4 in Game 5 Thursday night to take a 3-2 lead.

I think Barry has silenced the critics regarding his post season play.

The weather was perfect!

Some people where I work decided to take a hike today up the [[Blue Hill]] near our office. Take a look:

[[Blue Hill 2002]]

I think I’m going to have to take my family there.