Clickstream

Justice Scalia Supports Dictatorships Around the World

It's mind-boggling the logic being applied in politics these days. Why was Scalia one of the worst supreme court appointees in history? How about this, after ruling against someone who refused to make patronage appointments repaying republican politcal favors in New York:

Justice Scalia and the other members of the high court were not persuaded by arguments that “one-party rule” effectively denied some people “a fair shot” at a judicial nomination.

“The reason one-party rule is entrenched may be (and usually is) that voters approve of the positions and candidates that the party regularly puts forward,” Justice Scalia wrote.

Yes, that piece of brilliant logic comes from a supreme court justice. Single party rule is very democratic. Working great in Pakistan. Hugo Chavez would agree. North Korea seems amenable to the concept. It's being demonstrated in practice in Burma. I'm glad the republican-appointed judiciary agrees. Maybe we can entrench that style of democracy in the US.

Unless they all get thrown in jail for fundraising for terrorists. That gives a whole new meaning to "strong on terrorism".

Labels: corruption, republicans, scalia, terrorists

Posted by Mark Wednesday, January 16, 2008 2:31:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Network Solutions Again Pushing Legal Limits

A couple days ago the news came out that Network Solutions (evil bastard domain registrar you should avoid like the plague) is swiping domains when you search. If you go to their site and search for a domain, they will automatically register it and then offer to sell it to you. They get away with this because of a rule that allows domains to be registered for 5 days without payment. They can take advantage of unsuspecting consumers and if no purchase results, free up the domain 5 days later. Register.com has been accused of the same thing in the past.

As proof, I did searches on a few and then checked them and sure enough, they were taken. Here are screenshots as proof. First, I searched a bunch of domain names. See how the Network Solutions site shows them as free (except one someone beat me to):

Then I went to GoDaddy and used their domain search and these same domains are all shown as taken, registered to Network Solutions:


If you want to cause them some pain, search for copyrighted or trademarked names and then notify the rights holders.

Labels: network solutions, sleazy, swiping

Posted by Mark Saturday, January 12, 2008 1:05:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Retro-future Research

I've been updating materials from one of my future-oriented presentations and came across this video on the future of cars from 1958. I think the only thing they got right was suburban sprawl.

Lots more of these retro-future videos on Youtube. It's funny how people were saying things like "It's useless. Who wants to watch kids on skateboards all day?" at YouTube's inception. Another example of poor predictions.

Labels: retro-future

Posted by Mark Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:50:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Diebold Voting Machine Hacks Demonstrated

Black Box Voting has an article up about how bad the Diebold electronic voting machines really are. Three different hacks were described. To make it worse, some states like deservedly maligned Florida, have laws forbidding counting of paper ballots so there's no mechanism to look for manipulated elections. This company should be forced out of business. Let's hope your state isn't one using their machines.

Labels: diebold, hacks, insecure

Posted by Mark 6:43:00 PM | permalink | (1) comments

Another Reason to Oppose Retroactive Immunity for Telecoms

Because it would probably mean illegal government activities get grandfathered in as well.

Labels: fisa, immunity, telecom

Posted by Mark Monday, January 07, 2008 2:09:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Secret Underground Tokyo

One thing we lack in most of America is mystery, like this supposed discovery of mysteries under Tokyo. Although it might land us in the land of Focault's Pendulum, which incidentally makes for a fun comparison to WTC conspiracy theories

Labels: Tokyo, underground

Posted by Mark 12:37:00 PM | permalink | (1) comments

Nominate Giuliani for This Kind of Performance?

Great article in Discover on the effects of the toxic dust from the WTC building collapse. Yet another thing to add to the list of governmental failures. After reading this, it's hard to believe that anyone would consider Giuliani for any job, no matter how small.

Labels: giuliani, toxic, wtc

Posted by Mark 11:57:00 AM | permalink | (0) comments