Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Pipeline is not gambling on basketball today. 4:18:32 PM    comment []

How 'bout that? 321Studios offers $10,000 reward for busting movie pirates 321Studios, the developer of the DVDXCopy DVD copying software, has announced a reward for busting and convicting a pirate that uses their products for making illegal movie copies. 2:18:20 PM    comment []

News from Pakistan: MMA wants to close down cyber cafes, by Abdullah Iqbal, Gulf-News. With home computers still in limited use because of their cost, most Internet users rely on cafes, which now exist in even small towns and villagers. As such, a closure of these cafes would drastically reduce Internet usage. Commenting on this, a spokesman for the MMA in Lahore said: We think in cafes the Internet is not used for education, but only for recreation or immoral activity, so this would not adversely impact anyone. 12:17:54 PM    comment []

"Joe Millionaire" chooses Zora, by Frazier Moore (AP). Many on The Well had speculated about this ending and guessed the million-dollar prize. I am not disgusted with myself for having watched this, but I do feel a little unclean. To atone, I will do some ''mercenary'' act, such as bathing a poor child. 12:17:51 PM    comment []

Good advice for Alan Greenspan: On the Second Day, Atlas Waffled, by Paul Krugman (NYT). John Galt wouldn't be very happy with you right now. . . . Fed chairmen aren't allowed to speculate about disaster scenarios, so let me do it for you. If the administration gets what it wants, within a decade — or perhaps sooner — the United States will have budget fundamentals comparable to Brazil's a year ago. The ratios of debt and deficits to G.D.P. won't be all that high by historical standards, but the bond market will look ahead and see that things don't add up: the rich have been promised low tax rates, middle-class baby boomers have been promised pensions and medical care, and the government can't meet all those promises while paying interest on its debt. Fears that the government will solve its problem by inflating away its debt will drive up interest rates, worsening the deficit, and things will spiral out of control. So why are you still giving these people political cover? No doubt you're under intense pressure to be a team player. But these guys are users: they persuade other people to squander their hard-won credibility on behalf of bad policies, then discard those people once they are no longer useful. . . . . 9:15:36 AM    comment []

Radio: How to backup and restore your weblog. [Scripting News] 6:12:02 AM    comment []

Groups Support University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case. More than 300 organizations announced that they would support the university after the Bush administration opposed affirmative action policies there. By Diana Jean Schemo. [New York Times: Education] 6:10:04 AM    comment []

ZapMail Redux: A Response, by Dan "Effugas" Kaminsky. (Thoughts brought on by Clay Shirky's Customer-Owned Networks and Zapmail, which I thought I had blinked here, but don't find via Google -- there seems to be a dark chunk of my weblog in the Google archives -- or maybe I only sent it to my list or none of those things. Sometimes, I forget things.) 2:14:26 AM    comment []