Saturday, September 04, 2004

A Convention for Carnivores. For all the cuddly moments, this was manifestly a manly convention. This was not about reaching out and touching. This convention was about kicking butt. By By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY. [The New York Times > Opinion] 8:44:01 PM    comment []

What happens when parody invades reality? Zell's speech appears to have drawn on an internet hoax! Tsk, tsk. Was Zell scamming us, or was he a victim? Wonder what he'll say. [Ladies Against Women (Behind & Beyond!)] From the Martini Republic link: Making Zell's attack even more insane is the fact that both Dick Cheney and President Bush I actually spoke specifically in favor of spiking some of the very same weapons systems Miller falsely claims Kerry tried to kill. Cheney, for example, complained about Congress "forcing" him to buy more F-14s and F-15s, two systems Zell accuses Kerry of opposing. As Snopes points out, Secretary of Defense Cheney himself testified before Congress that he favored cutting the Apache Helicopter program: So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and $200 million in spares over the next five years. If you have Zell's email address, please acquaint him with Snopes, and also with Google. And urge him to see a doctor. Some Aricept might be in order. BREAKING NEWS UPDATE:  This just in — Bush vows to "end scourge of kidney theft" in second term! MORE BREAKING NEWS:  Zell denounces Cal football team for unpatriotic 56-14 rout of Air Force, claims they are "obsessed with trying to beat Air Force's football" team. UPDATE II:  Here is a more "nuanced" debunking of Zell's gibberish, from Factcheck.org:  "GOP claims that he opposed a long list of conventional weapons are overblown." 8:44:00 PM    comment []

InfoWorld: Let the TiVo Olympics begin. Thanks to this cheap, Linux-based appliance, I was able to compress all of the events that interested me into a fraction of the time it would otherwise have taken to watch them. I'll always remember the Athens games as the first TiVo Olympics. Now I'm thinking about ways to make the next one even better. [Tomalak's Realm] Y'know, we were just bemoaning that we had no Olympics to view of an evening. I shoulda planned for this by recording tons of stuff, huh? 8:37:33 PM    comment []

Strange Bedfellows in E-Mail Case. Civil liberties groups join the Department of Justice to protest a ruling that said ISPs can freely monitor e-mail. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News] 8:31:46 AM    comment []

premium SMS scams. Mobile phones are an interesting technology. They can be used not just as a means of communication, but increasingly as a payment system. Each advance in communications and payment systems technology is inevitably exploited by the unscrupulous (think of fax spam, email spam, telemarketing, premium 1900 numbers; counterfeit currency, cheque fraud, credit card fraud, debit card fraud, identity theft and fraud associated with PayPal and other online payment systems). Eventually this behaviour is recognized and the public is usually protected from these scams by new laws, different business practices or consumer behaviour or technological solutions. We haven’t got there yet with mobile phones. In Australia, ordinary people are still very vulnerable to premium SMS scams. Email spam is annoying enough. Comment spam on blogs can be quite vile – although I’m happy to say TypePad is much improved in this area. Unsolicited SMS (also known as text - and txt at Vodafone) is particularly annoying, and it is certain to become even more prevalent. But can you imagine receiving unsolicited spam which charges you content charges for the honour of receiving the spam? Essentially, that is what premium SMS scams are about. There are lots of different ways of getting hooked with premium SMS. Maybe you found a web site offering a “free” ringtone or picture, not knowing that you would then be getting a charged one every day, costing $A 3 each, every single day. Alternatively, you entered a competition or survey associated with a TV program or a radio station, and you then start receiving these crappy SMS jokes or horoscopes or news headlines. Each one costs 55 cents and you get one every single hour. I can accept that there could be a legitimate business in providing premium SMS services, so long as it’s transparent (“by entering this competition, you are agreeing that you want to receive an update every 30 mins, and that each update will cost you 55 cents”) and it's easy to unsubscribe from. Currently most premium SMS services are not like this at all.  . . . .  . . . [explodedlibrary.info] 8:25:35 AM    comment []