Monday, June 25, 2007

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 7170 Diggs, is a play on the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song. Or something.

7170 Diggs. Amazing.

Cameron Diaz Rubs Salt in Wounds

Celebrity Report: I don't think ignorance of history (particularly such brutal butchery) is a very good excuse. Cameron Diaz should be both ashamed and educated.

Immigration: Trust, but Verify

I think people have all sorts of problems with immigration, legal or otherwise. There are those who mistakenly believe that immigrants take away their jobs, there are those who are merely nationalistic, and there are those (like me) who have nothing against immigrants themselves, but a great deal against the social programs that confiscate wealth for their benefit.

Then again, I don't like such social programs for bona fide American citizens, either. So, I guess that means I have no real issue with immigrants. As long as they're law abiding, and registered somewhere to ensure they're not terrorists, they're more than welcome.

Human Rights Movement for Everything but Humans

This doesn't represent a "shadow on the human rights movement," this represents the "human rights movement" today. Whether it's anti-semitism, pro-Islamism, anti-capitalist, or anti-globalization, the real goal of the human rights movement is to destroy Israel, establish a caliphate (among the Islamists, of course, who play a large role in "organized" human rights efforts such as at the UN), eliminate capitalism, and do something to globalization (which will never be identified, because what, exactly, is to be done?).

The human rights movement has no more to do with "human rights" than environmentalism has to do with saving the planet.

Thou Shalt Not Pimp One's Ride

So the Pope has written the "1o Commandments of Driving," or somesuch? I would think this is a joke, but something tells me it's not.

In any case, screw it. I'm going to enjoy driving my very quick sports sedan, and revelling in the fact that it's much faster than many other cars on the road.

Besides, I'm not a Catholic, so none of this applies to me anyways.

Chinese Collectivism in Concrete Form

This reminds me of some science fiction movie whose title I can't remember. I wonder about the underlying collectivism that such rigid working conditions represent. I can't remember seeing an American factory that was quite so confining, even the most cubiclized office space.

What happens to the Chinese machine when this beehive-like efficiency gives way to any kind of individualism? I think the Japanese are in the process of discovering this themselves.

CIA Releases Tons of Redactions

Zzzzzzzzzzzz. I've seen stuff like this, and there's more redaction than content.

"Privacy" vs. Intellectual Property

This all seems very complex to me, and I can see why the courts are having problems with such issues. Should a company be required to track every bit of information that passes through its servers and workstations? My kneejerk reaction is, no, it shouldn't. First, it would be virtually impossible to manage from a sheer storage perspective. Second, does the government have an inherent authority to require the maintenance of such information? Can it, in fact, force private organizations to do its own investigative work?

Note that I'm not a fan of "privacy" as a catch-all to mask all sorts of otherwise illegal activities. Consider that this particular case concerns Torrentspy, a site that makes it easier to locate and download pirated intellectual property. Furthermore, I don't believe that "privacy" is any sort of Constitutional right, nor can it really be found anywhere in the Constitution.

Rather, I believe we have privacy with regard to our own property, such as our homes, cars, bodies, computers, etc. Once we put information out on the Internet, all bets are off. But the linked story does raise some interesting questions.

Class Warfare: FaceBook vs. MySpace

I could be wrong, but couldn't the entire difference here be due to the fact that Facebook began as a college social network service, while MySpace has always been a free-for-all?

Dunno, but it sure seems to make more sense than the class divisions theme asserted here.

Today's Shocker: Diplomat Abuses Parking System!

Boing Boing sometimes posts the silliest little stories. The same sort of thing could be said about every diplomat everywhere in the world. Let's see Boing Bong do some research on British diplomats in the US, and see how many unpaid parking tickets they have.