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If you have Real Player, you can watch Harry Browne's first four commercials. Well done, Harry!
Scott Rosenberg at Salon - A scanner darkly: berates the CueCat that Wired sent out with its last issue, and that Joel Spolsky reviewed ten days ago. I got one in the mail. After reading this article, I'm glad I didn't bother to attempt to install it. [faisal]
This thing doesn't even earn the right to be called a kludge....
How huge is the problem CueCat addresses, anyway? Is it that hard to find a company's home page on the Web? If a company wants a magazine ad to drive traffic to its Web site, what's more reasonable for it to expect consumers to do: Type "www.companyname.com" into their browsers, or laboriously install the CueCat and its software and scan a bar code?
In any case, as you've probably guessed, the CueCat does not work as advertised. The installation routine is a bear: First you have to plug in the device by inserting the CueCat's cable between your keyboard and your computer; then you must sit through endless video footage that rolls clunkily off the installation CD-ROM; then, if you're not careful, you'll be confronted with endless screens of survey questions designed to nail you down as a marketing target.
Association for Local Telecommunication Services - What is Reciprocal Compensation and Why is it Important to Your Business? more on the evils of the Reciprocal Compensation Adjustment Act of 2000 (H.R.4445) and its senate cousin, the Broadband Internet Regulatory Relief Act of 2000 (S.2902). Why this legislation will substantially raise rates for connecting to the internet with a modem. From a libertarian perspective, I'm not sure what to think of this legislation. It appears to partially deregulate the market, getting rid of the government-mandated requirement for local phone companies to pay ISPs, but I don't know enough about existing regulations to tell. The house bill requires knowledge of existing regulation. The senate one is very wordy and hard to understand. [faisal]
The Misanthropic Bitch - Now with 20 percent more stupid people: hehe. Don't go here unless you like to be offended. Too long for me to read the whole thing, but I got some laughs.
Charles Maxwell at LewRockwell.com - The ABCs of Gun Control: A nice list of aphorisms. My favorites: [lew]
An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
If Guns cause Crime, then Matches cause Arson.
You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
911 - government sponsored Dial a Prayer.
Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - Internal Combustion: Lew comments on the tax riots, er... gas riots, in Europe. [lew]
The political class can't claim that high gas prices are an accident of history. To achieve high prices has been the social-democratic political program for more than two decades. The influence of environmentalists, who regard the car as a moral blight on the world second only to the cow, has led to high taxes in the name of conservation. The higher the price, the less people drive, and people like Gore regard driving as morally suspect. Governments are glad to cooperate with green agitators because they never pass up an opportunity to collect more revenue....
What are the consequences? European nations all but shut down last week. People couldn't get to work. Kids couldn't get to school. Sick folks couldn't get to the hospitals. Stores couldn't receive deliveries of food. If this had continued too much longer, barbarism would be the order of the day. This would be our future in a world without the internal combustion engine. The air might be squeaky clean (absent any natural volcanos) but our living standards would be pre-industrial. How, again, is it possible that a man who called for this may be our next president?
Steven Johnson at Feed - re: Brewster Kahle: Mr. Johnson interviews Brewster Kahle, the inventor of WAIS and the founder of Alexa and The Internet Archive. Hi, Brewster! Hugs. [/.]
Google has a special page for government document searching: www.google.com/unclesam.
A.F. Branco at KeepAndBearArms.com - New Anti-Freedom Logo: An updated logo for Amerika Online. Hehe. [kaba]
According to my friend Brad, the first snow of the year has already closed the road between Laramie and Rawlins, Wyoming. Here's a web camera view of the road east of Rawlins. The server was very slow for me, but it did eventually come 'round.
Catherine Candisky at the Columbus Dispatch via Cannabis News - Marijuana's Smell Now Cause for Search: In Ohio, the smell of marijuana is now considered probable cause for a warrantless search. Sniff's comment on this: [cn]
is the smell of a burning bill of rights now cause for a revolution?