Downtime

IWDC will be down from 5 PM until Midnight today for a web server upgrade. Just found out about this from our host. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Max: Pretty

If I ever do anything with my filmish ideas, this will be in my gear shack.

Max: Garfield Minus Garfield

Odd

Max: Justice Delayed is Typical

The Missouri Court of appeals recently reversed the Missouri Division of Employment Security decision that I was not qualified to receive unemployment compensation after Charter fired me. Almost two years after I was fired, two (technically 3 if you count half a day as a substitute teacher) jobs later, I qualify for unemployment.

I had appealed based of Charter's lack of evidence that I had done what they claimed (hanging up on customers). The Court decided that it was not material whether or not I had hung up on customers. All that mattered was that Charter did not prove that I had "evil" intent in any policy violations they claimed I had made.

I don't know if this means I will actually get any money. If I do, it will quickly evaporate into the financial black hole caused by being jobless for a year after Charter showed me the secret back door hidden in the HR office. Still, plus one for the weirdos.

If you are interested, you can read the Court's decision here.

Max: FCC, Protecting America From Blurred Bits

Via Ars Technica

The FCC first issued a Notice of Apparent Liability on Married in 2004 after it received complaints about the program. In correspondence with the Commission, Fox TV acknowledged that in 2003, 161 affiliated stations broadcast the episode before 10 PM, the so-called "safe harbor" hour when risky material become more permissible. The "reality"-based program is no longer produced. It recruited single women and men who had never met but consented to become engaged and even marry each other in some instances.

The April 2003 episode in question featured the participants partying at a strip club. The strippers dance over the engaged couples, who massage, kiss, and even lick whip cream off the performers' bodies. Meanwhile, they make comments like "there's nothing wrong with kissing a stripper before you're married. Kissing a stripper after you're married, that’s when the trouble begins."

Fox attorneys noted in the network's appeal that the program visually concealed various parts of the strippers' anatomy. The FCC ruling acknowledges that, throughout the episode, the producers pixelated—that is, digitally distorted the performers "sexual" body parts—particularly breasts and buttocks. But the agency decision still classifies the scene as "graphic."

"The fact that isolated body parts were 'pixelated' did not obscure the overall graphic character of the depiction," the statement concludes. "The mere pixelation of sexual organs is not necessarily determinative under our analysis because the material must be assessed in its full context. Here, despite the obscured nature of the nudity, it is unmistakable that the party goers are participating in sexual activities and that sexual organs are being exposed."

The FCC is also considering banning nudity beneath clothing.

Max: iBand

Max: Nanotech Declared Witchcraft

Via Science Daily

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.

I was hoping this stupidity came from a failure to grasp what nanotech really is. But;

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

Welcome back to the dark ages...

Max: Our God Fearing, Christian Founding Fathers...

did not fear God and weren't particularly Christian.

"[The Founding Fathers] didn't believe that Jesus was divine. They thought he was a great moral teacher," says Wills. "They didn't believe in the efficacy of prayer. They thought 'God doesn't need our advice.' "

From Voice of America

Max: So Very Wrong (Funny)

Max: Freak Angels Are Coming

Max: Smoke on the... What?

Interesting.

Max: Pretty

I would sell my soul to have this;



Hell, I would even sell something that exists.

Max: RIAA Wants To Take Control Of Your Computer

From Ars Technica

At a Washington, DC, tech conference last week, RIAA boss Cary Sherman suggested that Internet filtering was a super idea but that he saw no reason to mandate it. Turns out that was only part of the story, though; Sherman's a sharp guy, and he's fully aware that filtering will prompt an encryption arms race that is going to be impossible to win... unless users somehow install the filtering software on their home PCs or equipment.

Last night, Public Knowledge posted a video clip from the conference that drew attention to Sherman's other remarks on the topic of filtering, and what he has to say is downright amazing: due to the encryption problem, filters may need to be put on end users' PCs.

The issue of encryption "would have to be faced," Sherman admitted after talking about the wonders of filtering. "One could have a filter on the end user's computer that would actually eliminate any benefit from encryption because if you want to hear [the music], you would need to decrypt it, and at that point the filter would work."

I say we offer the RIAA and MPAA the same protection we offered horse and buggy manufacturers when the car threatened their business model.

Max: Violating Your Rights For Your Own Good

Or, How We Raped the Constitution For Shits and Giggles

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Max: Greatest Headline Ever

UK to end submarine goat tests

Sadly, the article itself is only moderately interesting

Max: Pretty