“Groovy Motherfucker”

Having a Linux box is apparently just cause for the Boston PD to confiscate all your equipment.

Hooray for the TSA and their water-divining machinery.

Who would have thought that having three different voting systems (First past the post, regional list, and STV) on one ballot paper would cause confusion? Gah!

Kid phones a school hotline an hour before someone phones in a bomb threat. Unfortunately, the school hadn’t adjusted for the new DST switch, so he got hauled into juvenile detention for twelve days. “County juvenile detention officials wanted to keep Webb in custody, Andrews said. “They wanted him to have a mental health evaluation because he wouldn’t admit to making the call.” ” Frightening.

Diebold is suing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts because it chose a competing firm’s voting machines. “Weisberg said the company is not alleging any improprieties by the secretary of state’s office. Instead, it is saying the office acted in good faith but made a mistake in the selection.” Just when you think Diebold can’t get any more evil/corrupt/incompetent, they’re (ab)using the courts to screw with the rolling out of competitors’ technology.

A British online music store is being banned from purchasing cheap (legal) CDs in Hong Kong and selling them to British people cheaper than the “official” British release. How in the name of sodding fucksticks is this “copyright infringement”?!

“The league has sought to forbid advertisers from saying things like “Get a new color TV in time for the Super Bowl!”, so instead they have to use euphemisms like “The Big Game” instead. […] But advertisers may have to come up with some new euphemisms next year because now the NFL is seeking a trademark on “The Big Game”“

“Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.”

Throwies shut down Boston — I-93 North and big chunks of the MBTA were shut down today due to “suspicious objects that looked like circuit boards, found attached to bridges”. Turns out they were promotional throwies for Adult Swim. Somebody at Time Warner’s about to get fired, I imagine.

Our Attorney General: “The Constitution doesn’t say, ‘Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.’ It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended”

Because logging you out of your banking website is clearly less important than trying to sell you another credit card.

BPI publishes advertisement pushing for copyright terms extension. Features 4,000 “signatures” from musicians. Some of which are pushing up the daisies and whose petition-signing skills should be held in awe.

Good bloody grief. Damn that 2.4Ghz band, and all its illness-causing ways. Hope the schools also removed all cordless telephones and, erm, microwave ovens. Won’t somebody think of the children?!

Patrick Smith’s mother causes confusion at the airline security counter: Is it OK to take marinara sauce (which is a liquid) onto a plane if it’s frozen (which makes it a solid)? Ah, I feel safer already.

I’m playing with Vista on my laptop, and this “improvement” from Microsoft was pissing me off. Thankfully there is a “solution”. One that is a usability nightmare waiting to happen (drag a folder too close to the edge of the screen, and it becomes a toolbar that is hard to work out how to close).

Microsoft’s “you must buy points in $5 increments” makes sense if you consider credit-card transaction costs (I’m sure Apple loses money if you only buy one 99 cent song at a time — that’s why they batch up your transactions), but the user experience of “1.25 cents per point” is ridiculous, and probably going to bite MS.

Proof that Massachusetts don’t need no stinking electronic voting machines to disenfranchise its citizens. We can disenfranchise them the good ol’ fashioned way: with paper.

Hooray! It’s the first fucking idiotic, easily-gamable, pyramid-scheme, AllAdvantage-style “We’ll pay you to watch ads” business model of the new bubble.

Diebold voting machines are found to be easily re-flashable by anyone wanting to invisibly rig an election. Diebold spokesman: “I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.” I have not the words.

Palm’s first Windows Mobile handheld gets horribly confused and shuffles around your calendar appointments by an hour when daylight savings kicks in. Well I mean, obviously. Who could ever predict such an unusual event as clocks being moved forward an hour? It’s madness, I tells ya. Madness!