Woot. Per boingboing, Senator Chris Dodd has committed to placing a hold on any bill that includes telecommunications amnesty. Bring it, buddy…about time someone showed some spine.

To be precise, here’s what I sent the senator:
Thank you very, very much, Senator. This is a principled act, and I realize you will be under a great deal of pressure to back down. Thanks for standing up for the rule of law and transparent government. Reading about this pretty much made my day. Take care, and good luck.

And it did, indeed, make my day. And after reading my fill of bad news this morning, I needed his post AND a unicorn chaser.

Wow…great link from Jon Udell, and something to defintely think about: A Vision of Students Today. (and, btw…the vision of business today isn’t much better)

Twitter’s support for OAuth is available at the API Authentication page. I just started reading about OAuth, and it looks like an EXCELLENT solution to the give me your userid and password craziness that so many SN sites try. And found the notification via Twitter’s new tracking functionality, btw…thanks, gwachob!

I listen to a couple of different podcasts by the The Economist magazine, including one called This Week in the Economist, which gives a preview of some of the upcoming issue’s content. A couple of week’s back, they included a powerful editorial describing the policy changes that have occurred in the Western democracies after 9/11, and the missteps therein. It’s well worth a read: Civil liberties under threat — The real price of freedom. Give it a read, and then give it some thought. They are dead on in my opinion.

Peter Watts has been one of my favorite writers for a couple of years now, since I started the Rifters trilogy and was immediately hooked. And his newest book, Blindsight is simply outstanding.

You can get almost everything of his via CC license at his website in the Backlist section. I keep all his novels on my Nokia 770 for quick reference; even the man’s endnotes are worthwhile…I have 2 books in my reading queue b/c of them.

Buy his books!! Blindsight is in print, as is a short story collection. The man is a genius; we must encourage him. (and the blog is well worth reading, too.)

Oh, yeah…my non-total fanboy point to this rant. I was poking about in his backlist section, and decided to read some of the Commentary stuff. The Hierarchy of Contempt is a must read for any fan of contemporary science fiction, and a telling quick analysis of the state of the genre today. It’s just a few pages…go knock it out!

I’ve been meaning to post my thoughts on the RIAA court win for a couple of days now, but it’s been a little hectic (among other things, PC is sick…looks like we’re getting ready for first replacement box in a LONG time!). My basic thought is that regardless of her apparent guilt, suing your customers for hundreds of thousands of dollars is a bad idea. My suggestion? Quit the RIAA: pick sharing friendly Creative Commons music, or even just just more enlightened sources like Magnatune, Sellaband, or Amie Street. Let ’em eat sand…you can’t sue people who don’t have any of your music for infringement.

Other than the new NIN album that I picked up on a lark recently (to try out Amazon’s new MP3 service, primarily), I haven’t bought major label in a couple of years. And in the past 6 months, I’ve actually started buying music again, from the smaller folks. There’s some good stuff out there!

Bush on Private Contractors in Iraq — Wow. Some days, it just warms my heart to know that I broke a 16-year streak of voting 100% Libertarian to vote for Kerry against this guy in 2004. Not like it made a difference, but at least no one can pull the you threw your vote away argument out. *sigh*

I get a small amount of comment spam, but I haven’t bothered with wiring up a CAPTCHA, because the spam hasn’t reached PITA proportions, and…I’m kinda lazy. But reCAPTCHA gives me a further impetus, because not only does it protect me from comment spam, but it does it by helping with the digitization of books! It works by using words not read cleanly by the OCR software as the base of CAPTCHA images…clever! So even if a bot grabs my reCAPTCHA and convinces someone trying to get access to porn somewhere else to decode it for them (a way around CAPTCHAs)…even then I’m still getting OCR work done for (presently) the Internet Archive.

Very cool! And they have a python library, so I may work on a plugin for Django (if someone hasn’t already). The site is quite informative…they discuss how the process works, how they can use a word they haven’t yet decoded as a CAPTCHA, etc. Good stuff! Check it out.

Found another great band at Amie Street: Chinese Whispers. New Wave-ish, energetic tunes with great lyrics, 80s-style synth (which I dig). They are tagged as reminiscent of The Psychedelic Furs and David Bowie at their Amie Street page, which I certainly agree with. DEFINITELY worth a listen if you’re into this style of music. So far, I’ve liked Save Myself (in player below) and Walk Away in particular, but it’s all good.