random($foo)

Fellow Californians:

• No to recall – if only on principle for how much this whole thing is going to cost, but also because you don’t want Arnold in office (oh, and the car tax thing? Pete Wilson signed that in)
• I voted Camejo. It’s not a horse race (but if it were, you’d probably want to vote for Bustamante (he’s also the plaintiff in the Enron case; which does win some points as far as the respect thing goes at least))
• No to Prop 53 – makes it harder to balance the budget, contractor back scratching
• No to Prop 54 – despite what it would sound like, will lead to more discrimination

This is the kind of stuff that would be hilarious if err, well, this were a TV show and not the reality that we’re living in (the joke’s on us I guess):

Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories. “I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

(via kottke)

Matt W has been posting a lot of interesting stuff on his blog recently. On the “to read after I finish these deadlines” list…

Ahoy: Everything Can be a Link with Mozilla’s window.getSelection() Method and the W3C DOM Range API – Brian Donovan wrote a JS script that allows dynamic (user-drivent) text-fragment bookmarking via getSelection() and DOM ranging.

School District Sued over WLAN Planning – hmm. Sometimes I get bothered by the amount of microwave radiation bombarding my body. But mostly I’m apathetic about it (way more is coming from my cell phone than from APs anyway). An interesting discussion… See also:

• Cellular Phone Antennas (Mobile Phone Base Stations) and Human Health
• CDMA FAQ: Is there any danger associated with using a CDMA phone?
• Fixed Wireless Radiation

Hmm, the big question about getting a Treo 600 is whether I’m going to go stick w/ T-Mobile or Sprint… I have nothing against either company, decent experiences with both. I’ve had some reception funkiness w/ T-Mobile, but that’s probably more my Sidekick than anything else. The GSM version of the Treo 600 is a quad-band (GSM 800/900/1800/1900) world phone that also has longer battery life (5-7hrs) vs the CDMA version, which has 4hrs battery-life on a possibly funky Airprime radio, but which would probably be nominally faster (data throughput).

It’ll probably come down to availability/monthly price. (Vision is now $15/mo instead of $10/mo (not $30/mo at least though; minute plans seem to be gettin worse at Sprint) Some interesting threads @ TreoCentral:

• Topic: Soft launch only of Treo 600- available now!!! – at least $56 off for handset upgrade, $100-150 credit via retention for contract, and another $50 possible HandSpring rebate.
• Topic: Absolutely no luck – useful info as the page progresses

All this transhuman stuff is great, but remember: DON’T BETA TEST THE BIOWARE

(coined that a few months ago; would probably look good on a t-shirt)

• The Low Beyond – Eliezer S. Yudkowsky’s home page on issues surrounding the singularity, including:
  • Creating Friendly AI 1.0
  • Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5
  • FAQ about the Meaning of Life
• Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• KurzweilAI.net: The Singularity
• Surviving the Singularity
• Vernor Vinge on the Singularity (text version)
• The Singularity

If you’re a fan of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, etc, give Explosions in the Sky a try. It looks like their going to be in town in December.

• explosions in the sky – the only moment we were alone [14.0 MiB]
• explosions in the sky – six days at the bottom of the ocean [11.9 MiB]

Matt’s put up a great article on his experience with Adsense and his PVRblog entitled Blogging for Dollars

Also, Cam posts about being on the campaign trail, working on Wes Clark’s blog. (I like Wes Clark, the TPM interview was great; but if asked right now, I’d still being voting Dean – and yes, I was having a conversation where it came up; you know it’s bad when of a retired General seems like a more reasonable choice than the incumbent)

EFF: Unintended Consequences: Five Years under the DMCA

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to several important public policy priorities