Microsoft Class Action Settlement

For all of you who lives in California...
This settlement should interest you...

And if your computer came with Microsoft product (OS, office, etc.) then you are entitled to a settlement. Must be received no later than 4/28.

The voucher is for use on any computer purchase.

And another thing...

Richard A. Clarke is my hero of the week. In case you have been in a cave for the last 2 weeks, his new book is causing quite a bit of stir in D.C. and around the country.
Here is his main point: Going to war with Iraq was US's worst move possible in the war against Al-Queda. So far, the administration has been attacking him on personal and political levels and questioning his credibility. Yet, there is no national debate on Clarke's main point. For some, it might be too early to debate the answer. However, given the evidence so far, I think there is sufficient data to begin such a debate.

I want the administration to point out why going to Iraq has made us safer against Al-Queda given that there were no evidence from the CIA, FBI, NSA linking the secular govt and the religious movement? I want the administration to prove that going to Iraq has not enhanced the standing of Al-Queda in the muslim world. Instead of more political rhetorics, I would like hear some serious discussion with real data and real results.

Dangerous links between Corporations and Government

Recent news in the P2P front points ominously to the power of the media corporations on government. Given the recent proposal (PIRATE Act) in congress and the one in the state legislature, it is quite obvious that the government is in the backpocket of the RIAA and MPAA.

What pisses me off the most is the complete BS that the media corps and politicians are presenting to the public. The media corporations are alleging that P2P users are child pornographers, criminals, and terrorists. That is the most outrageous lie this side of Iraq. It is incredibly irresponsible for politicians to push these issue based exclusively on the money from the media corporations. I'm sure that the politicians (i.e. Mr. Hatch) do not fully understand the underlying technology.

Luckily, these are just proposals that (hopefully) won't see the light of day. And if it does, I hope enough people would stand up and protest the hijacking of our government. [BTW donate to the EFF. I do.] However, it is still quite alarming to read just how much the government at all levels favors big business.

RSS + BitTorrent Finally

Ha, so someone finally put the pieces together... See Wired Article for the details.
See details from a few weeks back on: RSS + BitTorrent = TIVO

I've been using various feeds in RSS for a while now, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. Push and intelligent content filtering are the way to go.

In the interest of a few

For those of you who can not get enough of this blog, I'll post my observations for the last few days. Actually I don't have too many except that a lot of Java (or any language) are non-intuitive and have to be re-learned (why is that?).

I'm still deciding a implementation language for the bhfile utility. Hopefully that will not drag on for too long.
Will add more l8r.

Election Day Today

In honor of Super Tuesday, there is an online test at Political Compass which tests your political world view along the social and economic axes. I'm sure the test has a large smudge factor due to ambiguous questions and limited answers, but it is interesting to see where various world leaders are. Of course, take it with a grain of salt since the site could be biased.
There is a diagram (right) which shows the primary candidates, which can be helpful in some ways to match your political viewpoints. The diagram is based on a world view, so although the democrats are considered liberal in the US, they are really centrist in the worldview. Dubya would be the most extreme of all the candidates.
For everyone that wants some entertainment mixed in with their politics, there is
The Daily Show. Looking forward to Indecision 2004.