Flynt winks; C-SPAN blinks
C-SPAN, the public service cable television channel created by the American cable industry, prides itself on presenting live and unvarnished coverage of public affairs. The channel’s mission is to...
View ArticleMinnesota mandatory health insurance
Either I’m missing something, or one of the meanest pieces of proposed legislation is coming down the pike. The proposed bill would require every Minnesota resident to have health insurance while...
View ArticleWhat is it about Microsoft and security?
I spent most of the day installing Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and, well, it’s a good thing I got a buzz cut last Thursday or what little hair I have left would be gone.One of the big deals...
View ArticleThe Jeff and Larry show
Wired magazine put on the Jeff Tweedy and Lawrence Lessig show earlier this week with all the theatrical trappings of a rock-and-roll extravaganza, with tickets sold out online in minutes and lines...
View ArticleGrateful Dead pull archive
The Internet Archive has been asked, presumably by the Grateful Dead, to pull more than 1,000 soundboard recordings of the band’s performances from its archive. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle...
View ArticleBush secretly ordered spying on citizenry
According to various reports the White House is neither confirming nor denying that President Bush in 2002 secretly ordered the National Security Agency to spy on email and telephone communications...
View ArticleMore on Bush’s criminal wiretaps
President Bush claimed yesterday that he was not expanding unchecked power of the executive branch of US government with his secret domestic spying program: “To say ‘unchecked power’ basically is...
View ArticleMinnesota weblog defamation case
A Minnesota weblog libel case is brewing that may have national implications for purveyors of new media. Michael Brodkorb writing anonymously on his weblog, Minnesota Democrats Exposed, cited an...
View ArticleThe tyranny of the gift
The other day a friend asked if I would be a kidney donor were I able. “Yes, of course; I think I’d even like to be an anonymous donor,” I immediately answered before I spotted the trap: “Well, then...
View ArticleBlood money
Hey everybody, forget about the tanked US economy. Let’s all go profit from providing dialysis services to permanent kidney failure patients, like DaVita, Inc.The Associated Press reports that DaVita...
View ArticleLaunching TwinCitiesTwitter in three hours
Do you tweet from or about the Twin Cities? If so, consider joining TwinCitiesTwitter, a hyperlocal tweetstream for the Twin Cities — Minneapolis and Saint Paul — Minnesota USA.Here’s how:Send a...
View ArticleNew York Times: Walk away from your mortgage
Strategic default. When a Wall Street firm does it, it’s just business; when an underwater homeowner does it, it’s morally repugnant and irresponsible. What’s wrong with this picture? Roger...
View ArticleApple iPad? Wait for v2; it’ll have wings
In the single most underwhelming product announcement in either of Steve Jobs’ tenure at Apple, the company today announced its iPad tablet computer. Available in April 2010 and ranging in price from...
View ArticleWikiLeaks’ brief affair with Amazon
WikiLeaks dropped its latest information bomb earlier this week and almost immediately its website was subject to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. WikiLeaks responded by moving its...
View ArticleRamsey County, Minnesota’s pants-on-fire former sheriff
Turns out former Ramsey County (that’s mostly Saint Paul, Minnesota) Sheriff Bob Fletcher failed to respond to multiple Minnesota Data Practices Act requests for information mostly because he was flat...
View ArticleLet’s start with Minnesota’s US$3 billion HMO budget question
A story broken by KSTP-TV investigative reporter Jay Kolls reveals that health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Minnesota collectively receive US$3 billion annually to administer the state’s public...
View ArticleDemand Media — content farm yet to show profit — goes public
Unbelievably, Demand Media — the largest of the content farm organizations, and one that has never turned a profit — went public. The stock closed 33 percent above its inflated offering price. At one...
View ArticleDay two at the sausage factory: Coronary angiogram
In about a half-hour, I’ll be heading down the Grand Avenue hill to the Nasseff Heart Center for a coronary angiogram. A catheter is inserted in an artery in my groin and passed up to my heart. A...
View ArticleGoogle+ arrives (for a few)
Google has announced its latest attempt at social networking, Google+. The search engine giant stresses that Google+ is a project, not a product, and it’s aim is to make the entire Google universe...
View ArticleHoward Levy comes home to the Flecktones
For the first time in 19 years all of the original Flecktones were together again publicly last night at the Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater. Bela Fleck, Howard Levy, Victor Wooten, and Future Man are all...
View ArticleJudge rules Oregon’s media shield law doesn’t cover bloggers
In a decision that will have ramifications for anyone who writes online without a corporate benefactor, US District Judge Marco A. Hernandez in Portland, OR has drawn a clear distinction between...
View ArticleStatus quo stenography
Today’s New York Times carries an op-ed by the US’ paper of record’s public editor, Arthur S. Brisbane — who, it should be noted, works outside of the Times‘ editorial structure — asking if the...
View ArticleIt’s not fascism when we do it
Mike Lofgren, a former congressional staffer, makes a non-compelling case in the Atlantic for voting for Barack Obama in tomorrow’s US presidential election. Basically, Lofgren’s argument boils down...
View ArticleI’ll meet you at the Jubilee
Shake it up now, Sugaree I’ll meet you at the Jubilee If that Jubilee don’t come Maybe I’ll meet you on the run — Robert Hunter and Jerry GarciaAccording to the Bible (Leviticus 25), Jubilee occurs...
View ArticleA brief shining moment of GOP sanity: Gone in a flash
Late last Friday, The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the caucus of conservatives in the US House of Representatives, published a remarkably lucid, extraordinarily sane position paper on copyright...
View ArticleThe problem with non-secured, boundary-less email
It’s not a small irony that the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was unable to secure his email communications.US Army General David H. Petraeus used Google’s Gmail to consort with...
View ArticleWhy iTunes 11 sucks
Dave Winer nails it (yet again) with “iTunes is an outliner.” He also provides an excellent analysis of how iTunes got to be so bad.I’m absolutely dumbfounded with all of the tech press fawning over...
View ArticleDisrupting publishing’s business skeuomorphism
Honda disrupted the automobile industry in the US by taking everything it knew about transportation and the individual automobile and distilling it to its simplest set of components that meet a...
View ArticleITU/WCIT threatens open internet
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a tiny agency within the United Nations hosting the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 3-14 December in Dubai. The...
View ArticleIndefinite detention ban dropped from NDAA
Last month, in something of a surprise, the US Senate passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that explicitly banned the US military from indefinitely detaining US...
View ArticleCable lobbyist admits data caps bogus
Former US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair and current cable industry lobbyist, Michael Powell, has acknowledged cable internet connectivity data caps had nothing to do about network...
View ArticleStill convinced Congress cares about fiscal responsibility?
If you need any additional convincing that fiscal responsibility is the furthest item of interest to the US Congress, look no further than the special treatment pharmaceutical giant Amgen — the...
View ArticleVelphoro approved by US FDA
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Velphoro for treatment of hyperphosphatemia in dialysis patients. Velphoro is an iron-based and calcium-free phosphate binder requiring fewer...
View ArticleNSA paid RSA US$10 million to include encryption back door
According to Joseph Menn writing for Reuters, The US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly paid US$10 million to encryption vendor RSA to include a back door in its BSAFE encryption product. In the...
View ArticleNSA domestic telephone surveillance program ruled legal
Less than two weeks ago, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic telephone surveillance program that collects information on nearly all...
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