The good folks over at Wild Bee have an excellent article about how you can use your computer to help the world while you sleep. Lotsa people run SETI@home – I think it is because of the screensaver. Instead of a looking for aliens, you could help political dissidents in repressive regimes, protect anonymous whistleblowers, and even protect our intelligence agents overseas. Install TOR and volunteer your computer for global privacy.
Tag Archives: Politics
Is your internet provider cheating you?
The FCC has a tool you can use to find out if your broadband provider is advertising better speeds than they provide.Check it out over at Broadband.gov.
This seems like a nice crowdsourced way to catch cheats. It will work better the more people participate, so go over and take the test.
Also of interest is that they are using open source software to provide the tests – software that can be independently verified.
The country and the country
Geoff over at BLDGBLOG has a great post about how Australia’s strange bid to avoid refugees makes some islands both Australian and not Australian. These islands become strange limbo zones of tortured legality, much like in “The City and The City”.
It’s strange to see them give up sovereignty over land to avoid their own laws about providing safe harbor to refugees. It seems that the self-image of mercifulness is more valuable than the land, but less valuable than actually welcoming in refugees.
Review: Makers by Cory Doctorow
I loved this book.
Forget my review and go get it now, it’s wonderful. 
If you don’t have the scratch right now, that’s ok: Â Cory Doctorow walks the talk and has published his book under a creative commons license. Â You can get “Makers” for free at his site as a pdf, as html, ePub, or as an audiobook. Â Just go get it and read it. Why?
If you don’t have the scratch right now, that’s ok: Â Cory Doctorow walks the talk and has published his book under a creative commons license. Â You can get “Makers” for free at his site as a pdf, as html, ePub, or as an audiobook. Â Just go get it and read it. Why?The characters felt right and true and good and wonderful, like people you’ve always wanted to be friends with. Â It’s the story of people playing around and doing the creative work that felt right to them, pushing to stay free and work on beautiful things. Â Their hard work takes a damn beating from the world around them and they rise up after that beating.
I was sad closing it, because I wanted more from them, more for them, and another thing…
I always wanted to be Perry, but I looked in that book and I’m Sammy.
Yes We Scan!
I completely and fully endorse Carl Malamud for the office of Public Printer of the United States. He’s kind of a transparency hero, the guy who’s been putting government documents, the ones we paid to create, into the public domain and on the internet. Typically, the laws that govern us are are locked down by the difficulty people have in accessing them. The budgets and such cost money to print and you have to pay printing and postage to get a copy.
Carl’s been active in getting the copies, and then putting them up online for free. That way people can look at them, cite them, comb them for problems.  There couldn’t be a better person in charge of the effort to give citizens information about their government.
You can read more about this hero of government openness at the website dedicated to putting him in the government: Yes We Scan!
It’s not just vandalism, is it?
Grafitti isn’t just a bunch of crap tags scrawled out on a building.
Sometimes it is much better.
This is where talk about property rights becomes more interesting. Look at the cross-section of folks who stop to look, photograph and enjoy the street art Banksy put up. How much jail time should he serve for this? How much should he be fined? Why?
Obama
Why?
Alex Barnett is someone who writes amazing ideas about technology, and he’s written why he would vote for Obama if he could. It’s not too long. One of the reasons that I’m starting to shed my cynicism about the process and get excited is that these smart nuanced positions that Obama takes don’t see to be entirely empty rhetoric. There’s some meat there. I don’t know if the guy can implement any of it, but trying is a damn sight better than not.
I always tell my friends to vote based on ideas. Vote for who you really want, because your little vote only matters to you and matters in an aggregate. That’s why when I had some crap choices I was one of the guys who voted for Nader.
But if you think about this election as a horse race, I’d urge you to take ten minutes to watch Larry Lessig’s presentation on “winnability.”
BangoWhatthehell
I am intrigued by this weird advisory on cryptome, keeper of, if not all, then at least exclusively, things you are not supposed to know. There’s no attribution, no explanation, and no other mention of this on the web.
The very short gist is:
Avoid the treacherous anonymous web browser, bangotango.com. It is harvesting unwary user addresses. It is operated by triumphpc.com as a law enforcement/intelligence sting.
It would be an interesting concept, if only because it has such problems with the idea of entrapment. The idea that the some agency could make the promise of proxied worry free browsing, even going so far as to include the text of the 4th amendment on the website, and then use evidence gathered there in court is boggling.
Remember the happy iraqis toppling the saddam statue?
Never “Never Again” Again
Sudan is the new Rwanda. I was flipping through Get Your War On and found another crisis in the making. So, it’s nice to read a funny comic, but it stinks to read another account of history repeating itself.