"The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad." [Scripting News]

It's not quite a total block, but most importently it shows the legislative branch has no intention of just letting the executive branch do whatever it feels like when it comes to surveillance. Checks and balances at work again. I have no doubt us civil libertatian types will still be unhappy with the final product, but we'll be much, much less unhappy then we would have been if TIA was started in its previously proposed form.

Tim Peters, a Really Smart Guy who is responsible for a lot of the most clever Python code and currently (among other things) a developer on the SpamBayes project, posted an interesting comments in comp.lang.python. It shows another possible 'second order' effect of spam that could occur if the odd few people who seem to respond to the spam, and thus may want it, start using Bayesian-type filters to make sure they get that type of spam, and only that type of spam.

Today is the fifth day of being on the Atkins diet, so how is it going?

The second and third day really sucked, but that's partially my fault. The book mentions that you can experience lightheadedness and headaches on those days, and recommends that you go ahead and up the carbohydrate count, rather then feel bad. Regrettably, I forgot about that section until it was basically too late.

I feel fine now, however; not exactly bursting with energy on the one hand, but on the other, for the first time in months or possibly even years I got up quite naturally at around 7:30 am, which is as much as 3 to 4 hours earlier then I normally get up. In fact I couldn't even stay asleep if I wanted to.

As of today at breakfast, I started the Atkins Diet, a controversial diet for the last thirty years. I mention this here both to document why I did this (so others can see the reasoning behind it and compare it to their own), and for some level of public accountability.

Why Diet?

The fact is that I don't really feel overweight. However... I am roughly six feet, three inches tall (give or take an inch) and I weight 240 pounds. Even under the new government recommendations, this puts me several pounds into the "obese" classification, the worst classification on the the list. The largest measurement around my torso is fourty-eight inches.

Universities are rushing toward a wireless future... But professors say the technology poses a growing challenge for them: retaining their students' attention.

Eh, ignore the computers, and if the student flunks, the student flunks. Schools are supposed to have standards anyhow. The only angle I sympathize with the professor on this one is the part where they express concern about the laptops bothering other students, which is justifiable, but should be handled like any other anti-social behavior in a classroom; just because it involves a computer doesn't make it any different then flinging a paper airplane across the room.

"People who ascribe to us the most base motives imaginable, using ancient rhetoric from 80 years of Marxist failure have, as usual, had to confront the fact that everything they believe in is demonstrably and spectacularly wrong. Despite their shrieking words and foaming mouth, the history of our actions makes liars of them all. It is a truth so simple, written so large and so clearly, that even the most liberal among us can understand it."

What do you do with a topic-based weblog when you've effectively run out of things to say that aren't redundent to stuff already in the archives?

(My answer later, but I want to give the question a chance to percolate.)

A Slashdot story. Don't miss the actual directive. And there are some interesting comments in the story, such as this one. I'm not close enough to Europe's politics to know how this will go.

I'm going to go contrarion on the Trent Lott furor and say that I think this whole thing is pretty overblown... especially in light of the fact he apparently has a history of this sort of thing.

The remarks that may cost him his career were made at a birthday party for a hundred year old senator. I take them with exactly the same level of seriousness as I take remarks at an funeral. There's an old saying to the effect of "Where the devil himself to die, we would sing his praises at the funeral." Same for birthday parties; overblown positive statements are de rigueur.

News.Com: Elcomsoft Not Guilty. [Scripting News]

While the people who bought the DMCA are upset at the not-guilty because it will make it harder to prosecute in the future, I can't say my kind of people have a lot to be pleased about either. In the end, apparently, it came down to whether violation was "willful", and the jury decided it was not. (I can only hope the fact that we're talking about Russians "willfully" violated a law we have no particular reason to assume they knew about came into the jury discussion.)