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It looks like there's a legitimate working hack for Vista that kills their bogus activation scheme. Microsoft is saying that they're not going to do anything about it yet because they don't know if it will become a wide exploit. But I think this commentor (from the source article) has it more correct:

They didn't think it through as a "hacker" (pirate more like it) would, and now they have a problem. Millions of legitimate users are out there with legitimate hardware sold with Vista. MS can't simply pull the carpet out from under these users. They will need to devise a way that all users can continue using their systems without having to do something drastic like reinstall or update the BIOS because many users simply don't know how to. Even locating the product key on the sticker would be difficult for some.

MS can't simply pull the OEM keys and try again.

But on MS's side, the number of users using this method is very low. And MS have said they'd prefer we pirate Windows than use MacOS or Linux.

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The article is here, but here's the basics:

Say your file is this string of letters:

aabbcc

And you try to download from the one guy in the world who has this file, but he goes offline before you finish it. With SET, they've developed a scheme where anyone with any kind of file that shares sections of bits with your file can be sources. Before you needed this one guy, but if you find people with these files:

bbgggeeeyyy and iiuucc

Because they have the code chunks you need, you can download it from them instead (and it doesn't matter what kinds of files are involved, only that the code chunks match.

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So companies don't want Vista? Well, we can fix that…. (hand rubbing and evil snicker).

Microsoft will stop allowing companies to install OEM versions of XP by the end of the year.

Well... that's not how this is supposed to work

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They're trying to get even more power and less oversight? And I thought this Mike guy was doing such a good job so far. Here's one that caught my eye:

Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush's terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.

Want this? Lol, nope

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This is useful. A short write-up on how to tell when someone can get away with not giving you what was advertised vs when you can force them to honor a deal to their detriment. Here's the interesting part:

Employs compensation methods that discourage or penalize sales people for selling the bait.

So that means that any kind of negative reinforcement used to make sales people not want to sell the advertised "junker" is bait and switch too. Employees take note.

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Good news: Here's an article on how to use Vista's compatibility mode to run older software.

Bad news: According to all the comments on the article, it doesn't work at all (which matches my experience with the XP compatibility mode).

Lending shouldn't be predatory

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According to Public Citizen, the DoD has proposed some rules that severely limited the scope of protections as suggested by consumer protection groups. Up to June 11th, you can submit your ideas about the proposal to them directly (information about sending in the comments is on the last page of the proposal).

Golly. I wonder if posting private information online could be a problem

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This lady found Social Security Numbers on a state website. She's threatened to publicly release detailed instructions on how to find them like she did and to expose the SSNs of several important people in the state if they don't fix the problem.

A spokesman for the office responsible said:

The bulk of the "hundreds of thousands" of documents on the Web site are business filings, and only 5 percent or so are believed to include Social Security numbers

Why can't states realize that putting records online makes them available to the world instead of just local people? There's public information and global public information.

That aside, this lady is my hero and I hope she does post the data. I've often wondered how long it would take to solve some of our privacy woes if a few dozen members of congress had all their personal data posted on a website.

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You may recall that Maryland was considering passing some laws requiring paper voting. According to the TrueVoteMD newsletter:

In the closing hours of the 2007 legislative session, a four-year effort to require paper ballots for Maryland's voting system passed the House and the Senate unanimously. ... The final bill ensures that any new voting system certified for use must include a voter verified paper ballot. The bill requires an optically scan-able paper ballot marked by hand or with the help of a ballot-marking device.