This story of a couple who shined a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter is interesting. According to the article, they were just having fun flashing them into the sky like giant light-sabers (which sounds pretty fun to me). Unfortunately, it hit the cockpit of the helicopter which must have diffused and spread the light (or else this couple has some killer aim to be able to hit the retina of a helicopter pilot at 500 feet).

Sounds just like a CSI Miami episode I saw.

Tags: Lasers, Police

According to a recent case, you have no right to privacy when having your computer repaired.

Tags: 4th Amendment, Circuit City

Even though the chair of the FTC has clear financial interests in the merger of Google and Doubleclick AND she was on the board deciding if the deal could go through AND she refused to recluse herself, the merger has been approved and there's no sign of any accountability on the way.

But it wasn't a unanimous decision. The Register tells of at least one dissenting member of the FTC who sees vast privacy implications in the future. No kidding.

Tags: Accountability, Big Business, FTC, Google

Well good. Let's hear it for the bloggers!

Tags: Congress, Good Stuff, Illegal Wiretapping

Well good.

Tags: Colorado, Evoting

I should make a song. I'll call it "Duh" and repeat the word "duh" over and over. Then I'll send it to all the state election boards who have been using e-voting. Here's an excerpt from Ars Technica's writeup of this startling revelation: *sigh* Tags: Evoting

Deborah Platt-Majores, who I think of an incompetent failure due to her work on the Presidentially decreed ID Theft Taskforce has shown herself to more on the dishonest rather than the incompetent side. Though she has a clear conflict of interest in the upcoming Google/Doubleclick merger evaluation (her husband works for the lawfirm that represents them), she has refused to recluse herself while at the same time, evidence of the law firms involvement with Doubleclick has been "mysteriously disappearing" from their website. But, of course, no matter how obviously wrong this is, nothing will be done about it because of the legacy of non-accountability set by Bush. Thanks Bush! You've really been an inspiration to all the greedy, self-serving a-holes who'd sell out all the little people for a little more power and money. Tags: Accountability, Conflict of Interest, FTC

If you believe that life exists out there, it's easy to see why programs like SETI have been created to try and gather evidence. Now there's an effort called "Active SETI" that's no longer content to wait for signs of life, it's broadcasting signals directly to other stars that are likely to contain similar lifeforms to us.

The problem is, there are some who believe that doing so puts us all in danger. Without knowing who or what is out there, what their capabilities are, and what their intentions are, we could be inviting our own destruction.

Rather than sound paranoid, this is very sound advice. If you drugged and blindfolded and were then released somewhere that sounded like a city, would the first thing you did be to yell, "hey, hey! I'm over here! HELLLLLOOOOO!!!"

You could be in any part of any city in the world. This is a stupid action to take.

Tags: Aliens, SETI

Students who expected impartial advice from financial aid offices on campus were getting the shaft. Now that they've been caught, loan companies have promised to stop bribing schools.

Tags: Families, Kickbacks, Loans, Schools

In a colossally stupid move, Best Buy triggers the Streisand Effect by issuing a take-down notice to a blogger who wrote about something they didn't like.

It turns out that this group called Improve Anywhere did a funny prank where they got about 80 people to dress in khakis and blue shirts and had them all enter a Best Buy and stand around. I heard about the prank last year sometime (and I saw the video).

Now they are selling joke t-shirts based on their famous stunt and Best Buy (not surprisingly) doesn't like it. Whether they have a real claim or not, I don't know (or care), but they've issued a take-down notice to the guys over at the Laughing Squid. Who's that? Well, the Laughing Squid is a blog, not unlike many other blogs online and the key issue here is that Best Buy is trying to surpress the blogger's right to cover information by saying that he's "promoting" the shirts.

Here's one for you Best Buy, I'm covering all his articles, and the original story, plus I'm promoting blogging! Oh horrors. I wonder what they'll do now.

Tags: Best Buy, Blogging