20. March, 2003 - Get your war on
- What to do if there’s a Red alert? Stay home, await word. If you venture out, you’ll be presumed to be “up to something.’ At least if you’re in New Jersey. Somehow I suspect that here near the U, there would be a huge crowd of kids out wandering around celebrating a day with no classes and no work. I'd expect that today, except we’re in the middle of Spring Break, so things are pretty quiet around here. Red Alert? First stop, liquor store. So far we remain at orange. [metafilter]
- War on Iraq begins with a few cruise missiles hitting Baghdad. As I write this, President Bush is talking to us all. I’ve had problems with this war all along, but there’s a certain feeling of relief that the shooting has finally started, rather than just sitting and waiting. But I still think that attacking Iraq and Saddam Hussein is a mistake. If the U.S. government wants to find the people who made Al Qaeda a threat, Langley or Riyadh are probably better places to look than Baghdad. That’s not to say that there isn’t good reason to wish Saddam Hussein out of power, but I still wonder why he’s next on the list after the Taliban in Afghanistan. In any case, the plan around here is to stay away from war coverage now that the initial bits are out of the way.
- Windows users warned about serious new software flaw. Of course if you never use your Windows machine to surf the web or read email, you’ve got nothing to worry about. [strib]
- Business 2.0 presents The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business [warning: popups]. There’s some fine reading here, pointing out the stupidity of big soulless corporations. And smaller souless corporations. Funny. They don't mention “standardizing on Windows” anywhere on the list. [boing boing]
- Larry Lessig passes on a story about the good that MIT does. See there’s this book that’s being published by the MIT Press. It includes a dozen one-line snippets taken from various songs. After asking the copyright holders for permission to use the lines and getting a stack of forms, an outright refusal, and a demand for $10,000, they said
screw it
and decided to just go ahead and publish the book and maybe set a nice little better precedent for fair use so publishers don’t worry so much. [boing boing]
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Thu, 20 Mar 2003 07:33:43.