The Economist had an article last week exploring the entertainment industries’ recent shift towards talentless celebrities (think Survivor winners). The case Economist brings to the table is that it’s cheaper to manufacturer a celebrity out of someone with no talent because celebrities who actually have talent are demanding a larger share of the pie these days. There is also an interesting thread in the article about how TV culture has created the need for celebrity tabloids.
No Child Left Behind for War
As part George W Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, there is a provision a few parents are taking note of that requires schools and parents to give recruiting information to Armed Forces agencies when their child starts middle school. Section 9528 contains the specific clause.
I’m deeply concerned as to why Bush feels the Armed Forces needs to have contact information for our 11 year old children, 7 years before they are eligible to be drafted. There is already a program in place that obtains draft information on our nation’s youth, it was supposed to be the Selective Service Program…
Re: Secret Service Wardriving in D.C.
Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about them wardriving. On one hand, it’s good that they’re doing some proactive public service, but on the other hand, why are they doing proactive public service (isn’t there something better they could be spending their money on)?
I’m the “president” of a community wireless group (www.cafwap.net), and our stated policy on security is “no security.” We believe that securing your wireless network is just an attractive nuisance for hackers and becomes a liability. Let other networking protocols handle the security (ssh, https, etc.), because 802.11+WEP is known to be worthless, easily crackable security. I wish I had the time to drive around D.C. following the Feds and distributing pamplets titled “How to crack 128bit WEP keys in 4 hours using Open Source tools.”
Unfortunately, if you have IP to protect, you shouldn’t be running a wireless network. :-/
New website idea.
Occassionally I get the urge to write my opinions about things, and it usually ends up in an email I send to some friends and eventually lost. I thought this blogger.com thing might help me to better share my thoughts.. we’ll see how it goes.