On his own website - brucespringsteen.net, Bruce speaks up about the treatment the Dixie Chicks have received after openly opposing the war against Iraq.
He writes:
The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.
I am no Bruce Springsteen fan, but taking the risk of speaking up against the powers that be and defending Dixie Chicks right to free speech and their own opinions, shows that he has undertood something too few americans have.
Interesting and funny clip Whilest this is political satire/comedy it still tells the truth about how much Bush has changed in his opinions about actions such as the one taken against Iraq.
Bush cancels plans for Oslo visit
US President George W Bush won't be coming to Oslo next month after all. Instead, he and Norway's prime minister will settle for a visit at the White House on May 16.
Somehow todays Dilbert strip reminds me of too many software companies: Dilbert, 27th of April 2003
This is news that has had many a blogger buzzing the last few days. Six Apart (Ben Trott and Mena Trott), the creators of MovableType, announced TypePad - a service that are likely to rival Google owned Blogger. The promises of the service are grand, including a built-in photo album creation tool, a built-in Blogroll - a list of all your favorite sites, or lists of books and music you are reading and listening to. The real killer of the service will be the template maker. Users will be able to design their blog without knowing, or seeing, any HTML code and with great control.
To me this project looks promising, but the skeptic in me want to see the system up and running before buying into all the hype. Remember, this is only the announcement of a newly founded company just starting up, not the launch of the actual service.
The Guardian wrote about it first, and have more of the story and details: Battle of the blog builders
[Via Anders Jacobsen's Blog]
Its tempting to think the policy of the State of Kansas was dreamed up on a high on illigit drugs.
Todd Dominey writes about the new policy of Drug Tax Stamps in his blog What do I know.
Its soon here, the TV Turnoff Week 2003. Between 21st and 27th of April Adbusters wants us to turn off the TV and do other better things.
For the campaign the Adbusters movement want to buy commercials on MTV. But MTV is looking nervous. If you like to remind MTV that the medium should be open to all expressions, also those trying to make people watch less TV, then Adbusters could use your help. Head on over to their site and you will find information on how to contact MTV to show your support.
The site also features the "uncommercial" they want MTV to show, as well as a way of donating to Adbusters to pay for the uncommercial.
Interesting way of fighting spam, spans real world "Denial-of-postal-Service-attack" (From Crypto-Gram Newsletter)
In December 2002, the notorious "spam king" Alan Ralsky gave an interview. Aside from his usual comments that antagonized spam-hating e-mail users, he mentioned his new home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The interview was posted on Slashdot, and some enterprising reader found his address in some database. Egging each other on, the Slashdot readership subscribed him to thousands of catalogs, mailing lists, information requests, etc. The results were devastating: within weeks he was getting hundreds of pounds of junk mail per day and was unable to find his real mail amongst the deluge.
Using all the people of Slashdot might work to some degree, but as Bruce Schneier of the Crypto-Gram Newsletter writes in his newsletter - it gets really interesting when you automate the process of adding someones address to requests for catalogs etc.
If you type the following search string into Google -- "request catalog name address city state zip" -- you'll get links to over 250,000 (the exact number varies) Web forms where you can type in your information and receive a catalog in the mail. Or, if you follow where this is going, you can type in the information of anyone you want. If you're a little bit clever with Perl (or any other scripting language), you can write a script that will automatically harvest the pages and fill in someone's information on all 250,000 forms. You'll have to do some parsing of the forms, but it's not too difficult. (There are actually a few more problems to solve. For example, the search engines normally don't return more than 1,000 actual hits per query.) When you're done, voila! It's Slashdot's attack, fully automated and dutifully executed by the U.S. Postal Service.
Somehow I think spammers such as Alan Ralsky will be very careful about giving out their mailing addresses in the future.
Nice to see Colin Moock get onboard the Flash blogs. I am sure that Colin will be a good addition to the Flash blogs, considering his well documented knowledge of ActionScripting and Flash (ActionScript for Flash MX : The Definitive Guide (Second Edition)). One of the very best Flash books out there! Not to mention his very good web resource with Flash/CSS/Javascript and web design/development information.
Now, go visit his moockblog
Sorry for the delay, a lot of things going on and no time to blog. But Michael Gunn has done a really cool job on his redesign of Hollowcube. Very classy Michael.
hollowcube.com - all your hollowcube are belong to us
I especially like the integration of his lightweight and ultra fast Flash RSS-reader in the blog.
This is a technology that many different companies have been working on for quite some time now. And now, according to some press photos and a VERY brief "press release" on Siemens AG's web site, it seems like it might be just around the corner:
Siemens AG - Siemens Innovations Paperlike Display
One application of the "paperlike display" seems to have be given the name epyrus, but it is quite impossible to find any more information anywhere about the unit. It seems to be a PDA type device (see picture).
Wired wrote an article about such displays and their possible uses in their 2000 August edition, titled "News flash". Interesting article, both about intended use and technology.
[Via JD on MX]
