the nice part about going offline for more than 4 hours at a time is that there is a lot more to read…
this morning i got to read more of Lawrence Lessig’s thoughts on how the Internet is going to be controlled by a small elite. i agree with his idealism, but i can’t see how the internet is any different than anything else in our globalized world – the powerful just keep getting more powerful and the internet is just another sign.
so, apparently MIT is starting to filter email to stop the KLEZ.E worm. now, i’m definitely an avid hater of this worm (and i’ve been getting 40+ messages with it per day and it was the cause of my latest email switch), but i can’t say that i’m thrilled that my mail is being filtered at a higher level. i really believe that some mail systems should filter (and i would like to get my mother on one of those systems), but i want the choice. i want to be given the option between “unfiltered mail server” and “filtered mail server.” as someone who knows how to deal with viruses on my end, i want to see all of them and filter for myself; that’s why i don’t /dev/null any messages – just bounce and copy a version for me to see what’s up. if you aren’t as savvy with email, join a mail server that filters for you. somehow, i just think it’s a bad sign that MIT is not giving us that choice, MIT of all places.
i still feel really badly for bill maher. his show is called politically incorrect and yet he is still being punished for making a rather poignant sarcastic remark because it was utterly politically incorrect. ::sigh:: that is never a good sign for those of us who want to criticize what is going on. but this returns to the power problem: you have to have power to have a voice and in order to get power, your voice must be inline with all of the other powerful voices.
gone are the days when you have to worry about showing up dead due to database errors; now, you can simply be wrongly presumed a terrorist. oh, how i love this database nation.
apparently, my roommate is having a lot more fun with random strangers on the ‘net (and even jesus related). oh, speaking of which, we passed by the jesus house yesterday and our religious christmas tree offerings are still adorning the outside tree! how exciting!