The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.
That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.
As always, this encroachment on your fourth amendment rights is “for the children” a justification that is the last refuge for scoundrels. Missing (as usual) is any actual justification for the push based on the argument presented. Law enforcement already has the right to get a subpoena to force Flickr or YouTube to turn over user information — have there been cases where police did so, only to be told the data had been deleted? Is there any evidence that YouTube and Flickr have been used for illegal activities (copyright infringement notwithstanding)?
Of course not. Because this isn’t about fighting terrorism or stopping child pornography, both offenses that can clearly be addressed via available tools. It’s about compiling databases of information on law-abiding citizens that can be mined by government computers. Its about compiling information, not about investigating ongoing criminal enterprises.
Lest you think any of this is based on principle, check out the rationale for excluding schools and libraries:
Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. “There’s a PR concern with including the libraries, so we’re not going to include them,” the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. “We know we’re going to get a pushback, so we’re not going to do that.”
So it’s all about protecting the children, unless it raises a PR concern. Then we’ll just move on to other lower-hanging fruit.
The Bush/Gonzalez administration seems to have a serious surveillance jones, and it would be nice to see some “pushback” from average citizens. Of course, the Clinton administration wasn’t any better (remember the Clipper Chip?), and a Hillary administration would probably be even worse than Bill’s was.
Most sites show hyperlinked text in blue and underlined, but some just boldface the text that is your portal to someplace else. Or they use a different font color.
Within text, some links highlight a key phrase, others a verb, and many prefer the very literal, “for such-and-such an article go here,” with the “here” being the blue, underlined, linking word. Still others prefer that links live within graphic elements: a picture, a drawing, a logo. Sometimes you don’t know where a link is until you roll your mouse over the spot.
Hyperlink theory may seem like inside baseball, but the stakes are high. The ad revenues of many Web sites depend on how many times they can get you to put your mouse on a link and click it, thus spending more time within the site, racking up more page views, seeing more ads.
More than that, links are the very fabric of the Web. The easy connectivity they provide is what defined the Web and made it so popular. And the number and quality of a site’s links are what most search engines use to determine which ones they will display when you type a search term.
Yet there really is no standard link-presentation theory, no bible of Web style to lay it all out for people building their own blogs and designing their own Web sites.
It’s certainly true that there was a time when all links were underlined and blue. Visited links were purple. Make an HTML page without CSS or inline styles and they still are. Back when the Ultimate Band List or NCSA were cutting-edge design. Of course, back then we also thought the blink and marquee tags were novel, so what did we know?
But now web design has brought people with actual design skills to the table, and link presentation is not, nor should it be, uniform. Does anyone actually think Daring Fireball is better this way?
Steve Johnson touches on this, but it bears repeating — as long as visitors can tell a link is a link, the actual presentation of the link doesn’t matter much. Far more important is that the link text indicates what is being linked. Don’t just link the word “here”. Don’t link to several related sites by hyperlinking each word in a sentence (or, god forbid, each letter). This does far more to promote usability than some de facto hyperlink standard.
Been away from the blog for a while, busy working on a site for a friend and looking for a job. But the fatblogging shame kept me on track. I managed a visit to the in-laws, where much bacon and sausage, eggs and biscuits are usually waiting. I even made it through another family movie-and-pizza night.
Another tenth of a pound down, and I’ll be halfway there. Yay!
To my readers (both of you) - posting has been light lately, as I’ve been working on a project coding a new site for a friend’s business. This has meant teaching myself Joomla, which I had never used on a live site, as well as a bunch of PHP and CSS hacking. Hopefully I can post a bit later today.
This will be a weekly feature from here on - a playlist of songs centered around a theme. This week includes ten songs from One to Ten. Artists include Metallica, Slackjaw, Astronaut, Miles Davis, Chab, Rhythm Pigs, Darling New Neighbors, The Scooters, Black Eye and Mobtown.
Yesterday was the first day I wanted to eat my stress, so to speak. No luck on the job front, the kids being kids, and so forth and all of a sudden a sleeve of thin mints sounded pretty good. But fatbloggers have to stick together, so I didn’t. Thus only a tenth of a pound, and I’m still on track to end the week at 21x.
Today’s recipe is for a lower-cal recipe for beef fajitas:
12 oz. boneless beef round steak 1/2 c. nonfat italian salad dressing 1/2 c. salsa 2 T. lime or lemon juice 1 t. Worcestershire sauce 4 10 inch flour tortillas, warmed nonstick cooking spray 1 medium onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings 1 medium sweet pepper, cut into thin strips 3/4 c. chopped tomato 1/4 of a small avocado, peeled and cut into 4 slices 1/4 c. shredded reduced-fat monterey jack or cheddar cheese 1/4 c. salsa
Trim fat from beef. Partially freeze beef; thinly slice across the grain into bite size strips. Place beef strips in a plastic bag set in a deep bowl. For marinade, in a small mixing bowl stir together the salad dressing, the 1/2 cup salsa, the lime or lemon juice and the Worcestershire sauce. Pour over beef in bag. Seal bag and turn beef to coat well. Marinate beef in the refrigerator for 6 to 24 hours, turning the bag occasionally.
Spray large skillet with cooking spray and preheat over medium heat. Add the onion to the skillet and stir-fry for 1-2 minutes. Add the sweet pepper and cook for 1-2 minutes more or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Remove vegetables from skillet.
Add undrained beef strips to skillet; stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Return vegetables to skillet. Add chopped tomato and cook 1 minute more or until hot.
To serve, immediately spoon the beef-vegetable mixture onto warm tortillas. Top each with an avocado slice, cheese and remaining salsa. Roll tortillas around filling.
4 servings. Each serving provides 341 calories, 13 g total fat, 24 g protein, 32 g carbohydrate and 2 g dietary fiber.
A victory of sorts - the Girl Scout cookie (or on, egad, MySpace) order came home last night, including Thin Mints, Tagalongs, Samoas and All Abouts. Obviously, we ordered these before deciding to make a lifestyle change. The kids have been downing them like crazy, but I abstained for now. But the Thin Mints are calling to me even now…
4 small chicken breast halves (1 1/2 pounds total) Nonstick cooking spray 2 c. small whole mushrooms 1 c. thinly sliced carrots 1 c. burgundy (I actually used Two Buck Chuck cab) 16 pearl onions, peeled 1 T. cooked and crumbled bacon 1 T. snipped parsley 2 cloves garlic, minced 3/4 t. dried marjoram 3/4 t. dried thyme 1/2 t. instant chicken bouillon granules 1/8 t. pepper 1 bay leaf 1/4 c. cold water 4 t. all-purpose flour
Remove skin from chicken. Rinse chicken; pat dry. Spray a cold large nonstick skillet or dutch oven with nonstick coating. Preheat over medium heat. Cook chicken in the hot skillet about 15 minutes or until lightly browned, turning to brown evenly.
Add the mushrooms, carrots, burgundy, onions, bacon, parsley, garlic, marjoram, thyme, bouillon, pepper and bay leaf. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 25 minutes or until the chicken is tender and no longer pink.
Use a slotted spoon to transfer the chicken and vegetables to dinner plates; cover and keep warm. Discard bay leaf. In a small bowl gradually stir the water into the flour until smooth. Stir into mixture in skillet. Cook until thickened and bubbly. Cook one minute more. Pour sauce of chicken and vegetables.
4 servings. Each serving contains 225 calories, 6 g total fat, 21 g protein, 12 g carbohydrate, 2 g dietary fiber.
If you’re like me and love caffeine but hate “energy drinks”, it’s good news that Pepsi plans to introduce Pepsi Max, which will include extra caffeine and ginseng. Apparently, one-third more caffeine than in Diet Mountain Dew (which has 55 mg). This would put Pepsi Max on par with Jolt and Red Bull, but still significantly below coffee (115 - 175 mg).
Earlier yesterday, a weeping Hall, 25, thanked Judge Frank A. Hoss Jr. in Stafford Circuit Court after he reduced a jury’s recommended two-year sentence to the seven weeks she has spent in jail and ordered she serve probation.
Hall, a mother of three young children who lives at Camp Lejeune, N.C., was convicted in January of maliciously throwing a missile into an occupied vehicle. The jury’s recommended sentence was the minimum for the felony charge.
No one was injured in the July 2 incident on Interstate 95 in Stafford, in which Hall threw a cup of ice and soda at another car while in a traffic backup. Eliza Fowle, 28, was a passenger in that vehicle, driven by her boyfriend, Pete Ballin, 36.
The prosecutor, of course, was undeterred by arguments that Hall’s actions were relatively harmless.
Prosecutor George Elsasser argued for imposing the sentence, saying actions such as Hall’s pose a danger. He cited a Stafford case from 2000 in which three teenagers were killed when a teen tossed an egg at their car, leading to a chase.
“The alternative is a free-for-all out on the road,” Elsasser said.
No, the alternative is prosecutors who actually apply reason when deciding whether, and with what, to charge a criminal defendant. Does Elsasser really believe motorists are going to start chucking Dr. Pepper at each other just because they’ll only spend seven weeks in jail instead of two years? Maybe he’s just worried that someone will mess up his best suit.
In all seriousness, this case points out the problems with mandatory minimum sentences. If the judge hadn’t had the opportunity to reduce the sentence, you’d have someone in prison for two years for chucking a beverage.
