Ben Williams' blog about technology, Linux, digital music, veganism, and a little politics.
Canada considers decriminalizing pot.
“Why clog the criminal courts with kids 14 or 15 who might have been experimenting with a single stick of marijuana and who could face a lifelong disadvantage with a criminal record? Isn’t there a better way?” Seventy percent of Canadians, according to the polls, think there should be.
Once again, the political rivalry between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan has reared its ugly head in the world of computing. China considers Taiwan a rebel province, and frowns upon any symbolic representation of Taiwanese independence. So Red Hat, mindful of the size of the Chinese software market, removed the flag on the advice of its “internationalization group” because, according to Red Hat legal counsel Mark Webbink, “China does not approve of the use of any reference to Taiwan and could have blocked the product from being imported into China if the flag remained.”
Some Say ICANN Loses Legitimacy
According to one Web blog following the meeting, Thrush said ccTLDs may prefer “to attend ITU (International Telecommunications Union) meetings instead of ICANN meetings.” The ITU is a United Nations agency that adopts telecom regulations and standards.
“According to one Web blog”? How come this “Web blog” doesn’t get attribution? Isn’t that kind of like saying “according to one newspaper”?
I managed to hose my incoming mail for the last two weeks, so if you sent me anything, please send again.
Forever Young (washingtonpost.com)
Does he think this will make him immortal?
“Depends on what you mean by immortal,” he says, sitting at Silicon Valley’s Original House of Pancakes in Los Altos, Calif., letting his ham and eggs get cold. “There is such a thing as proton decay.” Pause. He’s talking about the eventual collapse of subatomic particles in untold eons. Okay, what about merely geological time? Hundreds of thousands of years? “Oh yeah.” He smiles. “That. For sure.”
I’m checking out CyberCon 3 this weekend. It’s an online RPG convention with chat rooms for seminars and various online gaming systems (including NWN) for RPGs. I haven’t played in any of the games yet but the two seminars I’ve sat in on were pretty good.