j's online notebook

Take The Rorschach Test online. This is not a serious test, of course. How could it be? It's hard enough to interpret the results in a therapeutic setting. Prevailing opinion is that it's a farce. Which makes this website quite appropriate.

More free eBooks [These are all technical (i.e., computer-oriented).] I'm in Fourteenth Heaven. Every night this week I've been sitting in front of my computer until dawn reading eBooks. I need a portable reader or a laptop or something so I can read in bed. Good thing I have a comfortable office chair. Just DLd the My SQL Manual and Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams

Sensible article on file sharing and online "piracy" debunks the myths that the RIAA and others would have us believe.

"If blogging makes everyone a journalist, then tricks like this one make everyone their own news producer." Some good techniques revealed herein that might get you to the news that American broadcasters don't want you to see. I couldn't get to most of the sites referenced in this article, which is understandable, given the current state of chaos in Iraq. But the theory is good. And here's a link to a public proxy server that I found via Google.

Pictures don't lie. How the Internet aids the search for truth when government and media conspire to conceal. Excerpts:

The first picture shows a Presidential Palace - two words that ought not cohabitate, really - and it's had the crap blown out of it. Across the street is a gigantic assembly building of some kind, perhaps the National House of Enthusiastic Rubber Stamping. It's untouched. I'd wager a five-spot that they left it for whatever legislative body comes next. There's no sign of bombing anywhere else, except for a small building down at the bottom of the picture; perhaps that was the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, or the State Bureau for Interrogative Dentistry.

...when I wrote on this originally, I thought that advanced technology would be helping skeptical media folks debunk government lies. Instead, it turns out, a skeptical public is debunking media misrepresentations.

Think we're in Iraq for the oil? To eliminate the threat from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Think again. This article has the answers to your doubts. It's the New World Order all over again. "Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all."

Clever Little Site. I wish I'd had this idea. If I do it now, I'd just be copying it.

The Agonist. Great Blog. Get up to date war info, unfiltered by major U.S. news organizations.

Don't Call Me, and I Won't Call You. "Californians Swamp Anti-Telemarketer Site." This is one of the great grassroots movements against questionable business practices. My state, PA, initiated this program last year. I signed up for it, and now I get absolutely no telemarketing calls, which means, for all practical purposes, I get no calls at all. And am I now feeling lonely? Not a bit. According to a DMA list, there are currently 28 states that have such lists. The national list is scheduled to begin in July. Power to the people!

Gestapo Tactics. Things are happening in this country that are really beginning to bother me. Not that they haven't always happened, but now it's become completely legal and out in the open. "People say this doesn't happen in this country," McGeady said, "but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It's not what he might have done that matters to me -- they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It's like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka." Lesson learned: do not donate to any charities you are absolutely 100% sure about. Help Free Mike Hawash

Battery running low? Just add booze. "A new breed of biofuel cell promises to make recharging your mobile phone or other portable device as easy as feeding it a few drops of whatever liquor happens to be on hand." [Wired News]

E-mail free-speech v. trespassing on servers. Soon to be a CA Supreme Court case.

Oops! We didn't mean to post this.

Are We Doomed Yet? A great, well-written, in-depth article examining the debate over whether future society will be tightly regulated or an open network. Excerpts:

...code must be treated as speech: "It cannot seriously be argued that any form of computer code may be regulated without reference to First Amendment doctrine. The path from idea to human language to source code to object code is a continuum."

New rules for a society of wizards are being proposed and implemented every day. In recent times, a leading technologist has called for us to reconsider "the open, unrestrained pursuit of knowledge," a federal judge has ordered an injunction against hyperlinking with "a desire" to "disseminate," and the NYPD has upgraded its surveillance network. These changes reflect the increased power of individuals -- and the need of governments to keep individual power in check. Ironically, though increases in individual power during the print revolution catalyzed the ideals of freedom and individuality, corresponding increases in individual power during the computer revolution have catalyzed a sense of doom and a desire for autocratic rule.

I think the reality is that preventing dissemination on the Web is like exterminating cockroaches. We could put centuries of effort into the problem, but hackers will still scurry out from under the cookie jar...Clearly, if a society can't stop teenagers from spreading the word on how to "rip" DVDs or trade MP3s, then that same society will be hard-pressed to stop terrorists from spreading Ebola-AIDS or the latest self-replicating nanobot.

Beam me down, Scotty. How Space Could Liberate Us From Mideast Oil.

THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING By Peter Arnett He got a raw deal, but he's not complaining. He's too cool for that. But I'm complaining. NBC execs are pecuniary assholes. The truth will set you free. In this case, free of that good job you had. Daily Mirror's introduction of Peter to their employ:

PETER Arnett is a legend among war reporters.

He won a Pulitzer prize for his work during the Vietnam war while his extraordinary TV reports from the first Gulf conflict for CNN are an abiding memory.

Today he is a shining beacon of truth in an increasingly foggy war.

Yet he was sacked by NBC because he said what he thought in an interview with Iraqi television.

Honesty is not acceptable in the Bush era if it conflicts with the White House view.

The Daily Mirror is proud to have hired Peter Arnett. And proud that we have a team dedicated to telling the truth about what is happening in Iraq.