wiredfool

*** Amazon.com

Death of the net predicted, this time from “Amazon’s Net Patents”
.gif at 11. A while ago, I posted this detailing that I was boycotting amazon.com due to their spamming practices. Since that page went up, their market cap has gone up by orders of magnitude. I’m thinking that the boycott wasn’t that effective.

*** net.censorship

A misguided attempt to require “download filters” in Arizona Universities.

*** Y2K

My “Y2K” Predictions. And my response to Mayor Schell’s festivites here.
*** WTO

As some of you may know, the WTO met in Seattle the week after Thanksgiving, 1999. It didn’t go well. I wasn’t out protesting, but I have some observations. See “Seattle and the state of the occupation” for more details.

Following up on the Seattle occupation, “WTO 2 weeks later” discusses some of the reasoning why I think that the WTO is not such a bad thing. It takes into account not only the protests, but also the economics driving the organization.

*** I-695

I live in the State of Washington, which recently passed I-695, which has to be the most popular misguided piece of drek in recent memory. The public debate was frightening in its inaccurate numbers and general “who cares, someone will bail us out” attitude.

The sponsor is dismissing legal challenges as a waste of money, when court review of legislation is essential for the function of the state. And now the sponsor wants to bring us more of the same.

So I wrote a “letter to the editor” of the PI. It may or may not be published by them, but certainly can be published here.

In recent news, I-695 was declared unconstitutional. It’s being appealed. Good riddance.