Mutterings

She sure is purdy!

A fascinating video that completely changed my view of the 5th amendment. Like most people, I assumed it was only useful/used by the guilty. It’s actually just as important for the innocent!

“Don’t Talk to the Police” by Professor James Duane

Portland pictures are now available!

Portland 2008

Another article about how the US is overestimating China’s potential and future.

A Long Wait at the Gate to Greatness

In this corner, a giant corporation who’s done nothing innovative with their “property” in the last 20 years. Who’s in the other corner? Smart guys who saw an untapped market? Intellectual property thieves? Gamers?

It doesn’t make sense to me that Hasbro should hold copyright on this game for a half century now. This is one example where copyright law is out of whack with reality.

Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabble-Like Scrabulous

Tammy and I got into Portland yesterday night. We spent today walking much of downtown, seeing everything from Chinese formal gardens to a sand castle contest to a cupcake bakery (with many non-chocolate recipes!).

This evening we had dinner at Typhoon, a local Thai restaurant recommended by my co-worker Rachel. I had the best yellow curry I’ve ever tasted. The tofu was fried perfectly and the curry sauce was unbelievably good.

Tomorrow we are planning on seeing the zoo and the 23rd St district. OSCON starts up Wednesday and my talk is on Friday.

I think I’m going to flash my Linksys router with the Tomato firmware. I’ve noticed the Linksys performs poorly when I have 100+ TCP connections open (as happens frequently with Bittorrent) and the consensus seems to be that aftermarket firmwares, like Tomato and DD-WRT, perform much better under heavy load.

I’ll try to get some before and after metrics to see if that holds true.

Tomato Firmware | polarcloud.com

UPDATE: Why waste my time providing numbers when you can read this?

It’s interesting to see the other way of looking at the last 7 years of the Bush presidency. This WSJ editoral states:

Nearly seven years after 9/11, the U.S. homeland hasn’t been struck again and American civil liberties remain intact. So how does Congress say “thank you”? By trying to ruin the men who in good faith set the legal rules that have kept us safe.

My take on Bush’s tactics in the last 7 years have been the most blunt and hamfisted way of solving the problem. Rather than trying to stick to American principles of liberty, rule of law, habeus corpus, etc, the Bush administration has used brutal tactics more appropriate to a dictator. Extreme secrecy, torture, indefinite detention, illegal wiretapping - these are the tactics of tyranny. The WSJ article seems to imply that the ends justify the means. I must respectfully disagree. The thing I love the most about America is our Constitution and the Bill of Rights it forces upon government to ensure our freedoms, not safety, under any circumstance. To use these illegal tactics subverts the very thing which they claim to protect and makes a mockery of those Rights. How can we protect freedom by indefinitely detaining others without charge?

From Wikipedia:

Since the beginning of the current war in Afghanistan, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 420 of whom have been released without charge. [...] Of the roughly 355 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest.

So we detained 90% of the Gitmo prisoners based on little or no evidence at all. If you were one of the many locked up without charge for years, would you want someone held responsible for the injustice? If it were Russia holding 700 Americans for years without charge, wouldn’t you be outraged at the injustice? “…with liberty and justice for all.”

The Torture Gambit - WSJ.com

I’m flying into Prague in late August and planning on spending a few days there before taking a train to Berlin for RailsConf 2008. Anyone have suggestions:

• Where to stay?
• What to see?
• How to get around?

I don’t know anything about Prague so I’d appreciate any suggestions from people who’ve been there.