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The EFF Ninja Says: Support Bloggers’ Rights!

Okay, so the EFF ninja is actually me carrying a pair of very heavy

hammocks and a load of camping supplies at the Om Festival. But the EFF

does need your support in the fight for bloggers’ rights,

specifically…

EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit group of passionate people—lawyers,

technologists, volunteers, and visionaries — who depend on your support

to continue successfully defending your digital rights. Litigation is

particularly expensive; because two-thirds of our budget comes from

individual donors, every contribution is critical to helping EFF fight

—and win—more cases.

You Have the Right to Blog Anonymously. EFF has fought for your

right to speak anonymously on the Internet, establishing legal

protections in several states and federal jurisdictions, and developing

technologies to help you protect you identity. With your support,

EFF can continue to defend this right, conducting impact litigation to

establish strict standards to unmask an anonymous critic in more

jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Keep Sources Confidential. In Apple v. Does, EFF is fighting to establish the reporter’s privilege for online journalists before the California courts. With your support, EFF can defend news bloggers from subpoenas seeking the identity of confidential sources in more jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Make Fair Use of Intellectual Property. In OPG v. Diebold,

Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, had sent

out copyright cease-and-desist letters to ISPs after internal documents

indicating flaws in their systems were published on the Internet. EFF

established the publication was a fair use. With your support, EFF can help fight to protect bloggers from frivolous or abusive threats and lawsuits.

You have the Right to Allow Reader’s Comments Without Fear. In Barrett v. Rosenthal, EFF is working to establish that Section 230, a strong federal immunity for online publishers, applies to bloggers. With your support, EFF can continue to protect bloggers from liability for comments left by third parties.

(This is one issue with which I am personally acquainted — see the entry about Quick Boys Movers.)

You Have the Right to Protect Your Server from Government Seizure. In In re Subpoena to Rackspace.

EFF successfully fought to unveil a secret government subpoena that had

resulted in more than 20 Independent Media Center (Indymedia) news

websites and other Internet services being taken offline. With your support, EFF can hold the government accountable for investigations that cut off protected speech.

You Have the Right to Freely Blog about Elections. EFF has

advocated for the sensible application of Federal Election Commission

rules to blogs that comment on political campaigns. With your support, EFF can continue to protect political blogs from onerous campaign regulations.

You Have the Right to Blog about Your Workplace. EFF has

educated bloggers on their rights to blog about their workplace and

developed technologies to help anonymous whistle bloggers. With your support, EFF can help shape the law to protect workplace bloggers from unfair retaliation.

You Have the Right to Access as Media. EFF has educated bloggers

on their right to access public information, attend public events with

the same rights as mainstream media, and how to blog from public

events. With your support, EFF can fight for bloggers right to access as media.

Know Your Rights and Prepare to Defend Them. EFF has created the Legal Guide for Bloggers to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger and a guide on How to Blog Safely. With your support, EFF can expand and update these guides.

And that’s why this blog is sporting this button:

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"Amazing Software Types While You Talk!"

[courtesy of tweebiscuit] And now, a

graphic explanation of one of the problems with voice dictation

software…

Yeah, it’s an old joke, but I found it

amusing.

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Pot Makes Opening Remarks, Kettle Makes Rebuttal

The Colbinator writes about my Dundas Square Pillow Fight entry…

Nothing against the Accordion Guy, but his headline “Pillow Fight in Dundas Square This Sunday”

suddenly made me loathe my own generation. Flash mobs, cuddle parties,

neo-burlesque, robot pets, emo, speed dating, network gaming

tournaments, live-action remakes of cartoons… I suppose if you’d

really been on the ball, you could have figured out in advance what

would pass for a culture amongst a bunch of grown-up latchkey kids,

couldn’t you?

Nothing

against you either, Colby — you’re a hundred-watter in a sea of cheap

IKEA tealights — but I’ll take the pillow fight over that dreadful all-neocons-all-the-time Western Standard cruise you’re going on this December. I suspect there will be more active culture in last week’s yogurt than with this group of funboys. You look like the only one of the bunch who doesn’t need to up his dietary fibre intake.

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Anyone Notice Google’s Logo Today?

Graphic: Google logo for Rememberance Day.

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"Katamari Damacy" Creator Doesn’t See a Long-Term Future in Making Games

If you haven’t played the PlayStation 2 game Katamari Damacy or its

sequel, We Love Katamari,

you should drop by our house sometime and

give it a whirl. It’s one of the best games to come out in a long time,

as well as one of the most simple and addictive. It’s tought to

describe, as it’s quite unlike most other games, but here’s a

recommendation: it’s a game that both Wendy (not really a game player)

and I (who whipped people’s asses in Defender in high school — even

the students from Hong Kong PH34RED MY M$D SK1LLZ) can agree upon.

Unfortunately, its creator, Keita Takahashi, would much rather make other things, such as children’s playgrounds:

“I would like to create a playground for children,” he

said. “A normal playground is flat but I want an undulating one, with

bumps.”

Considering

that a lot of playgrounds are graveyards for jungle gyms and disused

swing sets and what fun Katamari Damacy is, videogaming’s loss could be

a win for children everywhere.

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Blogrolling Downtime This Saturday at 2 a.m.

Blogrolling Downtime

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Approximately 2:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Estimated downtime: 3 hours

Please note that both Blogrolling and the Blogrolling Forums will be

down on Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 2:00 a.m. (that’s Friday the

11th at 11:00 p.m. Pacific Time or Saturday the 12th at 7:00 a.m. UTC).

During this time, your blogrolls will not work, nor will the

Blogrolling forums be up.

We expect that this downtime — during which we’ll be doing some

server maintenance — will not last longer than 3 hours. Normal service

will resume once we’re finished.

We apologize for the short notice — this was just the best possible time to do the maintenance work.

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Imitiation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

[Originally posted on The Farm. I thought this might be of more general interest since it’s about design.]

The web application frameworks Rails, Django and Symfony not

only have the same general approach to their frameworks, they also

have the same general look on the banners of their webpages. These

frameworks all follow the what The Pragmatic Programmer called the DRY

— Don’t Repeat Yourself — principle, but that principle doesn’t rule

out repeating others!

Screen capture: Banner of the Rails site.

Screen capture: Banner of the Django site.

Screen capture: Banner of the Symfony site.