So the blog went away again, and now it's back. If you care, I've attached dreamhost account of what went wrong.
Meanwhile, the law school's email went down today for a while, and the internal network remains nearly useless as it moves data at a crawl. The law school borrowed a $100,000 sniffing tool from the university, but rumor has it (all we get is rumor…) that this didn't solve, or even identify, the problem. Oh joy!
I run a link to the official 'threat level', reproducing the silly color-coding run by the dept of excuse-the-term Homeland excuse-the-term Security. But I worry that readers don't see it as being semi-satirical, since I think the terror alert system is not only stupid but actually dangerous. Were it not for my belief that moving gifs are too irritating to have as a permanent feature, I'd switch to the terror alert banana, which makes the point rather well.
The blog was down for many hours today, as was the support line at dreamhost. They're usually pretty reliable, and very helpful, but when things fail, they fail hard.
The New York Times has a nice story about the Australian reaction to Major Mori, the Marine lawyer who is defending Guantanamo detainee David Hicks with all the skills at his command. By all accounts, Major Mori's the sort of person who makes us all proud. (See also my earlier item on Mori.)
Here's a Really Cheerful Thought:
the Web may actually be helping to keep some dictatorships in power. Asian dissidents have told me that the Web has made it easier for authoritarian regimes to monitor citizens. In Singapore, Gomez says, the government previously had to employ many security agents and spend a lot of time to monitor activists who were meeting with each other in person. But, with the advent of the Web, security agents can easily use government-linked servers to track the activities of activists and dissidents. In fact, Gomez says, in recent years opposition groups in Singapore have moved away from communicating online and returned to exchanging information face-to-face, in order to avoid surveillance.
More generally the article argues that dictatorships have been able to neuter the 'net through a combination of intimidation, monitoring, and blocking foreign sites.
Talkleft has a pointer to a UPI item that is so weird I have to quote it in full: TalkLeft: British Cops Search Pub Patrons With Giant X-Ray Device:
British police used a giant X-ray machine to check for drugs and guns in raids on two London pubs, the BBC reported Saturday. Thirty four suspects were arrested by police who
used a 7-foot high X-ray machine outside the two pubs. Suspects had the
choice to be scanned or strip searched – officials said most people
chose the X-ray. The scan shows anything hidden under one’s clothes,
including metal, plastic or ceramic guns, wooden clubs, explosives or
drugs. Scotland Yard said the arrests were for offences that included
possession with intent to supply drugs, possession of an offensive
weapon, credit card fraud and immigration violations.
It can’t happen here, right? Right? Right?
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