Author: Alderete

Teacher Reviews for Your School

TeacherReviews.com looks like a great resource for getting honest information from fellow students about what classes and professors to take — and who to avoid.

Rochelle is taking a web building class this semester, and for her final project is working on a system that will help capture student reviews of the instructors in her program (MLIS at San Jose State).

As part of her research, she found a site, TeacherReviews.com, which does much the same thing, but for any school in the world.

It’s a pretty nicely done site, and if you’re currently in school (even part-time, like Rochelle and I), you should take a few minutes and add your reviews to the site.

And pass the URL along to your classmates; these things are only useful if there’s a good body of knowledge that gets preserved.

Pets Warehouse Sues Hobbyists

Why Salon.com is great: covering little stories like Pets Warehouse Sues Hobbyists.

I’m grateful to Salon.com for running this story, about how the people behind Pets Warehouse sued a bunch of hobbiests. From reading the article, it sounds like a classic case of someone using the legal system to intimidate and outspend an opponent into submission. I doubt very much if Salon.com will roll over and play dead in quite the same way, and so they’re making sure the story of the little guy is heard.

Salon.com is a great online publication. They have outstanding political coverage, and do a great job of covering technology in a way that no one else really does, with thoughtful, in-depth writing of the highest quality.

Recommended.

Bush Loves Big Energy

“Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests and many campaign contributors while developing President Bush’s energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups.”

After 11 months of stalling, the Bush administration complied with a court order mere hours before the deadline, and released documents regarding who influenced the formation of the administrations energy policy.

The documents are clearly incomplete, with much substantive information still being withheld; no doubt Judicial Watch, an conservative political watchdog organization, will be back in court to force complete disclosure.

Nevertheless, in a Washington Post article Energy Contacts Revealed the documents makes it clear “Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests and many campaign contributors while developing President Bush’s energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups.”

What a surprise.

Purging Spam

If spam in your Inbox is a problem, Mailfilter is a pretty good solution, especially if you’re using Mac OS X.

Update: I no longer recommend Mailfilter under any circumstances. See my Personal Survey of Anti-Spam Tools for more current recommendations.

I get a lot of spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail), primarily because I have a lot of public web sites with my e-mail address on them. The spammers have robots that spider the web, scanning for e-mail addresses and adding them to their databases of victims to send offers for free porn, herbal viagra, multi-level marketing opportunities, transfers of money from Nigeria, and the like.

I get dozens of spam messages a day. For a long time I sent them to the Spam Recycling Center, but recently that started bouncing the messages back to me, so I had to find something else to do with them. And frankly, I’m tired to trying to fight spam. Now I just want to get less of it.

I recently found a utility called Mailfilter that is my new answer. Basically it pre-scans my incoming e-mail, and if anything matches a spam rule, it deletes it before I ever see it. I’ve been using it for less than a week, and it’s already deleted more than 200 spam messages. I am a very happy user.

The best thing, for me, is that it runs natively on Mac OS X, and integrates quite well with my e-mail client, Eudora, via AppleScript and cron.

It’s not for the faint-of-heart, technically. If you don’t know what a compiler is, or cron, or a shell script, then it’s probably not for you. But if any of those things sounds familiar then Mailfilter may be a pretty good solution for you, too.

Does Andersen Deserve to Die?

Does Andersen deserve to go down in flames? Yes.

I recently heard an interview on NPR with some Andersen employees, based in South California, who were basically saying that they loved their company and didn’t think Andersen as a whole should go down in flames for the Enron debacle.

I disagree. Ever heard the saying “one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch?” I think it’s great to have some kind of counterbalance to all the merger mania and consolidation amongst the various corporate behemoths.

Why shouldn’t there be a risk? These large corporations have no one’s interests but their own, and are virtually above the law (especially when they’re buying politicians). The consequence of being brought down for egregious behavior is a not a bad thing, IM!HO.

Oh, yeah, here’s a fun article about how lying was SOP for Andersen.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Seeking to “narrow the focus of the drug war to the true enemy,” Congress passed a bill legalizing drug use for the gainfully employed Monday.

In an interesting new development in the War On Drugs, Congress has passed a bill legalizing drug use if you are gainfully employed.

“Stockbrokers, lawyers, English professors…you’re not the problem here,” said DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson at a White House press conference.

“Drugs are addictive, and that’s true whether you’re a ghetto gang member or a Harvard-educated entertainment lawyer. But the cold, hard truth is, if the ghetto kid gets hooked, he isn’t going to clean up in a rehab clinic in Palm Springs and maybe even become president, now, is he? That’s why we need to protect the less fortunate among us with the threat of arrest and incarceration.”

When Elephants Dance

When Elephants Dance is the single best survey of the technological, political, and legal aspects of the current intellectual property power grab. It weaves together the complete story and history of the issue.

If you only read one article, make it this one. If you think I’m a zealot on this issue, the 15 minutes it will take you to read the article will prove you right or wrong. I’m pretty confident where you’ll come out.

Probably the best summary I’ve read comes from this article:

As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: “If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; they’re too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.”

Who’s Your Rep

Find out who your congressional representatives are, and who’s paying for their votes.

Since I’m regularly suggesting you should contact your political representatives and let them know how you feel about some proposed laws, I thought I’d make it easy for you to figure out who your representative is.

The website opensecrets.org makes it very easy to learn your congressional representatives, and who’s paying for their votes. Here’s a quick interface to their database:

Who’s My Rep?

For example, you can use this tool to learn that the fourth largest campaign contributor to Adam Schiff, who recently introduced a version of the CPDPTA into the House, is Big Entertainment. Surprise, surprise…

Ebert says “Thumbs Down” to RIAA

No less than Roger Ebert weighs in on the issue of digital rights management.

In an online editorial, Roger Ebert (of Siskel and Ebert fame) turns his Critical Eye on the RIAA and their campaign to copy protect music, and says Don’t Confuse Fans With Pirates.

In other words, it’s not just technology geeks who care about the hot issue of digital rights management, and are noticing that Congress is selling us out. You will be reading a lot about this issue, and how it will affect you if Big Entertainment gets their way…

Stop Buying Music

The CBDTPA is the most recent attempt to take away virtually every use of any form of digital media, except pay-for-use. It’s egregious, and serves Big Entertainment at the expense of everyone else. A simple boycott can send a big message: stop treating us like criminals.

Big Entertainment’s attempt to neuter and hijack personal technology continues to be a big issue, with the recent introduction of the CBDTPA (by whom else, the Senator from Disney), which would essentially turn computers into expensive DVD players, and the Internet into online TV.

Dan Gillmor writes about this, and proposes we send a strong message to Big Entertainment, by doing one simple thing: stop buying music CDs.

By not buying music from the big record companies for the rest of 2002, we send a powerful message that we don’t want to be treated like criminals. Read Dan’s article for the details.

Don’t think this is a big deal? Here’s an article that illustrates how the CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs.

Think this is just a theoretical abuse? Here’s an article that illustrates how the DCMA, CBDPTA’s precursor, has already made some forms of free speech impossible.

The time to make your displeasure known to our politicians is today.

Right now.