Entries from February 2005The Posts You Asked For

I don’t care if it’s not politically correct, or not compassionate, or whatever. If you do this you should forfeit your right to raise children. Period.
No long-term monitoring of the home environment. No six months of counseling and all is forgiven. You shouldn’t have to do this twice to be ruled unfit as a parent.
A [...]

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Michael Jackson tries to claw its way out of a car on the way to its trial at the Santa Barbara County courthouse.

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So “hackers” got into Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile account because the password she used was “Tinkerbell” — the name of her Chihuahua. The task was made easier because the T-Mobile Web site offered a password hint, “What is your favorite pet’s name?”
Duh.
One more time, the importance of a decent password raises its head. For heaven’s sake, [...]

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At what point did “stealing a credit card number” become “identity theft”?
To me, identity theft means doing more than ordering a bunch of electronic gizmos with someone else’s card. It means opening back accounts, signing deals — in short, pretending to be that person on a larger scale.
But today, because it sounds sexier, “credit card [...]

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Making the rounds is a story from the Washington Post called “Hard News” about how print newspapers are struggling against the free and easy Web.
It’s easy to say that the Web is where people will get their news, and that traditional news organizations will join or die. Heck, I get most of my news [...]

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Not that many people use them, but my trackbacks seem to be broken. I’ll try to fix them tonight.
Damn spammers. I tweaked the settings to kill trackback spam, and must have broken something. #$%&@!

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Back in November, I commented on how some companies come through my Caller ID as “111-111-1111″ as a way to get around my “no anonymous calls” feature. It’s slimy.
Now I see that Dan Gillmor has also noticed this. Glad I’m not alone.

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I’ve got a great old computer that I use for a lot of things. It’s a 300-MHz machine, and it’s perfect for Web browsing, e-mail, running Microsoft Office, and a lot of other things — even Photoshop runs pretty decently on it.
But anti-virus software kills it. It makes the machine so slow as to be [...]

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Quoth my boss:
suddenly, blogging is everywhere. every fool with a keyboard is talking about blogging, debating blogging.
now every newspaper exec who ridiculed blogs and instant messaging and probably web sites in general in years past is now a blog expert with an expert blog opinion.
i’m already sick of it.
it’s most definitely not cool any more.
(damm, [...]

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Houses need instant messaging. I don’t mean “everyone in a home needs IM.” I mean that homes need an electronic message board in the kitchen that would display incoming IMs, so that when I call home and my wife isn’t there, I can simply send an IM.
She may not check voice mail, because the [...]

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I have to share this for no good reason.
When I was but a tot, one of my favorite songs was about the planets. It was from my parents’ collection of 78s and every now and then I still think of the lyrics: “Mercury is first, then Venus with its clouds galore…”
I didn’t remember the [...]

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Thank you to all the people who wrote to me at the suggestion of the folks from the Answers in Genesis “museum.”
You and the museum are, of course, welcome to your opinions. And I will stick with mine.
I appreciate the various suggestions to read this or that Bible passage, but — and I [...]

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Please note the link on the left (under “USA Today Follow-Ups”) if you want to comment on this column.

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Want to comment on the column? Please do so here.

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The Christian Science Monitor asks, “Are bloggers journalists?” But the question is not only moot, but dangerous.

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