Last night was Pittsburgh Blogfest 5. These events just keeping getting better and better. This time, we had a special treat in the form of über-blogger Robert Scoble. Robert is a “technical evangelist” for Microsoft. He also co-wrote a book with Shel Israel called “Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
Declan McCullagh, the author of the CNET article I linked to yesterday has posted a FAQ about the legislation. In my opinion, it answers the legal debunking of his article posted at BoingBoing.
The United States Congress (Senator Arlen Spector in particular) can kiss my….Oh, wait. I musn't be annoying. I might be breaking the law.
" Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. "
"In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess."
"This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison."
….
"Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called 'Preventing Cyberstalking.' It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet 'without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."
"To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure."
"The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16. "
I guess I'm safe because my true identity is disclosed on this site.
What a bunch of asshats. Readers are encouraged to leave anonymous and/or pseudonymous annoyances aimed at our brilliant leaders (Please keep them PG, though).
I recently asked folks what they liked or did not like about this blog. Most of
the comments were about design elements. I was aiming more for content, but I do
appreciate the constructive criticism regarding presentation. Here’s a sampling:
“I think the design makes it a little unfriendly to the eye, hence harder to
read. It’s a bit crowded and the font and colors tend to blur after reading for
a bit.”“I could do without the background”
“You do have an awful lot of links, images, and stuff that need to download
before the page works or renders correctly.”
I’m aware of the glut of images and links and will eventually pare them down. The overall design, though, will take a lot more effort to fix than I have time for. To get it fixed, I need to do a little blegging. Are there any kind souls out there who would help me redesign my template for no more conpensation than my undying gratitute and a permalink to their blog?
I just discovered a neat Bloglines feature. It’s called "Related Feeds" and it tells you what people subscribed to a particular feed also read. Here’s the page for my feed. Be sure to visit these folks. If they’re reading this blog, they must have good taste, so we should see what else they’re reading. 😉