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2006-02-26 posted by vic
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  • Books
     Finished the review of Lamb. You can find our review HERE. The archive of past reviews is HERE, and our newest book is HERE.

  • You're all a bunch of perverts
     We here at The Cabal struggle to bring you news of your civil liberties, Virginia Tech, and geek trends with barely a peep from you, the reader. On the other hand, we post a couple of links to an attractive chess player (see the 2006-02-22 update) and the responses come pouring in.

    Well, the mob has spoken, so let it be so. Privateer454 sent us this collection of hot female athletes. Some images may be NSFW, but there's thumbnail browsing (like you pron-hounds don't know what that means), so if you're careful, you're probably cool.

    Then we got two different collections of female military personnel from around the world. Click HERE and HERE for the uniformed goodness.

  • Function Creep
     Well, we suspect that everyone will stop at the last item and never get this far, but we'll fight the good fight anyway. That giant sucking sound you hear is not jobs rushing to Mexico, but of your civil liberties slowly eroding. When it comes to things like warrantless NSA wiretapping, it's pretty obvious that's happening, but there is a more insidious way you lose rights: function creep - the tendency of things started by governments and corporations for one purpose that get adopted for countless others.

    For example, your social security number. It was originally designed for only one purpose, to identify you to the Social Security Administration. Now, you can't get a job or even cable TV without giving your SSN. It has become a de facto national ID number, the final step before the government gets around to national ID cards.

    And speaking of national ID cards, try getting around without a drivers license for a while. It's supposed to be for one purpose, and that's to license you to operate a car on public roads. Now you have to show it everywhere for everything. Some store have even started asking for it when you try to use a credit card. Despite the fact that the credit card Terms of Service they agreed to makes the card authorization signature based, they still ask for government issued ID. (You idiots and assholes who write "CID" or "See ID" on your credit cards should be cockpunched. You're making yourself LESS SAFE. When you signed for the card, you agreed to follow the rules, which include signing the card immediately upon receipt. If it gets stolen and you followed to rules, you're all set. If you didn't follow the rules, then YOU'RE liable for the charges. Dumbasses.)

    As an aside, if you want to have some fun, when you go to one of those stores that want your ID for a credit card, tell them no and then explain how they agreed to authorize cards based on signature.

    Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, function creep. Take these items which showed up in the news lately. First there's these industrious DHS officers. I guess the homeland is secure enough from terrorists that they have time to bust into libraries and hassle people about what they're looking at on the internet. This item does not make clear if anyone was even actually looking at teh pr0n. But that doesn't matter. If there's a problem with that, it's up to the library staff to monitor the situation, and if they have a problem they can call the police - the real police. DHS has no business getting involved in this situation. These guys should be fired.

    Next, here's an article from Reason about how anti-terrorism legislation is being used for non-terrorism related issues, like cold medicine and undersized lobsters. One of the biggest objections to the PATRIOT act is that even if it's passed with the best intentions for fighting terrorism, it will soon be used for all sorts of non-terrorism related purposes... used against you, eventually.

  • What about the UAE ports thing
     I'm not a big fan of this ports deal, but that's just mostly because of the way the process has been carried out. Instead of repeating it all here, check out my long post in the comments section at The Lazy Eye, where we discussed this.