News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
A US District Court judge has ruled that the US Treasury must change its currency such that blind people can distinguish between bills of different denominations. Apparently the US is one of the few countries where this is a problem. An appeal has already been authorized.
Link: http://www.acsblog.org/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #2: http://today.reuters.com/…
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the US Dept. of Transportation are campaigning to put interlock devices in the cars of all convicted drunk drivers. The devices are essentially breathalyzers that keep the car from starting if alcohol is detected above a preset level. Most states already require them for some offenders, but MADD wants them installed for everyone convicted of drunk driving—even first offenders.
Link: http://www.iht.com/…
Starting in 2007, the US Treasury will release “presidential” dollar coins. They’ll be phased in over time, similar to the state quarters, for all presidents up through Richard Nixon. Of note is that the coins will have inscriptions on the outside edge with date, mint mark, “In God We Trust,” and “E Pluribus Unum.” I’ve also heard that they will not tarnish as quickly as the Sacagawea dollars.
Link: http://www.usmint.gov/…
Link: http://today.reuters.com/…
(via Blogcritics Magazine via digg)
This is an insightful article about the clash between fair use and the DMCA. The MPAA is suing a company that will copy your DVD to an iPod for you. The MPAA contends that circumventing the DVD copy protection is illegal, and that users must re-purchase the movie via the iTunes store in order to watch it on an iPod. The worst part is that they may be right.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
There is a non-trivial chance that Democrats will take over the House and/or Senate after the upcoming Nov. 7th election. This Washington Post editorial is written by a Republican and does a very good job of explaining why this may be the case. I think he’s hit the nail on the head.
Canadian officials were understandably upset when a US judge ordered a convicted sex offender to spend 3 years “exiled” in Canada.
The state of Ohio is trying to implement a special sex offender registry. It’s for people who have never been convicted of (or even charged with) a sex crime. Instead, certain people will be declared as sex offenders by a judge, and then be added to the registry. This “civil registry” is intended to handle Catholic clergy who are sex offenders but have never been charged criminally and haven’t lost a civil lawsuit. I guarantee, however, that the registry will be (mis)used for purposes far from the original intent. This is a bad idea.
According to this federal appeals court ruling, carrying large amounts of cash is sufficient cause for the cash to be confiscated and not returned. What planet are these judges from?
The addition of a single comma will cost this company an estimated $2 million (Canadian).
Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/…
(via digg)
If you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, you may have heard about net neutrality. As it was first explained to me, telecom companies didn’t think it was fair that bandwidth-hogging, content-providing web sites (think Google) didn’t have to pay for their traffic that travels over the telco infrastructure. So I pay Qwest, for example, to access Google. Google serves up the content through their connection to the internet, whatever that is, and the data travels through the internet, eventually arriving at Qwest’s network and then my PC. This is net neutrality. Some of the more vocal telecom companies, however, want to also charge Google for sending the content over their network. In essence, double-charging and wringing every bit of money possible out of their network infrastructure. It’s no wonder, then, that companies such as Google and Amazon are firmly opposed to this and have been pressuring Congress to pass a net neutrality bill that outlaws it.
Since this original explanation, however, net neutrality has undergone a transformation. Without a net neutrality law in place, the internet would become a two-tier network, where content providers have to pay for preferential treatment. Thus Google, paying for this privilege, would find its content served up in much the same way it is today. While Chad’s News, which cannot afford such extravagant services, would be relegated to a “slower” internet. The best explanation of this is in the linked video of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. From the video, “The point is that with net neutrality all internet packets – whether they come from a big company or a single citizen – are treated in the exact same way.” (Note that there is some off-color humor in the clip, and the real meat of the issue starts about halfway through.)
So the push is on in Congress. The current efforts to get net neutrality passed as law have failed, but we can expect to see it come up again later this year.
This article critiques welfare reform, which was signed into law nearly 10 years ago. The conclusion is that it’s working better than expected but not as well as it could be.
The US government has created a comprehensive, online repository of all federal forms. Appropriately enough, they’re located at forms.gov.
