	Eric's Home Page
Menu: Home News UP 12/24/2002 12/20/2001 08/06/2001 06/16/2001 #3 06/16/2001 #2 06/16/2001 05/28/2001 05/14/2001 02/28/2001 01/16/2001 01/01/2001 09/24/2000 08/03/2000 08/01/2000 04/22/2000 03/06/2000 01/26/2000 01/24/2000 11/16/1999 09/20/1999 09/11/1999 Old News Older News Links Contact Info My Resume My Public Key EMAIL Eric BadTux Portal[et]	Long time, no see. I've been very busy. Here's the highlights: aescrypt: I am starting to expand it to include the functionality needed for a personal encryption product. This, alas, means Perl for many functions (argh!). Note that I no longer have LinuxToday in my bookmarks. Once upon a time they were a Linux site. Now they don't appear to have anybody on staff who is a member of the Linux community, and indeed, their editor has argued that there is no such thing as a "Linux community". I recommend LWN (Linux Weekly News) as your community news source. A Russian programmer presenting a scientific paper was arrested for his "crime" -- reverse-engineering Adobe's E-book format (done in order to prepare the paper). The charge is that he is "trafficking in a circumvention device", though nobody has ever said that he personally sold a single copy of any "circumvention device" (whatever the hell that is). It is alleged that his employer sold some software (8 copies) in the United States prior to withdrawing it from the U.S. market after Adobe threatened a lawsuit, and as a result, they are prosecuting the programmer (who never personally sold any copies, has no involvement in the marketing of the product, and otherwise has never done anything on U.S. soil other than present a paper). Apparently the Bush Justice Department figures that it gets to prosecute a commie and facts don't matter then. It is interesting that during the Cold War we protested the Russians jailing U.S. citizens on bogus charges, and now we (the U.S.) are doing the exact same thing! George W. Bush sent me $300. I donated it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is fighting to preserve the 1st Amendment for the Internet. For more info, see my editorial Spending George's Check. A mother was arrested and charged with kidnapping her own children. From what I can gather, their children were taken away because the parents are Christian Scientists and don't believe in doctors, and secondly because the parents are poor. This isn't unusual. According to one GAO study on the subject, "Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse combined accounted for only about 7% of removals to foster care". Charges of negligence are far more likely to result in removal of children into foster care: "74% of children alleged to have been neglected were placed in foster care, while only 41% of those alleged to have been abused were." It appears that being poor and having children is a crime in the United States, and that being poor is a bigger crime than beating your children. What is the correct response to stormtroopers taking your children away? The Christines tried publicity, and even daily protests outside of the courthouse by conservative activists did not help them get their children back. Can taking your children away from the child welfare workers at gunpoint be justified? It's sad that after two years of fighting via the system to get his children back, Kevin Christine cracked and committed a crime -- assaulting a caseworker at gunpoint to get his children back. It's equally sad that someone can be charged with kidnapping their own children, or would be placed in that situation in the first place.

Eric's Home Page

aescrypt: I am starting to expand it to include the functionality needed for a personal encryption product. This, alas, means Perl for many functions (argh!).
Note that I no longer have LinuxToday in my bookmarks. Once upon a time they were a Linux site. Now they don't appear to have anybody on staff who is a member of the Linux community, and indeed, their editor has argued that there is no such thing as a "Linux community". I recommend LWN (Linux Weekly News) as your community news source.
A Russian programmer presenting a scientific paper was arrested for his "crime" -- reverse-engineering Adobe's E-book format (done in order to prepare the paper). The charge is that he is "trafficking in a circumvention device", though nobody has ever said that he personally sold a single copy of any "circumvention device" (whatever the hell that is). It is alleged that his employer sold some software (8 copies) in the United States prior to withdrawing it from the U.S. market after Adobe threatened a lawsuit, and as a result, they are prosecuting the programmer (who never personally sold any copies, has no involvement in the marketing of the product, and otherwise has never done anything on U.S. soil other than present a paper). Apparently the Bush Justice Department figures that it gets to prosecute a commie and facts don't matter then. It is interesting that during the Cold War we protested the Russians jailing U.S. citizens on bogus charges, and now we (the U.S.) are doing the exact same thing!
George W. Bush sent me $300. I donated it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is fighting to preserve the 1st Amendment for the Internet. For more info, see my editorial Spending George's Check.
A mother was arrested and charged with kidnapping her own children. From what I can gather, their children were taken away because the parents are Christian Scientists and don't believe in doctors, and secondly because the parents are poor. This isn't unusual. According to one GAO study on the subject, "Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse combined accounted for only about 7% of removals to foster care". Charges of negligence are far more likely to result in removal of children into foster care: "74% of children alleged to have been neglected were placed in foster care, while only 41% of those alleged to have been abused were." It appears that being poor and having children is a crime in the United States, and that being poor is a bigger crime than beating your children. What is the correct response to stormtroopers taking your children away? The Christines tried publicity, and even daily protests outside of the courthouse by conservative activists did not help them get their children back. Can taking your children away from the child welfare workers at gunpoint be justified? It's sad that after two years of fighting via the system to get his children back, Kevin Christine cracked and committed a crime -- assaulting a caseworker at gunpoint to get his children back. It's equally sad that someone can be charged with kidnapping their own children, or would be placed in that situation in the first place.

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