Bruce Schneier, back in 2006:
The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn’t make us any safer.
I did this for six years. I still wonder sometimes what, exactly, the fuck I was doing.
—
Moltz, reliving the glory days of C.A.R.S.
Through some (cruel?) twist of fate, John and I have become pals and I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to tell him how much I loved C.A.R.S. back in the day. There was something so specific yet absolutely perfect about the humor of the site. It appealed to that incredibly narrow slice of people who not only know who Rob Enderle is but why he’s a jackass, poked fun at technology fanboys of all stripes yet still reaffirmed the prejudices of Mac nerds. I’m amazed John put up with it for as long as he did and, honestly, I’m not sure I’d find it as compelling now as I did 8 years ago, but I’m glad it was around when it was.
If you can’t make money from attention, you should do something else for a living.
—Seth Godin says Rupert has it exactly backwards
FOX News announces new zero tolerance policy for on-air mistakes
I’m curious if this only applies to their “news” programming or to their “opinion” and “entertainment” footage as well. Presumably, had this measure been in effect a few weeks ago, those responsible for the mixed up footage that Sean Hannity aired would be looking for a new job.
Bing’s got some sketchy deal with online retailers where if you find a product using Bing they give you, the Bing searcher, money back. Shockingly, this doesn’t always work and may even end up costing you, loyal Bing user, money.
Isn’t the bigger problem, though, that Bing is essentially saying they’ll pay you to use their product? That just reeks of desperation. The best way to get people to use something you build is to build something awesome, not bribe them into submission.
Pull out Wedge! You can’t do anymore good back there!
—The nerds at Reddit describe their sex lives with Star Wars quotes.
Expert Labs looks like one of the most interesting projects to come about in a while
Anil Dash is the perfect person to help the federal government listen to the web
Microsoft offers an early look at IE 9
Amidst all the talk of hardware accelerated text rendering (seriously?) and javascript performance that no longer lags by an order of magnitude (seriously!) there’s nothing about fixing the glaringly broken rendering issues that continue to cost developers real time. PNG transparency anyone?
With that said, I’m cautiously optimistic that every new version of IE gets us one step closer to a world where we can forget about IE 6 forever.
Mad Magazine brings you Blunder Woman [via comicbooks]