Free speech and government are always at odds.  You wouldn’t think this would be the case, but it is true.  You see, in a society where the news is controlled, your viewpoint is the only one heard, and you can control the messaging.

Free speech has the tendency to allow for things that you can’t control to be said, and because of this, a lot of time is spent, even in free societies, in controlling speech.

So, if it’s true that government and free speech are enemies, and yet the people want free speech, what can be done?  Well, you can use fear to attempt to control speech—in the name of security.

Law professors warn that new legislation allows state to seize websites merely for linking to other websites that host copyrighted material.

New legislation that would give the US government the power to seize website domains on a whim with no oversight merely for linking to sites that host copyrighted material has been labeled a hallmark of “repressive regimes” by a group of law professors who warn that the bill allows the state to “break the Internet addressing system”.

The Protect IP bill, currently stalled in the Senate, represents a death blow to Internet freedom of speech.

[Protect IP Act Gives Government Power to Seize Websites On a Whim]

I do not believe this bill got passed, because the Internet rebelled; however, that doesn’t mean that the government won’t try again.  You see, the government knows that as long as you can get your information from multiple sources, or read leaks from people like Julian Assange, etc., they don’t have as much control as they would like.

And I’m not one of those that thinks that government is intentionally malicious.  Rather than the evil super-villain, I believe that many that go into government believe that they can solve problems for people with their power (great power, great responsibility and all), and so they go about trying.  What they don’t realize is the trade-offs and the sacrifices, and that as they strip away liberty under the guise of protecting the people, they actually are changing the country, and making it possible for future government to take away more liberty.

So let free speech reign, even if you don’t like what’s being said.  It’s better to be free than to have freedom chipped away in the name of fixing things for us.

For the prospective college student, you want something that can both keep up with current technology, provide good battery life, and will be forward looking in features.  Also, having a webcam to chat with parents or friends at home can only be a benefit

Personally, I usually buy Dell when I buy– I actually build desktops, but even that can be sketchy depending on what kind of system you want to put together.

Right now, I think that I would go for the Inspiron 17R, because the price differential between it and the 15R is cheap, and with this coupon code you can get it for even cheaper!

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But eventually he got it resolved, with Dish…

One Twitter user asked whether he told them to “Make It So,” but I think it’s just that he’s much more comfortable in space or with a space company.

Click on the image at the right to see the full image.  For those of you not familiar with the term format, the idea is that by performing the syntax that the two humans have written, the hard disk of a computer would be erased.

So, by performing the command, the computer opponent inadvertently lost the game because he formatted his own hard-drive!

Watson brings up an interesting discussion about computing and where computers are headed.  Obviously this computer only gained its understanding through reading a lot of human generated content—there wasn’t anything here that needed mathematics, for instance, to solve.

At what point could a machine be considered learning on its own?  Could a machine eventually be considered sentient?

I mean, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they argued that Commander Data could be considered sentient, but I’m not sure that anything we created would eventually be able to be considered that sophisticated.  While I’m aware that a computer could learn, I’m not sure that it could actually come up with anything new that was intelligible.

I’ve seen some pretty cool code before, but this page has some that I’ve never seen.  If you’re a programmer, you’ll get a kick out of these pieces of code.

My favorite is the multi-lingual program at the bottom that can be compiled in 7 different programming languages, and if you read the comments, you can compile it both under DOS or linus.  Now that’s pretty amazing.

What’s the most amazing piece of code you’ve seen?

Ok, so this is pretty crazy.  What’s even more crazy is that I have a 32 GB micro SD card, and I have yet to get a virus off of one!

In a way, it’s an ingenious use of space—a very sci-fi type look and I could see how it could definitely work for someone that missed the train and didn’t have a lot of money.  I could also see it as some low cost housing that could be tried.

But I wonder what kind of security goes into a place like this.  Seems like there’d be a lot of opportunity for mischief.

That’s the reason that I want to get them learning Small Basic.  I also know that they need to get learning how to type.  So, for a while, I’ve been attempting to find a good typing program online, and this might just help them and me become better typers.  What do you think?

Have you ever visited a blog and found that it seemed like the homepage went on forever?  I mean, you could read the last 10 posts in its entirety (which has its benefits!), but the page was huge!

If you’re a blog owner, you may want your readers to get a snippet of what you’re talking about and then click through for the rest of the post rather than reading everything from one page—and you can do that in WordPress by using the “more” tag.

HTML Directive

WordPress can do a lot of things in the process of posting an article, and one of the features that is built into every installation is the ability to split the post, so that you only see part of it on the home page.

This tag is represented in the HTML view like so:

<!—more—>

It’s an HTML comment, so on the full post it won’t show in your text, but it tells WordPress to stop showing the whole post at that point and put up a link to read the rest of the entry.

From the Visual Editor

However, there’s an easier way to put it into your text.  When you’re using the visual editor, there’s a special button to put the “more tag” into your post:

I’ve circled the button in red.  Pressing that button will put in the light gray line that I’ve circled in blue.  The blue line represents where the post will be broken when it displays on the home page.

So, all you have to do is to put your cursor on the location where you want the break, push the button and you have a handy break in your post.

From Windows Live Writer

For me, I like using Windows Live Writer to authoring my posts.  In there, the “More tag” is hidden, but I’ll show you where they keep it!

If you go to the Insert Tab, you will find the same type of button, allowing you to split the post.  This does the same thing as the button in the Visual Editor.