I have an link to another site in one of my articles. I was curious to re-read the link, so I followed it. What did I get?

Error Document 403

Complications Ensued

OUR SITE IS A-OK so if you've tried another browser and you still see this page, please visit our private troubleshooting page. Thank you!

(Alternatively: If you came via a link, please try our home page directly. OR: Are you using a Google feature/desktop search/whatever or the Ask Toolbar? Try disabling it and retrying our home page directly.)

"OUR SITE IS A-OK"? It clearly isn't, since they denied me with a cryptic message. I manage to visit mind boggling numbers of web pages every day without problems, so clearly the problem is on their end. But I humored them and tried a different web browser on a different computer with a different IP address and running a different operating system. I got the exact same message. I run none of Google gizmo/feature/desktop search/whatever or the Ask Toolbar on either computer/browser. Okay, off to to the "private troubleshooting page". Before I even arrive, I get a popup message box:

Please follow the instructions on the page you are about to see. Thank you! (Click the OK button.)

I understand their frustration. People don't read instructions. But if they don't read instructions, why will adding instructions to read the instructions help? This isn't helpful, it's just whining. Anyway, clicking OK...

Details, Details

OUR SITE IS A-OK but something's iffy between your browser OR connection and our site, sorry. IF you've tried another browser and you still see this page, THEN please e-mail us with ALL of the following --

[Irrelevant technical information deleted - Alan]

Chances are we just need to whitelist you after we look at our logs. If you DON'T hear from us Monday through Friday, after approx. 24 hours (check your Junk Mail filters, just in case), please feel free to re-visit. Thanks!

BEFORE e-mailing, PLEASE note:

Here are three frequently quick fixes:

1.) Again, please try another browser. 2.) Some people have access to more than one Internet Service Provider (ISP), for example, at work and at home. If you have more than one ISP account, try your other one. (Some ISPs require white-listing regardless of browser because they're havens for spammers and such. This applies to a LOT of ISPs in Australasia, Middle Europe and South America.)

3.) Are you using a Google gizmo/feature/desktop search/whatever? Or the Ask Toolbar? Try disabling it and retrying our home page. Or you can try our home page directly. Thank you!

That's a lot of words. It can be a bit much, so let me summarize: "Piss off." That may not be their intent, but that's what they said. Really, is someone following a random link going to jump through all of these hoops just to see some content that might be good? Try another browser, try another ISP, disable useful software, send them some email, and try again in 24 business hours? Of course not. "Piss off."

Why was I blocked? No idea. I used two different computers, with different IP addresses, different operating systems, and different browsers. Neither of the computers has the software they warn against. (And we'll ignore that it's popular software that many people like and that the overwhelming majority of the web allows.) I can view the entire bloody web except for this joker's site. The only possible reason left? Apparently my "ISP" is a "haven for spammers and such." Apparently it's worth blocking the entire University of Wisconsin Madison! This isn't a cautious defense, this is carpet bombing a neighborhood because there is a shoplifter living somewhere in there.

I'm done. The article in question wasn't, as best I remember, worth this amount of work. It certainly isn't worth my linking to their article. It makes me look bad to link to insane people like this. Similar enough content can be found elsewhere (it's a summary of a work now in the public domain), so to hell with them. They lose a link and some visitors. Given their insane defenses, I can only conclude that this is their intent. Soon I trust they'll have no one linking to them and they'll have accomplished their goal of disappearing from the internet. I wish them the best of luck in their bizarre quest for anonymity.

Edited 2009-09-08: Web site name expunged (and comments naming it will be deleted.). I have since learned that it's essentially an single person's site that I gather grew beyond what was expected. After chatting with the webmaster, I still feel the blocking system as implemented is wildly overkill and poorly considered, but I don't think it's worth singling them out.

I was recently reminded of the University of Wisconsin's relatively new policy of doing criminal background checks on new hires. This article summarizes the reasoning. (Backup link) These people served their time. But apparently their punishment includes being forever barred from a huge number of jobs. Because after spending years in prison, isolated from normal society, upon reintroducing them to society, we proceed to isolate them and limit them to very low end jobs. They cannot ever hope to better themselves. They have no buy in to society. We are encouraging them to turn (back) to a life of crime! For someone to be truly rehabilitated, we need to get them to buy back into the idea of society. If someone cannot be rehabilitated, then we shouldn't be releasing them in the first place.

There are reasonable limitation. Barring someone convicted of molesting a child from working with children is reasonable. Want to bar someone convicted of financial fraud from financial work? Seems reasonable. But a blanket ban on felons? There is only one benefit: fear mongering legislators convince the short-sighted voters feel like something good is being done, thus earning those legislators re-election. It may seem like it makes the business or government safer in the short term, but in the long run it makes everyone less safe. Any legislator brave enough to vote against such a thing will be giving his opponent ammunition in the next election.

*sigh*

Anti-video game lawyer, media whore, and general nutjob Jack Thompson has been disbarred for life by the Florida Supreme Court.

I'm unable to verify, but it looks like the Florida Bar is a private organization, like many Bars are. I'm deeply uncomfortable with a private organization being involved so intimately with our judicial system. Indeed, the general idea that you need to be certified to practice law is worrisome. However, I'm not so mature that I can't appreciate having this nutjob lose a bit of credibility.

(Via Slashdot.)

McCain committed to appearing on Letterman. He called to beg off, saying he needed to race back to Washington to help with the economic crisis. Instead, he went three blocks away and recorded a interview with Katie Couric. What the hell was he thinking?

John McCain.
He keeps his word.
Unless a better option comes along.

China's totally trustworthy official news agent reported on their glorious, successful space launch. Unfortunately the launch hadn't happened yet.

Knowing a good idea when they see it, McCain's election team started running ad declaring "McCain won the debate-- hands down." several hours before the debate.

I was originally just going to post the China story, but the coincidence is too excellent.

John McCain on healthcare, from this article he wrote (backup link):

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

I was just looking at our banking system and thinking how successful our new innovative, less regulated banking system is. (backup link)

(Added 2008-09-22: This is via Mark Evanier's news from me.)

I hate copyright abusers. For some reason the Jericho Historical Society (backup link) annoys the heck out of me. Their copyright claims are simply, absolutely, and completely wrong. These idiots claim:

Copyright/Public domain works

Wilson Bentley did not copyright his photographs and thus they are in the public domain and free to use for any purpose.
HOWEVER
No materials or images from this (or any other) website may be resold in any form (print or electronic). The Public Domain status does not give you the right to resell material unless you have access to the original source and permission from the owner to reproduce the material. Any published works of Public Domain material is only "Royalty free" if explicitly stated.

Bentley's works are in the public domain. Great. That means I can make all the copies I want, including for sale. Period. I can take their images off their web site and immediately resell them to anyone foolish enough to offer me some money. The JHS has no claim to stop me. "Unless you have access to the original source" is complete nonsense. There is no basis in law for this claim. Simply scanning the photographs and putting them online, even with a bit of cleanup, fails to meet the creative standards necessary to make a new claim of copyright. Public domain is the public domain; I can make and sell all the copies I want. By their insane claims only owner of the original folios can reprint Shakespeare's works.

Twits.

(To be clear, the logos, text, and any other original work they did is under copyright, and excepting fair use, copies are not allowed under copyright law.)

Yahoo Answers is a good idea. You post a question, and people with free time and knowledge answer. But in practice it's a wasteland of stupid. There are lots of people with plenty of opinion and little practical knowledge. There are people who apparently can't even be arsed to read the question. What motivates these people? It probably wouldn't bother me so much, but it's starting to dominate many real-world-practical queries I turn to Google for.

A recent gem. The asker clearly asks, "I asked my local vet and they said just to clean them out with warm water and its not distemper but what is it ????" So a vet has seen the cat and determined that it's not something to worry about. At least one person was bold and stupid enough to respond, "it is probably an eye infection and he needs antibiotics. take him to see the vet" Right, already done. Now shut your pie hole and go away.

I've seen worse, this just happens to be one I ran into today.

(I'll also childishly call out an answer here, which features the line, "Cats need vet care just like children." To be, I understood her intent, it's the sort of goof everyone sometimes does.)

So I took the time to log in and set up a Yahoo Answers account just to flag a few painfully stupid answers as bad. And was told I couldn't. I wasn't "level 2". The hell? Thankfully the link explained everything: Yahoo has a page helpfully explaining why Yahoo Answers sucks so much. There are experience points and levels. This is profoundly stupid. Like forum level systems, this encourages people to game the system. Answering a question, no matter how badly, is worth points. Voting for a "best answer" is worth points, but voting, "all the answers suck" isn't. They try to limit abuse with the system, but the system ironically rewards the worst abusers! It's a feedback loop of dumb.

I miss Google Answers. Answers put money up for a good answer, creating a market for actual relevant answers. I have no idea why it was shut down.

(Later) I couldn't help myself; it was like a train wreck, I had to keep looking. No only are the answers stupid, many of the questions are stupid. People are asking for help infringing copyright. They have completely useless titles. People are posting in wildly wrong locations. (There is, naturally, no proper way to report this. The "Report Abuse" option doesn't include "wrong category" as an option.)

(2008-07-20) Typo fixes.

The May issue is being published only two months after Sharper Image agreed to pay Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, $525,000 in legal costs after a federal judge dismissed a libel lawsuit alleging the publisher printed false information in an October 2003 article about the Ionic Breeze's ability to reduce airborne particles.

"It is astonishing that Consumers Union would continue its misguided efforts to attack the judgment and experience of millions of Americans who are satisfied with the performance of the Ionic Breeze products," Sharper Image's lawyer E. Robert Wallach said in a statement.

That's real chutzpah.

I keep running across ads for Wowio, offering free comics. Sure, I'm always interested in new web comics. So off I go and... a shopping cart system? Well... okay. I'll add it and try to check out, except now I've got to register an account. Fine, except they want me to "confirm my identity." I can apparently scan my driver's license, which is too much work and gives them more information than I'm willing to share. I can give them my credit card number, but why should I trust them with that? Finally, I can somehow register by email.

Well, maybe I'll try the email thing. But let's quick check the license agreement.

This eText is protected by trade secret laws, copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. The eText is licensed, not sold. You agree to keep this eText confidential and hold it and the related methods and techniques in confidence and trust for WOWIO.

Trade secret law? I don't think you get to claim trade secrets on a mass market product you're shipping to random people on the internet. Even assuming this a reasonable, what sort of secrets could a freaking comic book have? Furthermore, I have to "keep this eText confidential." The hell? Again, you're offering this for free on the internet, I think that's the opposite of "confidential."

That's pretty much a deal breaker right there. They're obviously insane. But let's hypothetically go on. Why do they need to authenticate me? "Signing up for a WOWIO account requires that you authenticate your identity. This is necessary to protect the content of our publishing partners and provide readers with free ebooks." Welcome to nonsequitor land. You can give me free ebooks without my identity; I promise you.

So, authenticating by email, huh? Not if your only account is Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or just about any other major webmail provider. You know, like huge numbers of people use?

Wowio, the hell? What is your bizzare ass business model? Giving stuff away doesn't make a lot of money. I'm not seeing any ads. Assuming that giving stuff away is part of your business model, you're sure making it as hard as possible.

How's airline security doing?

We've got employees without ID wandering around. Screeners missed 20 out 22 tests to smuggle weapons and explosives past a checkpoint.

But at least we're seizing dangerous bottles of soda! And we're securing those dangerous seized liquids by carefully treating them like bombs, right? Or, we're just chucking them in a garbage barrel because they really aren't dangerous. And if you really want a bunch of liquid you can probably just grab it from the barrel.

[I find it] hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that 'shit' and 'fuck' are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.

Ah, the delicious irony. Thank goodness children never read the news.

And the battlecry of the enemies of freedom everywhere, "Who will think about the chiiiildren?!"

If we can't restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

Even ignoring Martin's gross misreading of the verdict, I love the implication. Heaven forbid that people have the freedom in what they say. This Speech-Freedom, or whatever you filthy liberals want to call it, is clearly un-American!

As a society, we're stupid about sex offenders. We've convinced ourselves that sex offenses are so absolutely terrible that we must ostrasize them for life, a level of punishment we don't apply to, say, people who commit fraud, deal drugs, or even some cases murder. By making their information public with public registries, we encourage people to shun them. Their records make it hard to get an honest job. Some cities use laws to force sex offenders to live under bridges. We're isolating these people, clearly telling them, "you're not part of society." If they're not part of society, why should they obey the law? Desperation is a great way to breed criminals. Stupid in every possible way. All it takes is the cry of overprotective idiots, "but think of the chiiiildren" and rational thought stops.

The recent MySpace purge of sex offenders is just another example of this idiocy. Are we really safer kicking this man off MySpace? If he's really so dangerous, why is he walking our streets? No, the reality is that to make stupid people feel safer, we're reminding him that he's not welcome and never will be.