General Stuff

• The Deer Park (Firefox 1.5) beta has been out for a couple of weeks now and is very stable and fast; beta 2 is due to come out any minute now. Despite the lack of a compatible Noia 2.0 eXtreme (my favourite Firefox theme) I highly recommend the upgrade.
• Fasterfox is a major performance tweak for Firefox. We don't have the fastest internet connection here so it's difficult to tell how effective it is, but I'll try and gauge it over the next few days anyway.
• Metal Gear Solid fans owe it to themselves to hear virt's remix titled My Frequency Is 140.85.
• Martin of Tipmonkies (heh. Tipmonkies. Heh.) published a list of free disposable e-mail address services. My personal favourite is DodgeIt.
• Finally, Serenity seems to be doing rather badly financially. I haven't seen the movie yet (and I doubt I'll get to see it in the Israeli theaters, with all the crap movies taking valuable theater space) but I have a very good feeling about it, and I hate to see anything original, interesting or (in Firefly's case) underdog do badly.
• Mystified by Virgill is awesome. For that matter, so is elements. The guy knows his shit.

Politics

• It bothers me a great deal when American agencies (or goverment agencies in general) presume to tell me what I'm entitled, or not entitled, to. As far as I'm concerned the default should be "I can do whatever the hell I want as long as it's not declared illegal", not "I can do whatever is declared legal". Very important distinction. So it's no surprise I was really pissed off to read an FCC document in which a statement began with "consumers are entitled to run applications and use servics of their choice". Thanks! I always wanted a government to officially allow me the liberties I've always taken for granted. But that's nothing compared to the rest of the statement: "... subject to the needs of law enforcement." You know what? To hell with the needs of law enforcement. I won't have police/FBI/shabak/whatever goons telling me what programs I can or can't use. I realize that it's like that in practice (the old issue of >128-bit RSA encryption not allowed outside the US, for one), but it's no excuse to make it official policy. I'll run whatever the hell I want on my machine. If it's illegal, have the police come up with sufficient justification for a search warrant, signed by an independant judge.
• The US Patent Office upholds a patent owned by Eolas, which has bearing on their case against Microsoft. I don't know the details of the patent and don't care. Ideas and thoughts should not be patentable, as simple as that. As Florian Mueller puts it (direct quote from the linked article):

  Pro-patent politicians told us that broad and trivial patents can be invalidated. If even Microsoft with all of its resources doesn't always succeed in that, what can smaller companies do?

• Apparently a single, disabled mom has found the strength to sue the RIAA back for wrongful legal practices. Any dent in the RIAA litigation behemoth is a good thing in my book.
• An ISP owner from Oklahoma wins a $10M lawsuit against a known spammer. It's doubtful he'll be getting any of his money, but the precedent-setting case is good in the long run anyway.