I don't usually delve into my personal or daily life on this blog. There are plenty of other places on the web where you can read about people's relationships, tattoos, irritable bowel syndrome, and cuticles. But I will momentarily break from my rule, and I ask that you withhold judgment: Today, I started a month-long Fitness Boot Camp. Let me explain. Early June in Portland was awful: soggy, cold, snow continuing to fall in the ...

Stephen sez, NY Times has reported that the Senate just approved a bill extending the warrantless wiretapping program AND giving the telcos immunity from prosecution for violating the law and the rights of their customers for compliance in earlier illegal warrantless wiretapping. And Barack Obama voted for it! Listen to your phone calls? Record your conversations? Yes we can, yes we can... That sound you hear? It's the Bill of Rights being torn in half. ...

Well so much for the attempts to filibuster and block telco immunity from being approved. The Senate has granted the telcos immunity with a 69 to 28 vote, effectively handing the President a "get out of jail free" card to not just protect the telcos, but to hide any evidence that the administration's warrantless wiretapping program may have been illegal. This is a total capitulation, and goes against every concept of checks and balances our ...

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush's five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government's authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration. The Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-Illinois) voted for the final bill, despite intense lobbying by supporters who used Obama's own online organizing technology to try to hold him to his ...

The Senate today overwhelmingly approved approved a controversial bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, expanding executive wiretap powers and providing retroactive immunity for telecoms. Several prominent Democrats, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, broke with presidential candidate Barack Obama to oppose the bill.Read More...

Online activists from the right and the left announced an unprecedented campaign Tuesday to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for caving in to the Bush administration on domestic spying. Netroots activists are raising money online to run advertisements against "Blue Dog Democrats", such as Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa., who voted for a bill that would immunize telecommunications companies who cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping. Credit: Eggman A group of high-profile progressive bloggers and libertarian ...

With the Senate set to vote on FISA amendments this week, Ars examines the legislation's key provisions and finds that it would undermine judicial oversight of foreign-to-domestic communications.Read More...

If your friends and family are having a hard time keeping up with your life online, Swurl can make it easier to collect all that stuff in one spot. Ars Technica goes hands on with this new social aggregation service. Read More...

Bizarre magazine interviews a Montreal gentleman named Rick who is tattooing his entire body to look like the living dead. From the interview (photo by Neville Elder): What look are you trying to achieve with your tattoos? They’re about the human body as a decomposing corpse – the art of a rotting cadaver. It’s also a tribute to horror movies, which I love. What influenced your tattoos? When I was a kid I was a ...

The original version of Fritz Lang's fantastic science fiction film Metropolis was first seen in Berlin in 1927. Shortly after, Paramount recut the film to (over)simplify the plot. From then on, it was thought that at least 1/4 of the whole film ended up on the editing room floor where it was swept into the dustbin of history. Recently though, much of the lost footage was rediscovered. According to ZEITmagazin, several of the rediscovered scenes ...

Australia's government is backing an ambitious plan to build a new fiber-to-the-node network that will reach 98 percent of Australians and offer a minimum 12Mbps to all. But just how open will it be? Google has some thoughts.Read More...

Jesse Willis went to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Wall-E and discovered that the lovable little robot is actually a dire criminal -- because he undertakes a variety of copying activities (bypassing DRM, file-sharing) that will be illegal under Canada's DMCA. Click through to read the unredacted version (warning -- minor spoiler if you do): 1. WALL-E records audio from his favorite movie, XXXXXXXXXXX, putting in onto his own digital recorder (bypassing the macrovision DRM ...

Last week, I pulled out my underused iPod, updated it with new songs from my iTunes, got in my car, and hit the play button. Almost immediately, I was reminded of why I had put my iPod away for that last few months. The reason: the shuffle feature. What should be an awesome, even liberating way of listening to one's music collection instead becomes obnoxious and restrictive -- at least for me. You'd think that ...

The record labels and defendant Jammie Thomas have filed their final motions, and it's now up to a judge to decide whether Thomas gets a new trial for copyright infringement and a second chance at beating a $222,000 judgment.Read More...

Two legends from somewhat different areas of the music scene are working on lining up a collaboration that seems counter intuitive at first, but actually makes perfect sense. Tom Waits and Tricky each tend to build their songs over loping, narcotic beats, and music made by both has, I assume, seen lots of play in the world's more well-appointed opium dens. Tricky explained to Uncut that Island Records founder Chris Blackwell told him six months ...

My latest Guardian column is up: "Warning to copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you're out" argues that if the entertainment industry wants the right to disconnect accused infringers after three accusations, then they should be prepared to have their corporate Internet access terminated if they make three false accusations. Thanks to Kevin Marks for the idea! The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press ...

Google is teaming up with Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, for a web-only TV series with high production and advertising values—and two-minute episodes.Read More...

Netflix reverses a very unpopular decision to eliminate account profiles—a feature that enabled separate rental queues to be shared in a household—due to customer feedback. Read More...