Disconnecting Telemarketers

Anonymous Scientist at UMass sent in a story about opt-out telemarketing laws, and several people submitted this story about a spam bill in the Senate. New York's telemarketing law does work - since we put our number on the list, we've gotten a couple of calls from charities (not covered by the law) and a couple of calls from Time-Warner Cable, asking us to sign up for cable. Time-Warner's calls would be banned, except that we have a pre-existing business relationship with them - you see, we already have cable. Update: 05/18 15:30 GMT by M : Oh, and if you live in New York: NYNoCall.com.

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Ashcroft's speech at cua graduation

[Anonymous Coward]

Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft

Commencement Address for The Catholic University of America
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Washington D.C.
May 11, 2002

Your Eminence, Cardinal McCarrick; Very Reverend President, Father O'Connell; trustees; members of the administration, faculty and staff; distinguished guests; parents and families of the graduates; and members of the class of 2002:

I am overwhelmed with the honor of joining you as an honorary graduate of this institution. It almost prompts me to cut the length of my speech.

Seriously, I am grateful to you, Father O'Connell, for your kind invitation to deliver this year's commencement address at The Catholic University of America. I am privileged, not only to be making the address, but also to be joining the ranks of those who have learned here, to join their ranks as an honorary member, thanks to the degree you have conferred upon me.

It is customary, on occasions such as this, for the speaker to congratulate the graduates on what they have achieved -- and let me be the first to do so. But let me also remind you, on this day so near to Mother's Day, that your achievement is not yours alone. You share this day with -- and they deserve our thanks - those people behind you, people who have been behind you for years -- the parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters who have supported you; the faculty and staff who have guided you; and, last but not least, the friend who got you through Religion 201.

The Catholic writer, G.K Chesterton, defined education - and I'm quoting now - as "the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." But Chesterton cautioned that we must first possess this societal soul - this common understanding of the virtues we value and the freedoms we cherish - we must possess it before we can pass it on. As he put it, and I'm quoting again, "We cannot give what we have not got," Chesterton said, and I'm quoting further, "and we cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves."

Today is a day worthy of celebration because today you begin your lives as the builders of our culture, the shapers of our institutions - the leaders, teachers and mentors of your fellow Americans. You begin this life journey as the heirs to the great tradition of scholarship informed and nurtured by the Catholic faith. Each of you, regardless of your personal faith, is today the recipient of a great gift - the gift of an education in human reason guided by the light of eternal truth.

In his extraordinary constitution on Catholic universities, His Holiness Pope John Paul II described the experience of Catholic education as "an ardent search for truth and its unselfish transmission to youth and to all those learning to think rigorously." The goal of this search for truth, the Pope wrote, is "to act rightly, to act rightly and to serve humanity better."

For 115 years, the university from which you graduate today, The Catholic University of America, has guided young people in this search for truth. You are soon to join a long line of distinguished alumni of this and other Catholic institutions. Monsignor George Higgins, a graduate of Catholic who passed away just a few days ago, devoted his life to the pursuit of social justice. I have the privilege of working with Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the President's National Security Advisor. She attended Notre Dame University. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are graduates of Georgetown and Holy Cross Universities. All of these men and women and many more graduates of Catholic institutions have, in the spirit of Chesterton, shaped the soul of our society, moulded the contours of this great culture, and passed it along, passed the culture along - better and more complete - to new generations of Americans.

They have understood as all eventually learn that the greatest responsibility of a society is the transmission of values from one generation to the next.

Across the country, at over 230 Catholic colleges and universities, hundreds of thousands of young Americans of many different faiths join in this heritage and receive this great gift. Two and a half million children in Catholic elementary and secondary schools - rich children, poor children, black children, white children, Catholic children, non-Catholic children - God's children - are also a part of this great tradition, part of this rich opportunity, this important gift. These children have been given a gift - the gift of high achievement born of high expectations, and high achievement and high expectations are partners in the process of producing the best that mankind can enjoy. They're also the recipients of the gift of dignity born of unconditional love.

The tradition you inherit is not confined within the walls of Catholic institutions. It has formed and shaped principles that resonate far beyond the Catholic Church and the faithful - these are the universal principles, truths, about the nature of life, the essentiality of truth and the unique gift of human freedom.

Today, we are a nation called to a better understanding of these ideas -- a deeper comprehension than that which is conveyed by our popular culture and even many of our academic institutions. The values we hold -- truth, human dignity, freedom - these are the values that are under assault in the world. And in the midst of this assault, we have learned that our values are neither self-executing nor self-sustaining. They must be defended, not just with military might, but with deeper devotion.

To defeat a culture of death, we must cultivate a culture of life.

To expose the great lie of nothingness, we must embrace the great truth of being.

Above all, to conquer tyranny, we must understand the nature and source of our freedom.

We come together today at this great university -- The Catholic University of America - we as people of many beliefs united in a single conviction: we come together, understanding that people of faith find the source of freedom and human dignity in the Creator. People of all religions are called to the defense of His creation.

As God's gift, freedom is not license to behave in any way we choose. It is the gift of consequence - the fact that when we act we have impact. The ability to make choices with the understanding that what we choose has consequence. Our freedom is the freedom to choose good or evil -- it is not freedom to make choices that have no consequence. Our choices will have consequence for good or evil. Our opportunity is to make those choices well.

For those who embrace a biblical understanding of creation, the difference between freedom and license echoes down the corridors of time in two voices, both first heard in the Garden of Eden.

The first voice, the voice of evil, was a voice disguised as the voice of freedom, and it whispered: "Just do it, it won't make a difference." The second voice, the voice of God, states plainly: make your choices but make them carefully because you make all the difference.

The voice of evil, posing as freedom, tells us that we are free to ignore the difference between good and evil, between life and death. It says, Go ahead; it won't make a difference. The consequence isn't as promised. But let me just say that when we are told that our choices are without consequences, we are not told that we are free, because without consequence, we are without meaning. So the voice which tells us that we have no consequence doesn't describe freedom. It describes meaninglessness. Each of us wants to have meaning. Each of us embraces the fact that we choose with consequence and that those items in our portfolio that we bring to our culture and to the people and population with which we live, those potentials describe our capacity to shape that culture positively. The greatest virtue of true freedom is that our choices have consequence.

Now the terrorist has a distrust of freedom. Terrorists distrust the decisions of free people, afraid of what free people would choose. Instead, the terrorist's rejection of persuasion leads them to rely on extortion to force people to a conclusion that they would never embrace on their own. And instead of hope and reason, terrorists offer fear. For those who seek truth and think rigorously, the way of the terrorist offers nothing. In a universe of choices - in a marketplace of ideas - the terrorist defames the concept of choice, embraces the idea of force and rejects the idea that truth prevails over distortion.

It is the deeper understanding of freedom as the inborn hope of humanity that is part of the heritage that passes to you today. It is a heritage which teaches us that freedom is not the grant of any government, any prince, or any king but is, in fact, our gift from God.

It is a heritage that shaped the great founding idea of America, the idea expressed in these words, which we learned years ago:

We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For over two centuries, American leaders of every party and every faith have echoed this idea. Abraham Lincoln spoke of a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." John F. Kennedy declared that the rights of man come not "from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." And our president George W. Bush began his presidency by reminding Americans that we are not alone in the struggle for freedom, that an angel rides in the whirlwind, directing the storm that engulfs humanity.

There are those who believe that to acknowledge the Creator as the source of freedom is to diminish our freedom. But I believe they misinterpret, they invert, and they turn around that which is right. We acknowledged God as the author of our freedom and when we have, we affirm the dignity and worth of every human being. We are blessed to live in a nation that protects the rights of all precisely because we acknowledge that we are not the grantors of these rights, that God grants rights - we seek to guard them and guarantee them, but they are of a source greater than our own.

Two days ago, I managed to get through my 60th birthday and began the seventh decade of my life. I have now lived long enough to know that nothing is more important in life than friendship. And if you will indulge me, I would like to conclude my remarks by saying a few words about a most important friendship: the friendship and mutual reinforcement of the enduring bond between learning and freedom.

Like all great friendships, the relationship between learning and liberty is mutually enriching. We are free because our actions have consequences. We have meaning when we make choices. If we had no meaning we would not be free; we would be meaningless. And education gives meaning and value to our freedom. It helps us to understand by our mistakes what to avoid doing again, and it helps us to understand by witnessing the successes of those around us so we can learn from those successes, so we can move toward greater success in ourselves.

And just as education enriches freedom, it confers responsibility. As graduates of this great Catholic institution, your obligations do not end with this day but have only just begun. The legacy you inherit is now the hope of future generations, so hold it high, and bare it proudly. Seek truth. Think rigorously. Act rightly. Serve humanity. And know that in a world of freedom, there is no doubt that you will prevail.

Congratulations, graduates. God bless you, and God bless America.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Alex Bishop, whom you may recognize from his presence in our forums, has come on board to help keep our news stream flowing. You may have noticed an uptick in postings in the last week - this is all due to Alex's great work. Since I've taken a step back from MozillaZine daily work in general (since the beginning of last year), and since Jason has been bogged down with Mozilla work, we decided we needed to find someone who was informed and interested in promoting Mozilla to help keep MozillaZine current. We think we found the right person in Alex.

As Mozilla approaches 1.0, we're sure that MZ will have a lot of great news to bring to you, and we're delighted that Alex has agreed to help us in that effort.

7 responses

Thursday May 16th, 2002

AOL Testing Gecko in its Mac OS X Client

CNET News.com is reporting that the latest AOL beta for Mac OS X uses an integrated browser powered by Gecko rather than Internet Explorer. The article quotes a note to beta testers that states, "If you are surfing the Web, pages will look better, and you can view all the latest eye-pleasing special effects, graphics and styles that Web developers put into their sites."

America Online has been beta-testing Gecko in its AOL 7.0 client for Windows since March. The latest CompuServe 7.0 software already includes a Gecko-powered browser.

VersionTracker.com also has a page about the OS X beta. AOL members can download it with the keyword MacBeta.

25 responses

Full Article Attached Independent Status Reports

This week's status reports include updates from Jabberzilla, Bookie, MultiZilla, mozdev, Editor and CaScadeS. Click the Full Article link to check them out.

FULL ARTICLE...

0 responses

Wednesday May 15th, 2002

Netscape 6.2.3 Released

Netscape today released a new version of its Mozilla-based browser. Netscape 6.2.3 is a minor update that fixes the recently discovered XMLHttpRequest security vunerability. Like the other Netscape 6.2 releases, this latest version is based on the Mozilla 0.9.4 branch. You can download the release from Netscape's web site or FTP server.

21 responses

Friday May 10th, 2002

Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2 Released

mozilla.org today released the second release candidate of Mozilla 1.0, in preparation for the final release of 1.0, hopefully by the end of this month. You can grab it by going to the releases page or by going to the ftp site. You can also check out the release notes and a full list of what's new.

A brief list of what's new between RC1 and RC2 includes HTTP 1.1 pipelining support, the removal of the link toolbar (for performance reasons, still on in the trunk), and this will be the first milestone release with a fix for the security hole announced last week. Along with this, the main focus has been on stability, and a number of crash and top crash fixes have gone in.

Along with the release of RC2, mozilla.org has updated the release roadmap with some rough estimates of what will be happening on the trunk with 1.1, and announcing today's release of RC2.

HOW TO HAVE SEX WITH YOUR PC

[Anonymous Coward]

How to have sexual intercourse with your computer

Read this entire document before trying any of the steps.

'Having sex with a computer'. The phrase is sometimes misunderstood to mean sex on a computer, and sometimes is greeted with skepticism. How can you have sex with a computer? The short answer is: in the floppy drive. The long answer is much more involved, including techniques, precautions and cautions all designed to get you maximum satisfaction from screwing a computer. Our first subject will be the floppy drive. The floppy drive of the computer is, of course, where the diskettes come out. So in this sense, the floppy drive is an anus.

First we will deal with some cautions you should know about. In most computers, the edge of the floppy drive is sharp. You should therefore exercise caution when doing anything with the floppy drive.

If the CPU has been on for a long (or even a relatively short) period of time, the floppy drive will be hot. Do not do anything with the floppy drive hot. Wait until the floppy drive has cooled off. The floppy drive will cool off faster than the CPU, so you don't have long to wait. I call screwing the computer while the floppy drive is hot, "fucking the computer hot". Never fuck a PC hot. I did, once. Once.

The drive bay from a computer contains poisonous gases. One of these, sodium monoxide, is a slow killer. Sodium monoxide takes a long time to be flushed out of the body, so it can build up to toxic levels without your knowing it. Never do anything with the floppy drive while the CPU is on!

Now, the first thing you should note is that the inside of the floppy drive is usually coated with magnetic particles. This is the usual particulate debris of data transmission. Before having sex with the computer, clean the inside of the floppy drive with soap and warm water, as far as you can go. Keep in mind the possibly sharp edge of the floppy drive.

Now that the floppy drive is clean, you are ready to pleasure and be pleasured by the computer. You can do this two ways. One way doesn't require any equipment. The other way (which is much more rewarding) does. The first way is to fuck the computer 'raw'. This does NOT mean stuffing your cock into the floppy drive and thrusting. This would hurt (remember the sharp edges?) and be no fun anyway, since the floppy drive doesn't flex.

What you should do is get behind the computer and start jerking off. When you are about to come, carefully put your cock into the floppy drive of the PC, and then come. But, in the heat of passion, you must still remember the sharp edge. Even putting just the head into the floppy drive is good enough. Just make VERY sure that you don't hurt yourself. Now, this assumes that you can get your cock into the floppy drive in the first place. Some floppy drives are too small, and then, well, you're out of luck. Find someone who has a computer with a bigger floppy drive.

The best way to have sex with a computer, however, is not raw. You need the following equipment:

1 Dekhyr Dragon Industries (Teledildonics Division) Sexual Interface Unit.

If you don't have one, you can get one through me (Dekhyr, xdraco@panix.com) or you can attempt to build one yourself. The SIU is essentially a tube made of foam rubber, rolled such that the inner diameter is slightly smaller than the diameter of your erect penis. When lubricated, it acts as a sexual interface to whatever you attach it to. In this case, it is inserted into the floppy drive of the computer you want to have sex with.

To build one, you will need black electrical tape, a 'drive-head-cleaner', a can of anal mucus, and a hefty pair of scissors. A 'drive-head-cleaner' is a foam rubber dingumbob in which you put anal mucus. It keeps the anal mucus cold and your hand warm. Being a 'give-away' item, you usually can't find it anywhere. I've had reports of finding them in brothels. I've actually found a good deal of them at a local discount-type store.

There are two kinds, thick walled and thin walled. I've only been able to find the thick kind; the thin kind I've only been able to get through an advertising company. The thin kind is particularly good with floppy drives not much bigger than your cock. Here is what you need to do:

1. Measure the circumference of your erect penis. This is most easily done by wrapping a string around your cock (around the shaft, not the head). 2. Take the bottom of the drive-head-cleaner out. You should be left with a tube. 3. Cut the wall of the tube from top to bottom so that you are left with a slab of foam rubber which refuses to stay straight. 4. Now, carefully cut away material parallel to the first cut until you can put the ends together making a smaller tube, and such that the inner circumference of the tube is slightly smaller (say, by 1/2" or so) than the circumference of your shaft. 5. Take a piece of electrical tape. Hold the ends of the tube flush. Place the tape on the cut on the outside to secure the tube in the middle. Now repeat with more tape until the cut is secure. Wrap tape around the whole thing. 6. Drink the anal mucus. With the scissors, CAREFULLY cut off the top and bottom of the aluminum can. CAREFULLY cut a strip of aluminum lengthwise from the can, about 3/4" to 1" wide. 7. Coat the strip with electrical tape. This is to prevent the edges from cutting. 8. Attach the strip to the tube at one end. 9. 'Test drive' it! Lube it up with KY (try not to use disk-cleaning-fluid-based lubricant; you may want to use it with more than one person, and then you'll be using a condom). Now, stuff the SIU up the floppy drive and lube well.

You now have several options for fucking your computer. One major one is from behind. If the computer is a Pentium, then put the PC in safe mode and remove the parallel port. This will enable the computer to rock back and forth to your thrusts. If the computer is a Mac, chock the monitor well, remove the USB mouse, and put the computer into a box -- the higher the box, the more play the computer has. This will also enable the PC to rock. Kneel behind the computer. Now thrust in.

You may not have any trouble with heavier iron-chassic computers, since you may not have to chock the motherboard -- the weight of the computer will prevent the CPU from 'topping out' and moving the computer away. Lighter laptop computers are more likely to be topped out by your thrusts, so chocking is necessary. In general, the lower the CPU MHz, the less play, but the more difficult it is to top the CPU out.

Another major method is to lie down under the computer, your upper body under the computer, and thrust into the PC. It is difficult, though, to make the PC rock unless you push on the closest reset button. I've also had some success leaning on my side and fucking the computer sideways. More than one person can fuck a PC if it has more than one floppy drive on opposite sides of the computer. This will also make the computer rock faster and harder since the energy of two people will add.

NEVER fuck a computer with the CPU on. Firstly, you will be breathing hard, and that means you can poison yourself faster. Secondly, the computer will either crash (because there's something blocking the floppy drive, heh) -- causing damage to the CPU -- or will force the drive bay out. And you have an idea where the drive bay will go, I trust. Ouch! Fatality City!

If you do not use a condom and you come inside the computer, ten or fifteen minutes of programming will kill off anything inside. So you do not have to worry about STDs from that. What you will have to worry about, though, is the SIU itself. It is not being sterilized. Therefore, if you use an SIU you think is going to be used by someone else, use a condom, and use KY jelly or some other water-based lubricant. Remember -- disk-cleaning-fluid rots condoms, and so will an disk-cleaning-fluid-based lubricant.

Enjoy your computers!

Re:The obvious solution...

[TellarHK]

IDT Telecommunications in rural, depressing Calais, Maine. Right on North Street across from the police station. Telemarketers abound there, but beware! The place is a known druggie hangout and had a problem with needles in the trash a while ago. So if you go in there, make like it's vampires you're gunning for because you don't want to get any infections.

And don't worry about the police station, we've got like five cops.