Build Date: Sun Nov 24 12:20:16 2024 UTC
Somewhere people are plotting against you and I am probably among them.
-- Doctor Murdock
Click Here To Purchase More Votes At Passport.Com!
2002-04-18 12:36:09
Two terms I've seen recently that have caught my attention: "E-government" and "Identity Theft." It looks like Mark Forman has recently declared that they're considering using Microsoft Passport technology to identify citizens. Why do I find this less than comforting?
Look, I'm totally in favor of increasing the tech level of government. There's no benefit to having antiquated technology in the way things work. E-voting should happen, for instance. Nonetheless, this whole thing has gotten me very frowny.
Why?
Could it be that I don't trust Passport? When I think Passport, the first thing that comes to mind is Hotmail. Hotmail used to be really cool until it got bought by Microsoft. Microsoft moved to transition it to mesh with its Suck-Ass No-Good Technology Protocol, and now the integration is complete. My favorite thing is the recent push to get people to pay for their free email by downgrading service and offering improvements for money. "Our service is bad, so give us money!". I can't wait for my rights to be governed likewise.
Could it be the whole Identity Theft thing? Maybe a secret benefit of the inefficiency of old-school dead-tree-based government is that intentional forgeries get caught more easily. Probably not, though. I mean, you can put together protection from that kind of thing. You can. But Microsoft probably won't.
Could it be that this whole thing is hitting my brain on the same day as I find out that the White House is now restructuring the military to spend more time working on Homeland Security? As my secret shiny hero Nivek Ogre tells us, "The police used to be watching over the people, now they're watching the people." I don't mean to imply that the current regime has an agenda of minimizing the privacy and freedom of the populace, but THE CURRENT REGIME HAS AN AGENDA OF MINIMIZING THE PRIVACY AND FREEDOM OF THE POPULACE.
Oops. I didn't mean to imply that. And, to make it worse, I'm putting buzzwords in quotes. I must be a total fucking dork. Please, for my own sake, kick my ass now.
Could it be that I'm secretly a Luddite, with nightmarish dreams of technology gone awry, like there will be some kind of evil "e-government" virus that will turn into a dinosaur and kill kids or something? No.
I think it's just because I would prefer my "e-government" to be based on grassroots, free software technology. Votezilla. Copylefted e-trial software. Ideally, the Senate and the House would get into a flame war over emacs vs. vi.
Wait, I've gotten onto a tangent, I think.
Did I mention that I'm very "emo"?
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The Walken / Country Bear Conspiracy
As has been recently reported in the PDJ, Christopher Walken, evil s00per villain extraordinaire, will be appearing next month in Disney's newest release, The Country Bear Movie. Always playing some wicked and very disturbed badass in movies like Sleepy Hollow, Illuminata, The Prophecy I, II, III, Pulp Fiction, Batman Returns, The Milagro Beanfield War, A View to a Kill, The Dogs of War, Heaven's Gate, and The Deer Hunter, Walken is unsuprisingly a big favorite in the PDJ news room. (More...)
Pigdog Journal's crack interview team gangs up on avant-garde Dutch musician SOLEX; bad craziness ensues. Yet another fabulous PIGDOG INTERVIEW. For REAL. (More...)
Ratsnatcher gets HOT HOT HOT in this classic road tale that looks at the steamy underworld of Bay Area Linux advocacy. Loosen your collar for this one! (More...)
An innocent trip to the Central Market resulted in a severe attack of arachnophobia (and a meal) when a depraved street kid set her vicious pet spider on an unsuspecting shopper. (More...)
Put the "Life" Back in SF "Nightlife"
The Man is putting the hurting on San Francisco clubs, but some people are fighting back. Beajolais! Flesh interviews Leslie Ayers of the San Francisco Late Night Coalition. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
