So blackouts and protests. I wonder if it will have any impact? From what I had been hearing about the people deciding on the SOPA, they were completely disinterested in what anyone had to say against it. Companies desperately clinging to the way they have made their money.

I actually put on my winter coat today! Snowy and chilly!

Had quite a productive night last night. Which was good because tonight
I'm going out for a farewell to a coworker.

While I was drawing and colouring last night I was listening to Terrence McKenna talk about his theories of evolution and psilocybin, which of course makes one feel like eatin' some mushrooms.

Got up this morning at my Dad's place, looked at the snow coming down, listened to the traffic nightmares between me and work and remembered what a no man's land it is for public transit around his place and decided to call in a snow day. Made bacon and eggs for breakfast, shoveled the walk and have had a rather enjoyable day so far!

It seems to be working even with the threat of protests. Senators are backing away from PIPA/SOPA, even the Whitehouse said it's a bad idea. I like my internet open and free! Let's see how the old guard responds.

C-C-C-C-cold!

Not today!

Now that sounds like a nice way to spend your day! As a result of my complete lack of commute, there would have to be a cataclysmic occurence to keep me from getting to the

It does seem like the senators are backing down on the PIPA/SOPA. Surprising! I guess when the wikipedias and googles start throwing their weight (and money?) around people are forced to listen.

This week is really dragging. It is a dragon.

Yeah it is nice to see that the government seems to be wavering a bit on the SOPA and PIPA deals. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but my dad works for NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is much more about technology than standards nowadays), and his specialty is network security, so he was a bit involved with the team there that was doing a technical review of the acts. (Specifically I remember him talking about PIPA, but I imagine SOPA has to go through a similar process.) The official NIST recommendation, was, of course, that the act would be totally ineffective to stop any real piracy, and furthermore it posed a real risk to internet security and any provisions to close some of the technical loopholes would really, really mess up internet security. And so they told the Senate committee that the best course of action was to just drop the act or majorly rewrite it as to not actually block any sites. Well some time later I guess they got a call from one of the Senators who sponsored the bill or something and he was very insistant that they change their recommendation (without him having to change the act) and made all kinds of threats about cutting funding and such. But so far NIST has not changed their stance and their funding remains unaffected so far as I know.

My dad also talked about how shortly after 9/11 there was a big move in Congress to get NIST to develop an 'internet kill switch' that could shut off all commercial internet in United States in case there was a terrorist attack or some such, and apparently they have still not managed to convince all the representatives that supported that idea that it is completely absurd. (They did actually determine how they could do it, but it would have cost literally hundreds of billions of dollars to implement the plan and even still there is no one at NIST who would accept the responsibility of shutting down the Internet.)

Oh man, now there is a scene straight out of Hollywood. Tense music and all, stark lighting from the fluorescent bulbs, the bearded mid-level government bureaucrat with his finger hovering over the button... someone just out of focus staring insistently at him over his shoulder. Is it the arrogant, power-hungry senator or the cocky, rule-breaking technician?

Will he, or won't he?

That is really interesting Melanie! Way to go Melanie's Dad and NIST!

I can already see Tom Cruise in MI:TCP/IP Protocol.

In a sort of unrelated thing, we once had an idea for a ridiculous adventure movie that would take place in a low background physics lab and a daring physicist would jump through explosions and such to preserve the miliKelvin [temperature of the detector].

I realize this completely not funny taken out of context. Go NIST!

yes, go Melanie's Dad!

"Internet Kill Switch" -- whoa.