My buddy, Dan is bored and he is apologizing for not supplying links. Well, Dan you supplied this link that I found interesting. Yeah, I know, it’s a top story everywhere today, but I’ve been ignoring Enron thinking it would go away. I jusf found it very interesting that the senators are feigning surprise at Mr. Lay not testifying.

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“Mr. Lay has a story to tell and we and the American people would like to hear that story,” Sen. Byron Dorgan said. The North Dakota Democrat is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee.

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<sarcasm>Yeah, Mr. Lay, tell us this story that is going to put you in prison for the next twenty years.</sarcasm> And people criticize Ronald Reagan because he came into politics after a succesful acting career. At least he had a union card. Sheesh!

Meryl Yourish takes on the light bulb question.

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Now, if you’re sitting there thinking, “What an editorial geek!” here’s my question for you: How many programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

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It can’t be done, Meryl. It’s a hardware problem.

At first I thought this Wired article, Cybercrime Bill Ups the Ante, was going to tell me about some nonsense idea brought up by lawmakers but after reading the article I think they may have found a legitimate reason for asking for such a harsh sentance regarding certain types of hacking;

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In cases where miscreants attempt “to cause death or serious bodily injury” through electronic means, the punishment is life imprisonment.

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Now I’m sure many of you are thinking, “How could hacking cause death or serious bodily injury?” Not all computers on the internet hosts websites, mail servers or music servers. There is a growing number of nodes that are accessible through the internet that control industrial processes, support aviation needs, and all sorts of other things where starting and stopping motors, opening and closing valves and regulating temperature, pressure and speed are concerned.

Considering the above, there are all sorts of opportunities for mischief that could cause serious injury or death. I think there are probably local laws that would cover those actions, though. I’m not sure why the federal government would feel a need to get involved. If the hacking was done across state lines there would already be a cause to involve federal authorities. The same goes for international hacking.

It looks like Louisiana has shut down PayPal in their state. The article states that California and Idaho think PayPal may be a bank and therefore needs to be regulated by the state. New York and Louisiana have taken that one step farther and declared PayPal to be a bank and is threatening to fine them severly if they continue to operate in their states without being registered as a bank in their state. I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how they are any different than any other billing company doing business in this country. Why are they a bank?

Miguel de Icaza is really shaking things up. If nothing else he is going to get the Linux community studying on whether they want to further computing or kill Microsoft. I hope they are about furthering computing.