If you care, I am scottdavidnolan on Twitter. I will NOT be reflecting my tweets here, as I like preserving blog space for more detailed writing, and I’ll tweet simple one liners there.

I am experimenting with Twitterific and Twitter’s own iOS apps (iPhone and iPad) and the website on my Mac.

Violent Political Rhetoric? Look Right.

It’s downright embarrassing to have these loons in the U.S. Congress (either chamber), so we must find a way to turn up the scrutiny on house races to expose to the voting public the real backgrounds (or lack thereof) of the candidates. Surely modern technology and many eyes can do it. When will the golden age of blogging assume it’s rightful mantle and help direct more media scrutiny?

I really think voters in several districts will regret their errors over the next two years (yes VA-05, I am looking at you… you’re in for a world of hurt).

Of course some districts are just looney, time and time again, perhaps the result of gerrymandering (how else can you explain Bachmann and Cantor?); we can only fix those by fixing the election process. We can fix a lot of the craziness by simply better scrutinizing the candidates and exposing them to more and more media so America’s mostly apathetic voters get a better idea of who they are sending to represent them.

My personal WordPress blog (the one I host) has Akismet to filter the likely spam from the real comments; and it is working… but the scope of this 11 days and running long attack is mind boggling. IP address ranges of mostly hacked PCs indicate that the bot-net spreading the comment spam circles the globe and is sophisticated enough to vary the attack from each hacked PC suck that the obvious triggers are not caught by the anti-spam firewalls. This indicates to me that there are a LOT of Windows based PCs that are doing far more than their owners want them to do.

It also raises liability questions. I used to think that if you were the unwitting victim of an attack, and while hacked your PC did something illegal, you should not be held accountable. I am not sure anymore and begin to question if everyone who puts a machine on the net does not have some obligation to prevent it’s being used illegally. Statistically, most of the hacked PCs have had no steps taken to secure them at all. Is that not a little frightening?

The product this attack is pushing are black market brand name drugs; and the language of the hook text in the spam is so poorly constructed that I suspect it’s all from Eastern European programmers being paid by organized crime syndicates. Hopefully the crime lords have to pay by the comment injected wether it actually gets published on our blogs or not; for at least then some programmer is getting paid and sucking the money out of the criminal’s hands.

It does also make me wonder how much of a markup the drug companies are charging for legal drugs; this method of marketing is hideously inefficient – but they must be getting a return on their “investment” which implies the margins are staggering.

If you are on MySpace and Facebook; you’d best be VERY careful about the applications you use.

If you are wondering why mainstream media is dying, Fake Steve poses a credible argument: because they’ve abdicated their responsibilities as the 4th estate.

Check out Fake Steve Jobs’ Article for yourself; it is a fun read. Blogs are often a better source of news than newspapers.

Pretty impressive design. Hats off to the cold war era packet messaging system designers from the 1960s.

I am hoping the resistance continues to be non-violent; though with the current government’s crackdown, it is unlikely to be completely peaceful.

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish continues to be an excellent source for news about the current revolution in Iran.

The mainstream media fail is that over 36 hours later, only the BBC has any real coverage of the revolution happening in Iran. You have to get this information from bloggers and twitterers if you want it. Guess the revolution is not being televised after all.

• andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
• hoosierinva.blogspot.com
• talkingpointsmemo.com
• bbc.co.uk
• blacknell.net
• tehranlive.org (Wow, this is an incredible site!!!)
• Update: JuanCole.com

In fact, I am now encumbered with a moral/ethical decision… should I subscribe the address they send me to every spammer and dubious porn site on the planet so they get their own treatment?

Mine is an evil laugh.