I ran across Wondermark, and spent too much time finding several funny ones. Unfortunately, this comic's "all rights reserved" so I can only link to it, not print them here.

Anyhow:

Airport security;
Hate mail;
Parties;
Card games;
Merry Christmas.

If only I had this problem. (Paige might say we do, but we don't have the luxury of ordering extra copies of books from Amazon). Joel eventually solved some of the problem, but the interesting part of that post is the fact that he's using a Macintosh (Joel used to be a big Windows fan, since he used to work at Microsoft).

It's also interesting that Joel's got a list of Firefox plug-ins that sound pretty useful.

New web companies ("Web 2.0" companies) have strange names, like "flickr," "squidoo," "reddit," etc. There is a page where you try to classify 43 words as either Web 2.0 names or somehting out of Star Wars. I got 30, which scores as "Too...much...kool-aid..." One more correct answer and it would have been "As your doctor, I recommend moving out of your parents' basement."

After you've had your fun, come up with a mash-up of two or more concepts that ought to be combined on a website, pick a name (maybe get a logo or a business plan) and get in touch with me.

I was once a member of an open source project that didn't go anywhere, although it had a really cool idea. Project Embassy was supposed to teach programming through a virtual battle-bots game.

Classes started today at NC A&T, and my professor made a reference to something the school is considering using for a freshman-level class. Alice is an open source system that, according to its website, is supposed to make it easier and more fun to learn programming.

Also, another professor at another university is working on a free game engine specifically for battles and such.

I wonder if anyone wants to combine the two.

Not much to add, but if you missed the story about the three Mexican fisherman found near New Guinea last week, some details are here. And, yes, it does sound like the beginning of a joke.

I finally found out how they "recycle" cell phones.

I haven't read the entire ACLU vs. NSA wiretapping opinion yet (the case I've been following is the EFF vs. AT&T case filed in another court). However, it struck me as odd, becuase I understood this very same judge had decided to dismiss the case because of the government's "state secrets" privelege which can basically shut down any pending lawsuit.

Then the judge in the EFF case decided it could go forward in spite of the government's assertion of state secrets, and the judge in the ACLU case seems to have relied on that opinion to enter a summary judgement. The ACLU judge should have realized that when she did so the NSA would appeal. So you'd expect her to at least try to write an airtight opinion to survive the appeal. It looks like she didn't.

UPDATE OK, turns out the judge who dismissed an ACLU lawsuit over the wiretaps was Judge Kennelly in the case Terkel vs. AT&T Inc.

UPDATE II Finished the opinion, and there's a point (right about the end of the discussion on state secrets) where it stops sounding like a legal opinion and begins sounding like an editorial. That's why the experts have been discussing whether it's well-reasoned. You may enjoy reading an interesting post by somebody who doesn't agree with the President.

UPDATE III Lawrence Tribe, who represented Gore in the notorious 2000 court case, weighed in, called the opinion "unusually casual and surprisingly breezy," said that Judge Taylor should "be held to account for the shoddy quality of [the] legal analysis" and said the opinion "seems almost to have been written more to poke a finger in the President's eye than to please the legal commentariat or even, alas, to impress an appellate panel."

Of course he also says "When a presidential program that wouldn't have been exposed at all but for leaks that the administration is trying not just to plug but to prosecute is manifestly lawless in the most fundamental respects; when that program challenges constitutional as well as statutory constraints on executive authority; when it is promulgated by an executive branch in the hands of characters who care little about the rule of law, much less about legal nuance; and when the lawmakers who are posturing as the program's critics have in fact engineered a statutory "fix" that amounts to little more than a whitewash in the offing -- when all these things are true, it's not costless to harp on the details of a basically correct legal denunciation of that program to the point of ridiculing the motives and capacities of the judge delivering the blow."

Interesting. For those who haven't dealt with college professors recently, that sentence amounts to "things are so bad, we need to be careful in complaining about the flaws in this opinion."