links for 2010-12-19

The Republican Party has since September 11, 2001, been absolutely insufferable in invoking those attacks at every possible moment for every possible reason, and in trying to portray themselves as better than other people precisely because they demagogue this issue so much.
So what a surprise that the Republicans in the Senate, shot down an attempt to extend health benefits to 9/11 first responders (i.e. firemen and policemen).

This year, EFF was proud to present one of its Pioneer Awards to Hari Prasad, an Indian security researcher who, along with his colleagues Alex Halderman and Rop Gonggrijp exposed serious flaws in the electronic voting machines used in India. The Indian government rewarded his hard work by arresting Prasad for alleged theft of the electronic voting machines which he had studied the criminal charges made against him are still pending.

You wish to rant about Syfy and its non-science fictional practices. Go ahead, but you know what, if you want Syfy to run science fictional programs and not, say, wrestling or ghost hunting, you have to show up in numbers greater than the number of wrestling/ghost hunting fans who show up to watch that. Mind you, I don’t like wrestling on Syfy any more than I like the fact that it’s been, what? nearly two decades since MTV actually showed music videos. But then it’s not my job to program a cable network to bring in the largest number of viewers in a particular demographic lest I be fired.
I suspect at this point the sooner people recognize that cable networks once dedicated to one genre of programming now see that previous focus as something of an inconvenient guideline, to be ignored when expedient, the happier (or at least, less disappointed) they will be.