U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has issued a ruling in the case American Civil Liberties Union et al. v. National Security Agency/Central et al. (2006), regarding the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program (TSP). The Bush administration and Congress have publicly acknowledged the existence of the program, yet the government tried to argue that [...]

The annual Computer History Museum Volunteer Appreciation Day was this past Sunday.  As usual, a good BBQ lunch was served.  The museum staff gave us an update on the plans for the next two phases of development, including the Timeline of Computer History which will be the main exhibit area, a raffle for door prizes, [...]

As of yesterday (14 August 2006), the U.S. Department of State is issuing passports containing an RFID chip. They are claimed to have anti-skimming provisions, but these are of dubious worth. The big threat isn’t so much that the bad guys can identify specific U.S. citizens, but that they will be able to [...]

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I received an A (97%) for my term paper for the American Government class. The subject of the paper was wiretapping, with a brief historical review, descriptions of recent developments and my own arguments and opinions regarding the legality of Bush’s warrantless wiretap program and its expected [...]

In a speech he delivered at the State Department yesterday, President Bush said that “America’s actions have never been guided by territorial ambition.” Didn’t he take any history classes in school? Has he never heard of:

Northwest Indian War (1787-1795)
U.S. taking Western Florida from Spain in 1813
War of 1812 (1812-1815)
First Seminole War (1818-1819)
Arikara War [...]

The TSA now prohibits passengers from taking liquids on planes, due to concerns that the liquids could be combined to form explosives or produce poisonous gases. I’m not going to argue as to whether that is sensible. But what they’re doing about it is incredibly dangerous. They are pouring the liquids into [...]

I’m unhappy that I only got 86% on the final. But at least that’s enough to get an A for the course.
If I am accepted to the degree program I’m applying for, I’ll have to take an upper division Linear Algebra course. The course I just took should prepare me well for it; [...]

As long as I score at least 66.4%, I’ll have an A for the course.
Professor Sekhon said that he considered giving an open-book test, but chose not to do so. Instead, he will let us refer to the sample final he gave out on Monday for our practice, and will let us write our [...]

A few weeks ago, I tried the pound cake, but it was only 4.5 ounces. Yesterday I tried the coffee cake, but it didn’t taste anything like coffee. Today the machine has marble cake, but there aren’t any marbles in it.

I think I aced today’s Linear Algebra exam, covering the chapters on inner product spaces and linear transformations, and part of the chapter on eigenvalues and eigenvectors. I didn’t have trouble with any of the problems, even the proofs. Though after class another student asked me about one question, and now I think [...]