Classic movie that I haven’t seen: Raging Bull. Remedy: Film Forum, 1:30 PM today, 20th anniversary showing. UPDATE: the movie was awesome, but I don’t know which was cooler, sitting in the movie theater a seat away from Spike Lee, or watching someone shush Spike Lee as the movie was about to roll.

In a bit of word trickery rivaling anything Clinton has mustered, Dubya got caught in a major lie about military readiness this week. In claiming that two divisions of the military aren’t “ready for duty,” Dubya failed to understand exactly what that term means, and why the divisions fit into their specific readiness categories. (The C-4 readiness category, to which both the 1st Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division downgraded themselves temporarily, indicates that they would not be able to report to two major theatres of war, in separate parts of the world, at the same time. The reason for both divisions downgrading themselves is that they were already stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo, on military missions.) The Army News Service explained the exact meaning of all this way back in November — one would think that Dubya should have been paying attention.

For all those who rant and rave about Internet Explorer and its various security issues, you may want to level your guns at Netscape Navigator right about now… but not after turning off Java in Netscape, since Brown Orifice is a huge gaping wound.

There’s an interesting patch, IP Personality, available for the 2.4.X line of Linux kernels. It allows your Linux box to masquerade as another type of machine at the network level; this fools network probe programs that try to identify machine types (like nmap) into thinking that your Linux box is something else. Why would you do this? Knowing what operating system a box runs helps hackers begin to plan an attack on that box; if you can legitimatly fool them, then you’re one step further from being hacked.

I hadn’t realized that the genius site TakeBackVermont.com was a Jessamyn product. I love her idea of just tacking a “.COM” onto the end of all of the offensive lawn signs, which will bring people to her website and to the more level-headed side of the issue.

I missed a WSJ article last week about Napster’s two-faced approach to intellectual property — the company’s officers don’t mind encouraging the sharing of other’s copyrighted works, but come down with a strong fist on anyone who tries to share in the company’s own labors. Meanwhile, Rafe Colburn doesn’t like the fact that Napster is trying to make money on the backs of other’s creative works.