How to feed cats with Linux

This guide to an automated cat-feeding system is essential to modern life, especially the vacation part:

We have to work, but that doesn’t mean our cats should have to go without stinky little fish, right? Why should our economic necessities have a negative effect on their treat times? Isn’t it our responsibility to build them an Internet-enabled, Linux-based, cat-feeding device?

The system involves microcontrollers, Python, and a serial port. And fish, typically dead ones, but the design could easily be upgraded to feed from an aquarium.

MoveOn.org: The boy who cried wolf

The nation’s left knee didn’t take long to start jerking. Here’s what the professional hysterics at Moveon. org want you to do:

In nominating John Roberts, the president has chosen a right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation’s highest court instead of a judge who would protect the rights of the American people. Working for mining companies, Roberts opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be “overruled,” and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion. That’s why we believe: “The Senate must not confirm right-wing corporate lawyer John Roberts to the Supreme Court.”

Clue: You can’t judge a man’s judicial philosophy by the arguments he made for his clients as an advocate. In the case of the Roe v. Wade comments, that client was the US government, representative of all of us, including the Berkeley hippies that run Moveon.

If Bush was to nominate somebody really bad, the arguments would be the same and nobody would pay any attention. Perhaps that’s why Bush put up Roberts, to flush these peckerwoods out.

Lessig’s new suit

John Dvorak speaks truth to power:

Will someone explain to me the benefits of a trendy system developed by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford? Dubbed Creative Commons, this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous “fair use” provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.

His assessment of CC is actually quite charitable.