Despite rumors of danger, I installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 today and haven't had any issues with it so far. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and assume that most of the dangers associated with it were due to a combination of the usual culprits: broken installations of Windows, badly configured installations from OEMs and general bad luck. Mostly the first two. I am not necessarily recommending it, unless you have something like Norton Ghost for quickly restoring your hard drive in case your PC happens to be one of those described above.
Our lead tester is living this week. She's quit. Flown the coop. The cat is out of the bag, and hitch-hiking cross country. There was a joke that INSERT_MY_PROJECT drove her to quit. After looking at the code, I can't say I blame her. I fully suspect that most of my team will leave within six months if we don't get permission to rewrite most of the crap that the previous group delivered, without knowledge of Java, using a badly implemented RAD environment. Rapid Application Development, or RAD, tools should be more accurately called Requesting Absolute Defeat when in the hands of people who don't firmly know the language and libraries that they are built on.
So here I am testing out Movable Type 4.15 while waiting on an oil change, and I notice that the Privacy plugin is, once again, broken. It seems to be broken because some of the callbacks that it relied on have changed. If that be the case, fixing it shouldn't be terribly difficult. Shouldn't. Famous last words.
I have a project proposal. More of a Request For Comment (RFC) as we call them. How about a new Wiki called the "Liberty Changelog?" I threw the idea out before, but I think it might be an interesting project. Very hard to define in practical terms, but starting at some point, say 1776, track changes, good and bad, for economic, religious, political and bodily liberty, with a summary of changes for every 25 years of America's existence. For 1973-2008, I can think of a few things to get us started if anyone is interested:
Losses:
- National Security Letters
- Selective Suspension of Habeus Corpus
- McCain-Feingold restrictions on political speech within 60 days of an election
- Kelo vs. New London redefinition of 5th amendment "Public Use."
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act's restrictions on publishing details of and distributing tools that can circumvent structures meant to restrict access to copyrighted materials.
- No Electronic Theft Act allows not-for-profit copyright infringement to become a felony offense.
- Addition of civil asset forfeiture laws for copyright infringement cases (coming soon via PRO-IP Act if not already signed into law now).
- Torture policies.
- Hudson vs. Michigan ruling against exclusionary rule.
- Drastic increase in the use of no-knock raids on suspected drug users.
- CALEA's requirements on manufacturers of networking and telecom products.
The wiki sounds cool, but I think you should either go from the nations founding (1776-1801) or from the century (1800-1824) To keep things consistent for the nitpickers who will no doubt complain.
1973-2008 is the only 25 year period of history where I could think of a lot of things off my head.