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This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

Beyond that, this attitude that we should uncritically support Obama in everything he does and refrain from criticizing him is unhealthy in the extreme. No political leader merits uncritical devotion -- neither when they are running for office nor when they occupy it -- and there are few things more dangerous than announcing that you so deeply believe in the Core Goodness of a political leader, or that we face such extreme political crises that you trust and support whatever your Leader does, even when you don't understand it or think that it's wrong. That's precisely the warped authoritarian mindset that defined the Bush Movement and led to the insanity of the post-9/11 Era, and that uncritical reverence is no more attractive or healthy when it's shifted to a new Leader.

Maidan was a group of tech-savvy pro-democracy activists who used the Internet as a tool to support their movement. Maidan in Ukranian means public square and Maidan’s website features the slogal “You CAN chnage the world you live in. And you can do it now. In Ukraine.”

The main activity of Maidan was election monitoring and networking with other pro-democracy organizations around Eastern Europe.

“websites cannot produce an activist organization.”

The spy tactics include copying information contained in laptop computers at airport checkpoints or hotel rooms, wirelessly inserting spyware on BlackBerry devices, and a new technique dubbed "slurping" that uses Bluetooth technology to steal data from electronic devices. In addition to cybersecurity threats in other countries, "so many people are going to the Olympics and are going to get electronically undressed," said Joel Brenner, the government's top counterintelligence officer. He tells of one computer-security expert who powered up a new Treo hand-held computer when his plane landed in China. By the time he got to his hotel, a handful of software programs had been wirelessly inserted.

“这是一次极限编程（Extreme Programming）挑战。我们只有2到3天时间去设计，之后每一天的计划都很精确的。我们要安排20到30种次序，每种50行代码，设备之间并不是孤立的，也就是你不仅需要让仪器按次序工作，还要让它们共同工作。”程序员们使用C编程语言，在Linux 操作系统上编写他们的程序。凤凰号登陆探测器将在火星夏天工作3个月左右，之后温度降至华氏零下170度，机器将会被冻僵。

《Python 核心编程》第二版总算要出了，这本是一个振奋人心的消息，毕竟有超过 10 位以上的 Python 爱好者一起合作翻译了这本书，能够翻译完这本长达 1000 页的 Python 巨著，这是非常不容易的。

最早是在 《Core Python Programming》(中文第二版)有奖书评活动 看到这个消息的，里面的链接指向 CPUG 的推广页，打开就能看到清风同学帅气的照片了 :D。不过仔细一看译者却另有其人，封皮上赫然写着“宋吉广”，但这本书可是 CPUG 组织翻译的啊，为什么译者却另有其人了呢？

看一下 China-pub 中此书的序言部分，可以很有意思的看到贡献者列表，但正是这些贡献者们完成了本书超过 90% 以上的翻译任务。

 波斯小昭的蛇舞波斯小昭的蛇舞  我很喜欢这个蕙心兰质的女子。