If they did, the “liberal” media wouldn’t be so happy about discussing charges of treason for the New York Times over the financial snooping program.

Seriously. What. The. Fuck? Treason? For reporting the truth? About a possibly illegal secret program? Bush’s ongoing hostility to the press is well documented, but this is completely beyond the pale. Claiming investigative reporters are “helping the enemy” when they report on possibly extralegal surveillance programs is complete and utter bullshit, and only serves to illustrate how far down the river we’ve been sold.

Majikthise’s got more.

Aaron Spelling has been cancelled by the great ratings body in the sky. He was 83.

IMDB lists 212 producer credits for Spelling, including The Mod Squad, The Rookies, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Vega$, Dynasty, T. J. Hooker, Hart to Hart, and Beverly Hills 90210.

Librarian insists police provide subpoena for requested data, as per law. Said librarian may be reprimanded for it, on the grounds that she “put the interests of the library first.” Um, isn’t that her job?

The AT&T v EFF suit over almost-certainly-illegal call record turnover is heating up. The fun part of this is that the government and AT&T are basically saying “there’s a war on, and to even address these allegations or review the evidence is to disclose too much,” which more or less means “secrecy is more important than the rule of law.”

Um, no. We can think of several regimes where that was (or is) the case, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want it as a value in our republic. More at Wired here; the 27BStroke6 blog is covering this pretty well.

Update: Fortunately, it looks like the judge is paying attention, at least based on the questions he’s insisting all sides answer.

In a pretty disappointing move, former White House staffer Mike McCurry is now shilling against Net Neutrality for the big telcos. Trouble is, there’s no real argument against the concept, as this dialog shows.

The biggest joke from the telco argument is the idea that Google or Amazon or whomever is looking for a “free ride” of some kind; it doesn’t even make sense. Obviously those firms pay millions to telcos every year for bandwidth. We here at Heathen pay for our end, too. There is no free ride, as Amazon’s Paul Misener makes clear in the link above.

Go check it out. As they whine about not needing network neutrality, it’s important to remember how brazen and arrogant they’ve been in the past, and how much they’ve just plain lied. Keep in mind, too, how much they totally rolled over for the Feds on this domestic wiretapping thing (except, of course, for Qwest).

Update: As if on cue, we get this announcement from AT&T, who now assert they own all your customer data, even the stuff that they probably ought not be collecting. Evil, we tell you. Evil.

Telcos are lying bastards.

JWZ reports that a restaurant in China is serving food made with human milk, which makes him and us wonder: Is it Vegan?

(Also, this makes us wonder if somewhere there aren’t people who work in a vegan dairy, which just makes us laugh.)

Google is introducing Google Spreadsheets.

Mike asks: why? His view is that most spreadsheet users will be unwilling to put spreadsheet data onto a server they don’t control out on the Internet. I think there certainly are some of these people, but I don’t think this is a major problem for Google for several reasons.

First, most people don’t care about the implications of Internet storage. The runaway success of web-based email tools (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) makes this very clear. I don’t know about you, but I routinely receive sensitive information in my email, or certainly information that could be used to access sensitive information. It’s clear people will trade this security hit — if they even realize it exists — for convenience.

Second, I assert without supporting data that most spreadsheets aren’t in any way sensitive. No one would have gained anything by hacking Google Spreadsheets and viewing our wedding plan last year, for example. Most spreadsheets, even the ones with financial data, are wholly mundane and of use or value only to those who create and reference them. Even in a world of perfectly sophisticated security-minded consumers, this leaves an enormous volume of spreadsheet applications that are perfect for Google.

Third, the killer app here is sharing. The tools that people like 37 Signals are creating aren’t better than standalone desktop apps at what they do, but they’re good enough that people use them because doing so makes sharing the information trivial. “Collaborative spreadsheeting” in an office or between offices is an activity fraught with peril; the usual result is several competing versions all sitting in everyone’s email attachment folder. I know Mrs. Heathen and I fought this issue with our wedding data, and I know a certain theater company that would love to be able to share a single sheet without constantly locking people out. Google can address this as a baseline quality of Spreadsheets, and in doing so create a value that Microsoft cannot emulate at all.

Now, obviously Google can’t possibly be aiming to eliminate Excel. It really is a good program; it’s perhaps the best thing to ever come out of Microsoft. However, it’s become almost required, since there are vanishingly few alternatives that are visible to normal people (OpenOffice doesn’t count), and it’s expensive. Casual spreadsheet use probably generates more sales than real number crunching, and that’s the market Google will target here. If you don’t have to buy Office after all — alternatives to Word are legion, and only the marketing droids need PowerPoint — how much money per seat do you save?

Slashdot reports that Windows XP secretly phones home. Regularly. WTF?