Monopoly Is Theft | Harper’s Magazine

I enjoyed reading about the history of the Monopoly board game, a history that turns out to be quite different than I had imagined.

The official history of Monopoly, as told by Hasbro, which owns the brand, states that the board game was invented in 1933 by an unemployed steam-radiator repairman and part-time dog walker from Philadelphia named Charles Darrow.

The game’s true origins, however, go unmentioned in the official literature. Three decades before Darrow’s patent, in 1903, a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie created a proto-Monopoly as a tool for teaching the philosophy of Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land.

via Monopoly Is Theft | Harper's Magazine.

Airdevil plans Atlantic crossing using 365 balloons

Raleigh resident and part-time daredevil balloonist Jonathan Trappe will be headed for the skies again next summer, this time on a trip across the Atlantic Ocean!

The big balls in the sky won’t just be the cluster balloons!

AN adventurer who became the first person to fly the English Channel dangling under helium-balloons is now planning to cross the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Intrepid Jonathan Trappe, 38, plans to navigate an incredible 2,500 miles next summer in a seven-foot lifeboat suspended by 365 huge UV-resistant balloons.

His outlandish aircraft will have an open roof with a canopy to protect him from high-altitude winds and frost bite.

Floating at between 18,000ft and 25,000ft – beating his previous record of 21,600ft – Jonathan will have to fly ten times further than his previous record of 230 miles to succeed.

via Airdevil plans Atlantic crossing using 365 balloons | The Sun |News.

Me and My Censor – by Eveline Chao | Foreign Policy

I found this Foreign Affairs article on Chinese censorship to be fascinating.

My first day of work in Beijing, my boss asked if I knew the “Three Ts.”

I did not. It was February 2007, and I was a wide-eyed 26 year-old fresh off the plane from New York, struggling to absorb the deluge of strange information that had hit me since arriving.

The Three Ts, he informed me, were the three most taboo topics to avoid in Chinese media — Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. My boss was Taiwanese himself, and delivered this information with a wry tone of bemusement. He had been doing business here for nearly 30 years, he had said, since China first began opening its economy to the outside world, and had witnessed a lot.

“You’ll hear more about it from our censor,” he said, and then, having inserted that tantalizing fragment into my head, sent me off to begin my new job.

via Me and My Censor – by Eveline Chao | Foreign Policy.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter To Shareholders

I started today feeling very down on Facebook. This feeling changed when I found this letter from Mark Zuckerberg to shareholders, basically saying that Facebook doesn’t exist simply to chase money. Crazy as it sounds, I believe him. I think Zuckerberg’s still very much still a hacker, in spite of Facebook’s popularity.

It’s given me hope that Zuck’s not a bad guy and there might be hope for Facebook yet. That said, if Zuck thinks he controls Facebook he’d better pay attention to the Hacked by Mitt Romney stuff.

It’s Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook’s IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter To Shareholders

As Facebook’s stock continues to collapse, the volume of whining is increasing.

Four months ago, you will recall, Facebook was viewed as “the next Google.” Now, with no major change in the fundamentals, it’s viewed as an over-hyped disaster. Meanwhile, there is ever-louder grumbling that 26-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in over his head and should be relieved of command.

As I listen to all this whining, I have a simple question:

Didn’t anyone even read Facebook’s IPO prospectus?

The answer, I can only assume, is “no.”

via It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders – Business Insider.

Obama-stare puts a spell on Romney – CNN.com

I found this humorous op-ed by Dean Obeidallah to be a pretty accurate synopsis of Obama and Romney’s foreign policy debate Monday night.

The Obama-stare is more than just a laser-like game face — apparently it causes people to agree with him on issue after issue. Obama-stare is more akin to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s use of the Jedi mind trick, or vampires on “True Blood” glamouring someone into saying exactly what they want to hear. Romney agreed with Obama so often I thought Mitt was going to endorse him.

How else can anyone explain why Romney — who is highly critical of Obama’s foreign policy when he is out on the campaign trail — would agree with the president on issue after issue when placed in the same room? Romney appeared as if he wasn’t vying for commander in chief as much as for “agree-er in chief.”

via Obama-stare puts a spell on Romney – CNN.com.

Facebook Connect vulnerability

I just checked out my Apache logs and found this interesting entry:

95.76.161.199 – – [22/Oct/2012:13:21:25 -0400] “GET /?fbconnect_action=myhome&fbuserid=1+and+1=2+union+select+1,2,3,4,5,concat(0x6730306431),7,8,9,10,11,12– HTTP/1.1” 403 5043 “-” “Mozilla/3.0 (windows)”

It appears to be an exploit attempt against the Facebook Connect plugin.

Here’s a webpagethat shows how it works.

There are quite a few websites potentially vulnerable to this exploit. While it doesn’t appear to make Facebook itself vulnerable, it does compromise any WordPress blogs which use this plugin.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM « Martin Bekkelund

This is one of many reasons why I won’t buy an Amazon Kindle.

A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst.

Linn travels a lot and therefore has, or should I say had, a lot of books on her Kindle, purchased from Amazon. Suddenly, her Kindle was wiped and her account was closed. Being convinced that something wrong had happened, she sent an e-mail to Amazon, asking for help. This was the answer:

via Outlawed by Amazon DRM « Martin Bekkelund.

Armed Forces Show Overwhelming Support for Obama

The military strongly supports the President, it seems. So much for that myth that servicemembers and veterans always vote Republican.

Foreign policy, military funding and plans for U.S. troops abroad are providing plenty of chewy campaign fodder for President Barack Obama and his GOP rival, Mitt Romney. But fundraising reports shed light on what the armed forces think about the the candidates.

Former Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul received significant support from the military for his strong stance on bringing troops home, and that briefly continued even after Romney pulled ahead as the clear GOP candidate.

Now, though, the military’s support has shifted toward Obama. Romney has consistently received little financial backing from military donors.

via Update: Armed Forces Show Overwhelming Support for Obama – OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets.

Bloomberg/Businessweek.com ranks Raleigh 18th

Bloomberg and Businessweek.com came out with their latest 50 Best Cities list and ranked Raleigh 18th.

In its description of the city, Bloomberg and Businessweek.com had this to say about Raleigh:

Raleigh wins the Carolinas, with strong median household income, low crime, and five universities. As one-third of the Research Triangle region, Raleigh is just minutes from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke University. The city features a major historical tradition with such properties as the Mordecai House and Tucker House. Residents who aren’t so interested in uninhabited old houses—especially younger residents—might prefer the sights at BugFest, the event at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

See that? Raleigh is “just minutes” away from UNC and Duke, but the reporter apparently failed to notice the 35,000-student North Carolina State University located squarely in the middle of Raleigh.

While I’m fond of Mordecai Historic Park and Tucker House, I wouldn’t exactly say these properties are worthy of national attention. There’s no mention, for instance, that Raleigh is the state’s capital, either. It’s as if all the reporter’s research on Raleigh came from Wikipedia or something (though Wikipedia would be more accurate).

Amtrak through NC hits highest percentage of growth in nation

Rail travel is hugely popular in North Carolina!

Raleigh, N.C. — Amtrak’s Piedmont route, which runs from Raleigh to Charlotte, grew by a higher percentage of riders than any other route in the nation during the last fiscal year, according to the latest data from the rail service.

The route set a new record of more than 162,000 riders and had the best percentage increase of all Amtrak routes, with a jump of 16.2 percent over the previous year, Amtrak said. The 2012 fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

It sure makes me wish the USDOT had awarded our state something more than the paltry $1.5 million from the billions in stimulus rail funding that were awarded two years ago:
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