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It’s big news today that Henry Norr was fired by the San Francisco Chronicle for filing a false time card. Scott Rosenberg puts this in perspective today, basically saying that it’s standard practice for reporters to fill out a time card that says they work a regular day job and then work the hours that are most conducive to producing the kinds of stories that they’re assigned. Norr, of course, claimed to be out sick when he was really out protesting and getting thrown in jail, but that’s a pretty flimsy excuse for firing a guy. ...

I wound up watching the Dixie Chicks interview on PrimeTime Thursday, mainly because my wife was interested. Let me just say that my position is that the Dixie Chicks are free to criticize the President in any way they choose, and that people are free to criticize the Dixie Chicks in any way they choose. Just the same, I’m allowed to think that anybody who would drag their kids out to a Dixie Chicks CD smashin’ party is likely to be a total and complete moron. And, anyone who would issue a death threat against someone for speaking ill of the President is a psychopath who should probably be in jail. Anyway, I thought that the Chicks acquitted themselves pretty well in their image rehab appearance. They of course said lots of things about everybody making mistakes, just as their handlers told them to, but they said lots of intelligent things as well. Natalie Maines apologized for what she said, but made it perfectly clear that the sentiment was her own and that it hadn’t changed. Also, when Diane Sawyer asked her if they wanted forgiveness, she refused to bite as well, merely saying that she wanted to be accepted, but not forgiven. I was quite pleased that they weren’t willing to sell themselves out. ...

Just in case you live under a rock, government funding for a University of Pennsylvania research project that was paying for OpenBSD development was cut not long after Theo de Raadt had some anti-war quotes published in the Canadian press. News stories are being tracked on the OpenBSD Media Coverage page. Another reader mentioned to me that the security advances in OpenBSD that I linked to the ZDNet story about the other day are not as innovative as claimed in the article. Apparently, it builds upon some innovations from elsewhere, like ProPolice. There’s also StackGuard. ...

Fred Kaplan has an interesting piece today about why the Army uses so many helicopters despite their propensity to get shot down. He also sings the praises of the A-10, which was my favorite military aircraft by far when I was of an age where I gave a lot of thought to what my favorite military aircraft might be. I was also a fan of the A6 Intruder and any C130 derivative that was heavily armed. ...

I received four books yesterday that I’m looking forward to reading (or at least skimming). A benefactor sent me: Python in a Nutshell, which I wanted after reading a rave review on Slashdot. Java Cookbook: I already have the Perl Cookbook, and I really like this format. This will be particularly useful to me because most of my knowledge is wrapped up in Web stuff, and quick solutions to things like I/O issues that I don't normally have to deal with will be quite handy. C# Essentials. I really don't much want to become a Microsoft developer, but learning other platforms makes you better at programming for your chosen platform, and I need to be able to discuss .NET intelligently anyway. The ability to at least wrap your brain around other platforms is one of those software engineering cultural literacy things, I think. XSLT Cookbook. This was a special bonus. I should know more about XSLT than I do, anyway. I’m still plowing through Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans, and I’m finding the book extremely helpful. If you’re a Java developer who hasn’t plunged into EJB yet, I recommend this book highly. Not only do I understand most of the EJB lingo now, but I am also confident that I have never worked on a project where I suffered because we did not go the EJB route. I was afraid I was missing out on something. In any case, if you want to get a job as a Java developer these days, understanding EJB is pretty much a key requirement, and this book will get you there in a hurry. The other thing I need to work on next is building a good working relationship with UML. I can read UML diagrams pretty well, but I need to take my skills there to the next level, again from a skills development perspective. When someone reads my résumé, they’d expect that I’m good with UML, so I need to make that the case … ...

I just want to say that Ben and Mena Trott are living the dream. First, they came out with a nifty little product that caught on in a big way. Now, they’re getting funding, hiring their friends, and branching out by offering a hosted product. Congratulations, guys. Having the initiative to build a product and then build a company is a pretty grand thing. Ben Hammersly has a story about these developments, and of course there are lots of details to be found on weblogs all over the place. ...

The Register reports that some Florida spammers have filed a lawsuit against anti-spam activists for some stupid reasons that don’t bear repeating. Spammers are the scum of the earth. That is all.

Michelle Goldberg interviews Fareed Zarakia about his book, The Future of Freedom for Salon. I’ve been captivated by Zarakia’s Newsweek articles for the past couple of years, and the book sounds interesting and provocative as well. Here’s something close to a synopsis: Freedom, Zakaria argues, comes not from politicians' slavish obeisance to the whims of The People, divined hourly by pollsters. It comes from an intricate architecture of liberty that includes an independent judiciary, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, a free press, autonomous universities and strong civic institutions. In America, all of these institutions have been under consistent attack for the last 40 years from populists of the left and right seeking to strip power from loathed elites and return it to the masses. “The deregulation of democracy has … gone too far,” Zakaria writes. ...

Chandler 0.1 was released yesterday. I haven’t even bothered to download it because I’m not going to hack on it, and the UI is just a placeholder.

I didn’t know that Bruce Eckel had a weblog. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it has an RSS feed, but I can deal with that. I taught myself Java with the first edition of Thinking in Java, and consider it one of the best computer books I’ve read.