An intriguing corollary to Hanlon's Razor popped up in a discussion thread
on schneier when discussion the Windows stealth upgrade controversy.

Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.

can be countered with:

"A sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Digging a hole can be fun ... but this collection of truly massive holes is impressive.
... and then there was the engineering disaster of Lake Peigneur.

Al Gore is in severe threat of becoming the darling of the liberals (if he isn't already).
Not only the global warming thing, but now in his book "The Assault on Reason" he make a strong stand for the independence of the internet:

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better
education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as
that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse
in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way - a
conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from
individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role
played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely
low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in
history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting
individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a
platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and
distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized
mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's
a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be
developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets
- through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise
of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to
protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for
our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the
survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open
and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of
individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet
service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this
future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the
threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet
marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small
number of broadband network operators. These operators have the
structural capacity to determine the way in which information is
transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered.
And the present Internet network operators - principally large telephone
and cable companies - have an economic incentive to extend their control
over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of
Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these
companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the
free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling
ways.

(From a Book Excerpt from TIME Magazine, Wednesday 16 May 2007)

With this stuff on the top of the hill, Wellington continues to let telecommunications be damn cool.

Politics in Hawke's Bay are heating up nicely with the appearance of a new group "Making Waves".
The web-site ain't flash, but the participatory democracy is spot on!

Also, I enjoyed the recent post on baybuzz about Andy and Ocean Beach.

Py Cory!
I didn't realise we had our own rain-dancers!
... and they are trying to develop a healthy export industry too!
Of course, if any scepticism is expressed about their unsubstantiated claims ... it's racism.

On this site there is an initial discussion on how spiritual computing has become inevitable through the convergence of four new trends, encompassing research, marketing, management, and ethics, and suggest that spiritual considerations are no longer marginal to digital culture.
The discussion document "Buddhism’s role in Bringing Spirituality into the Next Generation of Web Technologies" has a nice quote from the Dalai Lama at the top :

“In order to achieve their potentials, spirituality needs digital
technology and digital technology needs spirituality. At an
essential level, the two traditions complement each other.
Humanity’s survival may depend on interaction between
them.”
--- H.H. Dalai Lama

Despite the fact that the paper fails to achieve it's stated aim of discussing "Buddhism’s role in Bringing Spirituality into the Next Generation of Web Technologies",
it still makes interesting reading.

It looks like the next thing for the trendy green computer will be to use blackle for a search engine.
"186,137.445 Watt hours saved"
... and counting ...