The Dilbert.com website just got an extreme makeover. Gone is the old, rather clunky but perfectly functional, website, replaced by a Flash-heavy website that only Mordac the Preventer of Information Services could love. Users have been pretty unanimous in condemning the changes. Among the politer comments: 'Congrats. Vista is no more lonely at the top in the Competition For The Worst Upgrade In Computing Industry, this web site upgrade being a serious contender.' You have to register to leave comments, but many seem to have registered for the express purpose of panning the new design.

Isn't it ironic that the guy who mocked the PHB and corporate culture on a daily basis now has a 100% flash site?

Administrators of the Raymondville school system said they will review the district's cell phone policy after a report of an assault on a middle school student that was recorded with a cell phone and then displayed on YouTube.

It was at least the second time this year students from the school district uploaded violent videos to YouTube, said school board president John Solis. Early this year, a Raymondville High School student used a video to solicit someone to beat another student.

The father of a 13-year-old girl whose recent video-recorded beating was uploaded to the video-sharing Web site said he may press assault charges against the other students he blames for injuring his daughter.

Regino Garcia said Friday he is dissatisfied with the response of school administrators who he believes did not adequately punish those involved in the beating.

If this video wasn't recorded (and posted to YouTube), would there be evidence of the beating? How many eyewitnesses would have stepped forward?

If there is one thing good about a surveillance society, it's that those wronging others are more likely to be caught.

So today, equal time. It's time to place half of the tech-support blame where it belongs: at the feet of Them. The Users.

I tend to agree.

Julius Baer Bank and Trust dropped its case Wednesday against WikiLeaks, days after a federal judge allowed the renegade, whistle-blowing site to resume operations.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White signed an order that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar. On Friday, after intense media scrutiny, the judge did an about-face, saying he went too far.

A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S. hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade's site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

...

Evan Spiegel, one of the banks two attorneys at the hearing, said the bank "wanted nothing more" than for WikiLeaks to take down the documents in question. "That's been the point of the bank all along," he said. He added that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not afford the right to publish private banking information.

...

Still, the judge cautioned that he is likely to toss the entire case. He said the American courts may not be the proper venue for a Swiss bank to sue the WikiLeaks.org domain name owner -- John Shipton, an Australian citizen living in Kenya.

Seems like the forces to protect freedom-of-speech in the groundsetting Wikileaks.org case have spoken: Henry Weinstein at LA Times reports that a coalition of media and public interest organizations today urged judge Jeffrey White to rescind the shutdown of Wikileaks.org, which presents "restraint on free speech that violated the First Amendment", and is generally considered to become a representative case for free online speech. The dirty dozen organizations fighting for your voice and mine include the EFF, the ACLU, The Times, AP, Gannett, Hearst, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.

A well-meaning, but rushed, journalist named Ben Charny interviewed me this morning about Microsoft's interoperability press release.

He made a ridiculous number of mistakes. That's the nature of the wire reporters on deadline. Here are some corrections.

Using data from the Global Integrity Index, we put a U.S. court's recent order to block access to anti-corruption site Wikileaks.org into context. In summary: The Wikileaks.org shutdown is unheard of in the West, and has only been seen in a handful of the most repressive regimes. Good thing it doesn't work very well.

The transparency group WikiLeaks.org currently seems to be under heavy fire. The main WikiLeaks.org DNS entry is unavailable, reportedly due to a restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands. The WikiLeaks whistle blower, allegedly former vice president of the Cayman Islands branch of swiss bank Julius Baer, states in the WikiLeaks documents that the bank supported tax evasion and money laundering by its clients from around the world. WikiLeaks alternate names remained available until Saturday, when there seems to have been a heavy DDoS attack and a fire at the ISP. The documents in question are still available on other WikiLeaks sites, such as wikileaks.be, and are also mirrored on Cryptome. Details of the court documents have also been made available.

You know when you get a restraining order, a DDoS and a freak fire at your ISP, that you're pissing someone off. The only thing you're missing is a ship's anchor cutting your connectivity.

The bill was announced this afternoon and promised a bridging of the technological gap between young and old. "We have to admit that life is different than when we were growing up," said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol. "We have to have educational programs so that parents know about MySpace and Spacebook and..."

Uh, did he just say "Spacebook?"

O.K., well, Mr. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat, did admit he was out of his depth. "When we were young, things were different. And we need to pass legislation that reflects today's world, not yesterday's world," he continued. "Old geezers like me have no clue about the Internet and all of its intricacies."