After squeaking through the Senate this morning 25-23, the House quickly rallied and passed their version 61-37. Gregoire promises to sign the bill Tuesday.

Why the big deal? The Seattl PI’s article calls out the basics of the bill in on sentence:

The bill would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, lending and employment.

This is a massively huge step forward for our society. There are defining moments and movements that are looked back upon. This could very well be the precursor to the gay rights movement’s Proclamation Declaration.

EDIT: Thanks got to Copyscape for help in discovering this.

I registered for (and subsequently released my seat due to inability to attend) BloggerCon III. It’s a shame I couldn’t make it.

As part of the process, Dave Winer produced a BloggerCon III Blogroll. This is a trend for newer technology conferences and is a great idea. I’m all for them.

However, if you follow the link attached to my blog’s name on his blogroll, it does not go to my blog. It goes to a page on HIS worldoutline.com site with MY blog’s content displayed.

The attribution on that page is weak at best. Yes, the permalinks to the articles displayed do go to my site, but the content has little to no attribution to me or my site.

Whois data for worldoutline.com:

Registrant:
Scripting News, Inc
PO Box 840123
St Augustine, FL 32080
US

Domain name: WORLDOUTLINE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Winer, Dave

So Dave, I ask you here in public; why are you stealing my content?

I was reading the November PHP meeting minutes recently. Several changes are being made which will greatly benefit the PHP community, but could seriously trip up inexperienced developers and poorly written applications.

There are a great many changes, but the most imperative ones for all to get their heads around are the removal of three php.ini settings that if existent in a php.ini will disallow startup of the application. They are being removed, and are effectively being set to the equivalent of “off”. This is good news, as they should be that way now. Many people wrongly use these settings. Check your applications now and make sure they are not using these. If they are, buy a copy of the book “Essential PHP Security” by Chris Shiflett to find out how to re-write your code for safety and security. Not only is it a good idea, but it will be mandatory if your host upgrades to the version with these changes (looks now to be PHP 6.0)

MOST NOTABLE _FULL_ DEPRECATIONS:
register_globals
magic_quotes
safe_mode

A misinformed Sprint PCS telephone support worker severely endangered the life of a 10 month old baby
(Via NBC4 ):

EASTVALE, Calif. – A stolen car that had a kidnapped baby and a cell phone inside has become the center of a new controversy.

The parents of the kidnapped baby are outraged that the phone that could have been used to find the baby was not.
…
The Cochran family of Eastvale was loading their baby into their SUV in the home’s driveway. The father, Jason, belted in their 10-month-old baby and came back inside for their 3-year-old.

“Stephanie was finishing brushing his teeth. I went and got him and walked out the door and the car was gone with Wade in it,” said father Jason Cochran.

When the parents called 911 they also realized that the father’s Sprint cell phone with GPS locator technology was also in the car.

NBC4 reported that Sprint wouldn’t provide a location to the parents or to the deputies.

“The deputies were told that Sprint had the location of the vehicle but that they could not disclose it to them because they needed to pay the $25 fee for a subpoena or fill out some forms,” said Stephanie.

Almost 2 ? hours later a passer-by spotted the SUV abandoned a mile away.

Responding deputies found the boy safe in his car seat.

The two lessons in effect here:
1) NEVER leave your kids alone in the car (or anywhere for that matter…)
2) If something happens and your kid is taken like this, don’t waste time speaking with the first line people who say they can’t help you. FIGHT for your kid. You own that contract and don’t need to subpeona yourself. YOU have the authority to demand the information be released.

Web 2.0 is big on lots of things: Ajax, RSS, photocasting, tags, tag clouds, and more. I have no set opinion yet on where I think Web 2.0 is going, but I hope it is more successful than Bubble 1.0…

A lot of good blogs on Web 2.0 are at the Web 2.0 Workgroup.

Can anyone make money off of Web 2.0? Of course. But just making YAAH (Yet Another Ajax Homepage) won’t do it for you. You have to get into the technology and combine it with smart business sense. Like 1000tags.com. They’re combining tag coluds with a paid advertisement concept. Plain and simple: pay them money, get a tag. Pretty slick idea…

We lost the number 1 slot. Guess we have an influx of gambling, botox taking, Bears loving folks…

Just a friendly reminder that stamp prices go up 2 cents for standard mail starting this Sunday. Other forms of mail have different increases:

You can buy 2 cent stamps or 39 cent stamps at the post office or most other stamp vendors