there are so many ways to obfuscate active content while it goes through the pipes (i.e. before it gets parsed by the browser) that trying to block it through a proxy (even though it's been attempted by proxomitron and similar projects) is futile.

I don't know enough about this to be able to evaluate his statement.

In three states it's illegal to photograph police. In many other states wiretapping laws are being used to prevent video and audio recordings.

Here's a radical idea: Establish a free market in public transportation. Consider the results in Indianapolis:

The impact of the new Indianapolis ground transportation ordinance, which also abolished the official minimum fare, allowing taxis to charge as little as they like for a ride, even surpassed our own expectations. In the first month, the number of licensed taxi operators rose an amazing 60 percent, from twenty-eight licensed companies to forty-five. In addition, the new competition dropped fares among the new licensees almost 7 percent. But perhaps even more impressive than reduced fares and increased competition is the effect that the new market system has had upon the drivers themselves.

Nearly overnight, the dress code for taxi drivers went from ripped T-shirts to collars and ties. Cabs are noticeably cleaner, cabbies are friendlier and their vehicles are more visible on our streets.

That's fine, but the source is typically a Microsoft Office document, which has the problem of being proprietary and requiring an expensive piece of commercial software to handle.

We need to get all the legal entities (of which government is just one) to agree on an open standard document format like that of Open Office, so the public can easily process those documents.

No, the patch fixes the overrun in JBIG2 decompression. The workaround if you don't apply the patch is to disable JavaScript, either with a registry hack or through the Reader Preferences dialog.

In case you failed to read the article, here's the blog entry with the patch , not the workaround.