Vacation

Off to Philly, then the beach. Posting will be lighter than even the usual crappy level.

Lock Hacking

The Lockdown: Locked, but not secure (Part I) - Engadget

Newspaper Column Exposes Republican Agenda

Lamont win exposes Dem agenda:

"Leftist Ned Lamont’s defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut primary finally pulls back the curtain on the hard left’s attempt to take over the policy apparatus of the Democratic Party."

Leftist? Hard-left? Yes, Lamont is one of the bold, new breed of ultra-leftist self-made entrpeneurial millionaires. And he's fatter than Michael Moore!

What utter bullshit. What a weak fucking argument. A majority of Americans are aligned with Lamont's strategy for Iraq. The shrinking population of war supporters get shriller and shriller as the Iraq misadventure grinds on. The American people recognize a major fuckup when they see it. Eventually.

Further bullshit:

Reid and Schumer declared Lieberman to be “too close” to President Bush, a breathtaking assertion considering that Lieberman ran against Bush twice.

Yes, just breathtaking. Imagine agreeing with your opponent on one or several issues. Imagine an election where the opponents were not comlplete opposites; where they weren't both grabbing for some perceived center ground! How ludicrous!

It is worth noting that even as voters went to the polls in Connecticut, a manhunt was on for a dozen Egyptian “students” who failed to show up for college classes in Montana.

ALL TOGETHER NOW: What the hell does Iraq have to do with terrorists on American soil!! Won't conservatives ever get tired of making that bogus argument? Did Lamont hint that he wanted to weaken domestic security? No. Leaving Iraq will increase our security.

And this about sums up the philosophy of remaining Bush supporters:

Republicans have made their share of missteps, but one suspects that given a choice between the hard left as represented by Lamont, Reid and company and merely cloddish Republicans, voters may be more inclined to stick with well-meaning clods.

Yes, Republicans have made their share of mistakes. Then they went out and leveraged their assets, borrowed heavily and went into some serious mistake debt which they'll be repaying for a long time.

Pa says Ah's Tech'ed...

...got smacked in the haid with a laptop when ah was jest three.

It's all launchd, baby!

InfoWorld: Is Windows inherently more vulnerable to malware attacks than OS X?:

"Windows requires that users log in with administrative privileges to install software, which causes many to use privileged accounts for day-to-day usage."

That is so true.
via Slashdot

Murkowski Goes Down!

He's the first sitting Governor of Alaska to lose a primary challenge in 20 years. Alaska governor headed for primary defeat | Reuters.com:

"Former Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin, running a campaign that portrayed her as a reformer bucking the state's Republican establishment, will now face former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in November's general election."

Looks like a good sign for the 'throw the bums out' momentum.

Could they do worse?

Computer-based models to replace the investment advisor? | The Register :

"A number of recently published features and surveys evidence the continued growth in quantitative investment.

Quantitative investment is based on the deployment of computer generated investment decisions. It is reputed to be growing at 20 per cent per year. Major conventional fund managers as well as hedge funds are increasingly deploying computer-based models to make investment decisions rather than relying on human judgement - or is that a myth?"

The computer models might not bring a better return, but at least they'll have better personalities than the investment advisors.
Of course, they'll just be passing the torch of 'analysis' to a computer-model designer and relying on their judgement instead of the old-fashioned analyst's. It's still an art, not a science. Or maybe not even that.

Slow-Motion Legal Clusterfuck Grinds Downward

Judge Throws Out Charges in Padilla Case - New York Times

Looks like it's just the judge calling bullshit on prosecutorial charge overloading:

The judge, Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court in Miami, said constitutional problems were raised in the charges that Mr. Padilla and two co-defendants were in a conspiracy to support violent jihad campaigns overseas.

All three charges related to one conspiracy to support terrorism overseas, Judge Cooke said.

“Charging the defendants with a single offense multiple times is violative of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” she wrote in a decision dated Friday and released on Monday.

I'm writing this post with Writely, an online word processing app. It seems to have all the features you'd want, ąńď it's free. It can publish directly to a blog.

This	is
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Friday Random Conspiracy Theory

Doubts over JonBenet suspect's claims | The Daily Telegraph:

"A Colorado prosecutor suggested today that the arrest of 41-year-old John Mark Karr came sooner than she would have liked, prompted by 'exigent circumstances,' and cautioned that more work remained to be done in the case."

Why was Homeland Security involved in the arrest? Is this normal? What were the 'exigent circumstances'? Was the timetable of the investigation pushed up to distract the public from yesterday's disastrous (for Bush) court ruling? The arrest and confession of Ramsey's murderer certainly has the power to do so. Did they offer this creep some kind of deal to confess?

The Good Terror Making Seal of Approval

Pakistan: al-Qaida approved bomb plot

Our terror cells find it easy to achieve ISO 9000 compliance when they adopt the full suite of TerrorFlow Jihad Enterprise Management Platform solutions!

The Spanish Informer

Media Matters - Limbaugh: "[O]ne of my staff is Spanish and informs me" that Allen simply called Sidarth a "clown"

Evolution's a Bitch

MRSA now leading cause of skin infections in US
Fortunately, unlike religion and politics, science does not discriminate. Whatever salvations science bestows upon humanity, all will benefit eventually. I feel this is true despite the inevitable inequality and inefficiency in the the distribution of these benefits. Let the creationists deny it. Science will do its best to save them as well.

Of course, we'll all suffer from the misapplications of science as well. The poor will feel the bite of the bad stuff much quicker than they'll see any gain from the good stuff.

Urgent Dispatch from the Ironic Headline Ministry

Lebanese soldiers arrive in southern Lebanon

Kickin' Ass, Judicially Speaking

Hon. Anna Diggs Taylor

"We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution."

Warrantless Wiretapping Unconstitutional

AP Wire | 08/17/2006 | Judge: Wiretap program unconstitutional
The Judge lays it out for those who JUST. DON'T. GET IT.

We have due process for regular surveillance. We have a special court, FISA, for problematic foreign intelligence surveillance. There is no excuse whatsoever for law enforcement to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment was not an afterthought; it is mandatory for a healthy democracy. Besides, you know Bush, Hayden, et al. were abusing even the almost non-existent restrictions on the NSA program. I guarantee is worse than we know.

It's a shame that we had to wait for Bush administration to jump the shark before anyone had the balls to attack their sleazy tactics.

Now if the combatants OK it...

Security Council OKs Mideast Peace Deal

Actually good news!

Howcome...

... in one breath, conservatives and libertarians deride the possibility that government could be efficient or competent (and should therefore be minimized) and in the next, put their full faith and trust in the most agressive and dangerous elements of government: the military, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement?

Aren't these the things that we're supposed to keep a really close eye on?

Chickenshit

Roy at Alicublog says "Terror only works if you're terrorized." I couldn't agree more. All this air travel security clampdown will do is panic people for a few days then make them nervous for a few weeks, only to be forgotten and merge into the background fear in a few months. Any intelligent and dangerous terrorists would exploit this achingly obvious and repetitive timing cycle and wait for the optimum time to strike, when our guard was down. The media loves it because it's a dirt-cheap ratings booster. The Bush administration and their accomplices love it because a frightened electorate is their only hope of retaining Congress and maybe the 2008 Presidency. The American people suffer with maddeningly inept security and a certainty of future attacks. The billions we wasted and continue to waste in Iraq could have been used to truly shore up our defenses. Intelligence and police work are the true tools for success in the 'war on terror', which is actually the defense against criminal terroristic attacks, a much more nebulous and difficult foe than the comic book caricature painted by Bush and his pundit clowns. It doesn't sell as well and it doesn't keep us afraid.

We already know how seriously DHS treats the airline security effort by the casual way they corrupted the 'Watch List' database for bureaucratic bullshit. Stripping travelers down to their underwear before boarding is hardly going to help; terrorists will resort to surgically implanted bombs and we'll have to x-ray everyone before they can travel ("Please place your intestines on the conveyor belt, sir"). Is it just me, or do you see the death of air travel in this? I mean, didn't they used to say that if we altered our lifestyles drastically then the terrorists have won?

What cowards our Right-Wing Protectors have turned into. They want to see the terrorists scare us back to the stone age, where the townsfolk never see anything farther than a league from their home, and strangers are greeted with pitchforks, and all for the sake of immediate political gratification. Dick Cheney suggests that we would send the wrong message to the terrorists by electing Democrats! He throws out the total strawman that Democrats are isolationists, as if war is the only tool of foreign policy, clinging desperately to the lie that Iraq was part of the war on terror before we invaded (now, of course, it's a training ground for terrorists). Let me tell you something, Vice President Dick. Real terrorists don't care what messages we are sending them; they have a message to deliver to us. We should be ready for it.

Homeland Security Sez:

PATCH WINDOWS NOW!!!
DHS | Department of Homeland Security | DHS Recommends Security Patch to Protect Against a Vulnerability Found In Windows Operating Systems

Lieberman: Outcast

Pariah
Pronunciation: p&-'rI-&
Function: noun
Etymology: Tamil paraiyan, literally, drummer
1 : a member of a low caste of southern India
2 : one that is despised or rejected : OUTCAST

Bloggers != Hackers

Charges of Dirty Tricks on Web Feed Speculation in the Blogosphere - New York Times
Why the associate bloggers with hackers. Bloggers are writers; hackers are programmers. Bloggers (except for programming bloggers, of course!) are generally not techies at all. They're regular computer users who couldn't hack a pocket calculator. Why does the Times say this:

Or had some shadowy, sinister bloggertypes who were championing his challenger, Ned Lamont, hacked into the site and shut it down, as the Lieberman campaign charged?

Bloggertypes? Is this some kind of new slur? What 'type' is a blogger? And bloggers are no more capable of enlisting the aid of black-hat hackers than your average teacher, construction worker or NASCAR fan.

Lieberman's campaign weasel lied and made accusations against the Lamont campaign with (admittedly) no evidence whatsoever. That this is a lie, whether or not the site was hacked, is irrefutable. It almost makes you think that this was a last-minute, desperate election day smear tactic orchestrated by the Lieberman campaign. I can't believe that a major Senate campaign had its Web site go down on election day and, more than 24 hours later(!) still did not have it up. This is not feasible. There has to be some dirty trickery going on. Even if they lost every HTML file (or record), they could have slapped together a new static site and had it up and running in a matter of hours. I could do it.

I think that Lieberman and his crew are going to deeply regret getting the authorities mixed up in this.

Scary Shit

Could your keyboard spy on you? - Network World
You know that, if this knowledge has reached the public, it's already been deployed in the field by one spy agency or another. I wonder if this will become part of all off-the-shelf keyboard chipsets.

Looks Like Lieberman's Losing

Lieberman and Lamont Locked in a Tight Race - New York Times
Long Live Lamont!

88 Percent, Bitches!!

From the 'Young Minds Yearning to Be Free' Department:SBC [Southern Baptist Convention] Leader Alarmed Over Young Adults 'Dropping Out' of Churches:

"In 2002, the SBC's Council on Family Life reported that roughly 88 percent of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school. Dr. Frank Page, the denomination's new president, says SBC churches need to counter that statistic by finding ways to make themselves more relatable, more pertinent and significant to students before they graduate."

More relatable, more pertinent and significant, eh? Try dropping all that 'God' claptrap. Reality: The kids love it!

via Pandagon

Congratulations!

You've published the One Billionth 'The Democrats are Divided' article!!!
Not that it's a tired cliche or anything. From the Scotsman, too. Oy!

Scotsman.com News - Politics - War in Iraq splits Democrats: "The contest has split the Democratic party from top to bottom. The New York Times endorsed Mr Lamont while the Washington Post's editorial page supported Mr Lieberman. Younger voters, radicalised by the Bush years, are less likely to tolerate Mr Lieberman's bipartisan approach to foreign policy, while the party establishment - from Bill Clinton to the anti-war former senator Max Cleland - has largely supported the Senator, even if, like Hillary Clinton, they have pledged to support the eventual Democrat nominee."

(Actually, the article doesn't suck too much.)

Boycott IE 7!

IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch

Microsoft is essentially giving the finger to the Web Standards Project and Web standards in general. CSS? We don't need no stinking CSS! The fact that IE 7 continues to hose its users in the security department is a separate and major issue. This was a golden opportunity for MS to get their shit together and they failed. From the column:

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped.

Ouchie!
For cryin' out loud, if you can't develop your own HTML display engine, buy one!! It's Microsoft! Use Apple WebKit! Just stop taking development advice from the Marketing Department.

CRTs are History

Picture Tubes Are Fading Into the Past - New York Times:

"The bulky, squarish, heavy picture tube, the standard television technology for more than 60 years, is heading for the dustbin of history much faster than anyone expected."

I was caught by surprise at how fast the plasmas and LCDs replaced standard CRT TVs, at least in the high end.

Bush FDA Meets Reality; Scrambles to Save Face

F.D.A. Shifts View on Next-Day Pill - New York Times:

"In 2003, an F.D.A. advisory committee voted 23 to 4 to allow the drug’s over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. But a top official of the agency overruled that committee and agency staff members, raising concerns that young teenagers might engage in riskier sex if the morning-after pill was easily available. The company revised its application, asking that over-the-counter sale be allowed for women older than 16.

In the letter sent yesterday, Dr. Von Eschenbach said the agency would not approve that request but that, if the company met certain restrictions, it would allow over-the-counter sales to women 18 or older."

Keep your asinine, primitive superstitions and fear of sex out of our policies.