A few days ago, a protype “smart radio” was sent to the FCC for testing. The idea behind such a system is that it can communicate adaptively in the “white space” between TV stations, opening up spectrum. It failed abysmally.
Well, Microsoft is now saying that they sent sent FCC a defective prototype.
So they are now saying that they are complete pratts who could not be bothered to send a working unit.
Normally, I don’t trust Microflaccid enough to throw them, but this time, it rings true to me.
It appears that the German Government has introduced language in their computer crime laws that makes computer security work illegal.
It literally makes certain Google searches illegal.
It appears that it criminalizes the most basic of computer security auditing tools, and a number of concerns. A number of German security operations have either shut up shop, or jumped across the border.
It appears that Russian “Bear” bombers are once again testing US air defenses.
I guess it’s time to party like it’s 1989.
Seriously though, when one looks at the bellicose attitudes and rhetoric (Axis of Evil anyone?) of Bush and His Evil Minions™, we will be paying the price for decades.
This is interesting, it appears that the British operating in Southern Afghanistan want the US to stop operations in their area.
A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
ther British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.
The US military has a culture that is disastrous in a counter-insurgency situation.
There is a general disregard for civilian casualties, and an understanding of these consequences that I believe comes from an unwillingness to ascribe basic human motives to the indigenous population, along with an over-reliance on air-power.
This racism (and what else can you call dehumanizing someone in this way) is disastrous in a counter-insurgency situation, and the British are calling the US on this.
I understand the difficulties of dealing with a situation where the insurgents blend into the population, but if a police force were to, as a matter of policy, shoot hostages, there would be justified outrage.
This is worse than wrong, it’s aiding the enemy.
Seriously…It has to…Because I cannot tell the difference between White House press releases and the Onion.
Bush and his Evil Minions™ have decided to send someone to Iraq to help their legal system.
I guess that they need someone there, “To help fashion the country’s legal system”. Who could it be?
I can’t recall.
What name leaps to mind.
I can’t recall.
Oh, yes, I remember, it’s Alberto “Abu” Gonzzlez.
Seriously, this is too far from reality for The Onion’s writers to have dreamed this up.
Impeach them all now.
So now the blithering idiots who think that copyright is property want to apply copyright to designer fashion.
Let’s get this straight: It’s for the useful arts and sciences. Says so in the constitution.
What’s more, there is plenty of fashion (most of it sucky) being made out there. There is no need to encourage production of more tacky handbags.
IP is about encouraging production of beneficial things, inventions, arts, etc. It’s not about allowing people to print their own money so that they can make bigger campaign donations to you, senator butthead Schumer.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnistStu Bykofsky just asked Osama bin Ladin to attack America Again.
On 911, when a columnist correctly said that Bush was running from place to place like a scared rabbit, he was fired.
This jerk needs to be flipping burgers for a living, but he’s a right winger, so all will be forgiven.jour
Kansas????
Yes, Kansas. The State GOP there has formed loyalty committee.
TOPEKA – The state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee so that it can punish officers who endorse or contribute to Democrats.
…
The state committee’s actions struck a sour note for some Republicans, particularly moderates on issues such as abortion. Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, suggested the loyalty committee could prove a “public relations disaster.”
“Ironically, it smacks most of the Communist Party,” Beatty said Monday. “That’s the kind of public irony that most parties try to avoid — the party of freedom telling people they have no freedom.”
Gee. You think????? Josef Stalin is laughing in hell.
And, Kobach said, the grounds for removing someone from office are fairly narrow: They must publicly endorse or contribute to a non-Republican running in Kansas.
“This rule will operate primarily as a deterrent,” Kobach said. “My anticipation is that once the rule is in effect, you won’t see too many elected party leaders engaging in this kind of behavior.”
Vee must all Goose schtep in unison.*
But Andy Wollen, president of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, a moderate group, mused about the GOP creating a “grand high inquisitor.”
“When you hear the term loyalty committee, what runs through your mind?” he said. “Joseph McCarthy. George Orwell.”
Cloud supports the loyalty committee, even though he has run afoul of conservatives who dominate the party leadership.
He earned their public criticism for signing a fundraising letter for Wollen’s group in March, criticizing the party’s leadership and suggesting people give to the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority.
You know, in America, people are supposed to have the right to call their party leaders right wing nutcase wackjobs, particularly when they are right wing nutcase wackjobs.
If they could hook a dynamo to George Orwell’s grave, we’d power all of California.
*Yes, I know, mixing Nazis and Communist is a very mixed metaphor thing.
As a consequence of Bush’s policies, the military is increasingly broken. To use just one metric, the number of incoming soldiers with prior felony arrests or convictions has more than tripled in the past five years.
A number of these are gang bangers who be bringing back their training to the streets when they get out.
Jonah Goldberg, the second most egregious example of hepotism taken to extremeshas an editorial in the Los Angeles Times in which he calls for a return to Jim Crow era voter qualification tests.
He asks, “Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?”
Well, given that Fox News watchers are the least informed news consumers out there, this could benefit Democrats.
So let’s ask some basic questions of citizens:
Here re the answers: Senate, almost all of them (at least from the rulings from the Clinton days), that all rights in the constitution apply to the states too, Senate, Senate, Senate
The president does not appoint these folks, he nominates them, the senate appoints them.
Seriously the only person stupider than Goldberg is the idiot who suggest that he write OP/Eds for the LA Times.
They have an editorial Defending the Oreo Cookie. It appears that the Washington post suggest that Oreos are bad for you.
Unbelievably bloody lame.
These aren’t journalists, they are fanboyz pretending to be journalists.
It appears that NASA has lost nearly 100 million of taxpayer purchased equipment in the past decade.
It appears that there are few controls in place for about $35 billion of assets.
That being said, the story of the lost laptop is my favorite:
It cites one employee who excused himself (or herself) of losing a laptop worth $4,000 with the explanation that the machine had burned up in the atmosphere.
The lost equipment report included the following explanation: “This computer, although assigned to me, was being used on board the International Space Station. I was informed that it was tossed overboard to be burned up in the atmosphere when it failed.”
That sure as hell beats, “the dog ate my homework”.
You know, if I were in orbit, that’s what I’d do to a computer that was #$%%ing up badly. I’d watch it all the way down.
It appears that there is a bit of a problem in Devon, three councilors have left the party because another member does stripograms and phone sex as a livelihood.
They have left the party, and are now sitting as independents because, “We believe that our integrity and principles will be compromised if we stay.”
At the party level, it is reasonable to try to get rid of her because you believe that she will not win re-election or is a drag to the party, but if you are willing to leave the party over this, you are not serious about the party, and most likely, the party just isn’t that serious either.
Here is an interesting article on Condoleeza Rice. It appears that a view months ago, she wrote an article about Lebanon and how public/private partnerships might help in rebuilding the country.
Problem was, no on was willing to publish it. It came back from the “Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.”
Think about that. A sitting Secretary of State could not get a paper to publish her OP/ED because it was so hactacular.
As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. “I kept hearing the same thing: ‘There’s no news in this.’ ” Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership. “It read like a campaign document.”
The author goes on tho show how Bush politicized the State Department, as his administration has every other bureaucracy that they could get their hands on.
This misses the real point. The real point is that Condoleeza Rice is a complete incompetent who, much like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, has an unbroken record of failure.
This failure exceeds my wildest imagination. The fact that an academic, who was secretary of state was unable to write an article of sufficient quality for publication is a truly pathetic statement. In the publish or perish world of academe, this is inconceivable.
She is a fraud, elevated through right wing affirmative action, because it was convenient to have someone with a PhD in Sovietology to parrot right wing talking points.
No doubt her position as a double minority, black and a woman, has also served to elevate her stature in the party and with the pundits too.
Republicans believe that government is stupid, so they leave the stupid to govern.
There is an interesting article in the Military Times about the Pentagon rethinking the drawdown of troops in Europe.
The article claims that “The idea of cutting troops from 68,000 in 2001 to 28,000 by 2012 was part of an initiative by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to transform the military into a leaner, more cost-effective force,” but it was really all spite.
Rumsfeld began this policy when the most of the governments of Europe were unwilling to follow him into Iraq. It’s a part and parcel of his “old Europe” slam.
Gates realizes that reality prevents this.
Lovely. This is certainly bringing back honor and dignity to the government.
FEMA knew of formaldehyde in trailers:
July 20, 2007By David Goldstein McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Federal officials knew that hurricane evacuees housed in temporary trailers were worried about dangerous levels of formaldehyde but took little action, government documents show.
Their primary concern was the legal fallout if the temporary housing presented a health hazard, according to records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK,” a lawyer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote. “Once you get the results … the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”
….
Mitt Romney spent nearly $2K on makeup while governor.
Who cares. Really. The only thing of interest is that the press won’t be constantly harping on this, because makeup on Mitt makes him “manly”.
This is crap. Romney is a f#$%ing moron.
When he first ran for state wide office in Massachusetts, he ran for senate against Teddy Kennedy, and it started out competitive. Some polls actually had him in the lead.
Until the debates. Romney made the point that Kennedy was born wealthy, so what did he ever have to give for public service?
Mitt…You know…There are the three brothers…The war hero, the assassinated war hero president, and the assassinated populist presidential candidate.
Mit is stoopid.
On Fridays, he frequently contributes a pice to Eric Alterman’s Altercation:
However, where in hell do we go with that last passage there, about how the haircuts matter because “a healthy chunk of the political press corps” doesn’t like Edwards, and how they’re staying away from a sauce-for-the-goose position on Mitt Romney’s makeovers because of their own private calculations of the relative electability of the two candidates. OK, here’s the deal. Every member of that “healthy chunk” of the press corps should be fired. Today. This minute. Without pay or recompense. Let them all walk back inside the Beltway from Cedar Rapids if they have to. I value what I do. I value the work of the people in my business who do it correctly. But, holy mother of god, these people do not do what I do. It’s OK to sneer at a candidate if you don’t like him? It’s OK to create a destructive narrative out of unmitigated piffle because he doesn’t kiss your ass with the regularity you think you deserve, or because his press buses don’t run on time, or because one of his staffers was late with the Danish in Keene? I watched a roomful of them boo Al Gore seven years ago, behavior that would have gotten them run out of any press box in the major leagues. Do you think one of these jamokes — or jamokettes — is thinking, “Maybe we should lay off the haircut thing because of what we all did to Gore in 2000, and look how well that worked out.” Please.
Here’s what I think — the majority of people who cover national politics believe that history is whatever happened in the MSNBC Green Room 15 minutes earlier. I believe the campaign is covered by people with a completely unjustified sense of their own superiority, since not many of them understand or ever care about most of the issues, much less the horrendous bills that are going to come due upon whichever of these poor sods winds up with the job. I believe these people care more about their reputation around the bar at the Wayfarer in Manchester than they do about the interests of the people they purportedly serve. And, were I an editor, and someone brought me a story about John Edwards’ hair or Mitt Romney’s skin, that person would do it once. The second time, the lazy bastard would find himself typing bowling agate on Wednesday night.
Damn good thinking, and damn good writing.
And Robin Givhan, Washington Post Staff Writer, is a boob.
She wrote an article that is entirely about the fact that Hillary’s neckline shows about 1/4 inch of cleavage.
The Washington Post: Let Rupert Murdock buy it. The quality will improve.
Horrors: 
It appears that some inmates at El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma attempted to buy a “get out of jail free” card using copyright.
They “copyrighted” and then attempted to file suits for millions of dollars against him and seize his property with the idea of using this as leverage to be let out.
Needless to say, the indictments against them for “conspiring to impede the duties of federal prison officials” rap, and “mailing threatening communications with the intent to extort”.
On the bright side, they have each received six figure offers of employment from the RIAA when they get out of stir.