The Bush administration is pushing for retroactive immnunity for all telcos in this whole illegal wiretapping thing. If you haven’t been keeping up, this means they’re saying (a) you can’t sue over this, because to do so will expose state secrets and now (b) and you can’t sue over this because the telcos are immune to such claims because they’re helping the government.
WTF?
The number in question is the 16-digit decryption key to the new HD DVD copy protection scheme. The MPAA is having fits about the crack, and is issuing takedown notices very widely. However, since information wants to be free, it’s a little late for that. The geek world has made it pretty clear that they intend to disseminate the number as widely as possible no matter what the lawyers say. Follow the BB link and read the whole bit from the EFF on how absurd — and sad — this situation is.
How can a number become illegal?
MS is trying to buy Yahoo for $50B.
At Verizon, you now have to pay a fee for not paying a fee.
We just got 88% on the Spidey Villain Quiz over at MSNBC, which means we missed only 2: the show James Franco was originally on, and which Spidey nemesis alter-egos have made cameos in the films so far.
The quiz rewards knowledge of the mid-80s Secret Wars storyline (and subsequent events) a bit heavily, but that’s understandable based on the current Spider-context.
Also, we’re particularly amused by question 15 and its potential answers:
In the movie, Sandman’s name is Flint Marko. But in the comics, “Flint Marko” is only an alias that Sandman began using so that his mother would never know he had turned to a life of crime. What is his real name?
A. Wesley Dodds
B. Mark Sandman
C. Neil Gaiman
Of the 10, only one (Rudy) doesn’t want Roe v. Wade overturned, none want to get out of Iraq, and three dismiss evolution.
The American public’s desires to keep Roe alive and to escape the quagmire in Iraq are well documented. Sadly, the candidates probably fared better than the general populace on the evolution question.
John Hodgeman explains the World Bank on TDS.
LolTrek. (Widely linked.)
Here is a very funny strip from a guy who got fired recently.
Bush maintains his contempt for laws in this backpedaling over FISA:
Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.
As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.
But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.
Needless to say, every non-hack non-idiot lawyer and judge in the country disagrees with Bush’s interpretation here. In fact, Bush has admitted ON TELEVISION that he’s a multiple felon, since every act of wiretapping without a FISA warrant is a crime. For some reason, his craven party is untroubled by this, and the Dems lack the cohesion of message to make the case publicly. This doesn’t change the facts, though: Bush is an admitted criminal, still sitting in the Oval Office, and still insisting he need not submit to any checks on executive power even when black letter law says otherwise.
Bush’s Justice Department is trying to make Gitmo even more illegal:
Last week, the Justice Department quietly filed a motion with the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that would cap the number of visits by civilian defense lawyers to their clients at Guantanamo at three. Ever. Attorney-client mail would no longer be private. These requests are grounded in the brazen claim that civilian attorneys foment unrest at the prison. Perhaps if the detainees were to be completely isolated and ignored, they would realize how happy they are.
WTF? How can we be letting this happen? Via Slate. It gets worse:
And the real problem at Gitmo, adds Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU law school, is that even after you funnel all 60 or so prisoners who are still awaiting their not-yet-begun “trials” through to their quite inevitable findings of guilt, you still have at least 160 more “who will most likely never be charged, never be tried, and may nonetheless never be sent home.” These are the folks whom, no matter how thin the evidence and how cooked the proceedings, the government still can’t make a case against, yet doesn’t want to release. The Bush administration has absolutely no clue what to do with these people, and they aren’t going to figure it out. So, the new legal strategy seems to be: Stop them from embarrassing us. That means no contact with attorneys who might tell your stories of torture and abuse to the outside world. It means no awkward hunger strikes that might garner world sympathy. It means doing everything you can to make even the “black hole” there disappear. What the government really needs is for the folks down at Guantanamo to stop complaining, stop talking, and stop trying to kill themselves.
If the aforementioned number is illegal, then presumably this domain is, too, as are this tattoo and these colors.
That creepy “cameras with speakers so Big Brother can yell at you” thing they’ve got going on in parts of the U.K.? Yeah, now they’re doing it in DC.
On an online forum we frequent, someone just posted about a frustrating time they had trying to get a Linksys home router working for a friend. The writer is a Mac person through-and-through, but had been convinced to spend half the cash and get a Linksys router instead of a fancy Airport Extreme, since they do effectively the same jobs. (Actually, the Linksys is typically more capable, but that’s irrelevant for most users.)
Well, there’s a complication now to this whole affair that is clearly the work of pointy-haired jerkoff marketing drones: the instructions to Linksys routers (and, we presume, D-link and NetGear) now include a step to install software, which of course naive and nontechnical users attempt to do. And that’s where the problem surfaces.
Routers like these have, since their initial introduction in the home market, included very full-featured (and simple!) web-based configuration tools. Anyone on the router’s network with the router’s address and the password (both printed on the documentation) can configure it to behave any way they want. No software is required at the PC level at all to configure the router, and no router-specific software is ever be required at the PC level to simply USE a given network. You DO need a network card and drivers for said, but for the last 10 years or so these have typically been included with every PC and Mac sold. It’s an industry standard, and this interoperability is a key part of why networks have become so popular and pervasive.
What this means is that for pretty much every router on the market, a user can unbox it, throw the CD away without unsealing the envelope, plug it in, and start using it immediately. They would be well served to adjust the router to improve security — changing the password to the web console is mandatory; setting the router so that only users connected by wire can use the management console is also a great idea — but the baseline function and factory configuration of pretty much every consumer router we’ve seen since 2000 has been such that “plug it in and go” will work just fine. A simple sheet of instructions walking the user through the advisable configuration changes is really all the “installation” such a machine needs.
Instead of embracing this altogether tremendous boon — really, how common is this sort of ease in technology? — Linksys, et. al., have added a wholly useless step that, in our experience, is the cause of 90%+ of all home-network configuration problems. (And we get calls. Trust us.) We’ve fixed innumerable home network setups by ignoring the “setup” program, going straight to “New Network Connection,” and accepting the defaults.
Oddly, the one home router we can think of that actually DOES require special software for administration comes from an unlikely source: Apple. The Airport doesn’t, at last count, have a web console, and therefore requires the Airport Administration Utility for configuration and control. This is a pretty huge misstep for Apple that for some reason they have yet to correct. It’s pretty bizarre when hardcore nerd companies like Linksys can present a better out-of-box experience than the masters in Cupertino. (It’s also still funny that Airports do less and cost more than the other-brand equivalents from the geek triumvirate of Linksys/DLink/Netgear, and probably justify this price bump on “usability” grounds.)
So, can anybody tell us just exactly what the hell these companies are thinking with this bullshit install step? Seriously, why shoot themselves in the foot like this? Whisky Tango Foxtrot, people?
Update: RN from Portland writes:
A native app can configure your machine’s networking so that it can find the network device. That’s a good reason to have to install something from a CD.
We disagree. First, configuring one’s own machine is distinct from configuring the router, which is what we’re really talking about here.
Second, even if local configuration is the router company’s bag, including instructions to create a new network profile, or use your machine’s “automatic” setting, is a far better plan than insisting on some baroque package that requires installation, together with all the bullshit that entails on Windows (it’s merely annoying and unnecessary on Macs).
In the Apple world, finding a new basic networking device is bone simple — Macs all have an “Automatic” profile included by default in the Network locations list. Even if the user isn’t set to use it when they install the router, making the change requires only 3 clicks.
From the Onion back in March: Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll:
The Guardians said recent developments in the music world, such as the unaccountable popularity of the Dixie Chicks and Sufjan Stevens, have created a “perfect storm of lameness” from which rock might never recover. While Iommi refused to say when the vault would be opened, hard rock sources believe it will take place just prior to next month’s Fall Out Boy-Honda Civic tour, which many fear will suck the remaining lifeblood from all that still rocks.
“Citizens of Rock, we refuse to stand idly by any longer,” ZZ Top founder and Protectorate High Elder Billy Gibbons said. “When a puss like James Blunt is allowed to rule the airwaves, we must respond by exposing this monster riff, and blowing minds into the stratosphere.”
[…]
Members of the Protectorate were each given only partial information about the location of the vault, which they were instructed to open in unison only in the event of a total Rockopalypse. While some believed the vault was buried in Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Europe, or Asia, others claimed it could be found in the Court of the Crimson King.
However, after piecing together clues hidden in Yes album covers and Pink Floyd liner notes, rock historians now believe the riff is locked away deep beneath the Welsh countryside house known as Bron-Yr-Aur, at rock-grid coordinates SH735026. British weather satellites have also photographed an enormous cloud, shaped like a hybrid of an upside-down question mark and cross, forming above these exact coordinates.
The vault’s Key, regarded as too staggering a burden for any one man to bear, was divided in two parts, with half entrusted to Eddie Van Halen and half to David Lee Roth, shortly after Roth left the rock supergroup Van Halen. The two men, who have refused to work together for 20 years, recently announced plans for a historic reunion tour.
“Before we shake Heaven and Earth with the vicious power of this riff, we of the High Council of Elders of the Guardians of the Protectorate of Rock ask you: Are you about to rock?” AC/DC guitarist Angus Young said. “If so, we salute you.”
Dell has announced that it will install and support Ubuntu Linux in addition to Windows. Add this to their earlier announcement that they’ll continue to install XP after Redmond’s target Vista-only date, and you begin to get a picture of a certain software empire beginning to lose its stranglehold on the PC world.
Student denied degree because of MySpace photo. The photo in question is also pretty innocuous, too. We suppose it’s no surprise that the Internet provides new and more annoying ways for people to be douchebags — it’s been happening for 20 years on Usenet; no reason it shouldn’t spread to asswipe college administrators.
15 Reasons David Bowie Is The Man. Did you know about Nat Tate?
Peace out, H-dawg. We know you be balancin’ mad books in heaven:
POYNETTE, WI—Foul play is suspected in the death of an accounts receivable supervisor for a regional office-supply company, sheriff’s deputies reported Tuesday.
Herbert F. Kornfeld, 34, was an alleged accounting gang leader considered by law enforcement to be a key player in a series of ongoing office worker turf wars. He was found dead Monday morning in the third-floor copy room of Midstate Office Supply, his employer of 12 years.
Sigh. Take a moment to read Kornfeld’s first major work, “Keep Your Fucking Shit Off My Desk.”
On Sunday, Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki — a rookie! — did something that has only happened 12 other times in the history of major league baseball: he managed an unassisted triple play.
There’s video at the link, but a reply (included) is really required. It goes like this:
The whole thing took not much more than a second.
Such plays are, as we noted, rare: this is the first since 2003. Prior to that, they happened in 2000, 1994, 1992, 1968, two in 1927, 1925, two in 1923, 1920, and 1909.
Shelby is at it again. The upcoming SuperSnake Cobra variant will boat up to 725 horsepower. That is not a typo.
Las Vegas – April 27, 2007 – Shelby Automobiles will use newly-developed Ford Racing GT500 performance packs to help transform a limited number of 2007 and 2008 Ford Shelby GT500’s into fire breathing “Super Snake” coupes. The Super Snake post-title package will include enhancements to the Ford Shelby GT500’s handling, styling and power; tuning options will range from a warranted 600 HP V8 to over 725 HP (unwarranted). Only a limited number of Super Snakes will be built per model year at the Shelby Automobiles facility in Las Vegas beginning in late 2007.
They make it clear that all kooks aren’t Southern:
Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan’s influence on illegal immigrants.
The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.
Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.
In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”
Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order — and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said.
At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. “by self invasion.”
Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. … If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do.”
There does, however, seem to be a definite Republican trend toward ‘batshit insane.’
(via Rob)
We suspect most business travelers with a consistent and long-term destination do what we do, which is arrange for the hotel to hold onto one’s major suitcase over each weekend of the contract. (Some are able to escape the weekly packing/unpacking ritual entirely, by arranging for a long-term rental of the room, but the economics of this are sketchy at best.) Doing so greatly streamlines the whole airline thing; we fly with a briefcase and a small carryon with any other incidentals or return/replacement clothing, check nothing, and have nothing with us that requires a pointless TSA baggie.
The fine folks at the Holiday Inn Express in ClientTown have been very nice about this from week one, and we’re very glad of that. They are quite used to seeing Mr Heathen arrive, tired from the road, ’round about 11 local time each Sunday evening. We pass over the all-powerful Amex, pick up our key to 108 — it’s always 108 — and head down the hall to drop off the travel bags before returning to pick up the big-ass rolling hanging bag we leave here. It’s a routine.
In recent weeks, we’ve actually taken more advantage of this hospitality: we’re now leaving two bags, and have discovered that they’ll gleefully hold onto any leftover beer for the weekend as well, kept safe and cold in the office fridge. Perhaps in response to this, or perhaps because they’re just darned nice people, they’ve started being even more helpful: in the last couple weeks, the Sunday night girl has taken to bringing our bags to the room as soon as we check in, instead of waiting for us to knock on the office door. This isn’t a hotel with bellmen; it’s a business deal without so much as a coffeeshop, so it’s definitely more service than we expected.
Well, this week they did one better. As we checked in, we were informed by the nice desk lady that our bags were in fact already in our room, as was our leftover beer. “Have a nice night, Mr Heathen.”
That was nice. We liked it.
You probably shouldn’t.
We’re sure that most police officers are intelligent and principled individuals, but the fact remains that when a small group is given extraordinary powers in society, “trust” is not really something that should be operative. Blind trust in authority is madness; the only way to survive is to create a rigorous oversight structure that makes it all but impossible for the empowered to engage in the kind of criminal behavior that is unfortunately so common in law enforcement the world over, and that we see exemplified in Atlanta in the story linked above.
They think it’s bullshit, too, though it’s a little surprising they buy into Audiable Magic’s claims so completely. In any case, it’s clear to anyone who’s paying attention that DRM is doomed — on CDs, DVDs, or whatever. It can’t work, and, as the Economist puts it, “there are better ways of doing this than treating customers as if they were criminals.”
True. (Widely linked.)
22nd. As expected, L.S.U.’s giant QB JaMarcus Russell went first, to Oakland. Notre Dame’s pretty-boy, can’t-win-the-big-game Brady Quinn had to wait a while.
And with that, College Football 2006 is now over. See you in August. ;)
Bored with marathons? Try this one. (Via Rob.)
A Bush administration official in charge of AIDS policy — who’s been pushing the bullshit “abstinence and no condom” plan — has resigned for patronizing a DC brothel.
Take a look at this graph of the US Debt over the years, and note well who was driving during the most dramatic red-ink spending.
Prior to the Neo-Conservative take over of the Republican Party there was not much difference between the two parties debt philosophy, they both worked together to minimize it. However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan Presidency. The only exception to the steep increase over the last 25 years was during the Clinton Presidency, where he brought spending under control and the debt growth down to almost zero.
Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending really has gone out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders in Washington are Republican Presidents. Looking at the only Democratic President since 1981, Mr. Clinton, who raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year; the Republican Presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 25 years Republican Presidents have raised the debt by $2.59. Any way you look at it Conservative Republican Presidents can not control government spending, yet as the graph above clearly shows, President Clinton did.
That poodle thing was made up, too. We kinda wish it was true, though.
Stupid poodles.
Josh Marshall’s analysis of why we’re still in Iraq is a must-read:
This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment — both toward the occupation and America’s role in the world — has only grown.
I would submit that virtually everything we’ve done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial.
It’s often been noted that we’ve had a difficult time explaining or figuring out just who we’re fighting in Iraq. Is it the Sunni irreconcilables? Or is it Iran and its Shi’a proxies? Or is it al Qaida? The confusion is not incidental but fundamental. We can’t explain who we’re fighting because this isn’t a war, like most, where the existence of a particular enemy or specific danger dictates your need to fight. We’re occupying Iraq because continuing to do so allows us to pretend that the initial plan wasn’t completely misguided and a mistake.
Mrs Heathen prefers to confuse him with certain Soprano characters, but according to his wife, the real, live local CEJ is a year older today. See you tomorrow, buddy!
The WSJ is reporting Bush’s approval rating at 28%, an all-time low.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): Well, it’s a, I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
Since then, “the American taxpayers” have spent at least half a trillion dollars — at least five times the total cost of the Marshall Plan. Chunks of money several times greater than Natsios’ figure have simply gone missing and the monthly cost to the U.S. is more than $8 billion.
In 2006, President Bush appointed Andrew Natsios as the administration’s special envoy to Darfur.
This time, he tears Rudy a new one for his “vote GOP or die” bullshit. Thank God for Keith. Seriously.
If you notice your fancy aquarium live rock receding, you might have a six foot worm secretly living in your tank. Ew.
Apparently, some con artist managed to sell a whole bunch of sheep to Japanese folks by giving them weird haircuts and insisting they were poodles.
JWZ points out the story of the Alameda-Weekhawken Burrito Tunnel. Go. Read.
As it turns out, that letter to the editor in Arkansas was a joke.
Cory over at BoingBoing points us to Voce, a high-end wireless carrier. Ordinarily, we’d dismiss the whole idea, but this time it’s not quite so laughable as a blinged-out Vertu.
They’re targeting the rich and status-conscious (n.b. that truly awful all-Flash website), but the actual terms of the deal are interesting to anyone with serious cell needs:
There’s definitely some extra cash floating around in this deal, but the monthly fees alone don’t represent a huge premium over a heavy voice plan with a data package. $500 setup is steep, but a new Treo 680 (which would be free with Voce) would be $299 at Cingular with a 2-year contract. Voce is contract-free.
Both via BoingBoing:
Enjoy.
Now we have to get a pool so we can get some pool lights like these.
This story is all over the web today, but it’s worth your time. Bush is on the way out, but the work we’ll need to do to repair the damage he and his ilk have done to our republic is just beginning.
The 10, for those too lazy to click:
People think we’re safe because we’re the US, but in reality we’re only as safe as we make ourselves. This means holding our leaders accountable for their actions, and insisting that they follow the principles upon which our nation was founded. Bush fails by every measure, and much of our populace fails with him for going along for the ride.
Over at BB, we find the story of a Canadian prof denied entry to the US recently because he once admitted to taking LSD.
In 1967.
Congress is screwing us on this issue, but fortunately slackjawed yokels in Arkansas are paying attention. Whew.
(MeFi.)
Apparently, there’s Porn for the Playstation Portable on its stupid UMD video format. Wow.
Go check out Lisa Bufano. This piece, “Four Legs Good,” has the double-amputee artist dancing on exaggerated Queen-anne stilts as prosthetics.
(Via Table of Malcontents. )
