A brief history
Instapundit refers to this post on Indepundit. Great read, lots of references, history at its finest.
running dog lackey of the bourgeoisie
From 1990 to 2000, Toyota had the highest increase among major automakers in the amount of carbon dioxide its vehicles emitted into the air, according to a report released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C., group Environmental Defense.Isn't Kyoto in Japan...?
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When statistics from 2000 were compared to those from 1990, Toyota's carbon burden grew 72 percent, compared with 13 percent for GM and 26 percent for Ford.
"They charged heavily into trucks, "DeCicco [report's co-author] said.
[T]he Excursion stumbled from the start, in part because of a wave of negative publicity fanned by environmental groups like the Sierra Club. Even before the Excursion was officially introduced, the group ran a contest on its Web site to choose a nickname for the vehicle. The winner was the Ford Valdez, after the Exxon tanker that ran aground in Alaska.No, not really. After all, the Sierra Club is still thudding about....
Tonight, Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, hailed the Excursion's pending demise. "I think this is a sign that the age of dinosaurs is about to come to an end," he said.
An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said Monday.So they're arguing about who would go to heaven. Dimbulb #1 says he'll settle the argument, and goes in and gets his shotgun. But he doesn't just point at someone; he puts the muzzle in his mouth, prepatory (apparently) to pulling the trigger and finding out for himself.
The U.S. is partly to blame for this shameful state of affairs, but not because we have supported Israel, the only country in the region that has democracy, free expression and the rule of law. Rather, the problem is our support for Arab governments that provide none of these things.And from Ted:
Withdrawing our support for the corrupt Saudi dictatorship might lead to a less pro-American regime, for example, but it would begin to inoculate us from the mostly-justified criticism that we pro-democracy Americans promote oppression wherever it suits our business interests.All right, all right, much of the rest of Ted's column is the usual nonsense, but here is a single point of commonality. Gives one...hope.
A 40-year-old laborer is on trial in New Jersey in a groundbreaking case experts say could clear the way for the prosecution of anyone who lets a drunken driver get behind the wheel.Pangle was killed, along with a man in the other vehicle. Pangle's blood-alcohol content (BAC) was 0.26, more than twice New Jersey's legal limit. Powell, the friend, is being held responsible and has been charged with both deaths; as a result, he faces a possible 15 years in prison.
Kenneth Powell was asleep at home two years ago when police called and asked him to pick up best friend Michael Pangle, who had been arrested for drunken driving after a drinking session in a strip club.
Powell picked up Pangle and took his friend back to his sport utility vehicle, which was parked beside the road where he'd been arrested.
Pangle, 37, drove off into the night. Less than an hour later, his SUV collided with another car...
The United Nations denied Tuesday that it is investigating the July 1 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that Afghans say killed more than 50 civilians at a wedding party, claiming it has conducted a humanitarian fact-finding mission.What's remarkable is the destruction of language. First Kofi Annan says that the UN was "not involved in either an inquiry of an investigation...." A few paragraphs later, he is quoted as saying, "The U.N. team went there to see what had happened...." [Emphasis mine.] That's not an investigation?
The United Nations insisted the U.N. group that went to the village shortly after the incident was not an "investigative body"; it refers to it as a fact-finding team.Now the spokesman is "unclear as to the exact mandate of the mission to the village...."
The United Nations handed over a report on the U.S. airstrike that killed a large number of Afghan villagers to Afghanistan and the United States but will not make it public, U.N. officials said Tuesday.[Emphasis mine.]
It will be up to U.S. and Afghan authorities, who are conducting a joint investigation of the July 1 attack in Uruzgan province, to release the U.N. report compiled by humanitarian workers who arrived on the scene hours after the airstrike, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
American forces may have breached human rights and then removed evidence after the so-called wedding party air strike that killed more than 50 Afghan civilians this month, according to a draft United Nations report seen by The Times.It hasn't even been a month, yet their investigation and report are finished? Methinks the rough rough draft was typed up a few months ago.
A few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary [William Perry] of the Crusading Americans had said that the explosions at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by cowardly terrorists.And there it is.
We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk could induce a grieving mother to laughter! And it shows the fears that have enveloped you all. Where was this courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place in 1983 CE (1403 A.H). You were transformed into scattered bits and pieces; 241 soldiers were killed, most of them Marines. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in less than twenty-four hours!
But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where, after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post-cold war leadership of the new world order, you moved tens of thousands of international forces, including twenty-eight thousand American solders, into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area in disappointment, humiliation, and defeat, carrying your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You had been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the heart of every Muslim and a remedy to the chests of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden, and Mogadishu.
His [Robert J. Hermann, then the company's top tax attorney and a managing director] tax department made a huge and unique contribution to Enron's bottom line. Members of his staff, working with some of the most prominent banks and law firms in the nation, engineered a series of intricate tax-reduction transactions that had boosted Enron's reported profits by nearly $1 billion between 1995 and 2000.(Emphasis mine.)
In the 1990s, banks and law firms began aggressively peddling "structured finance," complex deals in which companies set up separate affiliates or partnerships to help generate tax deductions or move assets and debts off the books. With Skilling's ascension to the presidency in 1997, Enron became increasingly dependent upon such deals to hit its financial targets.The point of all this being that President Bush had little to do with what was going inside Enron that led to its downfall. To see who did, you have to review who was president, whose regulators were in place, during these key times.
Bush administration officials have suggested that corporate practices got out of hand under the Clinton administration's Securities and Exchange Commission.Nicely done dodge in the interview. Can't finger Bush, so shifts to "these people," then back.
"These people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you scratch them, they go straight to blame," Clinton said. "Now, you know, I didn't blame his father for Somalia when we had that awful day memorialized in 'Black Hawk Down.' I didn't do that."
The book and film "Black Hawk Down" tell the story of a deadly 1993 attack on U.S. special forces, which had been sent to the famine-ravaged East African country by President George H.W. Bush during his last days in office.
An American attack on Iraq could profoundly affect the American economy, because the United States would have to pay most of the cost and bear the brunt of any oil price shock or other market disruptions, government officials, diplomats and economists say.Well, no shit. The mind boggles at how much work went into producing that self-evident statement. No doubt tomorrow the Times will carry an article declaring that experts and researchers worry that ice is cold.
"Just open a map," said a member of the Kuwaiti royal family in close consultation with Washington. "Afghanistan is in turmoil, the Middle East is in flames, and you want to open a third front in the region?"Truly. Therefore, wasn't it just such a war in 1991? Back then it was great that we were storming in to beat the living bejeesus out of Saddam, so this "member of the Kuwati royal famly" would return to his third of fourth palace. But today...? Nah!
"That would truly turn into a war of civilizations," he added.
[W]hat outrages politicians, activists, and political movements often sheds more light on their motivations than any of their publicly stated positions, I've compiled the following list of some of the modern American left's most reviled people, objects, institutions, and ideas.A great read.
People in Saudi Arabia are sick of talking about Sept. 11. They have little interest in examining why 15 of their countrymen hijacked U.S. commercial planes and killed 3,000 civilians; many prefer to believe that the attacks were the work of the CIA or the Mossad, and that the 15 hijackers were unwitting players in someone else's plot. "They were just bodies," a senior government official says. Spend an evening in Jidda, the hometown of Osama bin Laden, where young Saudis today flock to American chain restaurants and shopping malls to loiter away the stifling summer nights, and you rarely hear bin Laden's name. "They find it silly when people talk about al-Qaeda," says journalist Mohammed al-Kheriji, 28, as he sips a latte at the city's newest Starbucks. "People are worried about their own problems."The article goes on about how "the country seethes with open loathing for the U.S. and sympathy for bin Laden's cause." The 15 Saudi hijackers who killed themselves on 9/11 are revered as "the Fifteen."
How can they even pretend to be protecting people from Evil Big Corporations when they're actually serving as those corporations' paid lackeys?"They" are your classic Democrats. Brief blog entry has links to relevant sites.
[W]hat terrifies me at the airports now is not the terrorists or drunks. It is the fear that I won't be able to get through all the checkpoints, or that my car will be seized for parking within a mile of the airport, or that I will have forgotten my identity card, or that I'll forget one of my shoes while my toes are being examined for explosives, or that my foot odor will offend some examiner and get me arrested as a public nuisance.I do not fly all that often (well, other than a ride on my motorcycle). Indeed, I haven't flown for well over a decade. But last month I put my daughter on an airliner for a trip to Colorado to see her dearest friend in the known universe. Oy, the little Nazis they have working security, made more so by the stark contrast with the dear souls working the check-in counters (unlike McGovern's experience). What they saw was a dad putting his daughter on an airliner, entrusting her life (and his sanity) to them. What the little boot clicker at the security checkpoint saw was a big bald man, armed with a wallet and set of car keys (and nothing else): "Take off your shoes!"
"Austin Powers in Goldmember," the third film in actor Mike Myers' spy spoof series, earned a record-breaking $71.5 million during its first weekend at the North American box office, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.Is it wrong to admit that I thought it was funny, especially the opening sequence?
If you or I asked Congress for permission to legally hack other people's computers, we'd be laughed off Capitol Hill. Then we'd be investigated by the FBI and every other agency concerned with criminal violations of privacy and security.There is a bill running through Congress that grants the movie and music industries these very rights, and grants them immunity from prosecution (criminal or civil) for any damage they might cause.
While we all publicly claim to prefer substance to style, there's something to be said for rolling around naked on a revolving futuristic bed verdant with $20 bills or smashing around in a silver-gray Aston Martin D.B.5. Those are just a few of the pleasures that the '60s spy genre offers us -- vicariously. You can't have everything, especially a sports car with an ejector seat and a rear bullet shield.Nicely said, though my favorite Connery Bond film is "Goldfinger." And she earns a warm spot in me heart because she's the other person (besides me) who likes "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."
Liberals suffer incurably from naivete, the stupidity of the good heart. Who else but that oracle of American liberalism, the New York Times, could run the puzzled headline: "Crime Keeps On Falling, but Prisons Keep On Filling." But? How about this wild theory: If you lock up the criminals, crime declines.Rather priceless contrast, really.
Accordingly, the conservative attitude toward liberals is one of compassionate condescension. Liberals are not quite as reciprocally charitable. It is natural. They think conservatives are mean. ...
I’m guessing that either Judge Leonie Brinkema read Getting Past No over the weekend, or someone slipped a Xanax into her Cap’n Crunch. (Moussaoui may have gone the Xanax route as well because he, too, is better-behaved today.) Indeed, Moussaoui and Brinkema seem to have reached an unspoken arrangement wherein she’s become, for all intents and purposes, his lawyer. They don’t cut each other off, they grant small courtesies, and, as the death penalty looms larger, each of them seems focused on trying to comprehend the other.I don't necessarily agree with her conclusion that the government has no case, but her description of the exchanges between The Accused and Her Honor are excellent.
Four Israelis were killed at Hebron Friday when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on two cars driving along a settler road, Israeli officials said.Just as with the rabbi they were obviously striking at vital Israeli interests, or armaments production facilities, or command and control centers, or leaders of terrorist movements.
In the throes of a tech depression, companies including Microsoft and Yahoo are aggressively trying to push people to paid services by making it harder than ever to rely on the free ones. Apple Computer is cutting free e-mail service altogether.I'll deal with spam, just let me manage my email on my computer, not theirs.
And Wednesday came reports that an asteroid hurtling toward earth could hit us in 2019. Which gave me cause for optimism. Think of all our warring parties. We'd come together to battle the asteroid, pooling our best talent and sharing our genius, wouldn't we? And then once we blew the asteroid up, and had a party, and felt safe, we'd get back to fighting again.So much of this is good that I want to cut and paste the entire thing, but I won't. Click, read, enjoy.
It is amazing that all of this is happening, isn't it?
Rather than build investigations based on what is known about al Qaeda and the hijackers, the attorney general has directed the roundup and jailing of hundreds of individuals and compilation of dossiers on thousands of individuals and groups -- a dragnet targeted at the Arab American, Muslim and immigrant communities. While no one of any rational persuasion denies that Arab Muslim males perpetrated the horrific terrorist acts of 9/11, that fact hardly serves as justification for the racial profiling that characterizes initiatives coming out of the administration.And...
Feeding volumes of data into computers, inviting the participation of untrained civilians, targeting groups on the basis of ethnicity, religion and political interests and tasking law enforcement officials with dubious interrogation duties, are not effective use of the limited, through rapidly expanding, enforcement resources.Yet much of these actions are exactly appropriate. "Based on what is known about al Qaeda" is the precise reason initial investigations have focused on Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants. All of the 9/11 hijackers were immigrants (legal, illegal, or otherwise). More precisely, that same criminal (or, dare we say it, enemy) profile draws our attention to Saudis, since the majority of 9/11 particpants were from that specific country, where there is apparently a lack of people of "any rational persuasion," given the number of theories floated in that neck of the woods about how Israel and the CIA blew up the World Trade Center.
For example, on the ring tone site Zingy.com, you can download the "Funeral March" for free. Now, maybe if you’re in the cast of "Six Feet Under" that’s kind of cute. Maybe if you’re a Marine, it’s kind of charming to have "The Star Spangled Banner" on your phone. And maybe if you’re Al Gore, it would be kinda kooky to download the "Macarena". Such exceptions, however, are rare.
Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading. A draft bill seen by CNET News.com marks the boldest political effort to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom line.I can just hear the media execs screaming, "Stop this techie world, we want off! No, better still, give us control."
The conflict between what Fritz Hollings and the people who run him want, and what Microsoft's customers want, is creating another. There are lots of people out there who think they know where all this is going. I doubt they have more or better information sources than I do: And I freely admit I don't know what's going to happen. It's not too late for Microsoft to step back from this abyss. I sure hope they think it over and decide to go another way. Microsoft did very well under its old policies. Giving the bean counters their way with customer-hostile policies is often the first sign of a slow slide to a fast collapse.(You'll have to scroll down to read this portion.)
Microsoft Corp. has discovered that some users of its MSN TV service have downloaded a program that makes their set-tops dial the 911 emergency number instead of regular dial-up numbers, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.This from the people who want us to trust their .NET, Hailstorm, and Palladium initiatives. Wonderful.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle quietly slipped into spending bill language exempting his home state of South Dakota from environmental regulations and lawsuits, in order to allow logging in an effort to prevent forest fires.Ah, the mind boggles at how such people can operate. On the one hand they'll insist they protect the environment, and on the other completely exempt their home state from environmental provisions. It is gratifying to see Daschle recognize the reality that, uh, over-zealous environmentalists have actually endangered the forests they seek to protect. Want proof? Consider this fire current raging in California:
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Mr. Daschle, a Democrat, said the language to expedite logging is essential to reduce the timber growth that can fuel wildfires.
"As we have seen in the last several weeks, the fire danger in the Black Hills is high and we need to get crews on the ground as soon as possible to reduce this risk and protect property and lives," Mr. Daschle said in a statement late Monday night after a House-Senate conference committee agreed on the language.
The language was tucked inside the defense supplemental spending bill, which passed the House last night by a 397-32 vote. The overall measure, which spends $29 billion, will be taken up by the Senate today.
The provision says that "due to extraordinary circumstances," timber activities will be exempt from the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act, is not subject to notice, comment or appeal requirements under the Appeals Reform Act, and is not subject to judicial review by any U.S. court.
More than 20 lawsuits, appeals or reviews are blocking timber projects to remove fuel from the Black Hills -- some bottled up in bureaucracy since 1985, say Republican aides.
Along with torching thousands of acres, the McNalley fire also reignited a debate about whether environmentalists have blocked proposed thinning projects that would have prevented the fire from spreading and burning so hot.It's a case that's becoming classic. It's an "environmental disaster" if a logging company cuts down trees; it's "nature's way" if those same trees burn up.
In the early 1990s, the Sequoia National Forest had plans for several commercial logging projects that would have thinned out small trees and taken much bigger ones.
Environmentalists protested, appealing some projects and blocking others.
STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.All right, it's date 05/16/2002, but I just found it.
Six years ago, Muslim fundamentalist legislators pushed through a law banning the mixing of the sexes in classes, libraries, cafeterias, labs and extracurricular activities at Kuwait University. Compliance was lax until lawmakers grilled Education Minister Misaed al-Haroun about it in April, and he committed to full segregation by the end of the next school year.Oh, I guess it's just their culture. Just like terrorism....
Astronaut wannabes looking for a short space jaunt may soon have an alternative to shelling out millions of dollars for a trip to the international space station. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that also offers flights aboard Russian fighter jets and a micro-gravity "vomit comet" for private citizens, announced Thursday its partnership with XCOR Aerospace in California. The aerospace company is developing a suborbital rocket vehicle designed specifically for space tourists at a bargain price when compared with private trips to the space station.Well, I supposed I need to pay more attention to these things, not that I saw much coverage of this earlier story. And that's from 2001. Seems to me that time was that such an event would have gotten tremendous coverage, even with 9/11, a brewing war in Afghanistan, etc.
When California Gov. Gray Davis signs a car emissions bill into law on Monday, he'll be taking on not just the U.S. automotive industry but also President Bush. The law will require sharp cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas many scientists fear is warming the Earth. The industry and the president oppose mandatory cuts, but several other states -- New York among them -- could follow California's path.Wonderfully slanted article, but is "fair and balanced" compared to the radio news report I listen to this morning on NPR, which didn't even bother to present any opposing view, just Cal EPA director Hickox.
Enthusiasts of free software disrupted a Commerce Department meeting Wednesday, insisting on their right to debate the entertainment industry over anti-copying technologies.It seems the only way some activists get heard is by being obnoxious. There was the recent spat at the AIDS conference in Spain. The difference there, of course, was that they targeted a single representative--from the US--rather than the conference as a whole. In this instance, this was a group that was protesting their exclusion from the discussion.
[S]uch numbers distort the true picture: They lump combatants in with noncombatants, suicide bombers with innocent civilians, and report Palestinian “collaborators” murdered by their own compatriots as if they had been killed by Israel. Correcting for such distortions, we can arrive at a figure of 579 Palestinian noncombatants killed by Israel, compared to 433 Israeli noncombatants killed by Palestinians (see Graph 1.2). While Israelis account for a little more than 27 percent of the total fatalities as generally reported, they represent some 43 percent of these noncombatant victims. There are a number of valid ways of arriving at such corrected figures to compare the extent to which each side has been responsible for the killing of noncombatants; they all show a much less lopsided picture of the conflict than the raw totals do.The ICT piece goes on to describe methodology, and presents figures and graphs to bolsters it conclusions. All in all, a completely different picture is painted than the one you get with the typical media scorecard.
1984, that dreaded Orwellian year, has finally arrived. The phenomenon George Orwell predicted reached full bloom around 1989, and has been straggling to completion ever since. Few people noticed, however, because of a simple error in Orwell’s prediction. His analysis was right, but he got the sign wrong.While I can agree that technology had a major hand in the downfall of Communism in East Europe, and probably elsewhere, I can see signs of rising totalitarianism throughout the West, facilitated by that very same technology. Look at how many legislators and corporate whoevers are trying to control that technology, and even the Internet itself. Just a cautionary note....
His novel 1984, written in 1948, contained the foremost prophecy of the cold war: that technological advancement would render Stalinism unstoppable, with individual liberty the inevitable casualty. However, when the technologies that would enable this totalitarian global village reached fruition, the victim was not democracy, but totalitarianism itself. What went right?
What does Yahoo Mail have against mocha? That’s what users of the company’s free e-mail service may be wondering if they try to send a message using the word "mocha" and discover that while in transit, "mocha" mysteriously changes to "espresso." To protect users from malicious code, Yahoo uses an automated filter to swap out a handful of words such as "mocha" that pertain to Web code known as JavaScript.Egads, has past litigation led to this, a company seeking to "protect" us from some cracker or another?
Authorities in Orange County, Calif., confirmed Wednesday that the body found Tuesday is 5-year-old Samantha Runnion.Samantha was kidnapped from near her own home, dragged kicking and screaming into her assailant's car. This is any parent's worse nightmare, to be afraid to let your child play outside, even in your own front yard. How do you respond to threats such as these?
[Martin] Amis' tone doesn't match the earned belligerence you find in Conquest's revised post-glasnost version of "The Great Terror." His prose gives off a sense of appalled wonder. Underneath the steady accumulation of facts and horror stories, Amis is asking how anyone in his or her right mind can still consider Marxism as a means to a more just world; how people (like his pal [Christopher] Hitchens) can joke about their communist past without invoking the horror that someone who joked about his fascist past would; how the apologists for Stalin, despite having plenty of evidence as to the truth of Soviet Russia before glasnost, can be thought of any differently from Holocaust deniers.The descriptions would make for unbelievable fiction, only it all happened. So much for the glory of Communism....
By 2017, the Social Security system is scheduled to begin running a deficit. By 2041, the deficit could accumulate to $25 trillion. To avoid that would require either a 25% reduction in benefits or an increase in Social Security taxes to 17% from 12.4%, experts tell us. Moreover, many Americans still think the money they have paid in Social Security taxes is sitting in a trust fund on their behalf. Wrong. The money for decades was used for general fund purposes, leaving the trust fund with a mountain of nonnegotiable IOUs from the U.S. Treasury--to be repaid from higher taxes down the road. Talk about phony accounting.He makes the point that all this talk about bad accounting practices on Wall Street is never directed at how the Fed's manage their books (or any government body, actually). To do so, of course, would cause horrific panic that would make any tumble in the stock market seem like a romp in the park.
Lindh pleaded guilty to one charge of supplying services to the Taliban, the hardline Muslim government of Afghanistan ousted by a U.S.-led military coalition, and another charge that wasn’t in the original indictment alleging he carried explosives in the commission of a felony.Oh, but I thought the defense had a great case? When I was driving in to work, just this very morning, there was the story on NPR saying how difficult it might be for the prosecution; all the defense had to do was win or motion or two. The prosecution's entire case rested on Walker's statements, etc.
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Under terms of his deal with prosecutors, Lindh, 21, would serve two 10-year prison sentences consecutively and would cooperate fully with U.S. authorities in the investigation of al-Qaida and terrorism. Lindh’s lawyers agreed not to ask to have the sentence lowered at sentencing, which had not yet been scheduled. Lindh will get credit for the time he’s served since he was jailed in December.
There was one commentator that opined that the defense was full of raging blueberry muffins, and voila, he was right. Defense rolls, Johnny gets 20 years, case closed.
A fatwa from Sheik Muhammad bin Othaimeen, whose funeral last year attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, tackles whether good Muslims can live in infidel lands. The faithful who must live abroad should "harbor enmity and hatred for the infidels and refrain from taking them as friends," it reads in part."Well of course I hate you...." Oh, the twists of the mind....
Saudis in general, and senior princes in particular, reject the notion that this kind of teaching helps spawns terrorists.
"Well, of course I hate you because you are Christian, but that doesn't mean I want to kill you," a professor of Islamic law in Riyadh explains to a visiting reporter.
A recent software update for Microsoft's Windows Media Player requires users to permit the automatic installation of undisclosed future anti-piracy measures.The article draws your attention to a little bit of the EULA (end user license agreement) that came with the latest Windows Media Player update which reads:
In order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management "Secure Content", Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer.That's bad enough, but the next sentence in that paragraph is -- for me -- the killer:
These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. [Emphasis mine.]Microsoft will, of course, "use reasonable efforts" to let you know.
Newdow also said that taking an 8-year-old to church doesn't mean the girl is choosing to be religious – and at any rate, it doesn't matter what the child believes.
"The main thrust of this case is not my daughter, it's me," he said. [Emphasis mine]
"Our fair share would be $2.5 billion," he [Clinton] said. "The difference of where we are and where we need to be is less than two months of war in Afghanistan."Two questions: 1) How is 25% of the bill "our fair share"?
In the evenings, when my particular piece of Earth has turned away from the Sun, and is exposed instead to the rest of the cosmos, I sit in front of a keyboard, log on, and seek out the windows that look down at the planets and out at the stars.
"As a matter of fact, actually, we are only the victims of terrorism and Libya is against terrorism," he [Gadhafi] said.He is quite the comedian, yes, yes he is.
Ahmed Abdul Rahman, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "All that is happening to Israeli citizens is a normal consequence for their occupation and rejection of Palestinian rights."But if the attacks are a "normal consequence," which is the PA calling for them to be stopped?
Ismail Abus Shanab, a Hamas spokesman, called the Amnesty International report "completely biased."
Hamas has claimed responsibility for more suicide bombings than any other Palestinian group and has vowed to continue the terror attacks despite a call from the Palestinian Authority to halt them.
Name-calling is the last resort of once powerful institutions that are finding themselves losing control in the face of rapid media change. Never mind that the same media giants are often the manufactures of the new media technologies we are using to skip their commercials or that some of the advertisements they want us to watch are marketing us features which allow us to skip advertisements. Never mind that we now have many more media options and we need the networks frankly far less than the networks need us.There's more, so please click over and read.
I don't know about you but I want to renegotiate my contract! ...
The tourist who videotaped police beating a handcuffed youth in Inglewood, Calif., is being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury Thursday.And he didn't sound very happy at the prospect. Indeed, Mr. Crooks doesn't sound too happy about the entire affair. Listening to him on the radio yesterday, he told about how he had been a past victim of police brutality, etc., and his predisposition toward the entire affair was quite clear. Namely, the police have no business hitting anyone anytime.
Prosecutor Curt Livesay told local radio station KFIAM that Mitchell Crooks was ordered to bring the original videotape.
Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn has called for the firing of Morse, whom Dorn accused of a felony assault. Dorn said there is no excuse for such force on a handcuffed suspect, regardless of what happened previously.And obviously Inglewood needs a new mayor, because this one's an idiot. If he actually succeeds in getting Morse fired, he's just increased the cost to the city. How so? Because I'm willing to bet that Inglewood PD has a police officers association (union). That association probably belongs to PORAC (Peace Officers Research Association of California), which in turn automatically enrolls them in LDF (Legal Defense Fund). Under standard contract terms, the city of Inglewood is liable to pay all damages in any action brought against its officers. So, while someone may sue and specific officer for a specific "offense," the city pays. It's part of the deal.
Even before Enron, WorldCom and President Bush's call for a crackdown on corporate crooks, local executives have been hauled into Bay Area federal courts in unprecedented numbers in recent years, accused of cooking the books, lying to securities regulators and insider trading.Personally, I think it's all an outgrowth of the dot-com eruption. Little companies made major bank on little more than promises. When the bubble burst...well, that's history. Large companies saw how it was done and started instituting similar "tactics." This didn't happen overnight, or over the course of a single year. Unfortunately, the collapse can happen much faster.
In fact, as the president Tuesday declared a fresh emphasis on cleaning up company boardrooms, federal prosecutors in Oakland were culminating a nine-year investigation with the trial of a former executive accused of orchestrating one of Silicon Valley's earliest investor fraud scandals.
The father of Elizabeth Smart, the 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her bedroom last month, said Wednesday he has received an anonymous letter indicating someone wants to negotiate the girl's release.This case has a distinct odor, and none too pleasant a one at that.
Some societies, we often hear, are simply accustomed to authoritarian rule--maybe they like it? And in any event, or so we have often heard: better the devil we know. Who can predict who might replace Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il or the House of Saud?Europeans love stability, having been so unsettled for so long. They are also, apparently, used to tyrants and dictatorships, having had so many for so long--and still having them as neighbors and such. While many embrace the notion of spreading democracy, others do not. How else do you explain those that embrace Arafat as if he were some great savior of the people, rather than a murderous thug?
Listening to such rationalizations, I am sometimes reminded of an underground pamphlet, written in English and handed around in Beijing just after the 1989 Communist Party killing spree that ended the huge democratic protests that centered in Tiananmen Square. "Stability the Key to Absolutely Everything," ran the headline on this screed. It was a satire, poking fun at the regime's insistence that the Chinese army had murdered Chinese civilians in order to preserve the vaunted stability that the Communist Party insisted that it, and it alone, could confer on China.
Broadband providers are cracking down on popular Wi-Fi networks, threatening to cut service to customers who set up the inexpensive wireless systems and allow others to freely tap into their Internet access. Time Warner Cable of New York City has given 10 customers less than a week to stop using their accounts to provide a wireless local area network available to anyone within 300 feet. The letters are just an initial volley; Time Warner expects to send additional letters, while AT&T Broadband also is preparing similar letters for some of its customers.Oh, this is annoying for the simple fact that I can see both sides.
The crackdown is reminiscent of the cable industry’s attempts to target cable thieves in the 1980s, and it reflects the soaring popularity of wireless Net access. After being introduced just a couple years ago, so-called Wi-Fi "hot spots" that tap into cable or digital subscriber lines (DSL) are now in at least 15 million homes and offices.
The Saudi royals are thus these days an increasingly troubled bunch. They are quite understandably exasperated that they have failed to earn needed capital by developing nonpetroleum industries, and that their citizenry lacks either the practical skills to create thriving commercial enterprises or the individual drive and initiative to build businesses from the ground up. They are even more irked that their imported gadgets have brought with them hostile ideas, critical lectures and unwelcome advice, as if air-conditioners and neurosurgeons should come without consequences and as freely as oil out of the desert. And they are still more dyspeptic that some people persist in thinking there is something unhealthy in the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudi nationals.And still we take aim at Iraq....
"They're expressing themselves and that's their freedom of speech," he [Anthony Fauci] said. "Now they've got to give the secretary his freedom of speech."...and I'm left shaking my head in wonder, at the sheer hypocrisy of things, not to mention the whining and crying. Act Up is not one of my favorite activist groups because they are, as a group, assholes. No, that's not sound reasoning, but that's the point. They don't want to discuss an issue. They epitomize the phrase "my way or the highway"; they are right, you are wrong, and shut up, we don't want to hear the argument. In the name of free speech, they stifle free speech, or -- more to the point -- the free exchange of ideas.
It was not to be. [U.S. Secretary of Health] Thompson continued with his speech before stopping several minutes into the protest, by which time about a dozen of the activists had climbed onto the stage with him. When their shouts faded and they retreated to the back of the audience after about 20 minutes, Thompson resumed his speech, only to be drowned out by a second round of booing and screams of "murderer, murderer."
A major five-year programme to develop the "holy grail" of HIV vaccine research has been launched by a team led by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Their goal is a vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies to destroy the virus before it can take hold, as well as triggering the immune system to kill infected cells.More power to 'em. Unless, of course, they offend Act Up, or don't perform to their specs. In which case, I'm sure that, once more, silence will equal death.
Despite a storm of complaints raised by her action, Prof Baker stood by her decision, telling The Telegraph: "I deplore the Israeli state. Miriam [Shlesinger] knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation."All the while I'm reading, I'm thinking that this Professor Mona Baker would be the first to howl if someone were to do likewise to her, just because, say, she's British. Lo and behold, further into the story:
She [Prof Baker] alleged that since the sackings she had been the victim of a hate campaign.So, she engages in intimidation and blatantly racist behavior...and is appalled when it happens to her. Shocking, I say, simply shocking!
"My husband and I receive hate mail every day, up to 50 [letters] a day, some of it extremely obscene," she said. "I can't read it out it is so obscene and very threatening. It is also sent to my university, to my vice-chancellor and to some of my colleagues, and they threaten people who want to stay on the board. The Americans are the worst offenders.
"There is a large intimidation machine out there which is waiting to intimidate anyone that it doesn't approve of."
...Frankenheimer had a long and important career as a filmmaker, and leaves a filmography that should make most young filmmakers today tremble in awe. This is the guy who directed BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY and THE TRAIN and SECONDS. Any one of those movies would be enough to cement his name, but to have essentially directed them back to back to back is staggering.Every one of those is a memorable film. "The Manuchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May" illustrate how to make a political thriller without the need to condemn one party over another (a la "The American President" and "The Contender"). And I can't watch "The Train" enough, as much as for Frankenheimer's direction as Burt Lancaster's extraordinary work.
A sense that the worst plague in human history remains out of control dominated talk on Sunday as 15,000 scientists, health workers and activists gathered here for the opening of the world’s biggest AIDS conference.The article goes on to, of course, say that the wealthy countries have to give more. More money, more free drugs, more of everything. There's even an idiot statement that AIDS could create "potential havens for terrorists."
...In the Webcast world, however, it’s possible for Jim and Wanda Atkinson to run one of the more popular sites--and one day, they hope, a profitable ad-supported business--by playing the tunes of, say, Dashboard Confessional. Possible, that is, until Oct. 20.Gotta love it. Just as Microsoft seeks to raise barriers to competition, record labels proclaim that for our good, webcasters have to pay exorbinant fees in order to play songs over the Internet, fees that conventional radio does not have to pay.
That’s the day the bill comes due for a government-imposed performance fee brought about by pressure from the recording industry. The fees, retroactive to 1998, “would put us out of business along with 90 percent of the industry,” says Jim Atkinson. It would be the day Web music dies--and a classic instance of an Old Economy industry leveraging its power to kill a promising alternative.
The UNDP assembled a panel of distinguished Arab authors, including Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador to the U.N., to take a hard look at the state of their own society. And while they don't fail to mention the evils of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, they clearly realize the plight of 1% of the Arabs can't account for all the region's ills. Nor is this yet another plea for more aid from the rich countries. The report places blame squarely where it belongs--unaccountable and unrepresentative governments in the Arab countries themselves.An indication of this, taken from the report, are the "Quality of Institutions in the Arab countries: standardized indicators," from Chapter 7, "Liberating human capabilities," page 113 of the report. Table 7-1 presents these standardized indicators, referring to high, medium, and low HDI groups. The high for graft was an indicator of 0.237, while the low was -0.953 -- that's right, a negative index! The average for the 17 Arab states involved in the study was -0.262.
On the basis described above, no Arab country enjoys high human welfare. Seven Arab countries, representing only 8.9 per cent of the population of the sample of 17, enjoy medium human welfare. The remaining 10 Arab countries, accountin for 91.1 per cent of the sample population, have low human welfare.The bar chart included illustrates this to rather devastating effect. (Quote and bar chart found in Chapter 7, page 113).
A study of young gay and bisexual men in major U.S. cities found that more than three-quarters of those infected with HIV were unaware they had the AIDS virus.Some day, hopefully soon, we'll start treating the AIDS epidemic like we've treated dozens of epidemics before it, and then rather than just throw money at it, we'll actually try and get a handle on it. First thing to do, though, is take the politics out of a medical issue.
First came a U.S. 9th circuit Court of Appeals ruling on June 26th, overturning a California law that requires public schools to lead students in the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance-which includes the phrase "one nation, under God." This law is plainly inappropriate in a country that prides itself on free speech and free will. Forcing anyone to say anything, much less making children pledge loyalty, would be far more appropriate under a totalitarian dictatorship. This is America. My right to say my country sucks when I think it does is what truly makes America great.