The Committee to Protect Bloggers has asked people to observe February 22^nd as Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.

It can’t hurt to highlight the problems people are having around the world saying things their governments don’t like. I don’t think many doubt that there are a few people who think that some of us belong in prison.

My favorite quote:

…John Schwarz, president and chief operating officer of Symantec Corp., would rather see Microsoft concentrate on fixing security flaws.

“We believe they’d be better off in focusing on making sure that their platform, the Windows operating system, is less subject to attack,” Schwarz said.

Microsoft is going to start offering software to protect its flawed software from people exploiting the flaws. They are going to use this opportunity to generate even more money from the people who suffer from having bought the flawed software in the first place.

While I don’t support “frivolous lawsuits”, how, exactly, is it not a tort for someone to sell you a defective product, and then charge you for the fix to the flaw. Wouldn’t it be suspected that you had intentionally left flaws, so that you could market the fix?

I know I’m automatically suspicious of Microsoft, but I’m having a hard time believing that a dedicated team of professional programmers is totally unable to write a software package that can’t be attacked by a lone wolf programmer operating out of a dorm room.

Microsoft has the cash to create the best operating system on the planet, but they are having a hard time competing on the basis of technical competence with creation of a lone Finnish student’s adaptation of a system used as a teaching aid which was conceptually based on a system written by a underemployed engineer who wanted a computer to play a game.

If Linus Torvalds, Andrew Tanenbaum, and Kenneth Thompson can do this, why can’t billionaire Bill Gates get it done? It’s not as if there aren’t a lot of experienced programmers looking for work.

The White House has a chef because it has often given state dinners in the past. The Bush’s don’t seem interested in state dinners. If you’re not going to hold big dinners, you don’t need a chef: you need a cook.

We pay the President $400K, provide a house, and an expense account. If his wife wants a cook, he can afford to hire one, although, since his wife doesn’t seem to have a lot to do, I don’t understand why she can’t cook for the two of them.

If they like a particular meal from Crawford, they spend enough time there to buy the food and freeze it for use at the White House, or they could order out. Washington has a lot of restaurants and the eateries that sell barbeque and Tex-Mex usually have take out. At one time I might have been worried about security concerns, but after Gannon, that’s obviously not a problem at the White House these days.

Paying an executive chef to make tamales for two people is not my idea of a reasonable use of tax dollars, nor is buying a yacht or new helicopters when the deficit is at a half trillion dollars a year.

Just a hint Laura: there are hungry children in this country with two working parents, so don’t expect me for care that you can’t get tacos from the White House kitchen when your husband is cutting food stamps.

[Edit: My Dad retired years before my Mother and he did the cooking because he was the one with the time.]