Posts from — May 2007

BBC reports: Prince Harry not to serve in Iraq

Prince Harry will not be sent to Iraq, the head of the British Army has said.

General Sir Richard Dannatt said the prince’s deployment would pose an “unacceptable” threat to him and the men who served alongside him.

It had been reported that militant groups had planned to kill or kidnap the young royal.

Clarence House said Prince Harry was “very disappointed” but will not be leaving the Army as a result.

[snip]

The general said he had reached his decision following a visit to the region at the end of last week.

“There have been a number of specific threats, some reported some not reported, which relate directly to Prince Harry as an individual.

“These threats expose not only him but also those around him to a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable.”

This is a tough call, but in the end General Dannatt had to come to grips with the reality that Prince Harry represented an increased threat to those around him because of the PR value of killing or capturing him. The family and friends of the Prince’s unit would surely blame any deaths or injuries on his deployment.

It’s too bad he couldn’t have just gone without the announcement of his deployment until after he returned, but that’s not the way the system works.

I’m sure NTodd won’t feel any glee at the news: N.Y. attorney general accuses Dell of fraud

Dell is being accused of making false promises to customers to drive sales, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The court filing accuses Dell and Dell Financial Services of fraud, false advertising and deceptive business practices, including offering misleading financing, and failing to honor rebates, warranties and service contracts.

The state of New York is asking for an injunction of Dell’s allegedly bad business practices and an order that the world’s second-largest PC maker pay an unspecified amount of damages to customers found to be affected.

Dell spokesman Bob Pearson told CNET News.com that the company will contest the suit. “We are confident that our practices will be found to be fair and appropriate. While even one dissatisfied customer is too many, the allegations in the AG’s filing are based upon a small fraction of Dell’s consumer transactions in New York. We are committed to providing a positive experience to all of our customers every day,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

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Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat has an software patent update, Background Info On Software Patents, on an earlier post about Microsoft threats.

Stephen Shankland, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, as more on the issue: Experts say Microsoft’s patent quest won’t go far

Microsoft said the Linux kernel infringes 42 Microsoft patents, but [Linus] Torvalds is among those who refuses to investigate whether he’s violating any.

“There are several reasons why engineers should not read other people’s patents, only their own. And it’s not a ‘hide your head in the sand’ issue, it’s a very practical issue of it being a waste of time,” Torvalds said.

For one thing, developing technology without looking at patents lets a person honestly say they developed that technology independently, which helps show that the patent in question doesn’t meet the requirement of a technology not being obvious, he said. And engineers aren’t likely to comprehend patents in the first place: “Unless you have a patent attorney at your side, patent language usually makes no sense.”

He derided Microsoft for spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) rather than tackling the issue forthrightly. “If Microsoft were to actually tell people what patents they claim we violate, we could either laugh in their face and show prior art, or just show them to be obvious, or we could do things differently,” he said.

Microsoft has a long history of using FUD to damage competitors, and it’s about time they really got slammed for their anticompetitive practices. They have not, to date, developed any new or innovative products. They have brought out different versions of existing products and used market share and predatory pricing to destroy the competition. The free software they give you today, will cost you tomorrow.

Where to begin?

First off the word is spelled TSAR, not CZAR. The Tsars were Russian and that’s how Russians pronounce the word. The Cyrillic letter “Ц” is extremely consistent in its pronunciation.

The title Tsar [Царь] is the shortened version of the Roman family name, Caesar [Цецарь], which was later [John IV the Awesome, 1547] used as a title. The same name was used as the title of the German emperor, Kaiser.

Ellroon’s Rants from the Rookery was the first place I saw it mentioned that the Shrubbery had found someone to accept the “one ring to rule them all”.

While he doesn’t appear to have the reduced physical stature of a Hobbit, Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, is a bit short of rank as he has three stars and a date of promotion of 08/16/2006. He has to be among the more junior Lieutenant Generals in the Army. Actually his wife, Dr. Jane Holl Lute, has more rank as the Assistant Secretary-General for peacekeeping operations at the United Nations.

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That’s the symbol of the Strategic Rocket Forces [Ракетные войска стратегического назначения]. I spent a lot of time watching their Soviet version. They weren’t quite as good as US capabilities, but close counts in nuclear weapons.

If the our so-called “Soviet expert” and Secretary of State keeps it up, we may find the SRF back in the news in a big way. Nobody knows if or when the Iranians will have nuclear weapons, but the SRF already controls the second largest number of such weapons on the planet.

While it is disheartening to hear “No breakthrough for US and Russia” it is very unsettling to hear “US to ignore Russia missile fears“.

Condoleezza Rice cannot be unaware that there are Russian words for irony [ирония] and hypocrisy [лицемерие]. She should certainly know better than to complain that Putin shares the Shrubbery’s views on the “unitary executive”. The only difference is that Putin decided to grab the energy wealth for the Russian government, while the Shrubbery wants it to go to Big Oil.

Basing missiles in Poland without having Russia on-board with the idea displays an incredible lack of diplomatic skill and unnecessarily increases tension in the world.

The BBC reports Hubble spots ring of dark matter

Astronomers have found one of the best pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, a mysterious quantity that pervades our Universe.

They have identified what appears to be a ghostly ring in the sky which is made up of this enigmatic substance.

This is why the Hubble needs to be kept active. There is so much to learn and to know. Sometimes we find that our experiments already exist if we can find them.

There was a bit of news at Красная Звезда : В ВВС РОССИИ – НОВЫЙ ГЛАВКОМ

В главном штабе Военно-воздушных сил России министр обороны РФ Анатолий Сердюков представил руководящему составу ВВС нового главнокомандующего. В соответствии с Указом Президента РФ им стал генерал-полковник Александр Зелин…

Oh, I see, sorry. The Russian Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, announced the appointment of the new Chief of Staff for the Russian Air Force: Colonel-General Aleksander Zelin.

Jonathan Fildes, Science and technology reporter, BBC News, reports on Scratch – Free tool offers ‘easy’ coding

A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been launched.

Primarily aimed at children, Scratch does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages.

Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks.

The digital toolkit, developed in the US at MIT’s Media Lab, allows people to blend images, sound and video.

This could get addictive.

Has anyone seen Michael Palin Terry Jones and Gordon Brown in the same room? How do we know that Gordon Brown isn’t Michael Pain Terry Jones with a Scot’s accent?

Update: I had my Pythons twisted.

Lurch at Main and Central wonders Is the Stryker Striking Out?. Then Swopa at Needlenose adds his point of view.

Like a lot of things in the military the Stryker is serving in a role it wasn’t designed for, and doesn’t work well in that different role.

General Eric Shinseki, the man who knew how many troops were needed for the Iraq conflict, was the “horse” pulling for the Infantry Carrier Vehicle. That designation is important because it tells you what the Stryker was designed to do – carry an infantry squad. It was a replacement for a canvas-sided truck.

During development the Stryker armor was upgraded from simple fragmentation protection to protection from 7.62mm and .50 caliber armor piercing rounds. It couldn’t go heavier without losing its ability to be carried by a C-130, a major requirement for the design.

It wasn’t a replacement for the HMMWVee, or the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, or the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, it was designed to replace a six-wheel truck.

The Military Times says the Army to make request for 17,000 MRAPs, and the Stryker definitely wasn’t designed as a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle [MRAP] like the Cougar and Buffalo.

The Stryker is certainly better than a truck, or a Humvee, but it wasn’t designed for urban warfare. I’m not going to fault it for not being all things to all people, or for not being the greatest thing since sliced bread.  It fulfills its design goals adequately, although real-world experience will probably point to improvements.

I had a CV-22 [Osprey] fly over the car when I was out today, and it didn’t crash!

It was in low and level flight and is probably one of the ugliest things I have ever seen in the air.

But, it didn’t crash, so there are exceptions to the common wisdom about the aircraft.

[05/11/07] Laura Smith-Spark, BBC News, Washington: US military takes Iraq war to YouTube

The US military has taken the war in Iraq into cyberspace, with the launch of its own channel on the video-sharing website YouTube.

[05/14/07] Rob Watson, BBC defence and security correspondent: US blocks soldiers from websites

The US military is to block troops from using YouTube and MySpace and 11 other popular websites for sharing photos, video clips and messages.

[05/02/07] Army Regulation 530–1: Operations Security (OPSEC) – commanders must approve blog posts and e-mails.

Next up, the Stars and Stripes will be replaced by the Красная Звезда so there is no doubt left about the intention of the Party to return to its Stalinist roots.

[I’m having a hard time visualizing Halliburton as part of the proletariat.]

The article on the Pope’s visit to Brazil is headlined: Pope blames Marxism, capitalism for problems. In the article he also blast autocrats and liberals.

So, if all of those things are the problem, what the solution? You sort of need a government and an economy, so give us a hint.

This time to my west in Escambia county on the Perdido River [the border between Florida and Alabama] near the town of Beulah, south of I-10. Smoke advisories are in effect around Pensacola.

They expect to have the fire contained tomorrow, but aren’t sure why it started.

Pensacola had a record high of 93° today, so it looks like a it’s going to be a long summer. We may get to the point that we would welcome a tropical storm to cool things off and wet things down.

UPDATE: National Weather Service Statement as of 10:36 AM CDT on May 14, 2007

… Smoke from the south Georgia… North Florida wildfires is spreading gradually to the west across the Florida Panhandle… South Alabama and into southeast Mississippi…