Posts from — June 2007

Sox In Action

Snf, Snf, Snf…..

[Editor: We all really need a break from the kittens and this is a rare picture of Sox actually doing something. It’s not that Sox doesn’t do anything, but I normally am too busy cleaning up the mess to think of a camera.]

Friday Ark

The BBC has imaginative headlines: FBI tries to fight zombie hordes

The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.

The initiative is part of an ongoing project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.

The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.

The agency said the zombies or bots were “a growing threat to national security”.

…

The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.

This operation recently passed a significant milestone as it racked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.

Wow, I’m impressed – the FBI actually doing something that has a chance of cleaning up some the problems with spam and denial of service attacks.  On the other hand – Operation Bot Roast?

CNN trying to act like a news source by carrying this Associated Press story: Space station computers rebooted, partial power restored

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) — Russian computers that control the international space station’s orientation and oxygen and water supplies were partly working again Thursday after failing the day before.

Flight controllers in Moscow were able to re-establish some communication with the computers overnight, and Russian engineers were working Thursday to restore the rest of the system, NASA space station flight director Holly Ridings said.

“They’ve made a lot of progress,” she said. “There are some cleanup steps to do still and some investigation.”

Officials with NASA and the Russian space agency still don’t know why the computers went down. They had never seen that type of failure on the space station before, and they believe it may be related to electrical power rather than computer software.

A new solar array had been unfolded outside the station Tuesday to help provide power for the orbiting outpost, and astronauts spent Wednesday hooking up a joint that will let the solar arrays track the sun.

I don’t want to go all Fristian with an extremely long distance diagnosis, but the problem, possibly power related occurs as people are mucking about with the solar arrays that supply power. I get a feeling the two events might be related.

Why, you may ask are a picture readily identifiable as Thomas the Tank Engine [to anyone who is around toddlers] and the symbol for chemical weapons in the same post?

As Whig at Cannablog points out, the people who added counter tops to your pet food and antifreeze to your toothpaste are using lead paint on wooden toys.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission if you have any Thomas & Friends™ Wooden Railway Toys, you should immediately take them away from the children and return them to the place of purchase or manufacturer.

Nothing from China should be allowed in the United States without a complete analysis and 100% inspection.

The US Office of Strategic Services provided materiel to a gentleman named Ho Chi Minh to battle the Japanese in World War II. That certainly worked out well.

The follow on organization, the CIA, provided materiel to a number of people including a man named Osama bin Laden to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan. That worked just as well.

No matter how often, or how spectacularly the concept fails, some people keep returning to the “wisdom” of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

IT IS NOT TRUE! STOP ALREADY!!

As Swopa notes, the experiment with arming Sunnis in Anbar province isn’t working out so well, but they just will not learn.

Swopa, ‘Noz, Steve Soto, Charles 2, and BadTux all see it coming. They all know this is going to end badly, but Major General Rick Lynch thinks it’s a good idea to fight “al Qaeda in Iraq” by providing materiel to Sunni groups like the Islamic Army of Iraq.

Today Rook notes in his post, Under Estimated Again, that the military in Iraq is calling for a surge in the surge – more troops. No word as to where they will come from, but if I had a child in Scouting, I might be worried.

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Adopted as the flag of the United States of America by the Flag Resolution of 1777 enacted on 14 June, 1777.

The flag was first flown from Fort Stanwix, on the site of the present city of Rome, New York, on August 3, 1777. It was first under fire three days later in the Battle of Oriskany, August 6, 1777.

An official flag has a rise to run ratio of 1 to 1.9 [the flag should be 1.9 times as long as it is high] with the canton [the dark blue part] that rises over the top seven stripes with a run of 40% of the flag’s run.

The only time you will see a “correct” US Flag is if you see the official colors of a military unit. Most flags are 3’X5′ or 4’X6′ instead of 3’X5.7′ or 4’X7.6′.

Frances Bellamy, the Baptist minister and socialist who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance was from Rome, New York.

Update: a picture of Pedro Guzman is at the ACLU-SoCal site [via Hipparchia in comments].

TBogg pointed out this SoCal tragedy.

An Associated Press report from the San Diego Union Tribune on the case of Pedro Guzman:

[Los Angeles County] Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the department followed procedures correctly.

“My understanding is that this individual said he was a Mexican national and was in the country illegally when we interviewed him,” Whitmore said. “We turn that information over to immigration officials, who then re-interview him.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed he had been deported and said the agency had done so correctly.

“ICE only processes persons for removal when all available credible evidence suggests the person is an alien,” read a statement. “That process was followed here and ICE has no reason to believe that it improperly removed Pedro Guzman.” An agency spokeswoman declined to comment further because the lawsuit was pending.

Fact: Mr. Guzman is known to be illiterate, and is in the court records as a US citizen. He is also known to be of diminished capacity. He is a US citizen and he was “deported”. There is no conceivable way of characterizing this as anything other that a F**K UP on the part of the LA Sheriff and ICE. Tijuana is not kind to people like Pedro Guzman, and it is very possible that he has died. This is why you don’t give the government unlimited, unrestricted powers, they are not competent to handle even restricted powers.

The family asked for help and the authorities stonewalled. People need to go to jail over this.

This from ABC News : Tearful Testimony in $54 Million Pants Lawsuit

A Washington, D.C. law judge broke down in tears and had to take a break from his testimony because he became too emotional while questioning himself about his experience with a missing pair of pants.

Administrative law judge Roy Pearson is representing himself in civil court and claimed that he is owed $54 million from a local dry cleaner who he says lost his pants, despite a sign in their store which ensures “Satisfaction Guaranteed.”

The case gained national attention soon after the lawsuit was filed. The pants are expected to be introduced into evidence, although the judge says the pants are not his, and the correct pants are still missing.

The sartorial loss caused Pearson to suffer what he calls severe “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort.”

It is time for an intervention. This guy is a judge and he is overcome with grief over a pair of pants? Why is this case in court? This is why there are mental health laws. This is the reason they changed “one size fits all” to “one size fits most,” because of people like this judge.

There was a time when I had my suits made to order in Britain. They had better fabric, and nothing fits like a custom suit. If you have spent $1000 on a suit, you take it to the place you bought it for alterations, not to a Korean dry cleaners. If it was an older suit and the alterations were because of weight gain or loss, don’t waste your money, it won’t fit right.

Kevin Drum wonders about Matthew Yglesias’s endorsement of this strategy:

Zbigniew Brzezinski at the conference says the US and Israel should try to put their demands for Iranian disarmament in the context of support for a regional nuclear-free zone (i.e., Israeli nuclear disarmament). After all, he says, if we’re supposed to believe that Israel’s nuclear arsenal isn’t a sufficient deterrent to ensure Israeli security in the face of Iran’s nuclear program, then it obviously isn’t a very valuable asset.

Matt thinks this will put pressure on Iran and will be a good thing. Kevin thinks it’s a waste of time because Israel wouldn’t agree to it and Iran would use it as a stalling tactic.

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While CNN doesn’t seem to care, CBS notes: Iraq Braces For Worst After Shrine Blast

(CBS/AP) Suspected al Qaeda bombers toppled the towering minarets of Samarra’s revered Shiite shrine [The Shrine of the Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari] on Wednesday, adding new provocation to old a year after the mosque’s Golden Dome was destroyed.

The attack stoked fears of an upsurge in intra-Muslim violence. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government asked for U.S. troop reinforcements in Samarra, 60 miles north of here, and for a heightened U.S. military alert in the capital.

But within hours, three Sunni mosques south of Baghdad went up in flames, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan, and attackers set fire to three more mosques in the capital itself.

Shorter General Barry McCaffrey [USA Retired] on NPR “Oh shit, it’s time to leave!”

Juan Cole echoes that sentiment, in a very scholarly fashion.

[Note: The CNN top stories at 7PM CST were pathetic, even for an “Entertainment” section.]

Scout at First Draft reports on the Anderson Cooper New Orleans piece and the inclusion of a segment on trailers that were trashed: “FEMA officials say nearly 10 percent of them came back unfit to use again.”

Back in August of 2005 I did a post on trailers:

FEMA brought in 1500 travel trailers to be used for housing after hurricane Ivan last Fall. The local NPR station reports that 900 of those trailers were damaged by hurricane Dennis including 200 listed as destroyed.

FEMA refused to allow the trailers to be moved for protection. People weren’t looking for any help moving them, they just wanted permission to move them at their own expense. FEMA’s refusal cost the government over 13% of its trailers locally.

The report also doesn’t mention the loss of trailers at FEMA’s storage site in Arkansas, because they were improperly protected for storage. Those trailers were brand new and never used.

A month short of his 90^th birthday Donald Jeffrey Herbert, better known to Boomers as Mr. Wizard, died today. The Associated Press has a short obituary.

For a lot of us, this was our first taste of science, and you could do it in your kitchen without a lot of equipment or special ingredients. He was responsible for a lot people entering science, and was a hell of a teacher.

Update: NPR has a remembrance by Ira Flatow and links to clips of the show.

One of the complaints I heard reported in discussions by Russian officials about the proposed deployment of the “Tinker Bell anti-missile parasol” was the failure of the US to demonstrate any appreciation for the efforts of Russia to gain access to bases in the former Soviet central Asian republics for the attack on the Taliban. The Russians were annoyed that the US has never acknowledged what they did.

This is the same complaint heard from Iranian and Syrian officials – we helped after 9/11, but the US has never even said thank you, and now threatens us.

This has been the pattern of this administration. People play nice, and the Hedgemony acts as if it is their due, and you don’t thank the lower classes for rendering homage to our greatness. This is the attitude that got the US kicked out of Uzbekistan, and will soon cost us our use of the base in Kyrgystan. These are sovereign governments and they aren’t going to put up with US arrogance.

The entire foreign policy seems to be: do it our way or we’ll bomb you. That’s not exactly a path to peace and stability.

To prevent Spam the system holds comments with more than 3 links and flag posts that contain certain words, that I selected from several spam storms. Comments on any post are closed after 30 days.

New posters have to be approved once, but if you change your name or e-mail address, you will get flagged as new and will have to be approved again before appearing in the comments.

I don’t edit or change posts, unless requested by the individual.

For the individual who used the identity “ahmedinajad”, I have no problem with what you wrote, but it was over 2100 words and contained 12 links. If you don’t feel you can edit it down, how about posting the entire thing somewhere, and then post a condensed version with a link to the expanded version. I pay for my bandwidth and storage, and there are plenty of free blog sites out there. I don’t have a problem with people promoting their content in a relevant comment thread.

If you are using graphics, please copy them to your site, or let me know you’re are linking to them. If I own the copyright I don’t have a problem with it.