Posts from — December 2009

“Boldly going

where no man has gone before.”

The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

The BBC reports that Microsoft admits code theft for Chinese blog Juku

Microsoft has indefinitely suspended its Chinese microblogging service MSN Juku after admitting that it “copied” code used to create the site.

A vendor contracted to work for the software giant was caught lifting code from a rival Canadian start-up, Plurk.

According to Plurk as much as 80% of the basecode was “stolen directly”.

I’m shocked to discover that Microsoft, an archenemy of illegal software piracy, has allowed itself to be hoodwinked by a contractor into deploying plagiarized code. 😈

A Pensacola News Journal editorial: Making dollars and sense

The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deserves credit for leveraging its fleet service garage as an asset to help shore up its budget in lean times. Opening it up to other local governments makes good sense (as in dollars and cents).

Former Sheriff Ron McNesby set up the vehicle garage as a way to save money by doing in-house maintenance and repair. He built a well-equipped, full-service mechanics shop.

Now Sheriff David Morgan has capitalized on the operation by opening its doors to other local law enforcement agencies.

The Escambia County Sheriff’s garage charges $35/hour, while the private sector charges $85/hour. The Sheriff’s garage works on the Crown Vics and Impalas with the police packages, and the standard law enforcement additional equipment. They have the spare parts for this limited market in stock.

As I know a few mechanics, they aren’t making much more than $15/hour in this area, so you do the math. Another important consideration is that you don’t have to worry about someone smashing a $400 [or more] light bar into the ceiling when they put a patrol car on a lift.

Kimberley on red alert as cyclone approaches

Cyclone Laurence is bearing down on the northern Western Australia coast, bringing with it winds of up to 285 kilometres per hour [175 mph].

The small but intense cyclone has been upgraded to a category 5 system and is located 55 kilometres south-west of Kuri Bay and 170 kilometres north-north-east of Derby.

The cyclone is just 30 kilometres off the mainland and is expected to cross the coast by nightfall.

It has already buffeted the small pearling community of Kuri Bay and is threatening the iron ore operations of Cockatoo and Koolan islands where staff have relocated to a cyclone shelter.

In addition to the bushfires in the South, Australia is faced with a nasty Cyclone season when there is an active El Niño. The hurricane force winds only extend out about 35 miles and the tropical storm force winds a little more that 100 miles, so this is more of a supersized tornado, but it is generating major rainfall in firehose bursts in the bands.

Between a Centaur and a Senator?

One is a horse’s ass with a human face, and the other is a mythical beast.

LIEberman is doing what he has always done. He never avoids an opportunity to project himself to the center of attention, and he is surrounded by enablers. His connections to the insurance industry are no more secret that Ben Nelson’s, so anyone who is surprised by the reactions of either of them, is totally out of touch with this universe.

Since Obama’s election, LIEberman’s feelings of importance have soared. He didn’t have to back down to get everything he has asked for because Harry Reid has bent over backwards to claim that he has 60 votes. Well, Harry, here’s a news flash – you do not now, nor have you ever had sixty votes, you have merely had 60 people in your caucus, and the two are not the same.

No one pressures LIEberman on anything, so there is no reason for him to change. Obama certainly doesn’t pressure the man he personally selected as his mentor when he was elected the Senator from Illinois. LIEberman was who Obama wanted to be, and he voted the same way as LIEberman on almost every roll call during his abbreviated Senate term.

There is nothing really left in the Senate bill that is worth supporting. The progressive/liberals in the Senate should just say no, and wait until there is a President and Senate that is interested in actually improving the US health care system. The Democratic Caucus should also kick LIEberman out. If you won’t vote with the caucus on procedures, you shouldn’t enjoy any of the benefits of membership.

Coffee, regular or decaf, is apparently not as bad as we have been led to believe. The CBC reports on a study that shows it reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes, and Science Friday reported on a study that showed it significantly reduces the risk of the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

What isn’t known is why. Coffee is a very complex natural compound, and all they know for certain is that caffeine is not the agency. It is loaded with antioxidants and trace minerals, so tracking down the actual reason for these effects is a very long-term project.

Of course, it is also possible that people who like coffee weren’t going to be afflicted by these problems, so don’t start overdosing on Arabica.

The diabetes study also gave a thumbs up to tea, and a good cup of tea is easier to make if you are traveling, as all you need is a teaball and your favorite tea. Good coffee requires the proper tools which take up a lot of space.

The BBC reports on a recent study that looked at the value of different professions to the society as a whole.

Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests.

The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.

It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy.

They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to “create stress”.

Bankers add no value to commerce, they are middlemen. They extract a “rent” from commerce for moving money. The money belongs to depositors, not the banks. They provide a needed service, but that service has been given a primacy that it simply doesn’t deserve.

The entire TARP debacle shows that financial institutions are only interested in their profits, and could care less about society. The people claiming that the institutions that took TARP funds are paying them back forget about the part of the program that is even more important – the government guarantees that taxpayers will cover any losses. It would be reasonable that any financial institution that pays back the TARP funds should be removed from the guarantees pool. If they are so healthy, they don’t need guarantees.

Jams O’Donnell recounts the tale: Santa refused leave to enter

Rev Canon James Rosenthal, who also happens to be a world authority on St Nicholas of Myra , had resolved to bring festive cheer to some children who are at the bottom of the pile of British society – those caught up in the British asylum system.

Rev Rosenthal arrived at Yarl’s Wood dressed in a red robe and long white beard, clutching a bishop’s mitre and crook, carrying presents donated by congregations of several London churches. Sadly he never got past the security personnel who guard the perimeter fence, despite gently protested that he was not a security threat.

Then as St Nicholas, accompanied by the Rev Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, attempted to bless the gifts, the increasingly angry security guards called the police…

Jams says there is video, which the “security personnel” better hope never shows up on YouTube or they are apt to get mugged by gangs of pre-schoolers. This is senseless and petty. This also brings up one of the major disadvantages of privatization – accountability.

The private firm that runs Yarl’s Wood might even fire the people involved, but that isn’t accountability. If this was a government facility some minister would have to explain the situation in Question Time, and might even get called for an interview by Jeremy Paxman [it’s like getting thrown a verbal piranha pool] for Newsnight. If this was a government operation, someone with real power would be sweating, not just the bottom of the pay scale.

Once upon a time people would say of an effective con artist that they “could sell ice to Eskimos.” They may not be buying ice, but Reuters reports that Inuits need cash for freezers in warming Arctic.

I looked at homesteading in Alaska, and most of the people who did it mentioned that you didn’t need a refrigerator, you just dug a hole in the permafrost. Now the permafrost is melting. Imagine the effect of bedrock turning to mush, because there are a lot of buildings in the interior that are set on the permafrost, without a formal foundation.

The way people are dithering in the US, I wouldn’t advise anyone buying property in the four southern-most counties of Florida, as there is a very definite chance that they will be under water in fifty years.

This is Saint Lucia’s Day for Scandinavians.

It features special treats that are handed out by a girl wearing a crown of candles, Lucia coming from the Latin for light, LUX.

Saint Lucia was an early Christian martyr from Syracuse on Sicily, but her official feast day, December 13, fit perfectly with the local pagan celebration of the Lussi on December 13, which was the Winter Solstice at the time. Yep, more cover to continue the fun mid-winter celebrations by pretending they are associated with Christianity to get the Church off everyone’s case.

Remember the former anesthesiologist in Ohio who is under investigation after being injured by a pipe bomb at his house? Well, according to his mother, building pipe bombs was a just a hobby.

Oh, yeah, a harmless hobby, like ham radio or model airplanes. Sure, everyone enjoys a well-crafted improvised explosive device. No harm in constructing bombs in a residential neighborhood… 😈

I wonder if we’ll discover that the next meth lab that gets busted, was merely an advanced chemistry experiment. Maybe North Korea should have tried – “Well, we had all this plutonium just sort of laying around and we thought we would see what we could do with it.”

You would think a former professor of Constitutional law would be a bit embarrassed by signing in law a bill of attainder, especially when it is based on dodgy “evidence”. [If it is good enough standard to start wars, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this.] From Digby.

Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald Leader drew a cartoon which neatly encapsulates the argument against limiting greenhouse gases. From McClatchy.

The Senate has put on a virtuoso display of missing the point, and total incompetence by creating a health care bill that allows insurance companies to limit coverage in a provision that is supposed to outlaw the practice, and has created a bill to control health care costs that will raise those costs. From MSNBC.

I have been tied up dealing with the medical/insurance industry for someone else. The insurance hasn’t been any problem at all because it is Medicare and Tricare. The problems have all been with the “electronic billing systems” used by doctors, pharmacies, and medical equipment suppliers. At one point of frustration I told the person at the medical equipment supplier that I would be more than happy to just pay cash, and the woman looked at me nearly in tears and said “Please don’t make me do a cash transaction, it’s pure hell!”

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends. I miss the latkes and jelly doughnuts my roommates received for the holiday at college. [Their grandmothers were afraid they wouldn’t celebrate or couldn’t get “real” food at that terrible Baptist university.] It was a great break.

One of the nice things about Hanukkah is that there are established “gifts”, so you don’t have to rack your brains about what to get: a card and gelt covers just about everyone.

General background at Wikipedia’s entry for Hanukkah and even more at Chabad’s Chanukah page.

[Note: on the Jewish calendar the day changes at sundown, not midnight.]

Real Life Re-Run

Mmm…Zzz…[snort]

[Editor: Real life as reduced the amount of time I have had near a computer, and cold weather has the cats in hiding, so here’s Excise, Income and Property when they were still cute. Hopefully things will calm down by next week.]

Friday Ark