Category — Uncategorized
Short Takes
The Chelsea Flower Show is taking place, which is a great spring trip to Britain if you ever have the opportunity.
Has anyone heard why James Wolcott is down? The site was up on Monday, but has been blank yesterday and today. Has he had an attack of Corrente, disappearing into the ether to reappear later?
May 24, 2006 6 Comments
I Think They Blew It
I beginning to believe that the Feds have just lost another slam-dunk case, the Representative William Jefferson [D-LA] bribery case.
Steve Bates has a few posts on the case, and mentioned my thinking in his latest post, concerning the search of Jefferson’s Congressional office.
All Things Considered covered the Republican reaction to the office search including a heated Tom DeLay reaction to what the FBI did. I think this may be an indication of the level of fear among Republicans that they may not be able to hide evidence in their offices anymore. [Update: Mustang Bobby found out why Denny Hastert is upset.]
Following that, ATC did an analysis piece comparing Jefferson’s situation to the Abscam probe of the 1980s. This FBI sting cleaned a number of crooks out of Congress using the same techniques that are in use here.
May 24, 2006 4 Comments
Mine Safety
Those evil liberals at All Things Considered decided to ask experts about Data-Mining a Mountain of Phone Calls .
Since this is an open source, I’m free to talk about some things I’ve avoided getting into before.
Problem one: the current “watch list” is almost a half million names and some of those names [Edward Kennedy, David Nelson] are not exactly unique. The lack of standardized transliteration between Arabic and English means one name could be on the list multiple times because of spelling variations. The same individual may have more than one name in the Middle East, e.g. Mahmoud Abbas is also known as Abu Masen. This means there is no way of knowing how many people the list represents.
May 24, 2006 Comments Off on Mine Safety
Going In Circles
The Postal Service spokesman in the “Global Con” piece mentioned “turning the corner” on fraud.
That reminded me of Kevin Hayden’s summary at American Street of all the corners we’ve turned in Iraq.
If we’re “staying the course”, why are we making all of these turns? Doesn’t that just take us back to where we started?
Not only do I not believe we are seeing the “light at the end of the tunnel”, I do not believe they know where the tunnel is. Too bad they won’t stop and ask for directions.
May 23, 2006 2 Comments
AgitProp
CBS reports: 565 Arrested In Mass-Marketing Fraud; and some of them were in the United States. Yes, sir, Abu Gonzo and the boys are cleaning up the Internets.
Those nasty liberals on NPR spread the news about Operation Global Con , but then they spoiled it by asking an expert on Internet scams about the effectiveness of the effort. Come on, you are not supposed to look at the guy behind the curtain.
As much as I appreciate that some of the ‘Net vermin have been taken off line, they aren’t even close to controlling anything. I just received 50 spam comments about ID theft, and another 50 on credit consolidation since 3PM. I’m refining my filters daily to stop this garbage.
I notify a half dozen companies a day about the “phishing” e-mails I receive. Not that it will do me any good, but folks, I don’t have a PayPal or eBay account and I don’t bank on-line, okay? You are wasting time and bandwidth sending me e-mails about the threats to accounts I don’t have.
May 23, 2006 Comments Off on AgitProp
Criminal Negligence
Some idiot in the Veterans Administration apparently wanted to work on a project at home so s/he copied a data base containing the names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of over 26 million people and took it home.
The data was stolen in a burglary, so everyone in the VA files has to worry about ID theft. What gets cut to provide the millions of dollars it is going to cost to notify everyone who is affected of the loss and danger?
These people do not have the faintest concept of security.
May 22, 2006 13 Comments
They Deserve It
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, and Alberto Mora, a former Navy general counsel who clashed with superiors over abuse of terrorism detainees, were honored Monday as recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
May 22, 2006 4 Comments
Disgusting
Apparently unable to break into the payday loan market, Microsoft is going into the rent-to-buy scam: Pay-As-You-Go Computers Are Coming.
Poor people in poor countries have to come up with a big down payment, and then buy time on the computers under the FlexGo system.
It is schemes like this that keep poor people poor, while making obscene profits for the companies.
May 22, 2006 Comments Off on Disgusting
According to Doyle
It’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL, who was born in Scotland of Irish parents and lived in England, making him a British author.
Most of his works are available on-line, so you can learn about “the dog in the night” without leaving your computer screen.
May 22, 2006 5 Comments
A New Nation
The BBC reports that Montenegro ‘chooses independence’. This vote is the final nail in the coffin of yet another bad idea foisted upon people by the European powers after World War One. Serbia and Montenegro were the last vestiges of the European construct of Yugoslavia, and now they are “divorced”.
The independent Republika Crna Gora [Republic of the Black Mountain] has less than a million people and is slightly smaller than Connecticut at 5,333 mile², but it has a coastline.
This change makes Serbia a landlocked country.
May 21, 2006 6 Comments
More Propaganda
I’ll go further than Atrios in labeling Israel: Iran ‘months’ from making nukes the basest form of jingoistic garbage. Israel does itself no favors when Olmert spreads disinformation like this.
If I had access to the enriched uranium I could build a bomb in my workshop. If it was difficult the two minimum wage workers in Japan wouldn’t have been able to start the Tokaimura Criticality Accident with a couple of milk pails and a vat. [It was stopped with boric acid, normally used down here to kill roaches.]
The hard parts are not dying while you are building the bomb, controlling the conditions required to start the reaction, and getting the bomb where you want it.
The refining process takes time, because if you do it too quickly and don’t follow all of the steps, as happened in Japan, you will get an unintended chain reaction. This is a precision manufacturing process and it can’t be rushed. You need a highly educated work force with absolutely no suicidal tendencies to build nuclear weapons. One misstep and you lose your workforce, your facility, and your weapon in an instant.
Any fool can keep adding enriched uranium until a chain reaction starts. You can’t ask the Japanese workers about it, because they died of the radiation when they added one pail too many to the vat.
May 21, 2006 Comments Off on More Propaganda
All Necessary Measures
Everyone agreed that in normal circumstances the proper method of dealing with the dissent would be to hold a discussion with those who held the differing views and explain why they were wrong, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
Many on the losing side had refused to accept their loss and continued to oppose the march of history and the need to safeguard the people, therefore this was no time to pause for the education of the dissenters. The people were threatened and the highest purpose was to protect the people.
The high ideals they all had long declared would have to wait for peaceful times. The individuals would understand that they had to give way to the greater good.
These were extraordinary times and extraordinary measures were needed to deal with them.
May 21, 2006 1 Comment
The Ride of the Дураки
Is there no end to Republican spying on individuals? Is there no corner where the GOP will not impose the government?
They are calling their latest venture in Stalinism the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act, “Internet SAFETY Act.” [Is there a course at Patrick Henry University for acronyms?]
From CNet – Congress may make ISPs snoop on you:
Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans’ online activities so that police can more easily “conduct criminal investigations.” Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.
In addition, Sensenbrenner’s legislation–expected to be announced as early as this week–also would create a federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and many other Web sites. It’s aimed at any site that might have “reason to believe” it facilitates access to child pornography–through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance.
ISPs [Internet Service Providers] can’t afford this. We are talking major investments in storage and software, an unfunded mandate.
After these people have funded universal pre-natal care, childhood nutrition and health care, universal childcare, etc. I’ll believe they give a damn about children. Until then they are perverts who want to spy on people.
May 20, 2006 4 Comments
Oversight
There was no Congressional oversight. Giving 8 of 535 members of Congress a classified briefing that they can’t discuss with anyone, is not oversight.
There is certainly no oversight when you refuse to give investigators the clearances they need.
May 20, 2006 Comments Off on Oversight