The man is just a bad President.

Taken Tuesday August 30, 2005 while New Orleans flooded. Maintaining balance, I guess.

The death of Windows

Hollywood, Microsoft align on new Windows | CNET News.com

For the first time, the Windows operating system will wall off some audio and video processes almost completely from users and outside programmers, in hopes of making them harder for hackers to reach. The company is establishing digital security checks that could even shut off a computer's connections to some monitors or televisions if antipiracy procedures that stop high-quality video copying aren't in place.

In short, the company is bending over backward--and investing considerable technological resources--to make sure Hollywood studios are happy with the next version of Windows, which is expected to ship on new PCs by late 2006. Microsoft believes it has to make nice with the entertainment industry if the PC is going to form the center of new digital home networks, which could allow such new features as streaming high-definition movies around the home.

Hey now you can do less with your computer!

As Cory Doctorow writes:

Microsoft is also subverting copyright. Fair use and other public rights in copyright hinge on factors that can't be modelled in software. For example, people engaged in parody have a lot more flexibility in terms of how they use copyrighted works than people who are engaged in satire. The difference between parody and satire is pretty fine -- it's the kind of thing courts rule on, not the kind of thing that you get a computer to detect.

DRM apologists claim that DRM can be used to model the preponderance of fair uses, but this is completely untrue. Fair use almost always hinges on intention -- there isn't any software that is capable of reading a user's mind and determining intention.

We'll see.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Revolution on Venezuela's estates

Did I mention that Freepers were morons?

Big Brass Blog

An Arizona daily Dumps Coulter

My opinion David Stoeffler: Opinion pages get a makeover | The Arizona Daily Star ?:

"Finally, we've decided that syndicated columnist Ann Coulter has worn out her welcome. Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives."

Unfortunately they replaced her with Tony Snow.

Like you didn't see this coming.

The Raw Story | ACLU reveals FBI labeled peace, affirmative action group 'terrorist'

Hey Wingnuts! Better sick your dogs on this guy.

THE BRAD BLOG: "Mr. Bush, Specialist Young Would Also Like to Speak With You..."

Election result maps by population

Election result maps

A different take on the '04 election map.

Cenk Uygur -- Brilliant

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post

"We are not fighting a war against terror. Terror is a method of warfare. Fighting against terror is kind of like fighting against rifles."

Read it.

$145,000

Experts Warn Debt May Threaten Economy - Yahoo! News

That's what you currently owe to pay our debts.

Just plain sick.

White House Briefing  News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration:

"About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush's invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him -- while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward."

Note to the press. Do you fucking job. (Hint it's not to brownnose the goddamn, whoever the fuck he is.)

Dowd on Bush's Salt Lake City speech

My Private Idaho - New York Times:

"'We owe them something,' he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). 'We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.'

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself."

Some cops in Utah probably aren't going to like this.

Boing Boing: Cops have to pay $41k for stopping man from videoing them

K9 and Sarah Jane Smith coming back to Doctor Who

Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

K9 and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) will be guesting in an ep of season 28 of Doctor Who. So will some dude from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now a geek aside:

IT IS NOT SEASON TWO OF DOCTOR WHO. IT IS SEASON 28.

That is all.

Why doesn't this stuff happen to me?

Mercury - Man forced to have sex at gunpoint

Red states vote Bush...

So Blue states can die for him


Click to enlarge.

Just Another Stop In Gitmo America

The Rude Pundit

The Rude One takes down John "Mistakes Happen" Loftus and the "pathetic, worthless dungheaps, unable to articulate anything more than "Terrist bad" and rage at the full moon for daring to take away the shadows they cower in, piss bucket opportunists who only need to be told where to bring the mob so, hunched over and grunting, they can lynch and burn, lynch and burn, without the niceties of trial, the delays of due process, and cavort and cackle like crazed jackals over the carrion corpses of the dead."

Great as always.

Jon Stewart -- Pimp

via Wonkette:

"Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .
Hitch: Don't you hear people saying. . .
Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .
Hitch: [Sputter]
Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...
Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine... I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give. . .
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That's not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince.

[Audience erupts in applause]

Hitch: You want me to believe you're really secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .
Stewart: I secretly need to believe he's on my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be."

It's sad, but not unusual, that the best analysis of the world's events comes from a half hour comedy show. Hitch is liberal hawk Christopher Hitchens BTW.

Major League Clusterfuck

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Police watchdog has 'crucial' Stockwell tube footage

Pat Robertson only supports killing dictators he doesn't do business with.

Pat Robertson and His Business Buddies (washingtonpost.com)

Liberian strongman Charles Taylor... He's cool, Pat's got gold mines there.

The late and brutal Zairian(?) dictator Mobutu Sese Seko... He's cool. Pat had diamond mines there.

Oh and he's got business ventures in that "great bastion of liberty, religious freedom and land of forced abortions, the People's Republic of China." It's a for profit Internets company called the Global Business Development Network.

Now I personally don't buy into the whole heaven and hell thing, but I'm pretty sure hypocrisy and lying, as Robertson did when he claimed he didn't call for Chavez's assassination two days after he did so, are pretty quick way to hell. So if I'm wrong, and I do end up in hell at least have a preacher there.