Author: cosmo

Now there’s some fun reading!

Saudi Arabia has crowned a new king, and a high-powered delegation from the United States went over to pay its respects. Vice President Cheney, former President Bush, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave obesance to the new king of oil.

Samuel Bodman, Secretary of Energy, perhaps said it best:

“As the world’s largest producer and as the world’s largest consumer, our two countries have a special relationship. We are, at least in certain respects, partners.”

That’s right. America, self-righteous and self-proclaimed defender of freedom and liberty, is a partner with one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet. In my mind, only China and North Korea are worse. The treatment of women in the Saudi Kingdom is deplorable.

But hey, they’ve got gas! Buddies! Pals!

Windows Vista continues to lose features. Today’s chopping block includes Monad, the virus-enabled command shell no different than a dozen other Unix shells. Good riddance. Of course, with all the other things being cut or “delayed”, it’s becoming harder for Microsoft to figure out a way to convince their customers that upgrading to Vista is worth the time and (let’s face it) hassle.

This is all summed up quite nicely in a post from Slashdot:

So that leaves Vista with the following features I guess:

– Slick ‘Vista’ wallpaper
– DRM to protect the wallpaper

Rock on!

“If you are not part of the solution, you are precipitate.”

— Gus Calabrese

“Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we’ve been bombing over the years been complaining?”

— George Wallace

Just when you thought you’d never find another federally-funded research study or graduate program that gave stupidity a new name, along comes Amanda Griffiths. She’s working hard on her Ph.D., eagerly awaiting the chance to defend her thesis, which is on the topic of… you guessed it…

… air guitar.

(Actual photo of Amanda.)

Laralee was at Vitamin Cottage (an organic and super-granola store) today and overheard a customer ask one of the employees:

“Where can I find the organic Jello?”

From an article in The New American:

Phyllis Dintenfass is an unassuming, 62-year-old retired teacher from Appleton, Wisconsin. She has never committed a crime against persons or property, but faces a year in prison and $100,000 in fines as a result of her collision with a federal official.

Last September, Mrs. Dintenfass and her husband were passing through security prior to a flight at Appleton’s Outagamie County Regional Airport. Since something she wore repeatedly triggered metal detectors, Mrs. Dintenfass was taken to a “secondary screening area” by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) supervisor named Anita Gostisha. The would-be passenger complied as Gostisha used an electronic “wand” to scan for metal objects.

Gostisha then used the back of her hands to check the area beneath Dintenfass’s breasts, provoking her to “lash out.” According to Dintenfass, her reaction was to reciprocate the unwanted and uninvited physical contact while saying, “How would you like it if I did that to you?” Gostisha claims that the middle-aged woman – uniformly described as mild-mannered and inoffensive – also “slammed her against the wall,” which would certainly be a proportionate response to what reasonable people would consider a sexual assault.

Dintenfass flatly denies shoving the TSA official. In any case, she was arrested and charged with “assaulting” a federal official. A federal jury found her guilty of that supposed crime on July 26. Sentencing will occur on November 1.

Dintenfass “punished Anita Gostisha for doing her job,” complained federal Prosecutor Tim Funnell. U.S. Attorney Steven Bispukic added that TSA officers, who perform a “vital function” are “entitled to protection from assault.”

Perhaps the only positive aspect of this case is that we now have an official acknowledgment from federal attorneys that the invasive, degrading physical contact regularly inflicted on air travelers by TSA drones is a form of “punishment” and “assault.” But this implicit admission is bundled with the assumption that federal officials, who belong to a specially privileged and protected class, are entitled to assault common citizens – in the name of “homeland security,” naturally.

Now that Microsoft has renamed Longhorn to Vista, they have an interesting task ahead: convince consumers that upgrading to the new version of Windows next year is a good thing to do. Most people don’t want to mess with the hassle of an upgrade, especially if they have everything working “just right”. Witness the number of people (and companies!) still running Windows 98 if you don’t believe that.

Anyway, I found a list of features that will be included in Vista. Here’s a quick rundown:

• new search mechanism
• parental controls
• “better” home networking
• translucent windows
• IPv6 network support
• encryption of entire disks
• automatic hard drive optimization (read “defragmentation”)
• secure boot

There are a few other eye-candy sorts of things, I’m sure. In the end, though, the list is completely laughable because– you guessed it– both Apple’s OS X and Linux KDE and Gnome desktops already support all of these features. Microsoft should consider changing “Vista” to something more apropos like “Yesterday” to represent the fact that their fancy new features have been around for (in some cases) years on alternative operating systems.

Innovation. Hmph.

That’s my girl.