Remember last month when the Democrats took their pussification to new heights by passing the new FISA law that would grant the Telecoms immunity from prosecution as a compromise? As it turns out giving the Telecoms immunity is the least of the problems that bill creates:

The new FISA compromise: it’s worse than you think - ArsTechnica.com

The 114-page bill was pushed through the House so quickly that there was no real time to debate its many complex provisions. This may explain why the telecom immunity provision has received so much attention in the media: it is much easier to explain to readers not familiar with the intricacies of surveillance law than the other provisions. But as important as the immunity issue is, the legislation also makes many prospective changes to surveillance law that will profoundly impact our privacy rights for years to come.

Specifically, the new legislation dramatically expands the government’s ability to wiretap without meaningful judicial oversight, by redefining “oversight” so that the feds can drag their feet on getting authorization almost indefinitely. It also gives the feds unprecedented new latitude in selecting eavesdropping targets, latitude that could be used to collect information on non-terrorist-related activities like P2P copyright infringement and online gambling. In short, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 opens up loopholes so large that the feds could drive a truck loaded down with purloined civil liberties through it. So the telecom immunity stuff is just the smoke; let’s take a look at the fire.

Go read the full article as the law is stunning in terms of major changes it makes to what criteria the government must meet in order to spy on someone and how long they can do it before they have to submit to judicial oversight. The fact that the Democrats helped to rush it through the House without any real debate is simply astounding as noted by the folks at Ars:

Democratic leaders have worked hard to portray the legislation as a compromise, but close examination of its provisions suggests that it is an unvarnished victory for President Bush and his allies in Congress. The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between Americans citizen and foreigners located overseas and effectively legalizes dragnet surveillance of domestic-to-foreign traffic. It stretches out the judicial review process so much that the government will in many cases be able to complete its surveillance activities before the courts finish deciding on its legality. And Democratic leaders have capitulated on the immunity question, agreeing to language that would almost certainly lead to retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecom companies.

What the fuck is up with the Democrats? Why the hell are the bending over, lubing their asses up, and yelling “bring it on” to the Republicans? Just what is it they hope to accomplish with this legislation if (or when) they gain control of the Presidency? They sure seem to have something up their sleeves with as eager as they are to go along with the Neocons on this issue.

In total the power outage last Thursday caused issues with some 53 motherboards in total and I had to touch each and every one of them today. When I got lucky it took nothing more than a reboot to get them back up and running and when I wasn’t lucky I had to replace the motherboard.

I wasn’t as lucky as I’d have liked to have been today.

By the end of the day there was still a good 9 or so motherboards I wasn’t able to get to. Afternoon shift should be able to whip them out, though, and hopefully tomorrow will be a little closer to normal. I was on my feet most of the day and I am a sore puppy as a result. With any luck I’ll be back to regular blog posting tomorrow. For now, I’m going to go relax.

You really have to admire the chutzpah of some of these assholes who push craptastic products by spamming the fuck out of every webstie they can find. Someone registered an account with the user name “" and then submitted the following bit of spam:

How I removed my moles and skin tags at home with this amazing paste- award winning ingredients!!!

It’s true, I had this huge mole near my eye. I had had it for over 30 years and no signs of cancer, it was just plain BIG!  This nurse friend who stapled my ear for weight loss also told me about this molepaste (#1 natural mole and wart remover) that you can get [craptastic URL removed]

Benefits:
You can do it at home
Less expensive than a doctor’s fee
only one 20 minute application then the area gets naturally cauterized
most won’t scar
natural ingredients

To see more before and afters go to [craptastic URL removed].

You’ve gotta be a major league asshole to think you’d be allowed to post a spam entry on the front page of a blog without being called on it. Perhaps if SEB hadn’t been updated in a year or two and was more or less a dead blog I could see someone trying this sort of thing, but on a live blog? That takes being an asshole to a whole new level.

So my three day weekend became a four day weekend when heavy storms passed through the area on Wednesday night and knocked out power to a good portion of Ann Arbor. I had almost made it to the freeway Thursday morning when the call came in not to bother showing up because there wasn’t any power. The office doesn’t have any UPS systems so this means things will be a real mess come Monday morning as I’m told that recovery from a power outage usually means a number of fried motherboards.

Even though my unscheduled day off means I’ll probably be short a day’s pay it’s probably for the best as I had a migraine going Thursday that lasted well into Friday. Which is part of why I’ve not posted anything for the past two days. Spent most of my time laying around in my pajamas trying various anti-migraine medicines and trying not to think about how my eyes felt like they wanted to pop straight out of my head.

So no fireworks for me this year. How about you folks? Do anything interesting for the Fourth?

Gotta love The Onion.

Sent in by Mistermook.

Not because of the distance involved, I’ve done long-distance trouble shooting and repair using just Remote Assistance on many occasions, but because in Texas you have to be a licensed private eye to do computer support:

According to the law passed in the 2007 Texas legislative session, the private investigator’s license is required for repair technicians to analyze their customers’ computer data. This analysis is common for business managers who wish to track their employees’ computer usage or families who want to find out where their children or spouses have been online, said Matt Miller, executive director of the institute.

“Anyone that analyzes computer data has conducted this regulated service and needs a license,” Miller said.

Rife said he determines how computer viruses originate by evaluating private data. He frequently repairs family computers that have viruses and is often asked to discover if a family member’s account caused the virus.

If a computer repair technician conducts a computer service that the government considers an investigation, the technician could be subject to a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine. This law also considers consumers who knowingly enlist an unlicensed company to perform an investigative repair subject to the same penalties.

And if you live in Texas and do computer repair and aren’t a licensed private eye then you’re breaking the law as well. Fortunately an advocacy group down there called “The Institute for Justice” is suing on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional, but for the moment certain PC repairs could make you an outlaw.

See this cute little puppy here?

Apparently it’s the latest source of Muslim outrage. No, I’m not joking:

A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman’s hat advertising a Scottish police force’s new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims. 

Tayside Police’s new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.

The choice of image on the Tayside Police cards - a black dog sitting in a police officer’s hat - has now been raised with Chief Constable John Vine.

If you’re anything like me I’m sure your first thought is: What the fuck? You might think that there’s got to be a rational and sensible explanation for this. You’d be wrong:

The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.

Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: ‘My concern was that it’s not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.

So far there’s been no reports of rioting over the advert, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time as word spreads of this horrible offense. The police have handled the situation better than I would have, I would’ve laughed the first time they told me they were offended by the dog, saying:

‘Trainee police dog Rebel has proved extremely popular with children and adults since being introduced to the public, aged six weeks old, as Tayside Police’s newest canine recruit.

‘His incredible world-wide popularity - he has attracted record visitor numbers to our website - led us to believe Rebel could play a starring role in the promotion of our non-emergency number.

‘We did not seek advice from the force’s diversity adviser prior to publishing and distributing the postcards. That was an oversight and we apologise for any offence caused.’

Give me a fucking break. Just more proof that many Muslims are just as irrational and delusional, if not more so, as many Christians.

Update: As requested, DOF graces us with the following:

Awww! He’s so cute!

Christopher Hitchens is one of the more interesting atheists out there for me because as much as I agree with him on most religious issues I also disagree with him quite a bit on his politics. Awhile back in an article for Slate.com he appeared to be defending the practice of waterboarding. He basically repeated the Republican talking points that claimed waterboarding is an “extreme interrogation technique” but not really torture. A lot of folks called him on it and suggested that if it’s not torture then perhaps he should give it a go himself to prove it.

To his credit that’s just what he did. He writes about it in a new Vanity Fair article titled Believe Me, It’s Torture:

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

You can see for yourself how long he lasted in the video they filmed of him undergoing the procedure, but it’s definitely worth reading the whole article as he tells us that he makes a second attempt at it. It’s one thing to read about people who have experienced this process, it’s entirely another to watch it happen and realize that our government has been doing this to people for some time now and doesn’t rule out doing it again. The fact that President Bush has condoned and authorized such a practice should be grounds for impeachment by itself.

The right wingers who continue to insist that waterboarding isn’t torture should be invited to partake of this exercise as well so they can see first hand just what it actually is. I know I’d pay good money to see pundits such as Rush Limbaugh, who has repeatedly equated waterboarding to being “no worse than frat-house hazings”, undergoing the process a few dozen times. I doubt he has the balls to put himself to the test the way Hitchens has.

Link found via Boing Boing.

It’s a short promotional clip for the new movie, but it made me laugh:

So gonna see this film.

Every time I write about computing on the Windows platform here, particularly when discussing problems, I can be assured that I’ll get at least a dozen comments/emails from folks encouraging me to switch to Linux because it’s the most secure and stable operating system in the universe. I’ve only dabbled in Linux previously, having used it mainly because my webhosts are all Linux based, but since taking on the new job some two months ago I’ve had to become a lot more familiar with it. Specifically I’ve had to get to know Ubuntu Linux rather quickly as it’s the primary distro used here at the office. I’ve mentioned before how one of the tasks assigned to me was to put together a Ubuntu based kiosk for the scanners to use when on break to browse the web. I’ve made a lot of progress since I started on that project, but there’s still a bit to go before it’s completely done. I’m still far from a Linux expert, but I’m much further along than I was when I started two months ago. Installing the OS and various packages is no longer a knuckle biting experience and I’m getting quite comfortable with VIM despite the fact that I hate it.

One of the things I’ve noticed in that time is that the much vaunted stability that Linux is supposed to be known for is largely a myth; or at least it appears to be for me. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t have ant least one crash that requires me to completely reboot the laptop to get it working again and there are often several crashes during the day that I manage to recover from. When you consider that I spend around 85% of my time running nothing other than Firefox 3 and Pidgin, that’s an impressive bit of crashing. Just getting a malfunctioning program to close is an annoying process and half the time it doesn’t restore the system to a usable state. Logging out of the system using the CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE key combination and then logging back in will fix things once every six times or so that I try it. Every now and then I’ll get lucky and an application will freeze up, the window turning an ominous gray, and then unfreeze on its own after a couple of moments for no discernible reason.

Now I accept that it’s possible I could just be a dumb fuck who’s doing something wrong and causing his own problems, but I find that difficult to believe because I’m not really doing anything all that advanced. I’m running a web browser and an IM chat client—two things that hardly ever crash on my Windows XP box at home.  I’m sure I’ll get tons of emails about how some folks have had their Linux workstations working non-stop for 10 years with nary a crash in sight, but, based on my own experiences with it, I can only imagine it’s because you never do anything with it. I say this because I have two laptops here, both running Ubuntu, and the one that doesn’t crash at least once a day is the one that I only touch occasionally to check the web based workstation monitor on. It seems as long as I don’t do much with it then it runs along just fine, but if I spend any amount of time using it it gets all pissy. I’ve been good about patching things when the little icon shows up and says there’s important updates to be installed—something which is a near-daily exercise as well—and I’ve been scanning the web looking for info on what may be causing the issues and there’s a whole host ranging from the various hardware drivers in use to issues with some Firefox plugins.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty to like about Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular, it’s a shit load easier to install than it used to be for example, but from the standpoint of an every day user I have to say that this crashes at least as often as any Windows installation does and is about ten times harder to diagnose as to why. For as far along as the GUI has come on Linux, it still seems like if you really want to be sure the changes you make take hold and you’re seeing all there is to see that you have to open a command line and wade through endless text based configuration files and logs which, if you’re lucky, might be semi-readable in content. I recognize that my years of using Windows makes it seem easier to use in some respects, but I don’t think it’s all an illusion brought on by familiarity either. I’m sure some of this will become easier to diagnose as I become ever more familiar with Linux in my day to day use, but at the moment I’m less than impressed with its much-vaunted aura of stability. 

Somehow I had a feeling Obama was too good to be true. There had to be something about him that was eventually going to disappoint me. And now I know what it is:

CHICAGO - Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

[...] Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

I suppose so long as he’s including more than just the Right Wing Nutsacks Evangelicals in handing out government money that’d be at least somewhat of an improvement over Bush’s plan, but I’ll believe it when I see Muslims or, even better, Wiccans getting a grant. The Right Wingers, of course, are going to have a hissy fit when they’re suddenly no longer the only ones sucking on the taxpayer teat. Expanding the program, however, is not the ideal solution:

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Obama’s proposed expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and civil liberties.

“I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration,” he said. “It ought to be shut down, not continued.”

Agreed. The government has no business being involved with the funding of religious organizations of any kind. Looks like it will continue to do so, however, even if the Republicans aren’t in control.

Or most of the other social websites that are out there. Twitter is wildly popular, but it seems like the sort of thing you’d use if you didn’t have a blog. Here’s what it’s for according to their about page:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Why? Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely.

• Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know.
• Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.
• Partying? Your friends may want to join you.

With Twitter, you can stay hyper–connected to your friends and always know what they’re doing. Or, you can stop following them any time. You can even set quiet times on Twitter so you’re not interrupted.

Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.

As much as my mother loves me dearly, I’m not sure she’d really give a shit to know that I’m, at this very moment, eating soup. My co-workers would probably appreciate a phone call over a twitter entry and if I’m partying then my friends probably already know about it. In short it sounds like a service that promotes the sharing of trivial minutiae at a level that makes blogging look like high journalism in comparison.

The only reason I’m even thinking about it at the moment is because of this TechCrunch entry about it wherein they talk about how Twitter is suffering from major problems with high traffic loads. Whereas Twitter fans usually bitch up a storm when the service fails lately they’ve been doing something else: switching to a competitor:

But that magic is created by the simple Reply feature - when you add “@TechCrunch” to a Twitter message, it tells me you are saying something directly to me, to start a new conversation or reply to an existing one. Without Reply, Twitter turns into a one way telephone conversation. Pulling the feature out is equivalent to a frontal lobotomy - Twitter is still walking around, but there’s a blank stare in its eyes.

So why aren’t people screaming about the feature being gone? Because this time, they’re just heading over to Friendfeed to have those very same conversations. Friendfeed for most users was just a place to bookmarks all their activities on other social networks. Now, more and more, it’s a place that people start conversations. The early adopters got that a while ago. Now, the not so early adopters are using it as a Twitter replacement, too.

As an example the author links to an entry he made on FriendFeed that spawned a whole conversation. It’s a one sentence entry about how he should be blogging, but keeps looking at the ocean and thinking of playing with his dog. It has 40 some odd replies, none of which are more than a sentence or two long themselves.

It appears, to my eyes anyway, to be a form of mini-blogging and I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use a blog to do it. I mean, I can understand why he didn’t post something like that to TechCrunch, but for me it seems like it’s redundant when I already blog about whatever trivial thing catches my attention anyway. It just makes for another site someone would have to go to or subscribe to in order to catch up on what I’m following. I already feel bad enough about the fact that I’ve been relying on Google Reader sharing to pass along items I can’t be bothered to blog about.

And what the fuck is Facebook all about anyway? According to their site:

Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.

OK, so how is that different from what Twitter says it does? You can’t see much of the service without signing up, but it looks like a less obnoxious version of MySpace and MySpace always struck me as the white trash equivalent of blogging only with even more inane content than the average blog and a design aesthetic bordering on the criminal.  Is Facebook more like LinkedIn? I do have a profile on LinkedIn because it appears aimed more at networking for possible jobs, but I’ve not done a very good job of setting up my profile yet.

As I said, maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting old, but I just don’t get the point of all these services. At least not if you already have a blog to call home. It just seems like it makes for more places people have to go to find out what you’re up to when they could just pick up the phone or drop you an email and say, “Where the hell have you been?”

Or so says a prominent Christian theology professor:

Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said women desire to have their own way instead of submitting to their husbands because of sin.

“And husbands on their parts, because they’re sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches,” Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.

See? It’s not your husband’s fault that he has to beat you senseless. He’s merely enforcing God’s vision of the role woman are to play in the relationship. Don’t think of it so much as a brutal pounding than as helpful love taps to knock you back onto the path of righteousness in hopes of saving your worthless ass from an eternity of hellfire which we all know would be way worse than the couple of black eyes and the broken arm your husband inflicted upon you. A little pain now will save you from a whole lotta burnin’ later.

So sayest professor Ware at least.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that people are driving a lot slower than they used to on the freeways? I’m all about doing the speed limit myself so I’m used to having people crawling up my ass most of the time—even though I’m in the slow lane—and only occasionally getting into the passing lane when I approach the rare person driving even slower than I am (often someone on their cell phone).

I’ve noticed over the past several weeks, roughly about the time gas hit four bucks a gallon here, a growing trend of people doing 65MPH or slower on the freeways. Whereas my excursions into the passing lane used to be infrequent and short lived they are now coming more often and for greater lengths of time. The number of idiots doing 90 while weaving through traffic has diminished quite a bit mainly because there’s too much congestion for them to have a hope of dodging their way through traffic.

It’s a simple fact that lower speeds use less gas, that was part of the motivation to make the speed limit 55MPH during the first energy crunch, but I’m surprised at the number of people who seem to be voluntarily participating in driving slower. At least one person I know says they’re definitely slowing down to save gas and has netted an extra 80 miles out of a full tank for doing so. It’s somewhat ironic that high gas prices are accomplishing something that draconian speed laws and occasional police crack downs haven’t been able to for years: Get people to drive slower.

Of course whereas I was once annoyed by people driving too fast I’m now annoyed by people driving too slow, but if I had to pick one of the two evils to deal with I’ll happily go with the latter one.

If you, like me, watch a fair amount of the Discovery Channel then chances are you’ve seen their “I Love The World” promo. I think it’s probably their best promotion ever and I find it hard not to sing along every time it comes on, but I like this variation on it even better:

Created by the folks over at Gamer’s Prodigy it pretty much says it all.

For comparison here’s the Discovery Channel’s original version:

Yeah, never get tired of that one.

I loved both the original Diablo and its sequel so I’m quite pleased to hear that Diablo 3 is in the works. Here’s a teaser trailer:

And, after the jump, a couple of videos of actual game play…

I so want to try this out on someone.

Go read more of Cectic.

Found via Unscrewing The Inscrutable

I’m torn. I’ve had the TARDIS USB hub on my Amazon.com Wish List for ages now, but I’m also drawn to these two hubs modeled after iconic Star Wars characters:

Meet the $68 animatronic Darth Vader and R2D2 USB hubs. Just stuff a USB Princess Leia into Darth’s neck and watch the dark lord’s eyes glow red as he scans side-to-side for the pretentious scowls of your contemptuous co-workers. Sounds effects? Oh you betcha…

Alas it appears as though these two will only be available in Japan for the time being. Plus the fact that the TARDIS hub is a good $23 cheaper will probably ensure that I’ll be sticking with my favorite Time Lord when it comes time to by a new USB hub.