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A Superior Court judge ruled May 27 that “there is no fundamental right for a voter to vote for the party of their choice” and threw out the state Libertarian Party’s challenge to North Carolina’s elections laws.

[..]

The judge agreed with the State’s argument that the number of elected offices that may appear on the ballot in Presidential election years, along with the use of optical scanning equipment, can cause “voter confusion.”

“The more parties there are that are recognized by the State and that place candidates on the ballot, the greater the chance there is for ballots that are so long as to be unwieldy and to risk voter confusion and frustration of the electoral process,” Judge Hobgood wrote.

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It was a localized version of the Michigan/Florida debate in Grand Prairie today and once again, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters were at odds.

Local Clinton supporters advocated Thursday for unseating ALL of the Democratic delegates from Collin County because their senate district conventions were held on the wrong day.

Officials with the Collin County Democratic Party said they chose to hold the convention a day late because there wasn’t a large enough venue in the county available for the scheduled date of Saturday, March 29. Party officials warned at the time that the eligibility of their delegation may be challenged.

I wonder what Hillary supporters are thinking about those other two places where the primary was held on the “wrong” day…

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On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war.

But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration.

“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.

“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”

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One of Brazil’s last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday

The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.

Funai said it photographed “strong and healthy” warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.

“Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years,” Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.

The tribe sighted recently is one of the last not to be contacted by officials. Funai does not make contact with such tribes Indians and prevents invasions of their land to ensure their autonomy, the foundation said.

Survival International said the Indians are in danger from illegal logging in Peru, which is driving tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated 500 uncontacted Indians now living on the Brazilian side.

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First and foremost, I am 15 weeks pregnant, unmarried, and I just graduated from college. This should be an exciting time for me, as I’m starting two new chapters in my life; unfortunately, enrolling for health insurance has become a burden.

Pregnancy is considered to be a “pre-existing condition” much like diabetes, cancer, or any other kind of health malfunction that would label me as less than perfect. I am a non-smoker, was a varsity athlete in college, and am of average height and weight. I have no other pre-existing medical conditions at all: I have no allergies, no asthma, and I’ve never had any major surgery. When I called Blue Cross Blue Shield, they denied me coverage due to my “condition”. When I asked if this would be a common concern for other health insurance companies, they said, “Yes, you will find this with all health insurance companies.”

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Senator Barack Obama emerged as Europe’s favourite candidate for America’s presidency today when a poll conducted for Telegraph.co.uk gave him 52 per cent support across five of the world’s richest nations, including Britain.

John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, received only 15 per cent of the vote in unprecedented survey covering Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

The poll also found a striking level of anti-American feeling in every country. A clear majority of Russians - 56 per cent - believe the US is a “force for evil” in the world. In Britain, only 33 per cent see America as a “force for good”.

Opinion towards America has become steadily more hostile throughout the presidency of George W Bush, with the Iraq war probably being the single most important factor.

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You know it’s silly season when Republican wingnuts start questioning the service of veterans, and start arguing that some Nazi concentration camps weren’t all that bad (since the deaths were merely in the tens of thousands).

And now it’s become even funnier.  This idiot right winger Steve Gilbert, hot on the trail of the “truth” regarding Obama’s great uncle’s service liberating Buchenwald, wrote to WWII vet Raymond Kitchell and his son Mark Kitchell, who together run a site dedicated to the 89th Infantry.

What has ensued is a total pwning and smack-down the likes of which only a WWII vet can deliver.

Read the whole thing.

Two Irishmen walk into a pet shop in Dingle, they walk over to the bird section and Gerry says to Paddy, “Dat”s dem.” The owner comes over and asks if he can help them. “Yeah, we’ll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere,” says Gerry.

The owner puts the budgies in a cardboard box. Paddy and Gerry pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Gerry’s truck to drive to the top of the Connor Pass. At the Connor Pass, Gerry looks down at the 1000 foot drop and says, “Dis looks like a grand place.”

He takes two birds out of the box, puts one on each shoulder and jumps off the cliff. Paddy watches as the budgies fly off and Gerry falls all the way to the bottom, killing himself stone dead. Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Paddy shakes his head and says, “Fook dat. Dis budgie jumping is too fook’n dangerous for me!”

Moment’s later; Seamus arrives up at Connor Pass. He’s been to the pet shop too and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another cardboard box in one hand and a shotgun in the other. “Hi, Paddy, watch dis,” Seamus says.

He takes a parrot from the box and lets him fly free. He then throws himself over the edge of the cliff with the gun. Paddy watches as half way down, Seamus takes the gun and shoots the parrot. Seamus continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body.

Paddy shakes his head and says, “And I’m never trying dat parrot shooting either!”

Paddy is just getting over the shock of losing two friends when Sean appears. He’s also been to the pet shop and is carrying a cardboard box out of which he pulls a chicken.

Sean then takes the chicken by its legs and hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine.

Once more Paddy shakes his head.

“Fook dat, lads. First dere was Gerry with his budgie jumping, den Seamus parrotshooting… And now Sean and his fook”n hengliding!”

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Is it just me, or has the stupidity of the RIAA lawyers attained new heights? To bring an ex parte discovery application before a judge who already has suggested they should be subjected to Rule 11 sanctions, based upon affidavits of “emergency” which have been previously shown to be false, and which are based on illegally procured evidence, at the same time that there is also a Rule 11 motion pending against them for bringing an unauthorized “action in aid of discovery”? Or is it the record companies who are stupid, since they’re the ones actually paying these lawyers to do these things?

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Steven Poole dissects the revisions Microsoft made to their “Five Misunderstood Features in Vista” paper. As a company, their copywriting is roughly on par with their user interface design.

(links to this, which you may want to go to directly instead of via the Quote link above)

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As many of you know, Revision3’s servers were brought down over the Memorial Day weekend by a denial of service attack. It’s an all too common occurrence these days. But this one wasn’t your normal cybercrime – there’s a chilling twist at the end. Here’s what happened, and why we’re even more concerned today, after it’s over, than we were on Saturday when it started.

It all started with just a simple “hi”. Now “hi” can be the sweetest word in the world, breathlessly whispered into your ear by a long-lost lover, or squealed out by your bouncy toddler at the end of the day. But taken to excess – like by a cranky 3-year old–it gets downright annoying. Now imagine a room full of hyperactive toddlers, hot off of a three hour Juicy-Juice bender, incessantly shrieking “hi” over and over again, and you begin to understand what our poor servers went through this past weekend.

[..]

Along with where it’s bound, every internet packet has a return address. Often, particularly in cases like this, it’s forged – or spoofed. But interestingly enough, whoever was sending these SYN packets wasn’t shy. Far from it: it’s as if they wanted us to know who they were.

A bit of address translation, and we’d discovered our nemesis. But instead of some shadowy underground criminal syndicate, the packets were coming from right in our home state of California. In fact, we traced the vast majority of those packets to a public company called Artistdirect (ARTD.OB). Once we were able to get their internet provider on the line, they verified that yes, indeed, that internet address belonged to a subsidiary of Artist Direct, called MediaDefender.

[..]

So I picked up the phone and tried to get in touch with ArtistDirect interim CEO Dimitri Villard. I eventually had a fascinating phone call with both Dimitri Villard and Ben Grodsky, Vice President of Operations at Media Defender.

First, they willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability. That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit.

Second, and here’s where the chain of events come into focus, although not the motive. We’d noticed some unauthorized use of our tracking server, and took steps to de-authorize torrents pointing to non-Revision3 files. That, as it turns out, was exactly the wrong thing to do. MediaDefender’s servers, at that point, initiated a flood of SYN packets attempting to reconnect to the files stored on our server. And that torrential cascade of “Hi”s brought down our network.

If the so-called “defenders” of intellectual property have no problem with breaking the law and abusing your property, why should you care about their property? They’re really asking for it to be copied with this behavior…

source

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, bacon, sausage and spam

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This flap is so chock full of objects of Internet scorn that it’s hard not to get a little dizzy: Right-wing nutcase Michelle Malkin has won a victory over baby-talking Food Network personality Rachael Ray, who was hawking obesity-causing products for fast-food company Dunkin’ Donuts while wearing what appeared to be a kaffiyeh, the cotton scarf that most Americans associate with Palestinian nationalists, especially the much reviled late Yasser Arafat.

Malkin called out Ray and Dunkin’ Donuts on the faux kaffiyeh being visible in the online ads and got the conservative blogosphere buzzing about a potential boycott of the donut chain. And guess what: Dunkin’ Donuts caved and yanked the ads.

It’s probably hard for many people to decide who deserves the lion’s share of their wrath: Malkin for ignorant (and, as always, borderline racist) demagoguery, the insipid Rachael Ray for aggressively embracing the role of foodie icon while shamelessly peddling nutritional nightmares, or Dunkin’ Donuts for manufacturing said fare in the first place and for backing down in the face of Malkin’s toothless swagger.

Just wait until somebody explains “arabic numerals” to Malkin…

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This then raises the question of what exactly you’re supposed to do when someone knocks on your door, and announces that they’re the police and that they have a search warrant. Don’t come to the door, and they’re going to break it down and come after you. Come to the door to verify it’s really the police (by no means a given)—and to let them in if it is—and your very movement toward the door can, also, be a trigger to break the door down and storm your home. Arm yourself and wait for them to come in? You’re practically begging them to shoot you.

Seems your only option is stand somewhere in your own house with your hands in the air, wait for the door to come down, and hope the raiding officers don’t mistake your t-shirt for a gun, or possibly trip or mistakenly fire and accidentally kill you. Be prepared to be thrown to the ground, stepped on, handcuffed, and have the barrel of a gun pointed at the back of your head.

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Yesterday, in his big non-proliferation speech, McCain took his gaffes to a new level. He actually invented 20 years of negotiations between the United States and Tehran. In his speech, McCain said:

“Today, some people seem to think they’ve discovered a brand new cause, something no one before them ever thought of. Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven’t tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades.”

McCain has clearly forgotten what Max Bergmann points out: The stated policy of the United States since April 7, 1980 has been that we don’t talk to the Iranians. Never has the United States had communications, or tried to have communications, with the Iranian government on their nuclear program. Iran’s nuclear communications have been limited to working through the European Union (led by France and Germany, countries John McCain has referred to as “vacuous” and “posturing”).

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Another example of careless jurisprudence this week: on Monday a new law came into force requiring fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to stipulate explicitly that their services are for “entertainment only”.

Well, trades descriptions legislation is anciently established; but in the realms of the spirit, prophecy, invisible worlds, ghosts and human souls, it has generally been felt that the whole thing is too cloudy for law. By bringing access to other spiritual dimensions into line with access to (say) a British Airways club class lounge, and by deeming in law - for that is what this measure does - that claims about worlds undreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, are false, Parliament has taken a serious step in principle, even if the measure itself is trivial and most clairvoyants are only jokers anyway.

What, for instance, about the “faith” community? Perhaps it’s there in the legislative small print already. There will have to be an exception in law for “religions”. Whereupon clairvoyants will presumably rename themselves spiritualists. And spiritualists will presumably claim the status of a religion. Whereupon lawmakers will stipulate that a “religion” has to centre around a deity. Whereupon Buddhism will cease to be a “religion”; and…

…Well you see the philosophical marsh into which this new principle leads. Is Parliament aware of any harder evidence for the efficacy of faith-healing than for the reliability of clairvoyance? I’d like to hear it. Otherwise, let the collecting boxes in church display a sign “for entertainment purposes only” and let Catholics buy candles to light “for entertainment purposes only”; and let trips to Lourdes be sold “for entertainment purposes only”. And let the raiment of the priest administering the Sacrament be embroidered likewise.