Apple has opened a store on Fifth Avenue. Click here to see the first 24 hours. Click on 5:00 and watch a guy propose to his girlfriend…

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“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

“You have no civil liberties if you are dead.”
– Sen. Pat Roberts, May 18, 2006.

trailer.

(The plane was flying back and to the left. Back, and to the left.)

Oh dear! You’ve got a bad case of Humans!

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Now that you’ve spent entirely too much money on your fancy sudden motion sensor equipped Mac laptop, I predict you’ll soon be swinging it around like a loon.

Introducing MacSaber 1.0 Beta. Using your Mac’s sudden motion sensor, this software turns your computer into a Jedi weapon almost worthy of taking on the real thing.

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President Bush’s planned deployment of National Guard troops to the Mexican border would last at least two years with no clear end date, according to a Pentagon memo obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The one-page “initial guidance” memo to National Guard leaders in border states does not address the estimated cost of the mission or when soldiers would be deployed. But high-ranking officials in the California National Guard said they were told Friday that deployments would not begin before early June.

No clear end date? Check.

Not a clue of the final cost? Check.

Fuzzy on deployment dates? Check.

And does any of this language ring a bell?

The document described an “end date” for the mission when the U.S. Border Patrol operation “gains independent operational control of the (southwest border) and National Guard forces are no longer required for this mission.”

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State governments were caught off-guard yesterday as the Senate voted to make English the official language of the United States. The sudden emergence of a single lingual standard is forcing many state Legislatures to abandon official state mottos — inspiring phrases adopted decades ago which hardly anyone can remember and certainly no one can pronounce.

Alabama, for instance, is considering changing its Latin motto — Audemus jura nostra defendere — which means “Did you get that at Wal-Mart?” to the much simpler “Roll Tide!”

Hawaii wants to change its native-tongue motto — Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono — which means “Book em Dano, murder one” with “Is that a volcano in your pants or are you just glad to see me?” The official state song — “Hawai’i pono’i” — which used to be Hawaii’s national anthem, is now the much catchier “Theme from Gilligan’s Island.”

South Carolina was all set to change its official Latin motto — Dum spiro spero — but the motion to change it was tabled after no one could remember what it meant. Ida Mae over at the state archives had written the translation down on the back of a receipt and thought she filed it under “M” but thinks now she may have thrown it out.

Montana’s official motto — Oro y plata — is in Spanish, which very loosely translated means “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” After a lengthy debate, legislators decided they like that just fine.

Maryland’s state motto is in Italian — Fatti maschii, parole femine. After conducting some research into its origins, legislators were shocked to discover it meant “Can I have your sister?” Turns out years ago some prankster legislator slipped it into a budget bill one night to replace the old motto — “We’ve got crabs.”

Kentucky, having just changed its English motto — United We Stand, Divided We Fall — in 2002 to the Latin “Deo gratiam habeamus,” which means “Let Us Be Grateful to God,” is changing again. This time it’s “Put $50 on Barbaro to Win.”

Washington’s motto is in Chinook — Al-ki — which means “By and By,” which sounded too much like the name of a chain of convenience stores, so they changed it to something the House Speaker remembered from “The Outlaw Josey Wales” — Endeavor to Persevere.

Minnesota’s motto is in French — L’étoile du Nord — and is a holdover from territorial days. Coincidentally, back then there was a whorehouse in St. Paul by that same name. The new motto will be “When the ice caps melt, we’ll be beachfront property.”

California’s motto is from the Greek — Eureka — which is what Congressman Duke Cunningham said every Friday when the plain brown envelope arrived at his office. The new motto —  ”You mean Paul McCartney didn’t have a pre-nup?”

Once these changes take effect things will be a lot less confusing for everyone. And states that had been wasting money teaching kids Latin can divert that money to more useful purposes — like teaching Bible stories like that one about that tower in Babel.

And, of course, the dollar changes as well. “E pluribus unum” will be replaced with “Made in china”.

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MSNBC:

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps’ own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.

U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.

Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn’t been completed.

One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.

“This one is ugly,” one official told NBC News.

Three Marine officers — commanders in Haditha — have been relieved of duty, and at least 12 Marines in all are under investigation for what would be the worst single incident involving the deliberate killing of civilians by U.S. military in Iraq.

Fox News:

Ali, 76, whose left leg was amputated years ago because of diabetes, died after being shot in the stomach and chest. His wife, Khamisa, 66, was shot in the back. Ali’s son, Jahid, 43, was hit in the head and chest. Son Walid, 37, was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room, and a third son, 28-year-old Rashid, died after he was shot in the head and chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Also among the dead were son Walid’s wife, Asma, 32, who was shot in the head, and their son Abdullah, 4, who was shot in the chest, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Walid’s 8-year-old daughter, Iman, and his 6-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman, were wounded and U.S. troops took them to Baghdad for treatment. The only person who escaped unharmed was Walid’s 5-month-old daughter, Asia. The three children now live with their maternal grandparents, Rsayef and Hamza said.

Rsayef said those killed in the second house were his brother Younis, 43, who was shot in the stomach and chest, the brother’s wife Aida, 40, who was shot in the neck and chest while still in bed where she was recuperating from bladder surgery. Their 8-year-old son Mohammed bled to death after being shot in the right arm, Rsayef said.

Also killed were Younis’s daughters, Nour, 14, who was shot in the head; Seba, 10, who was hit in the chest; Zeinab, 5, shot in the chest and stomach; and Aisha, 3, who was shot in the chest. Hoda Yassin, a visiting relative, was also killed, Rsayef and Hamza said.

The only survivor from Younis’s family was his 15-year-old daughter Safa, who pretended she was dead. She is living with her grandparents, Rsayef said.

Gateway Pundit:

Shame on John Murtha!

Confederate Yankee:

It would seem appropriate that the United States House of Representatives should at the very least censure Congressman Murtha, who has gone so far out of his way to initiate such inflammatory and potentially dangerous rhetoric. He has dishonored his seat, the military criminal justice system, the Marine Corps and the United States of America.

Blue Crab Boulevard

If Representative Murtha refuses to resign, the Congress should remove him for cause. Period.

Sweetness and Light:

Murtha (probably rightly) figures as long as he keeps this up nobody will dare go after him for him and his brother’s defense kickback scams.

He’d rather betray his country some more than go to jail, I guess.

Kalifornia Konservative:

Frankly, this is the actions of a traitor or a sellout. He deserves to be ridiculed, excoriated and frog-marched off Capitol Hill, then remanded to jail. No bail.

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“Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model. And again, at the end of the day, you make the choice based on what has the highest value to you,”

– Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe

He was talking about “commercial software” being reliable, so he must have been talking about Mac OS X. Remember when Windows crashed every day, in the days of Windows 95/98/Me? It must have been Open Source back then. . It had to be. Because there’s NO WAY it could be otherwise if they used a “commercial software model”.

Well, at least there’s one thing you can rely on with Microsoft.

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Security experts fear that the UK government is on track to outlaw the supply of network security tools, and even scripting languages such as Perl

IT and security professionals who make network monitoring tools publicly available or disclose details of unpatched vulnerabilities could be convicted under a proposed UK law, experts have warned.

The Police and Justice Bill will update the UK’s existing Computer Misuse Act (CMA), bringing in new powers to address the rise of organised cybercriminals and offences such as denial-of-service attacks. It was passed by the House of Commons earlier this month, and will be considered by the House Of Lords over the next couple of months.

Leading figures in the UK technology sector believe that the bill, as it currently stands, would outlaw a range of innocent activities.

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Clayton cited the Perl scripting language, created by Larry Wall in 1987, as an example of a useful technology that could fall foul of the law.

“Perl is almost universally used on a daily basis to permit the Internet to function,” said Clayton. “I doubt if there is a sysadmin on the planet who hasn’t written a Perl program at some time or another. Equally, almost every hacker who commits an offence under section 1 or section 3 of the CMA will use Perl as part of their toolkit. Unless Larry is especially stupid, and there is very little evidence for that, he will form the opinion that hackers are likely to use his Perl system. Locking Larry up is surely not desirable.”

First they came for the COBOL programmers, and I was silent,
Because ADD KEYSTROKES TO SYNTAX GIVING OBFUSCATION was always lame.
They they came for the BASIC programmers, and I was silent,
Because I considered GOTO harmful,
Then they came for the C++ programmers, and I was silent,
Because I could still write FORTRAN in any language,
Then they came for the Perl programmers, and now the only way I can win an obfuscated programming contest is to write it in APL.

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I couldn’t have said it better — so if you are searching for a humorous way to explain why net neutrality matters to your friends, this is the clip is for you.