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Microsoft keelhauls customers in WGA snafu
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Some, or maybe many, Microsoft volume license customers were told on Monday and Tuesday that their PCs were running pirated software.
In a post today on the company forums, Microsoft staffer Phil Chui blamed the cock-up over Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation on “an issue on the Microsoft server side”.
Microsoft is investigating the cause of the server breakdown. In the meantime it offers a workaround here.
This may be less than satisfactory for sysadmins, especially if they have to hose down their, by definition many, PCs one at a time.
If volume license customers can get caught up in WGA hell, what hope for the little guys? Today, Microsoft unwrapped the Software Protection Platform, a set of tough new anti-piracy measures to be incorporated into upcoming OS releases, Vista and Windows Longhorn Server. The biggest innovation, to use a totemic word for Microsoft, will be to “force PCs identified as running counterfeit Microsoft software, into “reduced functionality mode in Windows Vista”.
Yep, that’s the kind of operating system I want to trust running vital stuff.
European Central Bank wants EU protection from US
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The European Central Bank has put its weight behind transatlantic talks that the EU hopes will secure the privacy of European citizens from the prying eyes of US anti-terrorist investigators.
Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president, declared his support for the talks at a European Parliament hearing, after being pressed by MEPs to explain why the ECB had hidden its knowledge of a secret US anti-terrorist intelligence investigation, the Terrorist Finance Programme, from other EU authorities.
The EU is investigating alleged widespread privacy violations by the US investigation in the subpoenas it made for world-wide financial records held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the Belgian firm that handles instructions for most of the world’s financial transactions.
Since being exposed by the New York Times in June, the US use of SWIFT has fuelled tensions in Europe over what is perceived to be the America’s persistent violation of European civil liberties in its hunt for terrorists.
Those European organisations which complied with the secret US investigation without telling the EU have jumped on the crux of the transatlantic wrangle as a defence against the criticism levelled at them.
“I would say that there is a case for a clarification of the border of the interface between data protection and the fight against terrorism…at the global level,” Trichet told a joint committee hearing before the European Parliament today.
He admitted to MEPs that it and the G10 central banks that make up SWIFT’s oversight committee were told about the US subpoenas in February 2002. The banks kept schtum because they believed it wasn’t their job to consider the privacy of SWIFT’s data.
“The task of protecting personal data is outside of the remit of the Group’s oversight function, since it is unrelated to the functioning of market infrastructure and financial stability,” said Trichet.
But he was pressed by MEPs to consider the idea that data privacy was essential for financial stability. Should financiers think their transactions were being watched by US intelligence without any oversight, they might lose faith in the system.
Slowly but surely, the US is turning into the enemy of all nations.
The Miniature Earth
They all stare…
Indifferent
This Is What Vigilantism Looks Like
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Another airplane passenger false alarm:
Seth Stein is used to jetting around the world to create stylish holiday homes for wealthy clients. This means the hip architect is familiar with the irritations of heightened airline security post-9/11. But not even he could have imagined being mistaken for an Islamist terrorist and physically pinned to his seat while aboard an American Airlines flight — especially as he has Jewish origins.
Turns out that one of the other passengers decided to take matters into his own hands.
In Mr Stein’s case, he was pounced on as the crew and other travellers looked on. The drama unfolded less than an hour into the flight. As he settled down with a book and a ginger ale, the father-of-three was grabbed from behind and held in a head-lock.
“This guy just told me his name was Michael Wilk, that he was with the New York Police Department, that I’d been acting suspiciously and should stay calm. I could barely find my voice and couldn’t believe it was happening,” said Mr Stein.
“He went into my pocket and took out my passport and my iPod. All the other passengers were looking concerned.” Eventually, cabin crew explained that the captain had run a security check on Mr Stein after being alerted by the policeman and that this had cleared him. The passenger had been asked to go back to his seat before he had restrained Mr Stein. When the plane arrived in New York, Mr Stein was met by apologetic police officers who offered to fast-track him out of the airport.
Even stranger:
In a twist to the story, Mr Stein has since discovered that there is only one Michael Wilk on the NYPD’s official register of officers, but the man retired 25 years ago. Officials have told the architect that his assailant may work for another law enforcement agency but have refused to say which one.
Do you feel safer yet?
Lightning bolt throws photographer in the air
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When the sky darkened and lightning began to flash, Kane Quinnell grabbed his new digital camera, hoping to snap some pictures of the approaching storm.
Not having a tripod, he balanced the camera on his car, parked under the carport of his then Old Toongabbie home, and aimed the lens southward.
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After setting the camera for a four-second exposure he began shooting pictures, suspecting there was little chance of lightning flashing while the shutter was open.
“I hit the button … and there was nothing. I hit the button again … and nothing. On about the fourth attempt I hit the button again and I saw this lightning and heard the thunder.
“It was like a crack. The next thing I was about two metres in the air – it scared the hell out of me.”
Mr Quinnell estimated the lightning struck about 20 metres away. “I think it hit the house behind me.”
The other Google search site
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Google has created a search site without any Google branding to test new features. The site, SearchMash, has a simple blue and white interface with a search bar and an option to click on “popular searches.” Once keywords are entered, the results page features links to results running down the left side of the page and the top three image results on the right side.
SearchMash also lets you click on a result and drag and drop it to change the order. Also, when a link is clicked on, the user is offered the option of opening the listings in the current window or a new window, seeing more pages from the Web site or finding similar pages. Additional results are added to the bottom of the original results page by clicking on a “more web pages” link.
With SearchMash, Google “plans to test user interface ideas without Google’s brand somehow skewing the tests,” Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.com wrote in a blog posting on Monday. “It’s pretty slick.”
Sign
Cartoons
They Shall Not Pass!
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the battle of Cable Street. On Sunday October 4th 1936, Oswald Moseley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, attempted to lead a march through Stepney, at that time a predominantly Jewish area. As the fascists met at Royal Mint Street, around 300,000 people barricaded the roads of the East End, chanting “No Pasaran” and “They Shall Not Pass”. When the police attempted to break through the corden at Cable Street a riot ensued. The police were repelled and Moseley and his acolytes were forced to march in the opposite direction, into the empty streets of the City. With the Spanish Civil War at its peak, Cable Street saw communists, anarchists, Jews, dockers and many other ordinary eastenders fighting the fascists together and has a mythological place in East London folklore. Celebrations will be held this Sunday.
From today’s Guardian in case anyone thought this sort of thing was history…
American Troops Lost in Iraq, September 2006
FINAL ROLL CALL, SEPTEMBER 2006:
Ashley Henderson Huff, aged 22
All stories are on Spread the Word: Iraq-Nam.
In Bill’s Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory
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Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.
Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success? in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.
Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.
Quotations from Mark Foley
At Sacred Heart, I was taught how to be a better citizen because of their focus on discipline and moral values
By offering an education centered on values, the faculty in Catholic schools can create an interactive setting between parents and students that is geared toward long-term healthy character.
I am and have always been a strong proponent of public education. But by the virtue of its very nature – publicly funded schools cannot offer the type of spiritual education that Catholic schools have long provided.
I think one of the unique aspects of Catholic school education is the opportunity to care for the material and intellectual needs of the child in a community atmosphere.
In search of a complete education with the ideals of trust, faith, understanding and compassion, many families are turning to the structure, discipline and academic standards of Catholic schools.
Parochial schools in the United States are also responsible for educating students from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, including many who are non-Catholic.
And now MSN-AP
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – As Congress continued to feel the fallout from Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation over a scandal with male pages, Foley’s lawyer announced Tuesday that the Florida Republican had been molested by a clergyman as a teenager and that he was under the influence of alcohol when he sent lurid messages to congressional pages.
FOX ‘News’ labels Foley as Dem during O’Reilly Factor
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Just amazing. Fox’s O’Reilly Factor just covered the Mark Foley (R-FL) issue in two different segments, one of them with a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter.
Never mind the content of either segment for now. Incredibly during a total of three different cutaways to video footage of Foley, he was labelled at the bottom of the screen eachtime as “(D-FL)” !
Three different times. In two different segements. Each cutaway about 15 seconds or more. Showing Foley as a DEMOCRAT. Amazing.
Just an accident? We report, you decide.
Do Indians need to keep an eye on Arctic volcanoes?
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In June 1912, Novarupta—one of a chain of volcanoes on the Alaska Peninsula—erupted in what turned out to be the largest blast of the twentieth century. It was so powerful that it drained magma from under another volcano, Mount Katmai, six miles east, causing the summit of Katmai to collapse to form a caldera half a mile deep. Novarupta also expelled three cubic miles of magma and ash into the air, which fell to cover an area of 3,000 square miles more than a foot deep.
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When a volcano anywhere erupts, it does more than spew clouds of ash, which can shadow a region from sunlight and cool it for a few days. It also blows sulfur dioxide—a gas irritating to the lungs and smelling like rotten eggs. If the eruption is strongly vertical, it shoots that sulfur dioxide high into the stratosphere more than 10 miles above Earth.
Up in the stratosphere, sulfur dioxide reacts with water vapor to form sulfate aerosols. Because these aerosols float above the altitude of rain, they don’t get washed out. They linger, reflecting sunlight and cooling Earth’s surface.
This can create a kind of nuclear winter (a.k.a. “volcanic winter”) for a year or more after an eruption. In April 1815, for instance, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted. The following year, 1816, was called “the year without a summer,” with snow falling across the United States in July. Even the smaller June 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled the average temperature of the northern hemisphere summer of 1992 to well below average.
But both those volcanoes as well as Krakatau were in the tropics.
Novarupta is just south of the Arctic Circle.
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