[Quote:]

PC manufacturers that expected to get their hands on the final version of Windows Vista today will have to wait a couple more weeks for the operating system, according to sources familiar with Microsoft Corp.’s plans.

Microsoft originally targeted today for Vista’s release to manufacturing, but a last-minute bug that “took most of the Vista team by surprise” caused an unexpected delay, said Ethan Allen, a quality assurance lead at a Seattle high-tech company that tests its products for Vista.

Crap. Now I have to wait another two weeks to not buy it.

[Quote:]

A 24-year-old computer security student working on his doctorate at Indiana University Bloomington has created a Web site that allows anyone with an Internet connection and a printer to create and print fake boarding passes for Northwest Airlines flights.

[..]

“The Bush administration must immediately act to investigate, apprehend those responsible, shut down the website, and warn airlines and aviation security officials to be on the look-out for fraudsters or terrorists trying to use fake boarding passes in an attempt to cheat their way through security and onto a plane,” wrote Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the Committee on Homeland Security, in a statement.

Absolutely, congressman! Anybody exposing what frauds you all are for creating this crap security theater must naturally be thrown into a habeas corpus-free zone right away!

Oh, and Ed, how about getting Senator Schumer in jail as well?

[Quote:]

Thirty-year-old Smita Narang is rapidly becoming one of India’s hottest Web designers. Her method: applying vastu shastra, the Indian counterpart of feng shui, to the online realm. The process entails mapping page attributes – HTML, colors, graphics – to elements like fire, water, and air. “Any disturbance of these established elements can cause an imbalance in the site that directly affects its business,” Narang says. Thanks to her book WebVastu and her own vastu-ed up homepage, clients are clamoring for her advice.

I guess we can now officially call this the second internet bubble.

Three Blondes were all applying for the last available position on the Texas Highway Patrol.

The detective conducting the interview looked at the three of them and said, “So y’all want to be cops, huh?”

The blondes all nodded.

The detective got up, opened a file drawer and pulled out a folder. Sitting back down, he opened it and pulled out a picture, and said, “To be a detective, you have to be able to detect. You must be able to notice things such as distinguishing features and oddities, such as scars and so forth.” So saying, he stuck the photo in the face of the first blonde and withdrew it after about two seconds.

“Now,” he said, “did you notice any distinguishing features about this man ?”

The blonde immediately said, “Yes, I did. He has only one eye!”

The detective shook his head and said, “Of course he has only one eye in this picture! It’s a profile of his face! You’re dismissed!”

The first blonde hung her head and walked out of the office.

The detective then turned to the second blonde, stuck the photo in her face for two seconds, pulled it back and said, “What about you? Notice anything unusual or outstanding about this man?”

“Yes! He only has one ear!”

The detective put his head in his hands and exclaimed, “Didn’t you hear what I just told the other lady? This is a profile of the man’s face! Of course you can only see one ear!! You’re excused too!”

The second blonde sheepishly walked out of the office.

The detective turned his attention to the third and last blonde and said, “This is probably a waste of time, but…” He flashed the photo in her face for a couple of seconds and withdrew it, saying, “All right, did you notice anything distinguishing or unusual about this man?”

The blonde said, “I sure did. This man wears contact lenses.”

The detective frowned, took another look at the picture and began looking at some of the papers in the folder.

He looked up at the blonde with a puzzled _expression and said, “You’re absolutely right! His bio says he wears contacts! How in the world could you tell that by looking at his picture?”

The blonde rolled her eyes and said, “Well, Helloooo! With only one eye and one ear, he certainly can’t wear glasses.”

[Quote:]

Pope Benedict XVI reached out yesterday to secular intellectuals who share his fear Europe is losing its Christian roots, calling this convergence of views a “great opportunity.”

Addressing a congress of the Italian Roman Catholic Church in the northern town of Verona, the Pope warned of the dangers facing societies that abandon their roots, saying they are unable “to dialogue with other cultures where religion is a much stronger presence.”

Benedict said he was pleased that more and more intellectuals, especially in Italy, agreed with this stance, including “those who do not share our faith or do not practise it” — an apparent reference to Italy’s “devout atheists” gravitating toward the Catholic Church because it defends European values.

“It is a great opportunity” for the Church and Catholics, the 79-year-old pontiff told 2,700 delegates to the congress.

Let me translate that last statement for you: “it’s our only chance to stay relevant in the long term.”

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

This webpage will produce a boarding pass good enough to get anyone past TSA, and thus, into the “secure” gate areas of the airport terminal.
Note that this will not be a valid pass, so it will not get you on the airplane. For that, you need to actually buy a ticket.
Why would you want one of these?

1. To meet your elderly grandparents at the gate
2. To ‘upgrade’ yourself once on the airplane – by printing another boarding pass for a ticket you’re already purchased, only this time, in Business Class.
3. Just to demonstrate that the TSA Boarding Pass/ID check is useless.

Worse – the much touted “no fly list” is rather useless. All one has to do to bypass this is:

1. Buy a ticket online, using a prepaid credit card puchased at 7/11 with cash, for a fake passenger name. Make sure you do not use “John Smith” or “Robert Johnson”, as these are already on the no-fly list.
2. Show up at the airport, and tell the airline check-in staff you have no ID. They will give you a special boarding pass, marked “NO ID” and “SSSS” which will let you go through security without authenticating your stated name.
3. Board airplane.

[Quote:]

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez voted for a bill in Congress to strengthen protections against misuse of a restricted federal database, months before he praised a federal agent who leaked information from the database to Beauprez’s gubernatorial campaign, the Rocky Mountain News reported Monday.

Beauprez was also one of several co-sponsors of a separate bill dealing with the database, although he told The Denver Post last week he had never heard of it, The Post reported.

State investigators have said data from the National Crime Information Center, a database restricted to law-enforcement use, turned up in a Beauprez campaign ad attacking his Democratic opponent, former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, as being soft on illegal immigration.

[Quote:]

A former Iraqi minister has said that officials in the former interim government stole about $800m (£425m) meant for buying military equipment.

Former Finance Minister Ali Allawi told the US CBS network that about $1.2bn had been allocated for new weapons.

About $400m was spent on outdated equipment and the rest stolen, he said.

Mr Allawi said the UK and US had done little to recover the money or catch the suspects, who were “running around the world”.

“We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the UK or any of the surrounding Arab countries,” he said.

“The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar.

[Quote:]

Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called waterboarding, which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated the Bush administration doesn’t regard waterboarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said.

Indeed, sir, you have no brain. I’m looking forward to seeing you marched into the office next to the one I’m sitting in right now.

[Quote:]

Everybody knows that many athletes cheat by using performance-enhancing drugs like steroids, testosterone, and EPO. But what is it like to take these banned substances? Do they really help you win? To find out, Outside Magazine sent an amateur cyclist into the back rooms of sports medicine, where he just said yes to the most controversial chemicals in sports.

[Quote:]

Imagine mouthing a phrase in English, only for the words to come out in Spanish. That is the promise of a device that will make anyone appear bilingual, by translating unvoiced words into synthetic speech in another language.

The device uses electrodes attached to the face and neck to detect and interpret the unique patterns of electrical signals sent to facial muscles and the tongue as the person mouths words. The effect is like the real-life equivalent of watching a television show that has been dubbed into a foreign language, says speech researcher Tanja Schultz of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Existing translation systems based on automatic speech-recognition software require the user to speak the phrase out loud. This makes conversation difficult, as the speaker must speak and then push a button to play the translation. The new system allows for a more natural exchange. “The ultimate goal is to be in a position where you can just have a conversation,” says CMU speech researcher Alan Black.

I wonder – do Republicans like being cheated by their own representatives?

[Quote:]

Bowing to anti-immigration hardliners in the House, President Bush today held a White House ceremony celebrating the signing of the “Secure Fence Act.�? Bush told reporters, “The bill authorizes the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along our southern border.�?

Bush is right, the bill does “authorize�? the constrution of a new fence. But that doesn’t mean the bill pays for it. As the Washington Post reported earlier this month:

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

… [S]hortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects — not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and “tactical infrastructure�? to support the Department of Homeland Security’s preferred option of a “virtual fence.�?

[..]

“It’s one thing to authorize. It’s another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). The fine-print distinction between what Congress says it will do and what it actually pays for is a time-honored result of the checks and balances between lawmakers who oversee agencies and those who hold their purse strings.

In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details, and that key players — including the administration, local leaders and the Mexican government — oppose a fence-only approach, analysts said.

The “Secure Fence Act�? has everything to do with motivating the right-wing base, and nothing to do with securing America’s borders or passing comprehensive immigration reform.

[Quote:]

PvdA-leider Wouter Bos relativeert de betekenis van de doorrekening van de verkiezingprogramma’s door het Centraal Planbureau (CPB). “De CPB-cijfers bevatten altijd veel veronderstellingen en aannames. Je moet daar voorzichtig mee omgaan en je gezond verstand gebruiken”, aldus Bos donderdag.

Een verkiezingprogramma bevat altijd veel veronderstellingen en aannames. Je moet daar als kiezer voorzichtig mee omgaan en je verstand gebruiken. De doorrekening van het CPB kan je daarmee helpen.

Je moet even weten op welke manier ado de laatste week in het nieuws is geweest, maar dan is de foto best leuk:

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Here, at last, IBM speaks. And it has a lot to say.

Here is IBM’s Redacted Memorandum in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment on SCO’s Contract Claims (SCO’s First, Second, Third and Fourth Causes of Action [Part I and Part II]

We’ve listened to SCO for more than three years tell its side of the story, and the media printed its every word. IBM, when asked to comment, invariably said nothing. Now it tells the court in detail how truly wronged it has been by The SCO Group, and why the court should bring this wrong to an end by granting IBM’s motion for summary judgment on SCO’s contract claims.

There are five other summary judgment motions, but this one matters greatly to IBM, because it has to do with the claim most observers thought might be SCO’s strongest, the contract claims, particularly with regard to Sequent. Yet here, in this document, we find SCO’s house of cards has collapsed. There isn’t any System V code placed in Linux by IBM. SCO in the end hasn’t even lodged such a claim.

So what is SCO claiming? That IBM breached the agreements by contributing its own original source code (not UNIX System V source code) to the open source operating system known as Linux:

For years, SCO perpetuated the illusion that it had evidence that IBM took confidential source code (including methods and concepts) from UNIX System V and”dumped” it into Linux. However, SCO does not have — and never has had — any such evidence. SCO has not identified any UNIX System V source code (including methods or concepts) that IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux. Nor has SCO identified any modification or derivative work of UNIX System V that IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux. It is undisputed and indisputable that IBM has not contributed to Linux any UNIX System V source code (including methods or concepts) or any modification or derivative work of UNIX System V. To the extent that IBM has contributed source code, methods, and concepts to Linux, those contributions have been original or homegrown IBM works or the works of third parties other than SCO created independent of UNIX System V.

SCO’s contract claims thus turn on the proposition that the Agreements somehow give SCO the right to control IBM’s and others’ original works. SCO argues that IBM’s AIX and Dynix/ptx (“Dynix”) products, which are comprised of many tens of millions of lines of source code and are indisputably owned by IBM, include some UNIX System V material and are therefore modifications and derivative works of UNIX System V. According to SCO, the Agreements forbid IBM from contributing its own original works to Linux if they were ever part

of AIX or Dynix. SCO further claims that any IBM representative who worked in AIX or Dynix is forbidden from working on Linux.

Can you beat that?

The mountain of infringing code it told the media IBM had wrongly placed in Linux has completely disappeared.

Instead, SCO is left with an odd interpretation of contract that would give SCO control over IBM’s own code, copyrighted and patented by IBM and written without reference to System V. For that matter, SCO’s interpretation would pretty much give it control over the code of the entire software industry. Further it would make programmers unemployable for life on any other operating system but Unix, once exposed to it, which all computer science students are. Groklaw member PoIR dubs it “retromagical contractual obligations.”

[Quote:]

IT TOOK a leisurely 70 years after King Gillette invented the safety razor for someone to come up with the idea that twin blades might be—or, at least sell—better. Since then, the pace of change has accelerated, as blade after blade has been added to razors in an attempt to tech-up the “shaving experience�?.

For the most cynical shavers, this evolution is mere marketing. Twin blades seemed plausible. Three were a bit unlikely. Four, ridiculous. And five seems beyond the pale. Few people, though, seem willing to bet that Gillette’s five-bladed Fusion is the end of the road for razor-blade escalation. More blades may seem impossible for the moment—though strictly speaking the Fusion has six, because it has a single blade on its flip-side for tricky areas—but anyone of a gambling persuasion might want to examine the relationship between how many blades a razor has, and the date each new design was introduced.

This relationship (see chart) suggests shavers are going to get more blades whether they need them or not. However, just like Moore’s law—the observation that computer chips double in power every 18 months or so—it seems that technology as well as marketing determines the rate at which new blades are introduced.

[Quote:]

The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.

This ruling is the first BitTorrent related conviction in the US. Stanley pleaded guilty earlier this year to “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement�? and “criminal copyright infringement�?. He is one of the three defendants in the Elitetorrents operation better known as “Operation D-Elite�?.

Operation D-Elite (they love word tricks) was orchestrated by the FBI with a little help from the MPAA in May 2005, and resulted in the shutdown of one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers at that time.

Jail? For administrating an indexing site?

When are they going to lock up the Google admins?!?

[Quote:]

Nudity in public is the greatest modern taboo, according to a survey published today – and wearing a hoodie is second.

Almost two out of five (37%) people placed nakedness on top of the list of unacceptable public practices, followed by wearing a hoodie 12%, in the latest evidence that the British public are insane.

Public displays of affection (11%) and breast-feeding (9%) came third and fourth, in the survey of 3,013 people.

Violence, shouting abuse, masturbation, singing ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ by Color Me Badd, and attempting to sell your children into slavery all fail to feature on the list, however.

[Quote:]

An immigrant from Africa has gone on trial on charges alleging he circumcised his 2-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors to avoid bringing shame on his family.

It appears to be a groundbreaking prosecution for a case of female genital mutilation in the U.S., said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now, a New York-based human rights group that focuses on violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.

Khalid Adem could face 40 years in prison if convicted in Gwinnett County on the charges of aggravated battery and cruelty to children.

Some crimes make it extremely difficulty to be against the death penalty. 40 years is not long enough.

[Quote:]

about terror far more real than that imagined by hysterical post-9/11 SubTalk warnings

[Quote:]

And even testing things in IE isn’t easy. For example, here’s what you see when you click View Source in Vista:

This is just one of the endless confirmation dialogs Microsoft has added in the name of security. Here, the language doesn’t even make sense: No, a “website�? doesn’t “want�? to “open web content,�? I clicked View Source! And the dialog box defaults to not letting me do what I want. So you can’t even trust Vista to do what you tell it to do.

But the most painful experience yet has been installing Microsoft Script Debugger, an ancient artifact used to debug JavaScript in IE. After finding the link on Microsoft’s web site, it takes a stunning 35 clicks through nearly as many dialog boxes just to get the thing installed. (Keep reading for videos and an explanation.)

Installing Microsoft Script Debugger in Windows Vista, 10 MB

First I have to make sure my copy of Windows is “genuine,�? which involves installing an ActiveX component (yuck!) or downloading and running a 1.35 MB program that takes 15 seconds to load and forces me to copy and paste a code into a tiny text field. Once I’m past the validation step, I click to download and run the Script Debugger installer, which leads me through six confirmation dialogs before actually starting the installation.

Except the files can’t be copied! More cryptic dialogs appear. I click Retry several times to no avail, then finally give up and click Cancel. (Which I’m asked to confirm, of course.) After saying yes, I’m sure I want to cancel the installation that doesn’t work, another dialog pops up blaming me for the failed installation: “INF Install failure. Reason: The operation was cancelled by the user.�?

So I decide to actually read the instructions on the page that loaded after my download began. The instructions say that clicking “Run�? instead of “Save�? should be fine. Whatever, I’ll try saving the installer to disk anyway, because I really need this debugger. Ten confirmation dialogs later, the Microsoft Script Debugger installer finally starts copying files to my hard drive.

[Quote:]

Nine people were cited this month for shooting at a bull elk decoy that was used in a sting operation by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The decoy was set up along a roadway – visible from the road – north of Pinedale in elk area 95. Jackson/Pinedale Game Warden Coordinator Scott Werbelow said 62 vehicles passed the decoy during daylight hours on Oct. 1, two weeks before the area opened for elk hunting.

“We don’t use decoys a lot,” Werbelow said. “But we have certain problem areas where they are pretty effective, and this is one of those areas.”

I just can’t help myself. If I see an Elk, or reasonable facsimile, I have to shoot at it, it’s an addiction. I’m an Elkoholic.

[Quote:]

Some countries try to refute criticism over their treatment of prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terror suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said on Monday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator on torture, told a news conference that “all too frequently” governments respond to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.

“The United States has been the pioneer of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world,” Nowak said. “Today, other governments are kind of saying, ‘But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.’”

He said nations like Jordan tell him, “We are collaborating with the United States so it can’t be wrong if it is also done by the United States.”

America, that old shining beacon on a hill

[Quote:]

On 10/24/2006 (the day Firefox 2 is released) the staff at Mozilla HQ in Mountain View, CA gets a very special delivery: a cake from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team.

but they didn’t include the recipe