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In many of the Vista reviews, even the positive ones, people note that some Vista features are already in the Mac operating system.
You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts. If you just want to say, “Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along,” that’s fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with [the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?

I don’t know what Bill has been smoking, but I guess I want some of it… wow…

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report from the Congressional Budget Office says President Bush’s plan for a troop increase in Iraq could cost up to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment.

The plan could mean sending thousands of support troops in addition to the 20,000-plus combat troops the Defense Department has set for deployment.

The numbers come in a letter to Rep. John Spratt, chairman of the House Budget Committee, in response to a request from Spratt’s office.

[..]

The report notes that the Defense Department has identified only combat troops for deployment in the increase but says, “U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical and other services.”

The report notes the Defense Department expects to use fewer support troops than in the past.

It estimates that under past proportions, 28,000 support troops would be added to the 20,000 combat troops. But it revises that figure to 15,000 support troops for a new deployment.

That would bring the total number of forces being added in Iraq to between 35,000 and 48,000 troops, the report said.

So the surge is about twice what Bush claimed. Not only did Bush do exactly the opposite of what everyone with a mind recommended, he lied about what he was actually doing.

What a guy…

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The residents of this Central Kentucky town weren’t about to let a native daughter miss her favorite holiday because of military service. So they re-created it.

When National Guard Spc. Shannon Dale, 20, returned from duty in Afghanistan on Tuesday, it was as if time had stood still.

There were twinkling Christmas lights galore in store windows and throughout the Garrard County town of roughly 2,000 residents.

Many of them waved flags to welcome Dale, who was presented with a bouquet of roses and baby’s breath, and a salute from the bearer of the flowers, Tim Robbins, chaplain of the Paint Lick-Cartersville Volunteer Fire Department. The welcome was followed by a reception with cake, punch and hot chocolate.

“I didn’t expect all this,” Dale said, a little overcome by the hoopla. “I appreciate it a lot. This was my first Christmas away from home, and I was pretty upset about missing Christmas.”

Downtown Paint Lick is less than a city block long, but several businesses kept up their Christmas decorations as a show of support to Dale, a member of the 198th Military Police Battalion based in Louisville.

If you’ve got a TV bigger than 55 inches, you cannot watch the Superbowl on it

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Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens.

Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent.

Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there.

He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man.

Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of “extraordinary rendition” – a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

Prosecutors in Munich said in a statement that the city’s court had issued the warrants on suspicion of abduction and grievous bodily harm.

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We’ve just received a sound tip that Microsoft is working on its very own phone to be branded under the Zune moniker. Our tipsters inform us that Microsoft execs are in meetings today hammering out details of the device and developing strategies and timescales for its release.

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My father heard about Vista coming on the news. Since he was interested in getting it, he asked me to obtain it and install it on his computer and he would give some cash in return. I told him I was going to do that, but instead I burned an Ubuntu CD and installed it.

Later, when he came home from work, I showed him his new “Vista” install, complete with the latest Office and Solitaire.

Well, it’s been a few days since that and now he says Bill Gates is better than Steve Jobs and brags about how OS X on my iMac is obsolete compared to Vista on his PC.

I will continue with the prank for some weeks, after which I’ll tell him the truth and give him back his money.

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Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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IraqSlogger has confirmed that the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division has opened an investigation into this video, which was first posted on our site last week.

The clip, originally linked via a now defunct account on YouTube, purports to show a former guard from Abu Ghraib talking about torture techniques employed at the American-run prison. The man also recounts the gang rape of a female teenage detainee, in which one guard “pimped” the girl to others for $50 each. As he recalls, “I think at the end of the day he’d made like 500 bucks before she hung herself.”

According to chief of public affairs Christopher Grey, “CID Special Agents are looking into the matter and take this issue very seriously. I am not able to provide you with any further details of our activity at this time due to investigative reasons.”

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, President Bush acknowledged that as early as “September/October�? 2006, he realized a major change was needed in Iraq:

WSJ: Was there a moment in the war when you said we have to make a major change in the way we’re doing things in Iraq?
GWB: Yes, there was.
WSJ: When was that?

GWB: September/October.

But even after Bush realized that a major change was needed — in the weeks just prior to the midterm elections — he continued to knowingly mislead the American public and claim U.S. was “winning�? in Iraq and that the strategy was “working�?:

QUESTION: Are we winning?
BUSH: Absolutely we’re winning. … We’re winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle, right now, is Iraq. [10/25/06]

BUSH: But I believe that the military strategy we have is going to work. That’s what I believe. [10/25/06]

QUESTION: But just to be clear: When the commanders on the ground tell the president, in the large picture, we are stepping closer to chaos, he believes that can also be a picture of winning?
SNOW: Yes. [11/1/06]

BUSH: We’ve got a lot going for us. We got a strategy that helps us achieve victory, and we got a military that is the finest military any country has ever assembled. [11/3/06]

Previously, Bush acknowledged lying about Rumsfeld’s resignation for political purposes in the lead-up to the elections.

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On Tuesday, President Bush popped in for a surprise visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant, a homey diner in Peoria, Ill. It’s a scene that has been played out many times before by this White House and others: a president mingling among regular Americans, who, no matter what they might think of his policies, are usually humbled and shocked to see the leader of the free world standing 10 feet in front of them.

But on Tuesday, the surprise was on Bush. In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,�? Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?�? As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,�? a White House aide told her. “No problem,�? she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.�?

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Downing Street has said there will be no exemption from anti-discrimination laws for Catholic adoption agencies.

But Tony Blair said they would get 21 months to prepare for change, calling this a “sensible compromise”.

Adoption agencies had warned they would close rather than place children with gay couples, saying that went against their beliefs.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales said it was “deeply disappointed” that no exemption had been offered.

The proposed measures are likely to face a vote in Parliament next month before coming into effect on 6 April.

Mr Blair said he believed ministers had found a “way through” to prevent discrimination and protect the interests of children, which all “reasonable people” should be able to accept.

“There is no place in our society for discrimination. That’s why I support the right of gay couples to apply to adopt like any other couple.

“And that way there can be no exemptions for faith-based adoption agencies offering public funded services from regulations that prevent discrimination.”

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Scientists from across the world gathered Monday to hammer out the final details of an authoritative report on climate change that is expected to project centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless there are curbs in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Scientists involved in writing or reviewing the report say it is nearly certain to conclude that there is at least a 90 percent chance that human-caused emissions are the main factor in warming since 1950. The report is the fourth since 1990 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is overseen by the United Nations.

The report, several of the authors said, will describe a growing body of evidence that warming is likely to cause a profound transformation of the planet.

Three large sections of the report will be forthcoming during the year. The first will be a summary for policy makers and information on basic climate science, which is expected to be issued on Friday.

Among the findings in recent drafts:

- The Arctic Ocean could largely be devoid of sea ice during summer later in the century.

- Europe’s Mediterranean shores could become barely habitable in summers, while the Alps could shift from snowy winter destinations to summer havens from the heat.

- Growing seasons in temperate regions will expand, while droughts are likely to ravage further the semiarid regions of Africa and southern Asia.

“Concerns about climate change and public awareness on the subject are at an all-time high,�? the chairman of the panel, Rajendra Pachauri, told delegates on Monday.

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Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

[..]

On Monday, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, plans to introduce a bill in Congress that would require all voting machines nationwide to produce paper records through which voters can verify that their ballots were recorded correctly. A majority of House members have endorsed the proposal, and the changes have strong support among Senate Democrats. Mr. Holt’s bill would also substantially toughen the requirements for the touch-screen machines that have printers, and experts say this could give even more impetus to the shift toward the optical scanning systems.

Mr. Crist, a Republican, at times drew whoops and applause when he announced his plan at the South County Civic Center in Palm Beach County, the epicenter of the 2000 election standoff and home of the infamous “butterfly ballot�? that confused many voters. The touch screens had replaced the punch-card systems that caused widespread problems that year.

“You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,�? Mr. Crist told a few hundred mostly older citizens at the civic center, in Delray Beach, where many residents said they accidentally voted for Patrick J. Buchanan in 2000 instead of Al Gore because of the confusing ballot design. “That’s all we’re proposing today. It’s not very complicated; it is in fact common sense. Most importantly, it is the right thing to do.�?

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In the past, early adopters of new Windows versions have had some small hurdles to overcome. Such hurdles may be software incompatibility, or lack of driver support. These sorts of things are almost expected with each new Windows launch. But what would you do if you bought Windows Vista and your product key didn’t work? What if Microsoft had no solution and was unwilling to issue you a new key?

Many (if not all) users who took advantage of Microsoft’s Vista Family Discount have been issued invalid installation keys and cannot install Windows Vista Home Premium. Microsoft confirms that the keys are indeed valid, but not for Windows Vista. The CSR I spoke with was unable to tell what the key was for, but it did appear to be a valid key, for something.

Microsoft says, “This is a known issue and has been escalated to the program manager.�? When asked what could be done I was told, “I can take your name and number and call you back when there is a solution. If that is not acceptable, I can cancel your order and issue you a refund.�? I was also told, “There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.�?

What sort of people would subject themselves to this sort of abuse? How long do you remain customer of such a company?

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