[Quote:]

Two Raptors, the U.S. Air Force’s most advanced fighters and said to be the most expensive fighter planes ever built, arrived at U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, a Reuters photographer and a TV cameraman said.

The U.S. Air Force said 10 other F22 Raptors were expected to land in Japan on Sunday, a week later than originally scheduled.

A U.S. military spokesman earlier denied a report that the delay was due to a demand from North Korea during six-country talks on its nuclear arms programme in Beijing, which ended last Tuesday with an energy-for-arms deal.

The U.S. Air Force first cited “operational reasons” as the cause of the delay of the three-month deployment, then said it was because of software problems.

Rumor has it that it’s a very silly software glitch:

[Quote:]

CNN television, however, this morning reported that every fighter completely lost all navigation and communications when they crossed the international date line.

Well, at least they avoided a BSOD (Blue Sea of Death)

[Quote:]

Officials at the Navy’s brig in Hanahan developed elaborate plans to dodge public scrutiny of its operations to detain enemy combatants, plans that include destroying “critical info,” scrubbing public Web sites, and warning brig staff about the temptations of “high priced offers from news agencies,” a Navy report shows.

The 17-page document also describes how, with relatively short notice, the Naval Consolidated Brig created an expensive prison-within-a-prison, in part to prevent regular inmates from retaliating against the detainees. In this separate facility, a brig official said detainees are accorded protections under the U.S. Constitution, “except where curtailed by higher guidance.”

“accorded” protections? “Higher guidance”?

What the fuck happened to phrases like “inalienable rights”?

Stick a fork in the USA. It’s done.

[Meanwhile, at Guantanamo:]

The men imprisoned in Camp 6 are alone in cells with walls, floors and ceilings of solid metal 22 hours a day. There is no natural light or air and no windows except strips of glass next to the solid metal door that allow only a view of an interior corridor. During cell time, the men have no contact with any human beings other than guards.

“Rec time” consists of a transfer in shackles to a “pod” of five pens separated by chain-link fences. Each detainee is placed alone in a 12- by 9-foot pen for two hours and allowed to communicate with others should there be men in adjacent pens. The two-story-high concrete walls of the pod are covered by barbed wire, allowing a glimpse of the sky but no view of the horizon. Though this outdoor time is offered each 24-hour period, it is sometimes offered very late at night. Other than heavily censored letters to family and from family, the imprisoned men are completely cut off from information about the outside world.

The punchline? The prisoners at Camp 6 are the ones the US government says are innocent.

OK everybody, cancel Easter, they found the body.

[Quote:]

A Vancouver Police computer crime investigator has warned the city that plans for a citywide wireless Internet system put the city at risk of terrorist attack during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

The combination of anonymous, mobile Internet access and the potential presence of transit systems, traffic signals and gas and electric utility systems as tenants on a city-wide wireless network will make Vancouver a prime target for a paralysing attack by hackers, said Vancouver Police Det. Mark Fenton.

[..]

“If you have an open wireless system across the city, as a bad guy I could sit on a bus with a laptop and do global crime,” Fenton explained. “It would be virtually impossible to find me.”

“With the Olympics coming up and everybody wanting to go wireless it raises huge security concerns,” Fenton said.

Oh my God! Quick! Arrest everybody with a laptop!

[Quote:]

Muhammed Muheisen is a terrific photojournalist working for AP in the Middle East. He snapped the image above last week. As they say – “a picture is worth 1,000 words”

In this image made from video rats move around inside a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York, Friday, Feb. 23, 2007. (AP Photo/Rafael Garcia Jr. via APTN)

A giant sinkhole that swallowed several homes is seen in Guatemala City February 23, 2007. (Stringer/Reuters)

[Quote:]

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high as the gulf between the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 — half the federal poverty line — was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

The above is the device key for WinDVD 8. With this key, it’s suddenly a lot easier to copy HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks.

Yet another copy protection scheme that is falling apart even before it is in widespread use.

[Quote:]

Open Letter to Steven Ballmer

It’s come to many in the Linux community’s attention you have claimed again and again, that Linux violates Microsoft’s intellectual property.  Not only that, but it’s been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can’t provide.

Therefore, this website will serve as a response to this accusation, and within it, a request.   The request is simple, since you, Microsoft, claim to be so sure of yourself: Show Us the Code.

If Linux developers are made aware of the code, then the code can be omitted and Linux can re-write necessary aspects of the kernel or operating system.  This is a fairly simple request and common courtesy. Why wave around lawsuit threats, threats that will cost Microsoft in a court room as well as the defendants? It lacks logic, especially when you consider that there are developers around the world who would be more than happy to work with Microsoft to resolve this issue. Don’t you owe it to your shareholders to work with others to ensure their intellectual property isn’t being violated?

Also, we were under the impression you wanted to work with the open source community. That’s what Port 25 is all about isn’t it?  That’s what the Novell deal is about, correct?  Here’s your chance.  If you’re right you’ll make thousands upon thousands of open-source advocates hush up and make your competitors scramble for ways to not violate your IP.

Linux community members do not want your code.   We don’t want lawsuits.  We don’t want non-free code.   And much to your dismay, we don’t want Microsoft’s code specifically. 

As Slashdot says, if Microsoft answers this challenge — by May 1st — then Linux developers will be able to modify the code so that it remains ‘free’ software. If such infringing code doesn’t exist, we will have called Microsoft’s bluff. And if the campaign garners enough attention and if Steve Ballmer maintains silence, then the community and companies behind Linux can take the silence for the admission that it is.

[Quote:]

Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an “economic epidemic” under certain conditions. Any one of the following:

1) The product they want—electronic texts—are hard to find, and thus valuable.

2) The products they want are high-priced, so there’s a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them.

3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with.

Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they’re the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises.

And . . .

Guess what? It’s precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called “online piracy,” it’s DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward.

A great article by Jim Bean. If anybody knows how electronic distribution can help real sales providing you don’t assume your clients are thieves, it’s Jim. As demonstrated in the same article:

Included among them is my own most popular title, 1632. I put that novel up in the Baen Library back in 2001—six years ago. At the time, the novel had sold about 30,000 copies in paperback.

Today, six years after I “pirated” myself, the novel has sold over 100,000 copies.

In the face of examples like this—and this is but one example—all arguments that “online piracy” guts legitimate sales are exposed as pure and simple blather. In point of fact, the exact opposite is true. The real effect of making books available for free in electronic format is that it keeps stimulating sales of the paper editions—which is where 95% of the money is, anyway, from an author or a publisher’s standpoint.

And on an unrelated note:

[Quote:]

A high level investigation into allegations of homophobia, illegal gag orders, cronyism, and retaliation against Special Counsel Scott Bloch is being stymied by intimidation of those who made the complaints two federal employee groups say.

The Office of Personnel Management began the probe of Bloch in 2005 under Inspector General Patrick McFarland following a year of complaints by members of Congress, Federal Globe – the LGBT organization for federal civil servants, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – a watchdog group.

Now those groups say the Office of Special Counsel is trying to stonewall the investigation. This month employees at the agency were told to inform OSC management when they are contacted by investigators and that any contact with investigators must be in a special conference room at OSC headquarters.

The groups say the directive is an attempt to silence them.

After an inquiry from investigators in the probe the OSC has backed down on the meeting place, issuing a second directive saying the meetings could take place elsewhere.

The Office Of The Special Council is the agency that protects whistleblowers and investigates complaints of discrimination by federal workers, but, Bloch has refused to take on complaints of discrimination based on sexuality.

The OPM Inspector General investigation into Bloch is the third probe into Bloch’s operation.

[Quote:]

A maker of Mac software has uncovered a “scary” anti-piracy measure in a bit of code called Display Eater.

Display Eater records motion video on your screen which you can then convert to a quicktime movie.

However writing in his bog here, Karsten Kusche, who works for another Apple software maker Briksoftware, says that if you try to use a pirated serial number with Display Eater, the software will delete your home file, which in Mac land is the same as killing your computer.

Kusche said that while it is not right to pirate software it is a bit drastic to kill a mac user’s home file.

I’ll just leave you with this comment from a user on versiontracker.com, the largest Mac software tracking site on the net:

[Quote:]

Please stop writing code. You’ll do the Mac community a huge favor by never showing your face here again.

And I note that searching for Display Eater at versiontracker now returns zero results, so the software is delisted as well.

I guess the author reached his goal: nobody will be using a pirated version of this software. In fact, nobody will be using any version at all.

[Quote:]

Former “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla is mentally unfit to stand trial on terrorism charges and physically unable to tell his lawyers what happened to him in a U.S. military prison, doctors who examined him for the defense said in court on Thursday.

The doctors testified that Padilla, held by presidential order for 3-1/2 years in a military brig without being charged, is also unable to tell his lawyers anything about the time he spent in Afghanistan and Egypt, where the government alleges he conspired with Islamist terrorists to maim and murder people.

If asked to review taped conversations that will be used as evidence, he breaks into a sweat, hunches over and rocks back and forth, the doctors said.

“He hits a stone wall and his logic shuts down,” said Dr. Angela Hegarty, a neuropsychiatrist who examined Padilla in his Miami jail cell. “His overwhelming anxiety interferes with his reasoning.”

[..]

Prosecutors deny Padilla was abused and accuse the defense of raising the mental health issue in order to turn the proceedings into “a referendum on his past treatment in military custody.”

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke has ordered some of Padilla’s military jailers to appear in court for questioning when the hearing resumes on Monday.

Padilla himself denies he has painful memories, depression or any problems at all and believes he will be sent back to the brig to die there regardless of what happens in court, the defense doctors testified.

[Quote:]

A complaint made against a Hell Pizza billboard featuring US President George Bush has been partially upheld by the Advertising Standards Complaints Board (ASCB).

The advertisement featured Mr Bush and the words “Hell. Too good for some evil bastards”.

Objections were made to the use of slang in a public place, the alleged denigration of Mr Bush, and perceived blasphemy.

One of the complainants described the billboard as a vicious smear campaign against an openly Christian person.

But advertising agency Cinderella Ltd defended the billboard, saying that it tapped in to a growing sense of outrage about the invasion of Iraq.

The agency also said that use of the term “bastard” is widespread and can be considered a compliment.

The board ruled the choice of words was irresponsible, but the association with Mr Bush did not cause serious or widespread offence.

[Quote:]

This one’s been percolating for about a week now, but with Speaker Pelosi’s office weighing in yesterday, it’s a good time to review one of the Bush administration’s more embarrassing new scandals (not to be confused with the multitude of old ones).

It starts with Steven Griles, a former lobbyist who’s due to be indicted in the Abramoff scandal any minute now, who was hired to be Bush’s Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Shortly after taking office, Griles was accused of doing what he does best — arranging favors for his former clients. As ethics complaints started mounting, the Interior Department assigned an official to keep an eye on Griles, to make sure he didn’t get into too much trouble, while Interior’s inspector general looked into his activities. The official was Sue Ellen Wooldridge, then the deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

Shortly thereafter, Wooldridge started secretly dating the guy she was supposed to be monitoring for ethical lapses. As Paul Kiel explained, that’s when things got really interesting.

[Quote:]

You can listen to the music in a New York City bar, but you better not begin tapping your feet because it could lead to dancing.

[Quote:]

The controversial Monty Python film Life of Brian is being screened in a church on Tyneside.

Some condemned the 1979 film as blasphemous, because of its story of a Jewish man who is worshipped as the Messiah and then crucified.

Now the Anglican St Thomas the Martyr church in Newcastle is due to screen the film on Friday as part of a project with the independent Tyneside Cinema.

The Reverend Jonathan Adams said he had the backing of his congregation.

[..]

Rev Adams said: “Jesus of Nazareth is not some sort of hot house plant that we need to protect from criticism and scrutiny.

“Actually I don’t think the film does that. But it does poke fun at some of the stupidity and hypocrisies of people who profess religious faith.

“The Church is really in trouble if it does not pay attention to that sort of questioning.”

[Quote:]

An author has been told his book honouring First World War soldiers cannot be stocked by his local council unless he takes out insurance worth £5million.

Officials said Mark Sutton needed the accident cover in case the public injured themselves on his book – for example, if it fell on their foot or they got paper cuts.

[Quote:]

Ze heeft haar ministerie nog nauwelijks van binnen gezien of we weten al hoe laat het is. “De burka moet kunnen”, is de eerste boodschap van de nieuwe minister van Integratie, Ella Vogelaar.

[Quote:]

In the 1920s Joseph Rock, an Austrian-born botanist went to live in Lijiang, in Yunnan province. During expeditions over the next three decades he photographed shamans, trulku, petty kings, nomads, astounding scenery and flora and fauna across much of southwest China. He also studied the language and culture of the Nakhi people previouslywhose homeleand centred around Lijiang. A contemporary blogger is now posting some then-and-now images of the places and people Rock recorded.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Microsoft has been quietly testing a new “pay-as-you-go” software rental service in South Africa, Mexico, and Romania. The service allows users to pay a monthly fee of around $15 for the use of Office 2003.

The program is a pilot project, designed to help Microsoft gauge the public reaction to the idea of software rentals. In a statement given to Ars, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the program offers customers “the opportunity to obtain genuine Microsoft Office 2003 at a low upfront price, along with the flexibility to pay over time and renew when they choose.”

If you wonder where the “pay-as-you-go” phrase comes from, try to move to another product: your documents will be locked in a format you cannot read anymore. Thus, if you go, you pay big time.

[Quote:]

Another irony of history: Sept. 11-era laws aimed at keeping terrorists out of the United States have disqualified many Hmong refugees, the very people specially recognized by Congress for helping American troops in the Vietnam war.

Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, the Hmong who fought alongside the Americans in the “secret war” against communists in Laos are considered terrorists and are therefore ineligible for asylum or green cards. These are laws from the same Congress that in 2000 passed a law easing the citizenship requirements for the Hmong in recognition of their Vietnam era efforts.

[Quote:]

There was a time not long ago when a trip across the border from the United States to Canada was accomplished with a wink and a wave of a driver’s license. Those days are over.

Take the case of 55-year-old Lake Tahoe resident Greg Felsch. Stopped at the border in Vancouver this month at the start of a planned five-day ski trip, he was sent back to the United States because of a DUI conviction seven years ago. Not that he had any idea what was going on when he was told at customs: “Your next stop is immigration.”

Felsch was ushered into a room. “There must have been 75 people in line,” he says. “We were there for three hours. One woman was in tears. A guy was sent back for having a medical marijuana card. I felt like a felon with an ankle bracelet.”

Or ask the well-to-do East Bay couple who flew to British Columbia this month for an eight-day ski vacation at the famed Whistler Chateau, where rooms run to $500 a night. They’d made the trip many times, but were surprised at the border to be told that the husband would have to report to “secondary” immigration.

There, in a room he estimates was filled with 60 other concerned travelers, he was told he was “a person who was inadmissible to Canada.” The problem? A conviction for marijuana possession.

In 1975.

I guarantee you that all over the world people are laughing their asses off about this. And, frankly, I can see their point.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Debbie Foster was sued by RIAA member company Capitol Records for allegedly sharing copyrighted material on a P2P file sharing network.  However, the alleged infringement was apparently committed by someone else with access to her ISP account.  Foster had the case dismissed last summer, and as reported by Listening Post earlier this month, was awarded attorney’s fees in excess of $50,000.

For the RIAA, which functions as the legal and lobbying arm of the labels it represents, this was very bad news indeed.  If the ruling stands, the RIAA will have to be much more careful about who it sues going forward, adjusting its scatter-shot approach to filing such lawsuits in order to avoid suing the wrong people.  But if the RIAA’s appeal is granted, open Wi-Fi hotspots could become standing invitations for the organization to sue.

Predictably, the RIAA has filed a “motion for reconsideration” of Judge West’s decision to force the RIAA to pay for Foster’s legal fees.  In the motion, the plaintiffs emphasize a key point: They want the judge to rule that the owner of an ISP account is responsible for all activity on that account, which could have a chilling effect on public wireless access and open hotspots.  (The appeal also made the point that Foster should be held liable if she was aware of the infringement occuring via her account; in the case of someone with an open Wi-Fi network, that could constitute something as simple as experiencing traffic slowdowns.)

If the judge rules that we’re each legally responsible for all of the traffic that comes through our ISP account, open, unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots would become a serious legal liability, the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who depend on their neighbors for Wi-Fi will be out of luck, while altruistic (or ignorant) folks who leave their wireless networks open could find themselves embroiled in an RIAA lawsuits even if they’ve never shared a single song in their lives.

It’s actually much worse than that – I haven’t been a customer of a RIAA member for quite a number of years now, and yet they want to have a say in what technology I am allowed to use in an area of equipment that has nothing at all to do with music. What’s next? Forbidding me to visit my friends, because “visiting friends” is often used to share music?

[Quote:]

Detailed maps of the UK created by the KGB between 1950 and 1990 have gone on sale in digital format for the first time.

The maps show 16,000 square kilometres and 103 UK town and cities in more detail than Ordnance Survey maps. The Russians used satellite images and spies on the ground to create the maps, which include army camps and warehouses that don’t appear on other maps.

The maps include other information likely to be useful for an invading army, such as the height of bridges and depths and contours of river beds. Strategically important buildings like telephone exchanges, government buildings, and power stations were all colour-coded and identified with a numbered key.

It wasn’t just the UK that was treated to such detailed attention – most of the rest of the world was put under similar scrutiny, albeit not to such an indepth scale. For many countries in Africa and Asia the maps remain the most reliable and accessible source of geographic information.

Little is known of the how the USSR acheived such a mammoth task. The military cartography department was created in 1919 and the first map of the UK dates from 1938. The project accelerated from the mid-50s as the Cold War intensified. All place names on the maps are transcribed into Cyrillic script phonetically.