[Quote:]

MSNBC.com reports that Evangelical leader Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and the face of the religious right in the 1980s, Died Tuesday.

Ron Godwin, Liberty’s executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, had been found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but noted that Falwell had “a history of heart challenges.”

Falwell, a television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority in 1979, became the face of the religious right in the 1980s. He later founded the conservative Liberty University and served as its chancellor.

Reverend Falwell was found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, drooling on himself with his eyes rolled back in his head, half eaten sandwich lodged between two of his necks. At first, his secretary saw this as nothing out of the ordinary, but when he went a complete minute without muttering “damn faggots” softly in his sleep, medical authorities were immediately called.

While waiting for an ambulance, the secretary cracked open his secret God vault, removing and cracking open Rev. Falwell’s secret stash of stem cells, specially exonerated from moral wrongdoing by his own special blessing… and the fact that a black man provided the sperm, thereby negating its human value.

The secretary deftly poured the cells all over the Reverend’s face; nothing happened, thus validating and proving the Reverend’s position on the topic (even in death the man was a deity); there have been unsubstantiated reports that we are looking into that an angry baby later formed on the floor of his office, so let that be a warning to you “doctors” and “experts”.

While debating whether to give him medical care, ambulance workers asked themselves three questions: “Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?” And in the spirit of Reverend Falwell’s litmus test for medical research and treatment, the result speaks for itself.

Reverend Falwell will be remembered as a man of great moral courage, who was unafraid to take positions based on his faith regardless of the political climate (or what the bible actually said). He helped reshape the political and moral environment of America, and at his death, a quick survey of this great nation shows what a magnificent service he did for it; he truly was able to carry out the fundamental messages of the bible (aside from compassion, helping the poor and peace), and as a result, the sanctity of marriage and family remains in tact (50% divorce rates, spousal and child abuse not withstanding).

Memorial services will be announced as soon as we can find a casket big enough to hold both the Reverend’s massive, bloated corpse and the portfolio of great deeds he will take with him for judgment.

…
…

Seriously, though. It’s moments like this that really test the strength of my own humanity.

This man’s words and actions have caused youth to be expelled from their homes and condemned to lives of drugs and prostitution on the street; This man’s words and actions have given thugs permission to beat and murder.

In moments like this I’m sorry I do not believe in any afterlife in which somebody like Falwell gets to suffer, enormously, monstrously for his sins against innocent people.

Yes, this tests my own humanity.

[Quote:]

Microsoft Corp. has given the most detailed description to date of the number of open-source computer programs it says infringe on its patents, but the company says it still prefers licensing deals with open-source developers, software distributors and users instead of legal action against them.

“There is no reason why any segment of the industry needs to be exempt from intellectual property rules,” Horacio Gutierrez, a Microsoft vice president for intellectual property and licensing, said in an interview Monday.

[..]

Open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates 42 patents. Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs touch 68 other patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by Fortune magazine.

Microsoft also said Open Office, an open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.

Microsoft is the dominant maker of software that powers servers and desktop PCs, but the company views the free or low-cost Linux operating system alternatives “with a great deal of concern,” said Al Gillen, an analyst at the technology research group IDC.

“It’s one of the few operating systems that represents a viable threat that Microsoft has a great deal of difficulty containing,” Gillen said, because the developers share their code.

So now instead of “235″, we now have “42, 65, 15, 68 and 45″.

What is this? The lottery?

[Quote:]

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wasn’t really saying that Linux violates more than 200 software patents, Microsoft followed up by saying Ballmer was only citing findings from a controversial study done this summer by OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), a risk-mitigation consultancy.
The study claimed that Linux has been found to potentially violate 283 software patents. The author of that report, however, doesn’t see things the way Ballmer does at all.

“Microsoft is up to its usual FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt],” said Dan Ravicher, author of the study Microsoft cites, who is an attorney and executive director of PUBPAT (the Public Patent Foundation).

“Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

“There is no reason to believe that GNU/Linux has any greater risk of infringing patents than Windows, Unix-based or any other functionally similar operating system. Why? Because patents are infringed by specific structures that accomplish specific functionality,” Ravicher said.
“Patents don’t care how the infringing article is distributed, be it under an open-source license, a proprietary license or not at all. Therefore, if a patent infringes on Linux, it probably also infringes on Unix, Windows, etc.,” he said.

It makes no difference whether and how software is distributed, Ravicher said. “The bottom line is there’s no reason to believe that Windows, Solaris, AIX or any other functionally similar operating system has any less risk of infringing patents than Linux does.”

[Quote:]

JoAnn Falletta was doing what a conductor should — concentrating on the orchestra in front of her. No wonder it took her a few seconds on Sunday to realize someone behind her was motioning for a try. President Bush.

“Smiling at me kind of devilishly,” Falletta said.

She gave him her baton and stepped aside.

Gesturing exuberantly, the president led the orchestra during part of its performance of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

A few moments later, the orchestra descended into chaos. The Brass section began attacking the String section relentlessly. Brass demanded that Sting willingly give up their front-most seats. String vowed to do “whatever it takes” to maintain those seats. The Woodwinds section departed immediately and have been playing with another orchestra. Percussion continued to keep a general beat, but were drowned out by the wails, squeals, and blasts of the ensuing violence.

As President Bush left the room, he complained that the media wasn’t paying enough attention to the Percussion section, who he said, “are keeping wonderful time.” President Bush further predicted that, “As the rest of the orchestra begins to hear the steady drums, they will take up their own instruments and make beautiful music.” The process should take only a few hours, he said. “It will start small, but I expect we’ll hear a symphony by the end of the week.” He condemned the musical establishment of focusing too closely on the problems with the rest of the orchestra.

[Quote:]

Would you click on this Google ad?

No? Sure? Because 409 persons did!

How do I know? Because I’ve been running this Google Adwords campaign for 6 months now.

Last fall, my attention got caught by a small book on Google Adwords at our local library. Turns out it’s very easy to setup an ad and manage the budget. You can start with a couple of euros per month. And that gave me an idea: this can be used with malicious intend. It’s a way to get a drive-by download site on the first page of a search result (FYI, I’ve reported on other ways to achieve this). So I started an experiment…

1. I bought the drive-by-download.info domain. .info domains are notorious for malware hosting.
2. I setup a web server to display a simple page saying “Thank you for your visit!” and to log each request. That’s all. I want to be absolutely clear about this: no malware or other scripts/code were ever hosted on this server. No PCs were harmed in this experiment.
3. I started a Google Adwords campaign with several combinations of the words “drive by download” and the aforementioned ad, linking to drive-by-download.info
4. I was patient for 6 months

During this period, my ad was displayed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times. That’s a click-through-rate of 0.16%. My Google Adwords campaign cost me only €17 ($23). That’s €0.04 ($0.06) per click or per potentially compromised machine. 98% of the machines ran Windows (according to the User Agent string).