[Quote:]

Indonesian forces practicing for operations against pirates in July. (Photo: Bay Ismoyo/AFP — Getty Images)
[Quote:]

So far, 2007 is looking like a good one for pirates, according to the Piracy Reporting Center. There were 14 percent more attacks in the first nine months of the year than in the same period last year, with nations on the east and west sides of Africa — Nigeria and Somalia — each recording 26 incidents. Here are some more scary details:

In the first nine months of the year, 198 attacks were reported versus 174 attacks reported in 2006 during the same time frame. A total of 15 vessels were hijacked, 172 crewmembers were taken hostage, 63 were kidnapped, and 21 were assaulted. If this trend continues, the decline in piracy attacks begun in 2004 will have bottomed out. Crew assaults, kidnapping and ransom rose dramatically from 2006.

Just six months ago, The International Maritime Bureau was heralding a sharp reduction in pirate attacks, mainly because things had quieted down in one of the most dangerous zones at the time, the Straits of Malacca. That trend in the straits continues, with additional help from Thailand, according to the latest figures.

The article doesn’t mention how many MP3′s were downloaded, and the NYT forgot to ask RIAA for a damages estimate.

[Quote:]

Weird logic in play:

National Review’s Mark Hemingway attacks the Wilkersons as irresponsible parents:

While the debate around the Frost family at least initially centered around their relative wealth, the issue really at hand is one of bad behavior. […]

For Dara and Brian Wilkerson, the fact that they don’t have health insurance is less about falling through the cracks than the decisions they’ve made.

Hemingway claims that Bethany’s mother, Dara, “voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was ‘unmanageable,’” to “take a job at a restaurant with no health insurance.” He mourns the fact that the Wilkersons “went on to have a baby anyway.”

Dara Wilkerson released this statement responding to the attacks on her choice of employment:

We have seen the statement about my previous employment and here is what we have to say: I left my previous place of employment years before Bethany became part of our lives. I am a hard working woman. I have worked at Snappers Sea Grill for over 6 years. It is a good work environment and I am a loyal employee. My husband and I were blessed with Bethany two years ago and we are even more blessed to still have her with us today.

So according to this “pro-life” right-wing logic, the Wilkersons should have sacrificed having a daughter in order to stay in an “unmanageable” job.

Okay, so according to the Right Wing, people should only have babies if they can afford health insurance. Or put another way, no babies for working families.

But what happens if they rudely get pregnant anyway? Well then, one option would be abortion. But that’s not acceptable to the crazy right. It’s harming a life, which is unacceptable when in uterus, but totally okay once the baby is born. Heck, the baby must be punished because of his or her poor and stupid parents!  

So it really comes down to 1) don’t have kids if you are too poor to afford insurance, and 2) if you do, then fuck you, your innocent kid will suffer without proper medical care.

Wow.

I hope they keep it up. Could there possibly be a starker contrast between our world view and theirs?

[Quote:]

A consortium of leading global banks today announced an agreement in principle to create and provide liquidity support to a master conduit to enhance liquidity in the market for asset-backed commercial paper and medium-term notes issued by structured investment vehicles (“SIVs”).

Bank of America Corp. , Citigroup Inc. , JPMorgan Chase & Co. and several other financial institutions have reached an agreement in principle to create a single master liquidity enhancement conduit (“M-LEC”). Once established, M-LEC will agree, for a set period of time, to purchase qualifying highly-rated assets from certain existing SIVs that choose, in their sole discretion, to take advantage of this new source of liquidity. Access to such liquidity is intended to allow participating sellers to meet pending redemptions and facilitate asset-backed commercial paper rollovers.

M-LEC will issue new short-term credit instruments to finance its purchase of eligible assets from participating sellers. The instruments issued by M-LEC are intended to benefit from various features, including a cushion of support from junior layers of capital and liquidity backstops. The size of the vehicle, the scope of the liquidity backstops, and the underlying cushion of capital are intended to enhance the liquidity and marketability of the short-term obligations of M-LEC.

[In English:]

we had a huge property bubble, which is in the process of popping. Many banks will go bankrupt if they are forced to sell the houses they thought were good collateral for the debts.

So they are trying to gang up and game the market, to reinflate the bubble. This will do even more damage to the economy, which has already been fucked up beyond imagination by the easy money since about 1996. Whether or not it will work… over the long term, absolutely not. Over the short term… who knows?

I’ve been telling people for many years now that we’re in dire trouble; you can take this as another data point that I’m right. The banks are panicking. They wouldn’t do so if it weren’t a big deal.

The whole economy is smoke and mirrors, propped up by that bubble, and as it unwinds, it will bring on the worst economic times in living memory.

[in LOLCATz:]

[Quote:]

I’m in yr bank, pretending that yr bank isn’t really overextended and undercapitalized.

I made a CDO for u, thinking that it would be nice stable income for yr “safe” fund, but the rising foreclosure rate eated it.

Treasury Department Kitteh is having tail pulled by Citibank cat

plz to not be crashin stock market kthxbye.

[Quote:]

According to the announcement by netkas, the software has been tested with both 1.0.2 and 1.1.1. AnySIM offers a free unlocking solution for iPhone users and apparently, if I’m reading this correctly, does NOT fix baseband problems from earlier releases. This is meant for “virgin” locked phones only. Download your copy here.

And there’ll soon be an unlocked iPhone for sale in France

[Quote:]

Tuesday’s arrival stunned a nation still recovering from the nightmarish slog that was Monday, leaving some to wonder if the week was ever going to end, and others to ask what was taking Saturday so goddamn long.

[..]

“If our calculations are correct, there is a chance we are in effect closer to last weekend than the one coming up.”

[Quote:]

Three of the largest U.S. telephone companies declined to answer lawmakers’ questions about Bush administration efforts to spy on Americans’ phone calls and e- mails, saying the government forbade them from doing so.

“Our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive relating to government surveillance activities,” AT&T Inc. General Counsel Wayne Watts said in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee that was released today by the panel.

Verizon Communications Inc., the second largest U.S. phone company after AT&T, and Qwest Communications International Inc., the fourth largest, also declined to answer many of the committee’s questions.

And to use a old phrase against them: if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear, right?

It’s too bad Congress won’t have the balls to send subpoenas to the CEO’s of these companies, drag them in front of congress, and find them in contempt for refusing to comply.

[Quote:]

You just can’t seem to throw enough memory at Vista.

There have been a number of issues that Vista users have reported relating to copying and moving data, especially large numbers of files. Often there can be multiple errors at play making it difficult for Vista users to track down the problem, in fact very often there is little indication that file copy operations haven’t completed correctly. It’s only when the user checks the number of files in source and destination that they realize they have a problem.

The “Out of Memory” error (which is affectionately known at the PC Doc HQ as the “Out of Cheese” error … don’t ask why …) is one of the biggest and most baffling of Vista’s file handling problems has been occurs when a Vista user (running Kaspersky Anti Virus 6 or 7) tries to copy a large number of files (~16,400). I know, copying that many files is crazy and not something that people do every day, I’d expect a modern OS to be able to cope with this (am I asking too much???).

No, you’re not asking too much. And the actual number of files is likely exactly 16384, which is a nice power of two.

Every now and then I need to copy some files from windows computers. One of the things I hate about XP is that it swaps out active programs, ones you are using, so it can add the memory to the file cache. Try it out: copy a large file, and alt-tab to applications, and watch them grind to a halt trying to swap back in the code they need to run.

Although Vista appears “more stable”, meaning less reboots, it’s crap like this that has made me think of Vista as “a worse disaster than Windows ME”, and that is saying something…

Here’s what a file copy is like on windows:

1. The file is opened.
2. The file is scanned for viruses.
3. The file is scanned for adware.
4. The file is scanned for DRM violations.
5. The user is asked if they’re really sure they want to copy the file.
6. The user is asked again if they’re sure they want to copy it.
7. The OS makes a judgement on how long it will take to copy so it can update the pretty stats in the gui.
8. Lots of flashy graphics and widgets are loaded to show you a pretty animation while you wait.
9. The file is copied.
10. The destination file is verified that it is intact.
11. The destination file is scanned for viruses.
12. The destination file is scanned for adware.
13. The destination file is scanned for DRM violations.
14. The file is successfully copied.

[Quote:]

We will never make a 32-bit operating system.

– Bill Gates, at the launch of MSX in 1983. And arguably, they never have.

[Quote:]

Major record labels – Arista, Atlantic, BMG, Capitol, Caroline, Elektra, Interscope, LaFace, Maverick, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin, Warner Bros. and Zomba have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com.

According to Billboard, the complaint filed in the District Court in New York states that Usenet.com provides access to millions of copyright infringing files and, with a nod towards the Grokster Decision, apparently “touts its service as a haven for those seeking pirated content.”

Next up, they’ll sue ftp.com and web.com. It’ll end up “RIAA vs RFC 1149