Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests - NYTimes.com

According to the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010 Triana (aka "DSCOVR" or "GoreSat") is back: "The Air Force is very interested in the space weather information and is part of an interagency team looking at the possibility of refurbishing DSCOVR and launching it to an orbit referred to as L1, about one million miles from Earth on a line with the Sun. If the team determines that the satellite can be refurbished and launched, they will make a recommendation to the President. Notionally, NOAA and NASA would pay for refurbishing the satellite, the Air Force would pay for the launch, and all agencies would receive the data."

Sweet.

GoreSat Is Back | NASA Watch

New iPhone app out co-developed by memestreams user K and friend Aaron. Please support them by checking it out (and purchasing it!):)

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Dr Bob Winter, president of the Intensive Care Society, said information from Australia and New Zealand, is that their intensive care beds are swamped as 15 per cent of swine flu patients in hospital require specialist intensive care.

Dr Winter said: "If that happened here we would be screwed."

He's talking about England (sorry, Ubernoir) but this still does not bode well for this year's flu season.

Swine flu: intensive care beds will be swamped experts warn - Telegraph

There seems to be two opinion camps with regard to this Gates affair.

1. Racial: Gates was arrested because he was black - a white person in similar circumstances would not have been arrested. This speaks to the racism in this country.

2. Authoritarian: Gates was not arrested because he was black - he was arrested because he talked back to the police, as well he should be. People who don't respect the authority of the police deserve whats coming to them.

My perspective falls into a third column:

3. Gates was not arrested because he was black - he was arrested because he talked back to the police. The police ought to understand that someone whose house has been broken into is going to be in an agitated state, particularly if they are confronted with an officer of the law who at least initially thinks they might be the criminals who did the break-in.

I agree with Obama's observation that:

The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

This was petty muscle flexing on the part of the officers. This is not a racial issue. This sort of unnecessary exercise of power by government officials is an everyday problem that occurs in all kinds of different contexts.

I don't understand why none of the public commentary on this issue that I've seen takes this position. Its interesting to see the President speak out on something like this, but inevitably the policy responses will be targeted at solving the wrong problem.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Black scholar arrest angers Obama

Twitpay has been busy.

Let's say you are a coffee company looking for a way to promote your newest seasonal drink, the Pumpkin Latte. In order to get people talking about your product on Twitter, you could use RT2Get to start a retweet campaign:

The first 1000 people to retweet this message get one free pumpkin latte RT2Get 23212

This could be a pretty powerful way to harness the viral nature of twitter.

Twitpay - Easy promotions on Twitter

skullaria wrote:
I read....86 IPs from 18 countries?

Its more, but...

What about propaganda for the Rockefeller cybersecurity legislation?

I didn't think about it, but you're exactly right. They are certainly leveraging it that way, even if they didn't create it.

Its a strange attack - NK wouldn't have done something this silly. It looks like something a teenager would have done - but I also don't think there are a lot of fan boy hackers who think NK is cool and want to support their interests. You see islamist stuff like that, but generally speaking people in NK don't have Internet access.

Its possible that there are people in SK who think NK is cool. I've never run into that but I guess such a subculture wouldn't be completely surprising.

However, on many levels your theory makes more sense. In particular, I don't think an NK fanboy would have been savvy enough to do it on the 4th of July at the same time as an NK missile launch - it was too well timed.

The implications of this are disturbing.

RE: Lawmaker Wants ‘Show of Force’ Against North Korea for Website Attacks | Threat Level | Wired.com

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan), the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee,

is totally incompetent (clears throat)

said the U.S. should conduct a “show of force or strength” against North Korea for a supposed role in a round of attacks that hit numerous government and commercial websites this week.

Hoekstra, speaking on the conservative America’s Morning News radio show, produced by the Washington Times newspaper, said that “some of the best people in America” had been investigating the attacks and concluded that most likely “all the fingers” point to North Korea as the culprit.

They’re reaching the conclusion that this was a state act and that “this couldn’t be some amateurs,” claimed Hoekstra, in direct opposition to what security experts have actually been saying.

My professional opinion is that its extremely unlikely that this was state sponsored.

He added that North Korea needed to be “sent a strong message.”

“Whether it is a counterattack on cyber, whether it is, you know, more international sanctions . . . but it is time for America and South Korea, Japan and others to stand up to North Korea or the next time . . . they will go in and shut down a banking system or they will manipulate financial data or they will manipulate the electrical grid, either here or in South Korea,” Hoekstra said. “Or they will try to, and they may miscalculate, and people could be killed.”

I hope we can conclude that statements these guys make on pundit radio shows are not intended to be taken seriously.

Lawmaker Wants ‘Show of Force’ Against North Korea for Website Attacks | Threat Level | Wired.com

News has emerged of a milestone reached on the road towards a potentially world-changing piece of technology. We speak, of course, of US military plans to introduce roving steam-powered robots which would fuel themselves by harvesting everything alive and cramming it into their insatiable blazing furnaces.

Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel • The Register

"Life is Good ®" is one of the most banal and hypocritical trademarks in existence. These people make t-shirts that extol life's little pleasures, while simultaneously including that little ® symbol on the front of each one.

No one is ever legally required to use those ® symbols. The purpose of using them is to inform anyone who sees your product that you are the exclusive owner of the word or phrase you've placed it next to and if they use that word or phrase without your express written permission you will sue them for every god damn penny. Simply put, its a threat.

Its quite possible for you to defend a valid trademark claim without making that threat on everything you publish. The real value of making the threat is that it increases the amount of damages that you can collect for infringement. If someone genuinely didn't know that you had trademarked the phrase they might be able to respond to an infringement claim by simply ceasing their use of the mark. However, if they clearly saw and ignored your threat then you can go after them for statutory damages and attorney's fees. In other words, you can really fuck them.

I presume that most of their customers just don't see the ®. They wear it and the see the "life is good" message, and they don't see the "we'll fucking sue you" message positioned right next to it. I can't do that. I can't pretend that the t-shirts don't say "we'll fucking sue you."

And they're not fucking kidding about it either:

Although the company isn't eager to talk about it, LIG just wrapped up two years' worth of frivolous litigation against LG Electronics, the $35 billion Korean conglomerate that sells DVD players, cellphones, and refrigerators. In a suit filed two summers ago, LIG claims the Koreans' ``Life's Good" ad campaign infringes on their trademark, and alleges that LG's boring corporate logo ``is strikingly similar" to Jake, which it is not.

Assholes.

Whose 'good life' is it anyway? - The Boston Globe