] Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is
] that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand,
] the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs
] to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the
] accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and
] atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow
] naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of
] barbarity is always the work of individuals,
] unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national
] conscience.
]
]
] This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among
] military and political leaders after the emergence of
] pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in
] Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the
] soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.

[ This article is the best I've read on this topic... everyone should read it. -k]

washingtonpost.com: A Wretched New Picture Of America

] Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells
] for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This
] is the first time "saviour siblings" have been created to
] treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the
] medical team.

[ The article's wording is a little fuzzy, which led me to initially parse them as indicating that these "saviour" babies were sacrificial in some way. That is, thankfully, not the situation... they're discussing pre-implantation testing of IVF embryo's to give parents the ability to implant and carry one whose stem cells will have the ability to help treat their other child.

Still, controversy abounds on this practice... as expected. -k]

Five 'designer babies' created for stem cells

] Like a well-targeted attack-ad in a U.S. election
] campaign, the Abu Ghraib images make a visceral
] connection with an Arab audience, that no amount of
] contextualizing, apologies, reprimands or school-painting
] can reverse. No ad agency could have produced a more
] effective al-Qaeda recruitment tool: Bin Laden's movement
] presents its goal as the redemption of Muslim honor which
] has been "prostituted" before the West by "apostate"
] pro-U.S. regimes. Scenes of graphic humiliation of
] Muslims by American soldiers -- women mocking the
] genitalia of naked men -- will reinforce the appeal
] among the shamed young men of the Arab world of the
] extremists' message that violence against America as the
] path of Muslim redemption.

[ This is being picked up all over the place... always with the obvious connection to sexual decadence and arrogant, big-grin-while-we-destroy-your-culture attitudes which our enemies see in us. And which we've given them, and all the fence sitters, every reason to believe now.

Time doesn't go far enough... the title says "in Iraq", but this has sabotaged the United States EVERYWHERE ON EARTH.

I'll be memeing a WaPo article in a moment... one which i find extremely poignant. -k]

TIME.com: How the Prison Scandal Sabotages the U.S. in Iraq

] After a year of tackling the Windows security nightmare,
] Microsoft has killed its Next-Generation Secure Computing
] Base (NGSCB) project and later this year plans to detail
] a revised security plan for Longhorn, the next major
] version of Windows, company executives said.
]
] On Tuesday, Microsoft executives confirmed that NGSCB
] will be canned. The project, dreamed up with Intel in
] 2002, was once code-named Palladium.

I hate this technology to my core. I see its uses (banking, online transactions, etc), but this closed spec will be used extensively by Microsoft to protect its code and cause incompatibilities.

Its like Nuclear technology.Yes, we have over 440 Nuclear power plants worldwide, but we have orders of magnitude more Nuclear weapons.

[ That sounds like an argument that we should never have developed Nuclear science... which seems somewhat out of character.

The fundamental distinction is that closed-spec "Trusted" computing is not inevitible, as was nuclear, and will not leave us prey to our enemies in the way microsoft would have you believe. There are solutions to the security and IP problems we have today that don't require my PC to be locked away from my control.

I'm sure you agree with this... i was just trying to distance the issue from the analogy you made. -k]

Microsoft Shelves Palladium in Longhorn (for now)

] Then Rush Limbaugh put it all in perspective, after a
] caller remarked that the "stack [of] naked men" was "like
] a college fraternity prank."
]
] RUSH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no
] different than what happens at the skull and bones
] initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it
] and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then
] we are going to really hammer them because they had a
] good time. You know, these people are being fired at
] every day. I'm talking about people having a good time,
] these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of
] heard of need to blow some steam off?

[ Jesus. There's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. Fucking asshole Limbaugh. If you need to demean someone in this fashion in order to "have a good time" or get some "emotional release", then you're a monster, and deserve no less than the harshest punishment under military law. A dishonorable discharge shouldn't even be a question... the number of years spent in a dark, cold, uncomfortable cell should be the only topic of discussion as pertains to these individuals. It's like slamming puppies against a wall for fun, only worse, because it's not to cute and cuddly, but dumb, animals, but to real people, with intellect and, well, once they probably had some dignity.

You want to talk about hampering our military effort... you have no concept of how much damage these acts have done to america. None. We've engendered more hatred and anger with a few photos than I ever thought possible. This war is lost. Period. The message is gone. The good intent, whatever there was, is gone. The enemy is stronger than ever, and we're to blame. More Americans will die as a result.

But then, I suppose someone like Rush would argue that it wouldn't be a problem if the military would have suppressed these photos. Torture and humiliation is bad PR, but it's a necessary OUTLET for our uniformed men and women... we just need to keep quiet about it, for the safety of the US fucking Fatherland. Fuck you Rush, for insulting the thousands of HUMAN BEINGS that make up our armed forces. No one can call themselves a patriot who believes that actions such as these are anything less than reprehensible. End of story. -k]

Wonkette

Well, I've been agitating for some friends of mine to help me work on this for the better part of a year. Now, its here. But the glory goes to someone else.

I wish I had a compatible cellphone...

] As of this moment, semacode reader is now available as a
] free download for your Symbian/Series 60 phone. It's been
] a while that we've been working on this, and we also have
] a preliminary semacode creator up for your creative
] uses. I've written updates site-wide, with lots of
] pictures, screen shots, a quick start guide, and
] there's more. Join the mailing list. Send us an email;
] join the mailing list. Enjoy! #

[ Decius certainly wins on this one... i remember when he brought this up to us, at least a year ago. Too bad we're all such slackers that he couldn't motivate us. Nonetheless, i think this bodes well for Memestreams... the vision behind it is genuine.

I guess I should extrapolate a moral from the story and volunteer some perl hacking time to the project... -k]

Semacode: BarCode to URL translation for the people

] A Disney executive says it told Miramax last May that it
] did not want to be connected to the North American
] distribution of the film because it could be politically
] divisive.
]
] But Moore claims Disney is worried it could lose tax
] breaks it gets in Florida, where the president's brother
] Jeb Bush is governor. Disney denies that, according to
] The Times.
]
] Miramax says its deal with Disney only allows the company
] to block distribution of a film if it is over-budget or
] gets an NC-17 rating, neither of which appears to apply
] to Moore's movie. The two companies could go to mediation
] over the dispute.
]
] "I would have hoped by now that I would be able to put my
] work out to the public without having to experience the
] profound censorship obstacles I often seem to encounter,"
] Moore wrote in the statement on his site.
]
] "Some people may be afraid of this movie because of what
] it will show," Moore wrote. "But there's nothing they can
] do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I
] have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer
] %u2014 because, after all, it is a free country."

[ This is far more interesting than i thought... Is Moore making that shit up about tax breaks (i wouldn't put it past him) or is disney really that corrupt (also very possible)?

He can be a dick, but you gotta admire Moore's tenacity. -k]

CBS News | Disney Blocks Anti-Bush Film | May 5, 2004 10:07:58

[ Interesting article... touches on a lot of things that I enjoy thinking about... many things i'll need to read more about later. -k]

A Manifesto for Collaborative Tools

] NASA on Monday released a sweeping 180-degree view of a
] broad crater punched in the surface of Mars that was
] photographed by the space agency's Opportunity rover as
] it perched on the rim of the 430-foot-wide depression.

[ Few things are as humbling, or as exciting, as being able to experience the exploration of another planet. Really incredible how much success we've had with these two rovers.

Pix here : http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040503a.html -k]

NASA's Opportunity rover takes in sweep of Mars crater

] It may just be pocket change for the richest man in the
] world, but Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has been fined
] $800,000 by the federal government for violating an
] antitrust rule.
]
]
] ] The technical incident has nothing to do with the
] government's massive antitrust battles with Microsoft
] (MSFT: Research, Estimates).
]
] Gates, whose fortune has been estimated at more than $40
] billion, ran afoul of the Federal Trade Commission and
] the Justice Department's Antitrust Division for his
] purchases of stock in a drug company and a waste-hauling
] firm.

Doh

[ Of course, if you do the ratio of $800k:$40B and then do $X:$your_net_worth, and solve for X this amounts to less than a parking ticket in relative terms. It's a lot of money, but fortunately for him, he has it, a lot. -k]

Microsoft Gates fined $800,000 for antitrust violations - May. 3, 2004