Experts believe that the liberation of the United States will require a large ground force of European and other international troops, followed by a massive rebuilding program costing billions of euros. "Even before Bush, the American political system was a shambles," said Prof. Salvatore Deluna of the University of Madrid. "Their single-party plutocracy will have to be reshaped into true parliamentary-style democracy. Moreover, the economy will have to be retooled from its current military dictatorship model--in which a third of the federal budget goes to arms, and taxes are paid almost exclusively by the working class--to one in which basic human needs such as education and poverty are addressed. Their infrastructure is a mess; they don't even have a national passenger train system. Fixing a failed state of this size will require many years."

Ted Rail: WAR CRY

"We hold that the primary cause of current telecom troubles is that Internet-based end-to-end data networking has subsumed (and will subsume) the value that was formerly embodied in other communications networks. This, in turn, is causing the immediate obsolescence of the vertically integrated, circuit-based telephony industry of 127 years vintage. "

A lot of smart people tell the FCC to let the Bells die. I'm not sure what I think of this. Some of the comments are most certainly true, but there is a self-congradulatory tone here. "Circuits are bad; everything thats not IP oriented is bad policy" is every bit as protectionist as the opposite philosophy. The Internet has serious problems, and most of the industry is so blinded by its success that they cannot turn a critical eye to it. They sound like the winners of the French Revolution chanting "off with their heads."

Telling the FCC to tell the Bells to take a long walk...

Abe Lincoln:

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

What I'm linking here is Barlow's thoughts on the matter. You are reading Tom Cross quoting John Barlow quoting Sen. Robert Byrd quoting Abe Lincoln. How is THAT for a memestream? The thing you want to do now is click on the word 'recommend.'

BarlowFriendz 8.8: Pox Americana

Microsoft's efforts so far to obstruct Xbox mod chips have been relatively trivial, and simple for the modders to circumvent. The most recent redesign, for example, was dealt with inside a week. But on his recent Australian adventure Microsoft president Steve Ballmer dispensed one of the clearest policy statements on Xbox so far - Microsoft intends Xbox to be a closed system and to stay that way, and will use both technical and legal avenues to protect it.

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...Ballmer said that Microsoft might have to reconsider selling Xbox in Australia, or seek changes in the law.

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It's been suggested to us several times recently that there is a growing need for a Free Hardware Foundation - this is beginning to have a certain logic, we think.

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Agreed. I am really tired of Steve Ballmer. Dude, you *LOST* the server market, get over it. You are going to lose your core OS business. Trying to stop unlicensed software didn't work for the NES and they *THRIVED* from it!!! Subsidized hardware sales was a technique mastered by Sony way before you had a clue...

Stick to applications, that's what you do best.

Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter

Although both parties are focused on gaining control of the Congress, it is proving difficult for Congressional candidates to get news coverage. To date, coverage has focused on state level contests for governors’ mansions. Overall, while gubernatorial campaigns made up 48% of campaign stories analyzed, 17% of campaign stories focused on U.S. Senate contests, and only 5% of campaign stories focused on campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives. The remaining stories focused on other state and local election contests and ballot initiatives.

News media (practically) ignoring elections

The Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) Project has the goal of providing unparalleled flexibility and extensibility in managing storage. It represents a new approach to logical volume management, as the architecture introduces a plug-in model that allows for easy expansion or customization of various levels of volume management.

This should make its way into the 2.6/3.0 kernel tree. Looks to be far more advanced then the current LVM (Sistina) shipping with RedHat and other distros.

The paper comparing EVMS and other Linux VMs sums up things nicely. And be sure to check out the management client's screenshots.

Linux Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS)

This article describes how your (Microsoft Exchange) mail system can be exploited so as to provide a covert communications channel between an aggressor and their proxy in your midst. A channel whereby commands can be sent to your computer, and information returned from your computer, but you, the user are unable to see the traffic, albeit that such exchanges are happening as you use the computer quite normally.

Practical Covert Channel Attack Using MAPI

Bjork, who has recently given birth to her second child, was one of the first critics of the huge scheme when it was proposed almost three years ago.

Bjork's mother on hunger strike

Since v2.04, bash has allowed you to intelligently program and extend its standard completion behavior to achieve complex command lines with just a few keystrokes. Imagine typing ssh [Tab] and being able to complete on hosts from your ~/.ssh/known_hosts files. Or typing man 3 str [Tab] and getting a list of all string handling functions in the UNIX manual. mount system: [Tab] would complete on all exported file-systems from the host called system, while make [Tab] would complete on all targets in Makefile. This project was conceived to produce programmable completion routines for the most common Linux/UNIX commands, reducing the amount of typing sysadmins and programmers need to do on a daily basis.

If you are not using this yet, its time to be bourne again with super powers.

Bash Programmable Completion

Unfortunately, he was mistaken. For the war leaders of 1975 and 1991, two decades of being embarrassed by pipsqueak countries have lengthened to three. Arguably, this, not the chemical or biological weapons never used by Hussein in 1991, is what truly goads the Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney threesome.

Of Politics and Vengeance, The legacy factor