I love my Brother MFC 9700, but...

All you Brother fans out there on Windows XP (sp2), download and run filemon to see the repeated access by BrmfRsmg.exe (the Brother Resource Manager) of the file C:\WINDOWS\BrmfBidi.ini. Next, start the task manager, select the Processes tab, then on the View menu Select Columns... and check I/O Read Bytes. My machine had been up a few weeks, and I had printed maybe 10 pages on the printer, and I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that BrmfRsmg.exe had read more than 80,000,000,000 bytes. 80 billion bytes of data. WTF?

Frontline's News War should be required viewing for every American

I didn't really learn anything new in watching all 3 parts (there was a 4th part, but it was on Frontline/World and not really part of the main subject as parts 1-3). What happened to me was profound, however. There are two main issues discussed in this series: the history of the battle between the Executive branch of our government and journalists, and how the internet and media mega-companies are changing the landscape for the old media that do all the heavy lifting in protecting us from our own government and large corporations.

If you look at the last 40 years, love them or hate them, the New York Times and the Washington Post have been there for the American people. Watergate, for example. More recently the Times storing breaking what the NSA was doing to spying on the American people without warrants. Because of the Times story, our government has decided to get warrants (through FISA) for all wiretaps. On the other side, yes, Judy Miller was a key player in selling the Iraq war. Without her cheering section in the Times, it may not have been possible for the American people to get behind the war. I'm not arguing that the Times and the Post are infallible. They're not. But, they serve a vital function in our democracy.

Watch Frontline's News War and see for yourself.

Monkeys like money, too

An interesting experiment by the Freakanomics guys referenced here. For, the absolutely interesting thing is the use of the coins to barter for... sex. Perhaps the first occurrence of monkey prostitution ever? Someone should spank that monkey.

Walgreens are worse than crack dealers

The Freakonomics Blog has an interesting entry on the price of generic drugs at various stores. No wonder our health care system is completely broken. No wonder people without health care are completely screwed.

The Drug War

Recently there have been a growing number of articles about the horrific drug laws in the US. An article on alternet.org about a two-year study from a British commission makes some excellent points. For example:

• The notion of a drug-free society is "almost certainly a chimera. ... People have always used substances to change the way they see the world and how they feel, and there is every reason to think they always will." Therefore, "[t]he main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harms that drugs cause." A policy based on total prohibition "is bound to fail."
• The concept of "drugs" should include tobacco and alcohol. "Indeed, in their different ways, alcohol and tobacco cause far more harm than illegal drugs." These substances should be brought into a unified regulatory framework "capable of treating substances according to the harm they cause."
• The heart of this new regulatory framework must be an index of substance-related harms. "The index should be based on the best available evidence and should be able to be modified in light of new evidence."
• We need a new way of evaluating the efficacy of drug policies. "In our view, the success of drugs policy should be measured not in terms of the amounts of drugs seized or in the number of dealers imprisoned, but in terms of the amount of harms reduced."

The hypocrisy and drug laws are out of control. When someone can spend 20 years in prison for Marijuana use and a murderer of 2 people can get out of prison after 5 years (with a 7 year sentence), something is very, very wrong. When someone can get a 11 1/2 year sentence for growing mushrooms, something is very, very wrong. When alcohol is responsible for many, many more deaths each year and it gets a pass, something is very, very wrong.

What is it about transparency that people don't get?

Government of Country X is found to be spying on its own citizens. When a newspaper develops the story, they invite the super-secret "security" agency of Country X to pass judgement on the story (run it or not?). The agency says "niet" and the newspaper's editors decide it is not worth the trouble. They pass on the story.

Have you guessed the identity of Country X? The old Soviet Union? Niet. The United States of America. It is what happened at the LA Times. If you remember, the New York Times broke that story, because the whistleblower took it there after the LAT passed.

It is completely beyond me why this doesn't completely piss off every citizen in this country. It is clearly a very bad thing when the government not only spies on its own citizens, but then squashes coverage of it by applying pressure to a newspaper.

In this case, the information came out. That's good. How often does the item not come to light? I would wager that a significant amount of really bad shit has never seen the light of day. That only means our government is much worse than we know, and it's already pretty !@#%ing bad.

Childhood ...missing

Richard Louv's stirring article, No Child Left Inside, is a good read. I have a 6 yr old, so I think about this stuff a lot. I had a game, starting when I was 7 or so: ride my bike somewhere I'd never been and get "lost". It allowed me to explore and test the boundaries of my world. It was wonderfully fun. (It was also good exercise, since the more I played this game the further I had to go to successfully play.) That game is partly responsible for making me what I am today. But, for all the great memories I have of this game, I cannot imagine my son having the ability to play it, and it breaks my heart. [via Boing Boing]

Of all the reasons I seen ascribed to the current condition of children today, with respect to freedom of mobility, I have never seen this one...

The size of families has declined in recent decades. Single child families are no longer the strong exception. When I was growing up, I knew very few families with one child (a single one comes to mind). Most had 2 or more, and the family across the street clocked in at 7. My wife is the youngest of 9. Right now I can think of one family of 5, but most of my son's contemporaries have a single or no sibling. Families of 1 or 2 are the norm, and larger ones are just plain rare.

The psychology of a single child parent has to be different than one with 2 or more kids. I see it in myself. There is a protective mindset that occurs, I imagine, because all of my eggs are in one basket. The what if's are that much worse when you have one child. When you have more, a loss of a child would be crushing, but you would have to recover from it for the sake of the rest of the family. With a single child... that is almost unthinkable. Especially for those who are past the ability to have more children. I can't prove any of this.

So, I have to wonder, if I got into a time machine and went back to the time and place of my childhood, would I allow or deny my own single child the behavior I myself had?

What you can do with Photoshop

This is well worth 7 minutes of your time.

Please ignore Unnamed Bitch

Today the media is in hysterics over Unnamed Bitch's comments about John Edwards, '08 Presidential candidate (“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”). Why do people give Unnamed Bitch any air time at all? She doesn't believe the shit that comes out of her mouth. No one does. The only way to make Unnamed Bitch go away is to 1) not buy her disgusting books, and 2) don't pay her any attention whatsoever.

Thrown down a hole for learning Chinese

The LA Weekly has a facinating and disturbing about Billy Cottrell a brilliant theoretical physics student at California Institute of Technology, is serving an 8.5-year-sentence at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary for destroying $5 million worth of Hummers^[1]. He is also autistic. Now, go read this. [via Boing Boing]

Woman Faces 40 Years for Porn-Infected PC (Crazy, but True)

Those following the popup porn conviction of a grade school teacher should get a kick out of this.

What I don't really understand (and I don't believe she is responsible or that she should spend any time in jail, much less 40 years): couldn't she turn off the monitor? Failing that, even though she had been told not to turn off the computer, couldn't she turn off the computer? Crikey, the non-technical folks I've told to "never turn off a computer, shut it down instead" always ignore that advice. Always. I would think in an emergency like this would warrant ignoring all previous advice about turning off the damn thing.

This appears to have been a perfect storm of stupidity from the get go, from teacher to jury to judge.

Pennywise pound foolish?

Maybe this is part of the healthcare problem? Because $80 of healthcare was not available, a boy is dead and various medical providers will eat $250,000 (or more) of costs.

In the debate about universal healthcare, I really don't understand one thing: when I was on a PPO, the amount of time I spent hassling with my insurance company was amazing. I was constantly getting bills from people I'd never heard of (after some routine visit or procedure), and it always took me lots of my time to figure it out and pay the right amount. All this work is definitely not efficiently delivering healthcare. If there were universal healthcare, even if the agency that ran it was much less efficient than the current system, it would have to win hands down on efficiency. That is, a very simple system that is inefficient has to be cheaper than a grossly complex system that is inefficient. Why do critics of universal healthcare point to how badly the government would manage such a system when what we have now is a complete and utter joke, in terms of efficiency?

My Prisoner, My Brother

The story of what went on inside Abu Ghraib must never be forgotten. Aside from the innocent people that were detained and tortured, America lost part of their soul at that prison, and most people in this country don't even realize it.

Skype, eBay and the NSA... oh my!

7 years ago I would have read this slashdot comment and thought the author needed a little prozac to go along with his tin foil hat. Today? It seems entirely more plausible than not. That is a sad indictment of how far we have fallen in the last 7 years.

The context of this comment was in a discussion as to why Skype reads the BIOS and motherboard serial number on Windows PCs.

Here's the comment, by user sideswipe76:

I am gonna repeat my grand conspiracy theory: It is my belief that eBay's purchase of Skype was somehow coaxed by the NSA/CIA and here is why: Ebay's purchase of Skype never made sense. Ebay could have included skypeout:// links in their auctions without spending a penny. That would be like saying slashdot can't use IM unless they buy AOL. Skype spent way above considered market value for Skype and their share holders have applied no real pressure to have it turn a profit. This makes the transaction suspicious. The reason of course if because prior to the eBay's purchase Skype was owned in Luxembourg and definitely not an ideal partner for eavesdropping on "terra'rists" (given those crazy European privacy laws). Given that the calls are encrypted, and that Skype does maintain the keys to decrypt those session, getting Skype under US subpeona power is a powerful tool for eavesdropping. Infact, because it is VoIP for most if not all of the calls, it can easily route traffic into the US were it can be picked up, decoded and monitored. Or, since it is known that open IP's become super nodes, Skype can naturally be coaxed into steering packets toward a super-node that can easily be monitored. I use to work for the company that wrote Carnivore. People got worked up over that? It was only the prototype.

Free Press?

Murdoch confessess to being propaganda machine for Bush. That sort of gives an interesting slant on the FoxNews slogan We Report, You Decide, doesn't it?

Habeas Corpus, RIP

Adel Hamad has never been accused of a belligerent act against the United States. Despite not being captured on a battlefield (Mr. Hamad was arrested in the middle of the night from his bed) the U.S. nevertheless categorized him as an enemy combatant.

Read the 3 allegations and watch the video made by his assigned lawyers. Absolutely stomach turning, it is.

The trouble with Dick

He is the anti-Christ. The devil. My proof, Cheney said this on CNN:

You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do; the world is much safer today because of it.

Either the man is insane, which is certainly possible, or he is completely evil. Either way, it's not so good for us. I can't even imagine what he'd do as President.

The myth of McCain

Sidney Blumenthal has a good commentary on John McCain.

Electronic Voting Machines

Being a software engineer, I'm sure there is a way to make an electronic voting machine secure and reliable. There is a good effort going on in Australia. Las Vegas does a good job with gaming machines. It's just gotta be possible. Well, the problem is fairly clear, with the voting machines in this country, the people running the voting machine companies in this country are idiots.

Hillary in '08?

If Hillary were to be elected in '08, just think about it. That would mean from 1988 until 2012 the United States would be ruled by Presidents from just two families. 3 Bush terms and 3 Clinton terms. That would be 24 years rule by two families.

Speaking of '08, the Liberal Media is at it again. Faux News reported that Obama had attended a radical Muslim school as a child. It's even a urban legend now. While there is a lot of good buzz about Obama, there is a lot of negative buzz, too. I don't think he has a chance in hell of getting elected. I hope I'm wrong, though.