CRM News: Best of ECT News: Is CRM Feasible on Open Source?

Debian Linux Tutorial - Guide On How To Install Linux Software for Servers and Network Installation and Set Up for Beginners with Instructions On How To Configure A Home Server

MSNBC - Missing: A Laptop of DEA Informants A store near me sells used computers, including laptops by the hundreds, mostly obtained at government auctions. Some of these systems are in "mint" condition, but all are new enough and fast enough to be still usable systems. Laptops in particular are available to government workers advanced in rank. Some have to "justify" their need for a laptop, others just get them because they hold down a specific job. At my last contracting position, laptops were reported missing from the main headquarters building (I won't say which one) on a regular basis. While the security on the building was fairly tight, it was a matter if YOU qualified to get in or out of the building, they didn't care much what you were carrying. So I had the impression of laptops leaking through the federal bureaucracy like a sieve, being stolen, not by common criminals, but by the bureaucrats themselves, or by contract workers. Why would someone need to take a database such as this home with them? Why would you trust this data to a laptop rather than securing it on a server? The selling point of laptops is NOT as a storage device, laptop hard drives being among the most vulnerable to damage from being dropped or even bumped at the wrong time. My guess is that this story does not present the exception, but the rule when it comes to handling data, both sensitive and otherwise.

The Connection Excellent article. Short response to it: If I were more a partisan than an American I'd feel tickled pink about this. I'm so tired of arm-chair version of Sherlock Holmes who attempt to draw inferences from headlines alone. Bush family in the Oil business? Then Iraq must be about oil! The fact is these infantile theories of cause and effect are easy to foist on the American voter, especially one who doesn't spend a whole lot of time doing their own research. "Well, if Move-On put it on their web page then it's good enough for me." And Ben and Jerry's DOES say we are spending too many Oreo cookies on the military. Maybe it's time to go get ice cream! But there are other speculations that don't come so easy. That doesn't make them any less likely to be true. My wondering always goes quickly to motive, and past performance. Sadaam had plenty of motivation against th US. He DID threaten the US, Bush Sr. and anyone else who got in his way. That WAS his way. And it won't be surprising to see (eventually) a flood of evidence that he was either behind or at least involved with several plots against the US. What if this all could have been prevented by going on to Baghdad in the first Iraqi war? Will we get a Mea Culpa from those involved in that decision? More importantly will we get at least an apology from those like Al Gore and John Kerry who are attempting to make so much political hay over the issue? One or both of them might actually be in high office by then, and it would at least be refreshing for those of us who are not convinced yet to hear just exactly what would they be doing differently. In Sherlock Holmes stories almost all of his inferential leaps are correct, even when he later admits to guessing. In the real world it is hardly ever so. Time to stop guessing and start planning, and if you don't like the plan that's in operation now, present an alternative! No hand waving, details please.

"Armchair Provocateur" by Peter BergenCounterpoint

Q&A with Laurie Mylroie on Bush vs. the Beltway on National Review OnlineIbid

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United StatesPossibly interesting testimony. Also todays C-Span Washington Journal: Here.

Chomsky Backpedals on "Silent Genocide" in Afghanistan: "In December, Noam Chomsky continued to spin his 2001 claim that U.S. military action in Afghanistan constituted a 'silent genocide' that would result in millions of deaths in that country. Chomsky wants to engage in Clinton-esque parsing of his words, so lets revisit what Chomsky said prior to the U.S. initiation of hostilities against Afghanistan."

The New York Times Critiques it's own coverage of Iraq: "Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all." Recommendation to New York Times. When a reporter screws up badly, you fire them (remember?) and even in that case (you DO remember don't you?) higher ups "resigned to persue other interest". So, if indeed, you think you contributed to the Iraqi war, which you now think should have never been started, then SURELY this is an appropriate time to fire someone. If on the other hand this is just leftist politics as usual, no one will be fired, demoted or even reprimanded. And I'd guess in about a year you will be claiming clairvoyance for those earlier article when WMD are found, in abundance. Your mission right now as is the case with so many others, and as is so transparent, is to defeat George Bush. Accuracy in reporting is the last thing on your mind.

Yahoo! News - Tests Confirm Sarin Gas in Baghdad Bomb

USATODAY.com - Santa Fe rethinking doggie seat belt proposal Amessage from the road to hell department.

WEES Radio 107.9 FM

Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News Outlets They had to take a survey to figure this out?

CRM Daily: NewsFactor Network - Marketing Automation - Gmail Free, But for a Price Someone needs to start a new list of clueless people and organizations that are buying this concept of a privacy issue with Google's new Gmail. Let's get this straight: Unless you encrypt your e-mail it's not private, or secure. How many times have you heard that FTP is not secure? If you work with computer networks AT ALL, the answer is: A LOT. Thats because FTP sends your password from the client to the server in un-encrypted form. New version of FTP correct this by encrypting the password. Similarly, secure web transaction involved the entire page, and everything you type into a form on that page being encrypted. As everyone SHOULD know by now, things zipping to and fro on the internet are subject to snooping. The bits and bytes pass thought a lot of equipment owned by many different people and theoretically, any one of them could be siphoning off traffic for good or evil purposes. That means, TA DA: nobodies e-mail is secure or private. Unless, that is, you take measures to make it so, namely encrypting it. How many people encrypt their email? I don't. I don't even digitally sign mine (although I have in the past just to play with the concept). But at least one air-headed state congressperson from California (of all places) wants to pass a law against Gmail. Duh. And it seems several technical publication (who should know better) seem to not have all their fact straight either. Oddly enough the publication mentioned here is in California too. Coincidence? I think not. Ban California!

Test post by mail

This is a test of the post by mail system. Had this been an actual post, it would be a lot more interesting. Or something.

Yahoo! News - A bit of perspective, please: "It is said that the images from Abu Ghraib blur the moral difference between America and Saddam Hussein. This reflects the moral obtuseness of those who say such things. Moral obtuseness, of course, is an art form for many in Europe, who consistently ignore the crimes of terrorists. Such people, in the words of Raymond Aron, are 'merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes, as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrine.'"

CNN.com - Microsoft strikes back - Mar 31, 2004 HA! (it's a spoof)

The New York Times > Technology > Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft: "Google's software, which is expected to be introduced soon, according to several people with knowledge of the company's plans, is the clearest indication to date that the company, based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes to extend its search business to compete directly with Microsoft's control of desktop computing."

The New York Times > Health > U.S. Speeding Up Approval Steps for AIDS DrugsAs Andrew Sullivan points out, Bush has done more for AIDs research in 3 years than Clinton did in 8, but the left won't give him credit.

LinuxWorld Exclusive: Linus Torvalds Makes Startling Admission, Discloses *Real* Fathers of Linux (LinuxWorld)

IOC gives go-ahead for transsexuals to compete in Olympics: "One of the best known cases of transsexuals in sports involves Renee Richards, formerly Richard Raskind, who played on the women's tennis tour in the 1970s. Richards, now a New York opthamologist, was surprised by the IOC decision and was against it. She said decisions on transsexuals should be made on an individual basis. 'Basically, I think they're making a wrong judgment here, although I would have loved to have that judgment made in my case in 1976,' she said. 'They're probably looking for trouble down the line. There may be a true transsexual -- not someone who's nuts and wants to make money -- who will be a very good champion player, and it will be a young person, let's say a Jimmy Connors or a Tiger Woods, and then they'll have an unequal playing field. 'In some sports, the physical superiority of men over women is very significant.'"

U.S. athletes told to cool it at Olympics - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - May 16, 2004: "American athletes have been warned not to wave the U.S. flag during their medal celebrations at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens, for fear of provoking crowd hostility and harming the country's already-battered public image. " Um... how 'bout we just don't go, And pull out of Iraq, and Yugoslavia, and Germany, And stop buying products from overseas, And Oil from the middeast, Turn all corporations over to the nearest labor union leader, Legalize all drugs, and define marriage to mean the union of anything with anything else, And let the world, including the far left here in the US stew in their own juices for a while? It's tempting to try and find somewhere far far away and stop caring, Or just go to the movies, absorb the propaganda and never come out of the stupor again.

MSNBC - Academics warn of crisis over visa policiesHow soon we forget.

Yahoo! News - NASA's Finances in Disarray; Auditor Leaves: "That big number -- $565 billion, with a 'B' -- was the result of posting problems, new software and a 'massive cleanup' of 12 years of NASA's financial records, said Patrick Ciganer, NASA's chief for integrated financial management." No doubt this is an isolated case though. People who keep voting for larger governement wouldn't tollerate much of this would they? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/politics/06HEAL.html?ex=1084766400&en=26bcd8eb6c7ba48f&ei=5070 http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0802/081902t1.htm http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/BG1282.cfm http://www.ncpa.org/iss/gov/2002/pd030102b.html http://www.cse.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=1532 http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/itspending/story/0,10801,88509,00.html ... and on and on ...

Booknotes Transcript: The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military by Dana Priest "We`re still in the situation where people say this military shouldn`t be doing this. They should be fighting wars. At the same time there`s no one else to send and the U.N. and the U.N. organization is not funded or organized properly and the U.N. is a reflection of all of these countries. So there is a widespread frustration not only in the U.S. government but in the world community that militaries shouldn`t do nation building but there`s no one else to do it and there has not been the political leadership to build another apparatus that could take that on and that`s the problem." The book contains stories of rape and murder, American military people serving life sentences as a result. UN fecklesness and corruption. Sound familiar? It should, only it's not about Iraq.

SomaFM: Listener Supported, Commercial Free Internet Radio

Voiceprint Music - Moodswings

Voiceprint Music - Home

IBM Dreams of Pushing Microsoft Off the Desktop and Stomping its Clinging Fingers (LinuxWorld): "The Workplace Client Technology costs $24 a head a year; the Workplace Messenger and Workplace Document are $29 apiece for each user over three years. IBM is also going to charge $2 a month to support the servers. The price drops in large volumes." Now, if this happens, IBM will be aiming the products at business users. But at those per-seat costs, Google, or Yahoo could offer them to everyone... as FREE services, supported by advertising. This notion of centralizing applications (and the data that goes with them) back on a server where they belong (because on the server they are relativly safe from viruses, backed up daily, and can be accessed from anywhere on the net), first surfaced several years ago as the thin-client initiative, promoted among others, by Lary Elison of Oracle. That initiative failed, mainly due to the fact that vendors of the hardware got greedy, often offering the "thin-client" devices at a cost HIGHER than the standard PC they would be replaceing. Needless to say, potential customers were not impressed. Since then, the idea has surfaced again, about two years ago, when a company called Citrix was demonstrating the possibility of running Windows desktops in a window on Linux, and other Unix machines, or in a web browser interface on just about any computer equiped with a web browser. The system worked so well that Microsft promptly paid Citrix for rights to use the product themselves, afterwhich, the idea suddenly stopped getting mentioned much by either Citrix or Microsoft. Conspiracy theory anyone? Whereas the above concept would have continued to result in licensing charges being paid to Microsoft for each client system, these new initiatives don't involve Windows at all. Will this prompt Microsoft to pull the Citrix rabbit back out of that hat? Let's hope so. Maybe they too can offer Word and Excel usage for free to MSN subscribers. The average home user, the kid in high school doing a book report, and many dunderheads in business and industry are not nearly sofisticated enough to need a $400 word processing package. They don't do backups, they don't know about firewalls, and can't be trusted to update their virus scanners. The world needs a newer and safer paradign ffor computing. Microsoft has proven that they can't secure Windows no matter how hard they try. Time to give up, all of us, and try something else. Server side computing is the way to go, and if Microsoft wants to play, welcome to the party.

BBC - h2g2 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Secrets of the stealth ship: "Carbon fibre is one of the toughest known materials - and that is why it is so expensive." Economic illiteracy is so rampant it can never be cured.

Government Computer News (GCN) daily news -- federal, state and local government technology; GAO: Government bilked for fake degree fees

Cryptonomicon.Net

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto

The Atlantic | March 2003 | Caring for Your Introvert | Rauch

PWI Newstest

KtB: updated 5.2.04

Is it over, 'over there'? - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - April 28, 2004

oc_camera.jpg (JPEG Image, 352x288 pixels)

Mirrors - Linux From ScratchAnother link from the library aricle.

Dynix library automation systems, imaging, and cataloging softwareLink from article below. Library software for Linux.

Ultra Cool News! Makes me glad I'm moving to Maryland! NewsForge | Linux in action: A public library's success story

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Touts Computerized Future: "Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates offered a brief glimpse of a major Windows security update, called Service Pack 2, that is due out sometime this year. But he said that while security 'is a required thing, we feel very optimistic that will be in place.' The company urged hardware makers to devote resources toward supporting Microsoft's vision of a future rife with multiple electronic gadgets. " Was he wearing very dark glasses and tapping the ground in frount of him with a stick too? Did they also predict the eventual emergence of VHS tapes over Beta? We'll start thinking about getting advice on the future from Microsoft when they demonstrate that they actually have mastered those fundamentals mentioned in the article. So far that doesn't seem to be the case. In the mean time the vision for the future of electronic gadgets will probably come from Japan, China, India. Credit goes to Microsoft for giving away America's tech lead while we all fiddled with blue screens rather than doing real technology.

Vitamins may be bad for your heart Maybe we should select Woody Allen as Surgeon General next time.

WSJ.com - Stopping Sasser Why doesn't MS provide a firewall program for Windows 2000, and even the 9X variants? They are willing to jeopardize the entire network, and even subject their own current users from various forms of continual attack just to prive a MINOR incremental advantage to Windows XP? If their products are inovative (taking them at their word) then mere security fixes should be available from Microsoft for all security issues, particulalry those that broadcast infections to others. This is simple good citizenship. What's wrong with the people at Microsoft that they cannot see this? Something to ponder.

Looking through my web statistics I get curious about some of the search strings. Seem I am the number one authoritative web page on something at last: Google Search: dog getting electrocuted owned Well, at least for the next few hours. Of course I don't have anything on the subject of dogs getting electrocuted, owned or otherwise. These days you have to be more and more carefull with your searches to find what you are after.

Finally! BBC introduces flexible TV with online trial The idea of video content (or audio for that matter) on demand is long overdue. People I talke to about this almost universally say something like "Why would you want that?" at which point I blow as gasket. Maybe some live demos will get the idea going.

Not necessarily bad news: The New York Times > Science > U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences

Yahoo! News - Sasser Worm Strikes Countless PCs Worldwide: "Finnish bancassurer Sampo (SAMAS.HE) temporarily closed all of its 130 branch offices on Monday as a precaution. In Australia, Westpac Bank (WBC.AX) said it was hit by the worm, and branches had to use pen and paper to allow them to keep trading, The Australian newspaper (http://www.theaustralian.news.com) reported." Seems that somewhere along the line, letting one company decide where we were going to go today we have lost track of where we wanted to end up. Surely this is not that place.

Kerry 'Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief', Say Former Military Colleagues -- 05/03/2004

FWoTM Award

• For endless grandstanding during the on-air portions of the 911 hearings,
• Using up his 10 minutes to give a speech and then complaining that he had no time left to ask questions,
• Repeatedly calling Dr. Condoleezza Rice "Mr. Clark",
• Showing up on every talk show or comedy program that would take him to politicize the committee,
• Demanding that the President must testify before the committee and then,
• Leaving presidential testimony an hour early to meet with another senator at a Capitol Hill bar.

This months FuckWit of the Month award goes to:

Former Senator Bob Kerry:

TIME.com: Contradicting Bill -- May. 10, 2004