Centrists.Org: Book Summary -- Pete Peterson's Running on EmptyChapter 5: “How The Democrats Got Us Into This Mess (With Republican Help)� This chapter describes the creation and expansion of major entitlement programs. Peterson maintains Democrat policy makers, including Franklin Roosevelt knew their programs were based on faulty economic assumptions and moved ahead anyway. Some of these programs were developed in response to genuine needs. Others were simply designed to buy political support from targeted special interest groups. All were deliberately designed to be larger than necessary in order to gain support from more affluent voters who might otherwise have objected to expenditures more tightly targeted to low income families. Once these programs were established, their funding became almost automatic. In the case of individual entitlements, the funding became mandatory and the government could be sued if it failed to provide the promised benefits. Although Democrats started this process, Republicans have also used expanded entitlement spending to curry favor with special interest groups. Peterson points out that according to a 2002 government survey, only about 4.2 percent of all senior citizens had a major problem affording prescription drugs. Nevertheless, Republicans pushed through the largest expansion of entitlement spending in 30 years in order to placate AARP and other senior citizen lobbies. Meanwhile Democrats attacked the new $400 billion program for not being generous enough.

Windows, Linux grapple in Great Gadget Smack-Down!

ABCNEWS.com : Is Dems' Biggest Money Man Mob-Connected?: "Campaign reform advocates say the role of secretive big money is all a throwback to the days of Richard Nixon and the scandal that grew out of the 1972 Republican Convention."

FactCheck.org Kerry Blames Corporate Tax Code for Shipping Jobs Overseas: "But recent Labor Department data underscore what even Democratic economists have said for some time -- outsourcing jobs overseas, or 'offshoring,' accounts for just a small fraction of the many millions of jobs that are lost each year even in a good economy. There is indeed a tax break for US-based multinational corporations to locate operations overseas. Bush isn't to blame for it -- it's been there for decades. It's also true that Bush doesn't support Kerry's proposed remedy, which is controversial."

MSN Sandbox Microsoft has a sandbox too?! I feel so dirty.

FactCheck.org Bushs "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying ... and we don't yet know that he was wrong either.

More on Los Alamos

developerWorks : Blogs

MacDevCenter.com: How to Fall in Love with Your iSight, Again HAHA!: "Admit it. You are completely bored with your iSight. Your impulsive, giddy love affair has all but dried up, now that the reality of video chatting has settled in. To paraphrase the band Talking Heads, you may find yourself in front of a beautiful geekosphere, and you may find yourself on some beautiful bandwidth, but you may ask yourself: where is my useful device? Is this my beautiful iSight? How did I get here? My God! What have I done?"

SCO flops in DaimlerChrysler Unix lawsuit | CNET News.com Good news!

AllPolitics - Berger Saw No 'Extraneous Influences' On Foreign Policy - Sep. 11, 1997: "Under questioning by Thompson, Berger defended his participation in weekly campaign strategy meetings during the Clinton re-election effort last year. Berger said he wanted to make sure there was no distortion of Clinton's foreign policy record or positions in campaign ads or other materials. 'I was kind of a living stop sign,' he said." Yeah. We get it.

Sam Schulman on Sam to Sandy

PRESS BRIEFING BY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SANDY BERGER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WILLIAM COHEN, AND CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS GENERAL HUGH SHELTON on the Iraqi Crisis, 15 November 1998

Rich Lowry on George W. Bush & Election 2004 on National Review Online

Yahoo! News - Clinton Aide Investigated on Terror Memos: "'When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded,' he said." Uh, yeah, sure.

Isaac Asimov - How I, Robot gets the science-fiction grandmaster wrong. By Chris Suellentrop: "The movie takes the exact opposite approach and thereby betrays Asimov's vision. It elevates feeling and emotion over reason as a tool to determine the right moral decisions. Will Smith's character, Del Spooner, sneers at robots as 'slaves to logic.' When another character pleads, 'Whatever you feel, just think,' the audience is meant to take his preference for reason over sentiment as a sign of his villainy. And when the main antagonist outlines the Dastardly Plan unveiled during the film's climax, the villain defends the treachery by asserting, 'My logic is undeniable.'"

Audio Sources (MP3 preferably)

Bernard Lewis on BOOK TV.ORG Used the phrase "Diversity of Lies" to describe how propegandist media in the modern world can expose truth by trying to cover it up in inconsistent ways. Book sounds interesting too.

Chomsky Backpedals on "Silent Genocide" in Afghanistan From below...

Noam Chomsky

IBM z/VM Home page

The Virtual Machine hmmmm, even better article than below.

Cambridge Monitor System - "encyclopedia article about Cambridge Monitor System. Free access, no registration needed. What does Cambridge Monitor System mean? What is Cambridge Monitor System? Provided by the Free Online Encyclopedia."

BBspot - Microsoft Granted Patent for Creating Insecure Software :)

Excel ate my DNA | The Register: "Genetic research is being hampered by a smart formatting function in Excel, according to US researchers." Whew!. NO (answer to question below).

MS wins $4m from spammer scammmer | The Register: "Since the beginning of last year, Microsoft has initiated 60 US lawsuits against alleged spammers. Half a dozen cases have been decided in Redmond's favour, with one dismissal. Microsoft settled with four defendants and pushed two others into bankruptcy. In all, Microsoft has received $54m in judgments from the US courts, the company said." Oh my. Do I HAVE to say something nice about Microsoft?

Airport snoop system thrown in $102m garbage can | The Register: "Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge gave word this week of his department's flip-flop on the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening Systems, or CAPPS II, project. " Maybe they should have called it Craps.

503 Service Unavailable: "503 Service Unavailable The service is not available. Please try again later." OMG, WTF, teh Slashdot is down for an hour!, LOL Les bom something.

Wired News: Los Alamos Lab Halts Operations: "'This willful flouting of the rules must stop, and I don't care how many people I have to fire to make it stop. If you think the rules are silly, if you think compliance is a joke, please resign now and save me the trouble,' Nanos added in a separate e-mail to Los Alamos employees." Ah, if only more governmental manager would issue memos such as this. Of course in most governmental organizations employees can't be fired... something else that needs to change.

Microsoft Struggling on Linux, Says Former Top Exec - Computer Business Review: "Silverberg went on to note Microsoft faces a potential challenge maintaining an ecosystem of partners. Previously, the ecosystem helped propel Windows, as Microsoft created a platform that allowed others to benefit from Microsoft's success. However, Silverberg said Microsoft's expansion into so many new areas is producing reluctance to invest in Windows because developers are unsure how to build their business based on Windows. These developers are now evaluating alternative platforms, according to Silverberg."

Yahoo! News - No Computer for Kerry As He Writes Speech "It's not that he's opposed to keyboards — he said he uses computers and preferred to compose letters on a typewriter when he was fighting in the Vietnam War. He said it's just that he writes more effectively on paper." I Wonder when we will get a computer-literate president.

Wilson contradictions leave Democrat senators speechless: "The committee found that the CIA report, based on Wilson's mission, differed considerably from the former ambassador's description to the committee of his findings. That report ''did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.'' As far as his statement to the Washington Post about ''forged documents'' involved in the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium, Wilson told the committee he may have ''misspoken.'' In fact, the intelligence community agreed that ''Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa.''"

Yahoo! News - Cyber Dissident Jailed for 19 Months It takes a village.

Google picks up photo management firm | CNET News.com

Clifford D. May on Joe Wilson on National Review Online

Complete timeline of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Africa-uranium allegation

The Black Republican

INCITE Interesting, conservative (I think)

Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission (washingtonpost.com)

A Future of Peace and Capitalism

NewsForge | Windows vs. Linux security: No unbiased reports

USNews.com: Gary Marksden cartoon on Edwards and his running mate (7/19/04)

Suspect in AltaVista hacking case works at Microsoft: "Chavet's arrest was announced by the U.S. attorney in northern California last week without reference to his current employment. Microsoft acknowledged yesterday that Chavet is a Microsoft employee but declined to name the team on which he works. However, three other people with knowledge of Chavet's Microsoft employment confirmed that he has been working on the MSN Search effort. " Duh, no kidding?

MSNBC - More Distortions From Michael Moore

CNN.com - California education chief calls preschooler 'stupid dirty girl' - Jul 9, 2004: "Democratic state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, who had scheduled a protest by civil rights organizations, canceled the demonstration after an apparent mix-up over the girl's racial background. Dymally was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News Thursday saying the child was 'a little African-American girl. Would he (Riordan) have done that to a white girl?' The girl is white, with blonde hair." --- This is the funniest event in a long time for our F-ed up politically correct nation. Senile old politico lets slip a rude remark and the NAACP comes to the rescue only to discover it was directed at a WHITE girl. Where is the ACLU, NOW, or the NRA for that matter when you need them! Business must be slow for hack political activists at the moment. Maybe we can get Jesse Jackson to step in and conduct negotiations, and Jimmy Carter can supervise that everything is being done even handedly.

Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911, Dave Kopel, Independence Institute

Guardian Unlimited Film | News | Fahrenheit 9/11 gets help offer from Hezbollah

Indiana Printing & Publishing Co.: "Up and down the shore"

Kerry Says He Believes Life Starts at Conception (washingtonpost.com) Nod nod, wink wink. The thing I hate most about Democrat politics is that Democrat voters don't EXPECT their candidates to be truthful about what they beleive, or what they will do once in office. Oh, go ahead and pretend to be a good Catholic, we know better, you'll do the "right" thing once you get in office.

Open source prepares to kiss EU patent ass goodbye | The Register

Patent lawyer puts claim to entire Internet | The Register Moronic USPTO strikes again!

Genesis-X: News: Nullsoft Founder Switches To Linux

Wired News: Mozilla Feeds on Rival's Woes

Yahoo! News - U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE: "The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer."

Hong Kong Stages Massive Democracy March

Court upholds Microsoft-Justice Dept. settlement | CNET News.com No joy in Mudville.

MSN launches revamped search engine | CNET News.com

Think Tanks vs Open Source: Microsoft Funding is Common Denominator (LinuxWorld) Handy FUD reference list.

Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using Uh huh.

Democrats attack Gates' "charity": ZDNet Australia: News: Business

Clarke, Jason; Hardy, David T.: Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man

Truss, Lynne: Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Wired News: EFF Publishes Patent Hit List

Truth About Iraq Finally Has Its Pants On Well written, but wrong. Worth a read.

FT.com Home US: "Halliburton, the world's second-biggest energy services company, warned investors on Tuesday of two unexpected charges, totaling $815m, to come in the second quarter of 2004." Conspiracy theorists take note.

About Google

Google Labs I never remember to look here until AFTER they add some new service and it gets publisized. Duh.

Google Blog

Google Corporate Information: Software Principles

Director Michael Moore Simultaneously On Voter Rolls In New York, Michigan - June 28, 2004

The New York Times > Washington > National Review Founder Says It's Time to Leave Stage: "In 1954, when Ronald Reagan was still a registered Democrat and host of 'General Electric Theater,' the 28-year-old William Frank Buckley Jr. decided to start a magazine as a standard-bearer for the fledgling conservative movement. In the 50-year ascent of the American right since then, his publication, National Review, has been its most influential journal and Mr. Buckley has been the magazine's guiding spirit and, until today, controlling shareholder."

Middle East Information Center :: Arab Israeli Conflict News, History, and Discussions

War crimes investigator says al Qaeda spawned from Third Reich If you don't listen to the John Bachelor show you may be living in a fantasy land.

Gates defends Microsoft patch efforts | The Register: "Gates lauded Microsoft's recent handling of its security patching processes. 'We have several hundred people who are on 24-hour availability to do this work. It is a phenomenal thing,' he said. 'If you track how we have improved over this last twenty four months, you'll see that we are absolutely doing our best.'" Yes, that's what scares us.

FactCheck.org Anti-Bush Ad Overstates Case Against Halliburton

BBC NEWS | Health | Scans uncover secrets of the womb

CNN.com - Iraq handover of sovereignty completed - Jun 28, 2004: "BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government took place at 10:26 a.m. local time Monday, two days before the June 30 deadline previously announced by the U.S.-led coalition, CNN has learned."

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event: "IRAQ A SOVEREIGN STATE Control of Iraq has been handed to a sovereign government after a surprise announcement that the transfer was being brought forward to today."

WSJ.com - In Surprise Move, Coalition Transfers Power in Iraq Early: "BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government Monday, speeding the move by two days in an apparent bid to surprise insurgents who may have tried to sabotage the step toward self rule."

Taipei Times - The jury is still out on open source The title is misleading though. Tim O'Reilly gives several examples of Open Source success stories.

TIME.com: A New Terror Threat Booby Trapped Beer Coolers

Microsoft Goes Belly Up! hehe

Michael Moore Hates America

CQ Delmarva

The New York Times > Washington > The Intelligence: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says: "The task force concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis. It is not known whether some on the task force held dissenting opinions about the document's veracity." I love the word-play at the New York Times. When they can't get away with a lie they just play dumb. Well, type-casting helps.

Wired News: New Virus May Steal Data Oh wonderful.

Researchers warn of infectious Web sites - News - ZDNet: "Researchers believe that attackers seed the Web sites with malicious code by breaking into unsecured servers or by using a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft's Web software, Internet Information Server (IIS). When a victim browses the site, the code redirects them to one of two sites, most often to another server in Russia. " ZDNet came closer to getting it right.

My Way News: "The mysterious infection appeared to target at least one recent version of software by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to operate Web sites, called its Internet Information Server, popular among businesses and organizations. A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment immediately." More accurately: This ONLY affects Windows software. Microsoft doesn't have a clue what to do about it yet.

Linux in Government: Winning in the Big Enterprise Space

Skype Internet telephony for Linux.

Safire: The Zelikow Report: "Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff."

Wired 9.11: The Electric Kool-Aid Bandwidth Test Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Fox Yard Cam

Bradbury wants Moore to change movie title

The New Atlantis� -� A Journal of Technology and Society Looks unbiased anyway.

Gary Aldrich: What Troubles NASA

NASA's Troubles

The Old New Thing

Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War: "For example, WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."

Forbes.com: The Big Blue Muzzle