BunkBlog

What moronic wanker of a “security expert” decided that the Adult Swim guerrilla advertising devices were improvised explosive devices? Improvised Light Bright, maybe!

They shut down significant portions of Boston for these things.  Look at them.  Would you have done anything besides say, “that is the ugliest creature to flip me off ever?”

Some stories are just too darned funny to not share. I think this was on Boing Boing, so if you’re a real geek you’ve seen it already. Apparently, some pot dealers are getting creative, and mixing up the “munchies” part of the weed experience with the “getting high” part. Witness, Pot Tarts and Buddafingers. How do the DEA agents not laugh their asses off when they bust these guys?

Break me off a piece of that Keef Kat bar!

Note: this blog does not advocate doing illegal drugs.

Two bombs went off at midnight in Bangkok, Thailand. This is part of a series of eight bombs during the night there.  Happy New Year.

Dustin Donica, a 22-year-old Specialist in the U.S. Army from Spring (a town near Houston), is the 3000th confirmed American fatality in Iraq.  Happy New Year.

James Brown, singer, songwriter, bandleader, dancer, druguser, and wifebeater – dead at 73.  Great music, absolutely horrible person.

Requiescat in pace, you old coot.

Let me preface this with the admission that I am not making, and have never made minimum wage. Sure, during the early years of my indenture to the U.S. Army, I’m sure the wage I made, prorated hourly, was a pittance. But, they did give me a crappy room to crash in and some mediocre food and medical care. So, better than many.

This week, I had a conversation with my boss about the death of the minimum wage. He is convinced that we do not need to raise the minimum wage for any reason, letting the market decide how to pay things. So, here’s a few things that I can point to as some backing for my opinion (everyone has one) that the stagnation of our minimum wage is a bad thing for the country.

More »

General Schoomaker says the Army ‘will break’ without more troops. He also wants to use the Guard and Reserves as just more active duty troops. And people wondered why I didn’t join the Reserves when I separated from the Army. Why get out if you’re not getting out?

According to this new study by a couple universities and a national group, the North Pole may be underwater by summer 2040.  Hey, if global warming sinks the North Pole, how will we explain Santa Claus to the kids?

Save Santa Claus, stop global warming.

In the continuing saga of Microsoft punking its customers and partners, they’re killing the MSN Music store. Due to legal requirements, they’ll offer links to the Real PlaysForSure/RDNA music store, as well as the Microsoft Zune Store.

Real is moving away from PlaysForSure to their Rhapsody DNA, paired with the Sansa e200R series. Napster never really got much traction as a legit music store. MyCokeMusic, a UK music download store, is gone. I see a trend here. PlaysForSure, which never really had the market penetration of the iTunes AAC digital restrictions software, is dead and just doesn’t know it.

Anyone who bought music from a DRM-encrusted store is a sucker to begin with, but if you have PlaysForSure music, now might be a good time to stop buying any more of it, and find a copy of the FairUse4WM program and convert those soon-to-not-work tracks into something more lasting.

I find it interesting that in the NY Times story about Ted Haggard admitting to buying drugs, the gay escort who outed him is referred to by his full name. As anyone knows, whoever is written up in the news with his middle name is a serial killer or child molester.

Of course, the Reverend says he was tempted, bought the drugs, but did not use it. Why, then, are there multiple voice mail messages, which ask for “more product” in increments of 100 or 200 dollars?  If you don’t do drugs, why would you get more of it?

South Park tonight not only includes Flying Spaghetti Monster references, but the oh-so-important Buck Rogers sequence.  Have Stone and Parker been hanging out with Seth MacFarlane?

The current political climate is very sad.  The Democrats are going to make some gains (whatever magnitude) this year, and it’s going to be almost entirely due to the Republicans screwing up.  How many ads have you seen or read that boil down to, “Vote Democrat, because we’re not fans of George Bush”?  That’s just pathetic.  They have no ideas of their own or they think if people knew their ideas they wouldn’t vote for them.

Thinking Republicans (there are many I know personally, so they must exist in greater numbers than the Congress would indicate) are appalled at the lack of conservative values this batch of numbskulls have shown. Small government?  Nobody’s seen a GOP White House reduce the size of government in 30 years. Personal freedom? Can you say wiretaps and gay marriage?  The party that used to (claim to) be in favor of “get out of my life” policies is now the more intrusive one.

And yet, the Democrats still have a hard time capitalizing on this weakness in their opponents except to say, “we couldn’t screw it up as much as the current folks, could we?”

We’re doomed.

In case you feel that Microsoft doesn’t have enough control over your computing experience, read this little article.

“Validation will fail if the software detects a substantially different hardware configuration,” the spokesperson said. “At that point, the customer is able to use the one reassignment for the new device. If, after using its one reassignment right, a customer again exceeds the tolerance for updated components, the customer can purchase an additional license or seek remediation through Microsoft’s support services.”

Great. So, you can buy an OS and upgrade your hardware, then buy the OS again. Fan-freakin-tastic.

Ubuntu is a very nice alternative. Just sayin’.

Creative is removing features from its Zen MicroPhoto and Zen Vision:M players. If you thought that FM recording feature you bought it with is a good thing, then you should never update its firmware. Creative has followed the Sony PSP approach of deleting features upon addition of new features. You can now use Audible files, but your recorder doesn’t record the radio. I’m sure the RIAA had nothing to do with this.

It appears that Kim Jong Il has decided to set off one of his small nuclear bombs. Small, in nuke terms, means it’s no bigger than the bomb we used to completely annihilate Nagasaki in 1945.

Naturally, the White House said the test defied world opinion. Hello pot, have you met kettle?

The ROK said the bomb was 550 tons (in TNT equivalence), while Russia said it was at least 5000 tons and possibly 15000.  There’s a range of guessing, eh?

The PRC has condemned the test, which is surprising considering that China is North Korea’s only ally. The South Koreans were going to send 4000 tons of cement across the DMZ on Tuesday to help with their flood relief efforts; it’s been “delayed” now.

Any bets on how many North Koreans will starve this winter?

The folks over at JoeUser are a bit more right-wing than most large groups online, it seems. They’re not even, in general, libertarian but definitely a preponderance of Bush-lovers. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se; it does make for some interesting discussions at times. This post stimulated a lot of responses, most of them (to my mind) unthinking. The original poster is a retired Colonel and was sharing his personal economic status change over the previous year, as contrasted with the “great news” about the economy that is trumpeted on Fox News. He was, of course, attacked as an idiot on multiple occasions. The fact that few people on that board seem capable of spelling much correctly does distract me, but here’s one correctly spelled response that jumped out at me:

People don’t know if they are better off or not.

Oh, well, then. We’ll just tell people they’re better off, and even if their checkbooks tell them differently, they’ll believe us.

I love the persecution complex the GOP has. Even after gaining control of the House, Senate, White House, and (more or less) the Supreme Court, they still act like they’re some minority under attack. Hey, when you’re in charge you don’t get to be the underdog! Don’t claim the Democrats are doing something underhanded because ABC breaks a story making your party look sleazy; maybe you should use that Ethics Committee before someone gets indicted.

So, Mark Foley is a pedophile scumbag, who thinks going into alcohol rehab will somehow help his image. Oh, wait! Today he’s claiming that he was molested by a clergyman as a child. Oh, well, that certainly excuses this behavior.

Watch out for the Democrats, they’re out to get you!* Booga booga booga! And, right on cue, the GOP pundits pop up on all the news shows, attacking Democrats and claiming that the kids being targeted by Foley aren’t innocents but were working it. Huh?

*This would require the Dems to find their spines and ideas, so don’t hold your breath.

Everyone who said that they didn’t need to worry about TiVo’s closed architecture, because it did everything they needed, including that nifty TiVoToGo that let you make DVDs on your computer from your TiVo box? Yeah, you got punked.

The new and improved TiVo Series3 boxes, the ones that finally allow you to record HD (something you could do with MythTV for years), have deleted the already-very-limited ability to do what you want with the recording you make on your machine that you pay for. Cheers.

There is no legal reason to do this, by the way. The fair use doctrine and case law (Betamax decision) are on the side of people who want to make personal copies of free over-the-air broadcasts. Aren’t you glad that TiVo is more interested in not offending Hollywood than they are in providing features their customers want?

Contract drivers being killed by insurgents in Iraq. The military escort drove off while the convoy was under fire, leaving at least three cargo trucks to fend for themselves with no weapons or defenses of any kind. The Army says they conducted an investigation, but can’t find the results of that investigation so they have no comment.

Halliburton fired the one surviving driver, because he was injured on the job. That’s company policy.

Quick followup to my previous post on our new dark ages. I’m continually astounded at the weasel words journalists use, rather than just saying what is objectively true.

Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundanamental to American values, such as a person’s ability to protest court detention and the use of coerced tesimony as evidence.

Yes, they said that. Of course, a good newspaper would have said, “Which is 100% true.” Don’t just repeat that some say this and some say that; report what the actual law actually says, why don’t you? Yes, they did eventually say these things, but someone who skimmed the article would see a typical “two opposing and equal views” passage, rather than “one side is eviscerating the Constitution” passage.

And now the GOP will try to portray the Democrats as soft on terrorists because a few of them resisted the bill (and not very vocally – filibuster Roberts but not the removal of judicial review, habeas corpus, and the Geneva Conventions?). Of course, the Democrats, if recent years are any indication, will find no coherent voice to retort, “We’re not soft on terrorists. The Republicans, however, are anti-American, as they gut the Constitution and revoke 800 years of legal tradition.”

My elected representatives continue to prove they have no honor.

On September 20, 2001, the President said:

[The terrorists] hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

Well, I guess we’ve given in then. Those freedoms are now exclusively available only if the executive branch of the federal government allows you to have them. There is no recourse, there are no checks or balances, there is no transparency in government. Congratulations, Bin Laden, you won.