Author: Ed That Goes Ping

Microsoft: Our Bugs ARE our DRM

The Bryan-College Station Eagle > Associated Press Headlines says:

“Microsoft Corp. plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes.”

On the one hand, this is completely irresponsible because Microsoft’s security flaws, as exploited by worms and viruses, are dangerous and costly and waste untold internet resources every day.

On the other hand, you have to admire the creativity involved — now, Microsoft’s bug-ridden crapware is its own “DRM”! It’s like shareware which cripples itself if you don’t pay, but it’s pre-crippled at the factory!

Please, Johnny… Make It Stop

Via Mefi, the most disturbing Johnny Carson clips ever.

This is taken from a public access show, and there’s a kind of outraged young man introducing the clips. Ignore him.

You can take this to be about Carson, as the narrator does, or you can take it to be a little picture into what American media and attitudes were like in the mid 70s, in case you’ve forgotten or weren’t born yet. The 70s are supposed to be *after* America stopped being all racist, but there’s this transitional period where people haven’t yet learned how not to make asses of themselves about racial issues or make really uncomfortable racial jokes.

We’re better about that now, right?… right? I guess our children will be the judge of that. :)

Here’s a mirror.

A Brutal Iraqi Regime

(Human Rights Watch, 26-1-2005)

Methods of torture cited by detainees include routine beatings to the body using cables, hosepipes and other implements. Detainees report kicking, slapping and punching; prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, including the earlobes and genitals; and being kept blindfolded and/or handcuffed continuously for several days. In several cases, the detainees suffered what may be permanent physical disability.  
 
Detainees also reported being deprived by Iraqi security forces of food and water, and being crammed into small cells with standing room only. Numerous detainees described how Iraqi police sought bribes in return for release, access to family members or food and water.  

Saddam Hussein’s tactics? No, those are all things that our good friends and partners, the Interim Government have done on our watch.

But hey, at least they’ll respect our copyright regime and sell their oil in USD rather than Euro. The people of Iraq can take comfort that in those respects they are now free. In terms of not being subject to arbitrary torture and detention by an evil regime, well…. not so much.

Link via MeFi, though I’m sure this is going to be all over the American media, because they’re so liberal.

Fafnir AND John Waters’s Head!!!

Talk about brushes with greatness. On the same night I find out Sara stared from a distance of mere inches at the back of John Waters’s head throughout a movie, and Nate somehow (perhaps through a typographical error gone horribly wrong?) got himself blogrolled by Fafblog, a blog-status-symbol than which no greater can be conceived. (It’s Anselmian, that linkage. Wow.)

I am now two degrees of separation both from Fafnir and from the back of John Waters’s head.

The mind reels!

Timely Protest of the School of the Americas

Several protesters were arrested and jailed for trespassing on Fort Benning, location of America’s terrorist training ground, the School of the Americas, during the annual protests there. (They mark the anniversary of the rape and murder of American missionaries by United States-sponsored Salvadoran death squads.)

Ah, those were the Reagan years. Sponsoring death squads who rape and murder American churchwomen.

Old news? No, all the cool conservatives are advocating the “Salvadoran Option” for Iraq. It worked so well in Central America! Why not? We put the guy in charge of the original death squads plans, John Negroponte, in charge in Iraq.

Good thing this is all in the news. Oh, wait, it’s not in the news? Huh. I thought we had a liberal media…

Via Colin from ISCABBS, friend of protestor Dan Schwankl, who will be spending the next 90 days in Federal prison.

From the SOAW web page:

The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians…

In an attempt to deflect public criticism and disassociate the school from its dubious reputation, the SOA was renamed to “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)” in 2001.