Thursday, November 30, 2006

How Hugo Chavez deals with "dissidents"

Stalin would be proud.

VCRISIS
[...]
Assassinated or missing
1. Carlos Augusto Aumatrie (assassinated)
2. Juan Carlos Urbano Lugo (assassinated)
3. Jose Manuel Vilas LiƱera (assassinated)
4. Omar Arturo Morales
5. Juan Jose Perez
6. Juan Ernesto Sanchez
7. Andres Bastidas Guedes
8. Jose Luis Rodriguez
9. Eduardo Jose Miranda
10. Julio Cesar Gomez
11. Rafael Tomas Pulido Marcano (APPEARED BADLY TORTURED)
12. Pedro Jose Sanchez Robles (assassinated)
13. William Alvarez Morales (assassinated)
[...]

More crazy patents - frameless glasses

I got a better idea. Put a plastic tab on the top side of the lense(s) and just use a pneumatic nail gun to attach them to the wearer's forehead with 12 penny framing nails.

PATENT STORM
A frameless glassware assembly attaching to body piercing studs. Design consisting of an elastomeric C-clip fixedly attached to one distal end of a metal arm, which is attached to a frameless glass lens assembly. Design allows for frameless eyeglass attachment to the eyebrow studs or to the nose studs of a user via the elastomeric C-clip. One embodiment allows the frameless glassware to attach to eyebrow studs and the second allows the frameless glassware to attach to a nose stud. Both designs are frameless and avoid side wire earpieces common to hold glassware to the face of a user.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Moonbat accuses Bush daughter of transmitting STD's

Meet the unhinged completely unmedicated left posting over at Dan Riehl's place.
I'd be petulant too, if my son were in a war that Bush started and can't finish whil[e] his kids are transmitting STD's in Argentina.
Normally I don't make much out of remarks like this because I make them myself frequently. When I do it though, its done with a measure of jest which I attempt to convey to the reader rather than pure white hot ideological BDS hatred.

The person who made this comment has a LONG history over at Dan's place firmly establishing themselves as one of the most crazed unmedicated trolls plying blogs these days. Hater trolls like to hide in the shadow of comment threads, but this one just earned a post all their own.

A coding problem I didn't need

It never occurred to me that some compiler might generate multiple THEADER/MODEND sets within a given OBJ module it spits out. Yet this seems to be exactly what one version of the Ryan/McFarland FORTRAN compiler does that I have. LINK apparently accepts this construct OK.
[UPDATE]
Even though ancient (and current) versions of the Microsoft LINK handle this multiple THEADER/MODEND construct, Borland's TLINK crashes and burns when it encounters it. TLINK apparently assumes an OBJ can have only a single THEADER/MODEND set and simply stops scanning the input file after the first one. Net result - lots of unresolved symbols and a failed link. The Borland TDUMP utility for dumping the contents of an OBJ seems to list multiples, but displays some bogus information due to internal variables not being reinitialized when it encounters a THEADER.
[UPDATE]


If its being spit out by compilers and accepted by LINK, then I'll need to handle it too.

[UPDATE]
It seems this moronic Ryan McFarland FORTRAN compiler is also emitting BOGUS checksums for certain OBJ record types. So far I've seen it happen on LNAMES, and LEDATA. The SEGDEF's looked OK though.

I know some language translators punt on the record checksum byte and just set it to zero, but this is the first I've seen plugging in garbage.

A plea from an Iraqi we all need to read

The Mesopotamian
[...]The consequences of failure are unthinkable not only for us, the Iraqis, but also for all free people in the world with the American people foremost, whether they belong to this party or that. Never mind the chorus of America haters, and all the discordant din of international hypocrisy. This fight against terrorism is more just than the struggle against fascism and Nazism was. There can be no neutrals in this battle. The terrorists are worst than the fascists, these killers specializing in murdering and torturing the innocent are by far more heinous than any other kind of vermin. No decent human being can find any excuses for these zombies. Worst still, anybody who heaps invective against those confronting this inhuman evil, is almost as guilty as the beast himself. America was not always right, but this time by God, its fight is as just as the sun is bright in an Iraqi summer day. Anybody who cannot see this is as blind in heart as in sight[...]

[...]America seems to have become confused and loosing sight of the fundamentals of the issue and even who the real enemy is. Of course this was aided by a massive propaganda assault aimed directly at the American public from abroad and from within. Yet this is absolutely not a partisan issue. It is tragic that this matter is used for partisan purposes and for electoral considerations. When the ship of state starts sinking, it will take down everybody with it. You ask us Iraqis about this. And this is war, my friends. You can’t have half wars. In war you just have to go all the way. You either win or lose, and if you lose you are lost. In no other situation is this more true than this our war.

Democrat or republican, America has no option but to find a way to win this war. All real Americans must be as sure of that as all real Iraqis.

Not quite ready for the pro bowlers tour...

VIDEO CLIP(wmv format)

Is there a witchdoctor in the house?

Socialized medicine. Long waits, low quality, and witchdoctors. What's not to like? I'm waiting for my neighbor, a Santeria priestess, to get certified. She works cheap - bring a live chicken as payment and she's happy.

Telegraph
A family planning doctor told a patient that she had "something sinister" moving in her stomach and needed an exorcism to ward off evil spirits, a medical tribunal heard yesterday.

Dr Joyce Pratt, 44, informed the young woman that she was being tormented by black magic and sent her away with crosses and stones to protect her. She also claimed to have visionary powers and told the patient that her mother was a witch who was planning to kill her, it was alleged.

Dr Pratt, who worked for the NHS Westside Contraceptive Services in Westminster, London, is accused of serious professional misconduct and was due to face a General Medical Council "fitness to practise" panel in Manchester yesterday.[...]
H/T Expressus

Darfur rebels hit oil field

China Daily
[...]The attack on the field on the edge of South Darfur appeared to be another sign that Darfur's violence was spreading across the region

"The government garrison guarding the oil field was totally destroyed," the National Redemption Front rebel group said in a statement. "Numerous soldiers, including high-ranking officers and generals, have surrendered," the rebels said, claiming to have shot down an army helicopter and to have captured a "substantial amount" of weapons and military vehicles.

A Sudanese military spokesman denied the army had surrendered, saying its troops had "inflicted heavy causalities on the rebels, who withdrew from the area." He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with official policy[...]

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The moonbat's FrankenFood quandry

UC Davis has apparently identified a gene in wheat that somehow got lost along the way as wheat became domesticated. The gene in question has been proven definitively to greatly enhance the nutritional value of wheat and is present in wild strains of wheat.

It seems this gene could be turned back on or restored in the domesticated strains allowing them to become more nutritious.

What a puzzle this is for the Franken-food crowd. You've got a "natural" trait, yet reintroducing it will require genetic manipulation of the food. Cognitive dissonance.

The Davis Enterprise
Researchers at UC Davis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Haifa in Israel have cloned a gene from wild wheat that increases the protein, zinc and iron content in the grain, potentially offering a solution to nutritional deficiencies affecting hundreds of millions of children around the world, the university announced.

Results from the study are reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science...

I'll have a burger and fries - hold the ketchup

The Saudis are fond of cutting the hands off thieves. I wonder what they got planned for this guy ;->

Saudi Gazette
DURING an inspection tour of a restaurant in Ahad Rufaidah by the Civil Defense, Staff Sergeant Sa’eed Mohammed Bin Shuwaih caught a Filipino worker urinating in a ketchup jerry can. The worker was caught in the presence of all the officials and he was handed over to the police after the municipality closed down the restaurant.
H/T Stilettos in the Sand(who just made my blogroll)

It was a slow news day at Reuters Nov 7

...when they felt that running stories that Saddam's hidey-hole was discovered by psychics somehow rated as news.
[...]"You remember when they found Saddam Hussein in Iraq? A soldier walked over to a rug, lifted it and then found a trap-door and found him in there," Geller told Reuters.

"Well, I know that that soldier walked over to that rug because he got information from a 'remote viewer' from the United States."[...]
Roswell! Alien Invasions! Men in Black! Psychics! UFO's! Have we all suddenly stepped off the bus into "moron world" when a (supposedly) credible outfit like Reuters gives any inktime at all to stories like this?

Cold War Junkyard

I could spend days poking around a place like this. Some planes look like beat parts donors, but others appear to have some long term storage precautions taken.

Mig-21 chasing a UFO

Nice in flight Mig-21 footage even if the thing turns out to be a fraud.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Associated Press caught (again) faking Iraq news

You MUST read through this whole affair. In a nutshell, AP has apparently been taking bogus "news" from people presenting themselves as Iraqi police, when they are not Iraqi police. Many of the stories have been flat out false - the most recent being the burning of 6 sunnis. This story falsification has been going on since spring of this year.

Flopping Aces

More at Flopping Aces

Keep in mind that Associated Press was proven previously to have been penetrated by at least one Saddam spy as documented in the archives of Saddam's intel service.

Something else to blame on the Joooos

28 down, how many left to go?

Canadian Press
Iranian state television reported Monday that a plane crashed in Tehran, killing 28 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard, including high-ranking officers[...]

How "oppressed" are the Palestinians?

One hears a constant drumbeat in the media about how badly the Palis are being treated. Is this in fact true? In this scathing takedown of Noam Chomsky protege Tanya Reinhart, Martin Kramer offers some insight.
[...]But it's more than bias. Like every bum prediction, this one reflects an underlying flaw in understanding. In Reinhart's case, it's a very deep flaw, and it's this: she's completely missed the most salient development in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The flaw is perfectly evidenced in this accusation she's made against Israel:
What is happening in the [Israeli-occupied] Territories is a process of slow and steady genocide. People die from being shot and killed, many die from their wounds—the number of wounded is enormous, it is in the tens of thousands. Often, people can not get medical treatment, so someone with a heart attack will die at a road block because they can not get to the hospital. There is a serious shortage of food, so there is malnutrition of children. The Palestinian society is dying—daily—and there is hardly any awareness of this in Israeli society.
What's wrong with this picture? For a "dying society," subjected to "slow and steady genocide," Palestinians have enjoyed an astonishingly robust population growth. In the West Bank, the net population growth rate is 3.13%, and in Gaza it's 3.77%, compared to Israel's 1.2%. That's also much higher than the net growth rates of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt (CIA estimates for 2005). Life expectancy at birth is 72.3—at least five years above the Arab average, and higher than the same figure for Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia (Arab Human Development Report III, 2002 figures)[...]

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Full-auto fun

American "crazies" playing with their toys. God bless'em. Somewhere in there I think saw an HK-91/G3 near the end. I used to have one of those back in the 80's until I sold it to another guy who was working at Borland with me at the time. Put a box of ammo through that thing and your shoulder felt like it had been beaten with a sledge hammer.



H/T to some commenter over at Jane Galt's place

Return To Ramadi

This is a very long piece, but well worth reading. Fumento writes in the style of Michael Yon and with the same immediacy and credibility. This is stuff the MSM won't tell you because its encouraging and shows that we are indeed making significant progress in the hardest of the hardcore areas in Iraq.

Michael Fumento
[...]despite desperate efforts by the anti-Iraqi forces to keep citizens of Ramadi from providing valuable tips – efforts including murder, torture, and destroying phone lines and cell phone towers – the enemy is indeed wearing out its welcome in a city it once essentially owned[...]

[...]Put it all together – the Forward Observation Bases, new Combat Operation Posts, new Observation Posts, tribal cooperation, ever more Iraqi army and police, better intelligence, and public works projects. There's no "stay the course" strategy here; the course changes as necessary and it's continually changed for the better. I believe we are winning the Battle of Ramadi. And if the enemy can be beaten here, he can be beaten anywhere.
H/T to commenter 'E. T. Page' over at the Mudville Gazette

Software testing - peeling the onion

Suppose you've got some old software that's getting a face lift. This happens all the time. The old stuff appeared to work perfectly in its old task, but now some new demands are being made on it.

Code paths previously untraveled now are getting executed. Perhaps this is because that unexecuted code was put in to conform with some sort of standard that no compilers of the day emitted in its totality (in this case Intel's OMF86 which was only subsetted by language tools targeted to PC's). When all you're working with is a paper spec and no tool that actually generates certain aspects of that spec, well...shit happens...or in this case, shit happened.

The old Lattice C compilers never generated threaded fixup records in their OBJ files, but the code in question includes an OMF loader that purports to recognize threaded fixups because...well...they were part of the Intel OMF spec.

You the reader don't need to understand what a threaded fixup is, only people writing compiler back ends, linkers, and maniacs like me need to know such things in detail. What you do need to understand though is that the threaded fixup loading code had a bug. That bug I injected in the code back in the early-80's had gone undetected for some 20+ years and the program worked perfectly with the compiler outputs it was originally designed to work with -- it was a latent bug.

So I'm chugging along adding the recognition/identification support for a lot of other compilers besides the old Lattice one. Computer Innovations C86, Lattice 3.x versions, all the Borland stuff from Turbo C 1.0 onward, and I finally get to the early Microsoft C compiler.

BANG. Microsoft generates threaded fixups. The latent bug rears its ugly head and the world collapses around me.

OK fine, its going to be that way eh? A couple of days pouring through old OMF docs, head scratching, getting back up to speed on what was previously imagined to be a flawless piece of software, jacking around with a debugger and the latent bug is fixed and extinguished. Unfortunately it wasn't an instant death kind of bug. It was one of those silent killers where the stuff just wasn't working right and you didn't find out about it until thousands of instructions and dozens of function calls later when the bad data causes some problem. Backtracking those to their origin is always a PITA...but I digress.

I thought that was it. It wasn't. Now that output from the Microsoft C compiler can be loaded/parsed/recognized, more problems with fixups surface because the Microsoft "huge" model is generating a form of fixup the code wasn't designed to handle. No big deal. That one was pretty easy to add. Dig up some docs on Microsoft fixups and 15 minutes later that one is nailed.

The point here is that I'm apparently going to be peeling the onion a lot in this endeavor. Even in apparently well functioning code, there will be a lot of latent bugs because of test case gaps, spec confusion, etc. Behind every bug you see, many more may be lurking once that one is fixed.

I've seen test/development managers dupe the higher level managers by shaping presentations of defect status. My original 20+ year old bug wasn't just "one bug", I know its going to turn into many bugs over the next few days.

If you just report on just "failed" test cases, without saying how many variations are blocked by that "one bug", its hard to get a handle on how many layers of the onion you'll be peeling once that "one bug" has been "fixed".

This becomes particularly embarrassing as a product nears its ship date and the "difficult" problems previously put off that blocked hundred of variations get fixed and suddenly the defect count spikes rather than going down. An astute manager will want to correlate failed test cases against blocked variations so a SWAG at the spike might be taken, or executives at least warned that such a phenomenon might occur.

Anyone who has shipped tens of millions of lines of code over dozens of releases will eventually develop some historical data that will give them insight into the nature of the SWAG they need to make.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Sunshine girls


Gotta love the foreign press. This is it Pinto -- here's the pooter.

TorontoSun

Weird patents -- a fart collection apparatus


European Patent Office
A device for collecting flatus gas from a human or animal subject, the device comprising a gas-tight collecting tube 10 for insertion into the rectum of the subject and retaining means comprising a pair of O rings 18 locatable in the subject's inter-sphincter groove[...]
Much more HERE

I note with some interest that this patent application has expired due to non-payment of applicable fees. Would it be considered "torture" to stick gas collection tubes up the bums of terrorists in the name of scientific research?

H/T Hell Bent

Spud gun terror in Canada

It always starts out small like this, then they graduate up to larger and larger destructive weapons like THIS ONE that can launch pumpkins over a mile. Next thing you know the treacherous bastards are having some real fun, which of course is completely unacceptable.

Times Colonist
[...]Officers at 11:30 p.m. Sunday investigated reports of possible gunfire coming from the balcony of a Lampson Street residence in Esquimalt. A 43-year-old man was arrested and police seized nine improvised potato guns of various sizes.[...]
H/T War on guns and Dr. Helen


Canada don't like black people ;-> This is a pic of the amazing Mavis Staples enjoying herself with a little spud gun fun. Don't bring that hardware north of the border Mavis or the Canadians are going to slap you in jail.



If I'd ever taken my Pocket Flame Thrower to Canada, I'd probably be languishing in some Canadian prison right now.

Weekly Jobless Claims Climb by 12,000

Week after the democrats take over? Hmmm...

I blame Pelosi and Reid.

IB TIMES
[...]The Labor Department reported Wednesday that new applications filed for the work week ending Nov. 18, rose by a seasonally adjusted 12,000 to 321,000. The increase was bigger than many economists were expecting. They were forecasting new claims to clock in at about 310,000. [...]

Venezuela Says IEA and OPEC are lying

If VE's output is only 2.5Mbbl/day, then one Shell Canadian tar sand plant is going to produce as much as 5% of the total VE daily output.

Here is energy independence, right in front of our noses. BTW, the US currently produces more oil that VE or Iran individually.

IB TIMES
[...]Venezuela says it produces about 3.3 million barrels a day, but many outside sources - including the IEA, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the U.S. Energy Information Agency - put actual production closer to about 2.5 million barrels a day.[...]

Thursday, November 23, 2006

"Happy penis" program a success in Brazil

They're probably happy because they can bootleg the goods on the net for $10 a throw ;->

XINHUA
The mayor of a small town in Brazil says his elderly constituents are much happier ever since he started handing out free Viagra through a program titled "Pinto Alegre" in Portuguese, or "Happy Penis" in English.

Joao de Souza Luz, mayor of Novo Santo Antonio, in the central state of Mato Grosso, said 68 men over the age of 60 had already signed up for the program, which was approved by the town's legislature.

"Since we started the free distribution of sexual stimulants, our elderly population changed. They're much happier," said Souza Luz[...]

Man tows car with his penis

People will do almost anything for publicity. I want to see him bungee jump with that same attachment point. That will separate the men from the boys. At least it'll separate them from something ;->

Chicks must dig guys who tow cars with their junk.

Aftonbladet TV video (Swedish)

Via Dustbury and Jalopnik

A delightful little industrial fraud.


Not nuke, not wind, not solar. Anyone want to invest in a perpetual motion machine ;->

Tim's take HERE.

Snake oil sales at its finest it would appear. Good buzz words to lure in the eco-moonbats with cash laden wallets. Smooth, albeit content free, presentations. Media kits, INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES.

Book your flight to Arcturus NOW before they're all sold out! Reminds me of the sales pitch for Bre-X's claimed Busang gold strike. I actually made about $10K off the Bre-X scam years ago. Got out well before the crash.

Nikkogen
...Although Nikkogen is a new company, our engineering skill base experience exceeds 125 years and is built on heavy engineering, electrical power station support, energy control system design, installation and maintenance.

We have a global license to manufacture/market zero-emission Prime Mover Systems that are designed to drive large electrical alternators to generate clean carbon-free electricity...
H/T Tim Worstall

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Outlandish, sad, and disgusting.

Palm Beach Post video

Story Here
Police appealed again Wednesday morning for help identifying the body of a baby girl found a day earlier at a recycling plant in suburban West Palm Beach.

Preliminary autopsy results could not determine whether the child, named Baby Grace by detectives, was born alive, Palm Beach County sheriff's officials said. She appeared to have been carried to full term. Little else was known except that she was white and had black hair.

Anyone with information is asked to call detective Bob Falbe at 561-688-4147 or Crime Stoppers at 800-458-TIPS.[...]

How NOT to do an assassination

Pretty amateur if you ask me. What kind of moronic plotters give the press a heads up they're going to whack someone?

Blacksmiths of Lebanon
Al Seyassah daily learned from authoritative sources in Beirut, that one of the editors of the Syrian National News Agency (SANA) placed a phone call to a pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper at 3:05 pm on Tuesday. The caller inquired about the details of the assassination of Lebanese Minister for Industry Pierre Gemayel, raising eyebrows at the Lebanese newpaper. The timing of phone call was 55 minutes before the assassination was carried out.
H/T Sandmonkey

Real snakes on a real plane!

I knew there was a reason I haven't stepped foot on a commercial airliner for about 8 years now ;->

REUTERS
Manila airport officials prevented a real life version of horror flick "Snakes on a Plane" this week when they stopped more than 130 reptiles, including poisonous cobras, from boarding a flight to Bangkok.[...]
H/T Sandmonkey

What is this green gunge on these CDROM disks?

I had about 6 old (but brand new, cello-sealed in jewel case) Sony CD-R's sitting in a dusty corner. Old stuff - 6X max write speed. So I figure I'll use'em up making some backups of some programming work I've been doing lately.

I crack those babies open and look at the media side and there's a greenish gunge creeping all over the surface rendering them unusable. The gunge had a texture to it, not smooth like the normal media surface. Not rough like sandpaper, but you could feel that it wasn't as smooth as the un-gunged part of the surface.

Its not like I've been storing them out in the back yard buried under a pile of leaves with the lizards or something, they'd just been sitting on the shelf in the Batcave.

I tried washing the gunge off with dish soap and warm water. No joy. This gunge is apparently a permanent sort of gunge.

What the heck is this stuff? I feel like I'm living in the X-Files.

Where is Al Gore when you need him?


Its freaking cold here in Palm Beach county tonight. I had to break down and turn the heat on an hour ago. Typically, there is only about one week a year where I might have to turn the heat on...and that's usually in late DEC or JAN.

GLOBAL. WARMING. Right.

WFTV Channel 9
[...]A blast of cold air is moving into the state this week, state emergency officials said.

Wind chills may drop into the 20s in parts of north Florida and high temperatures may only reach the 60s as far south as the Keys on Wednesday, state meteorologist Ben Nelson said.

Miami wasn't expected to even hit 70 on Wednesday, and low temperatures were expected to dive into the mid-40s.[...]

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Patterico's not happy...

...Can't say that I blame him.

A good read on how some bureaucratic apparatchiks just don't "get it" when it comes to information dissemination these days.

An alternative explanation, a much darker one, is these same asshats are actively working to undermine the US military image and information dissemination whenever possible. Someone perhaps looking to suck up to the MSM for job later on wouldn't do that now would they? No way ;->

New "weapons grade crazy" entry


Been doing a bit of blogroll maintenance lately adding some new friends and such, but there is a new entry my "weapons grade crazy" section.

Screamer In The Matrix

In the fever swamps within you will find mix of crazy that is quite eclectic. 9/11 "truther", Antisemitism, BDS, Islamist propaganda, etc. This person really is quite the one-stop-shopping place for loons of just about any stripe.

I find it useful to occasionally take a look at the crazies like this. It reminds me to thank my parents for raising a person who isn't a stark raving mad loon.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Run away! Run away! Object terrorizes London

Heh. When I was a child I had a live .50cal bullet as part of my collection in my bedroom. Astonishingly, I'm still here to type this post. Its a miracle I'm still alive I guess ;->

Guardian-Series
LIVE ammunition has been found lying in the doorway of a busy high street shop.

The .22 calibre short round bullet was found at the entrance of the 99p Stores in Walthamstow High Street on Wednesday morning, November 1.[...]

[...]"How can you feel safe when you are finding things like this on the street?[...]

[...]Police are treating the unattended ammunition as a crime. Mr Khan alerted them at 10.16am, and they arrived at his shop to pick up the bullet at 11.32am.
H/T Tigerhawk

Global Orgasm day - Dec 22

S.C.I.E.N.C.E. baby its science. I won't question their patriotism, just their sanity ;->

globalorgasm.org
The Global Consciousness Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu), Princeton University, runs a network of Random Event Generators (REGs) around the world, which record changes in randomness during global events. The results show that human consciousness can be measured to have a global effect on matter and energy during widely-watched events such as 9/11 and the Indian Ocean tsunami. There have also been measurable results during mass meditations and prayers.

The Zero Point Field or Quantum Field surrounds and is part of everything in the universe. It can be affected by human consciousness, as can be seen when simple observation of a subatomic particle's state...
H/T Tigerhawk

[UPDATE]
In celebration of this event, we need a suitable theme song. The obvious choice would be Orgone Accumulator by Hawkwind. Of course I date myself by even knowing who this band even was ;->

Sunday, November 19, 2006

T4 - Return to Jesus

I posted this a while ago, but its so funny I just have to do it again.

Canadian Liberal party campaign ad

Fear mongering anyone?

Shell's Canadian oil sands expanding to 155,000bbl/day

The bulk of the article is about how they are working on CO2 capture/containment within the framework of oil field work, but the 155,000bbl/day figure caught me off guard. That's a non-trivial level of production.

Globe and Mail
[...]Mr. Mather said Shell has studied building a carbon capture facility at its Scotford upgrader east of Edmonton, which is being expanded to produce up to 155,000 barrels of synthetic oil a day.[...]

If it makes sense for hospitals, why not homes?

I have always installed receptacles with the ground prong up (or neutral up if mounted horizontally). The only exception would be for an appliance with an immediate turn plug. In that case I make sure the cord hangs down to place less strain on the receptacle and cord.

The National Electric Code has no opinion on the orientation of receptacles. Perhaps it should? (FWIW, numerous proposals to revise the NEC have been turned down by the code making panels declaring it a design choice, not a safety issue)

FDA Public Health Notification about bed fires
[...]Check all electrical outlets, including accessory outlets that may be mounted on patient beds, for cleanliness, physical integrity, and functionality. The IEEE standard 602-1996, section 4.2.2 advises that hospital-grade outlets be used and that they should be mounted with the ground pin or neutral blade up to assure that any metal that may drop between the plug and the wall will most likely contact an unenergized blade. (Specifications for “hospital-grade” connectors appear in UL498-2001, Supplement SD.)[...]

Moderate arabs to suck canal water soon

Excellent article and dead on. The moderate Arabs blew their chance to get behind the US democracy efforts, with the dems in power and the old Bush v1.0 team back, they're all out in the cold and back where they were during the Cold War.
Daily Star

H/T Tigerhawk

The "other war" the media is ignoring

A few days ago I suggested we should get involved in the horn of Africa. It would appear that we've been doing exactly that although you'd never know it listening to the nightly news.

CJTF-HOA (lots of news articles here)

Curiously, we've even performed joint training exercises with, get this...the French military in Djibouti.
The Marines of 461 along with elements of Charlie Company of the Guam Army National Guard conducted a joint military training with the French unit based in Djibouti, on Oct. 31. The event marked the first time the United States and French military forces have worked together in a training exercise involving both air and ground forces in the Horn of Africa.
US Navy assumes command of Camp Lemonier
[...]Consisting of about 1,500 U.S. and coalition personnel, the task force conducts operations and training to help host nations establish a secure environment while enabling regional stability.

The primary purpose of the camp is to support CTF-HOA's anti-terrorism operations here in the Horn of Africa to include Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, said Fahey.

As Fischer moves on to his new assignment in Quantico, Va., he says Camp Lemonier's greatest achievement is its day-to-day operation.

We're an anti-terrorism base, so our most important accomplishment is providing security and safety to Camp Lemonier each and every day,” he said.

Originally a French Foreign Legion post, the camp was later renovated by the U.S. CJTF-HOA later moved its headquarters from the flagship USS Mount Whitney to the East African facility. [...]


Germans also operating out of Djibouti (H/T Armies of Liberation)
Germany's recent decision to continue participating in the "Enduring Freedom" campaign against international terrorism has caused some controversy, but for troops on naval patrol in Africa, it's business as usual.[...]

[...]While many Germans may be starting to question the usefulness of the "Enduring Freedom" campaign, the marines themselves are sure of their aims.

"We are here to fight international terrorism," says one soldier on the frigate "Schleswig Holstein."[...]

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Harry Reid: Dems to push for higher gas prices

How discouraging added refinery capacity, exploration, and drilling in this country is supposed to move this country towards the Pelosi "energy independence" promise remains unclear...

WATE
[...]Topping the list for possible repeal are: tax breaks for refinery expansion and for geological studies to help oil exploration, and a tax credit for drilling in this country rather than abroad.

These clowns never learn...

Every day I offer thanks that god made criminals a largely stupid bunch. That jackass ex UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter was picked up a few years ago doing the same thing at the Burger King in Menands NY (about 8 miles from my family homestead). I go in that Burger King all the time when I'm up in NY. Even supposedly "smart" people apparently turn suddenly moronic when it comes to hitting on kids.

WATE News 6
An Oliver Springs fire department captain has been suspended following his arrest for allegedly using the Internet to solicit sex from a 15-year-old girl[...]

[...]charged with 22 counts of solicitation of a minor and one count each of statutory rape and especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor[...]

[...]rendezvous with the girl at a convenience store in Murfreesboro on Thursday but was met there instead by an undercover Tennessee Bureau Investigation agent[...]

Flying Burkhas

Got some new and impressive CGI anti-muslim propaganda pics up at POLEMIKEN. #3 is cool - flying burkhas.

These guys are relentless and vicious. I like that ;->

Mindless random clicking can...

...lead to some pretty funny stuff. I'm not going to spoil it for you. You're gonna have to click the link to get the prize.

Vile usurpation of Hummingbird lady's work



There's a fascinating web page HERE on a lady who's managed to hand feed a bunch of hummingbirds. Humming birds are cool. I like hummingbirds. I like almost all birds (even vultures) excepting of course pigeons, which are nothing more than profoundly retarded flying rats.

Anyway, the point of this post is that some sleazy scumbag lowlife detestable slime mold of a human being took the pictures of Abigail and her humming birds, claimed them as their own and then used them to win a weekly photo contest at KTVQ in Lexington.

H/T Blog Idaho

NY Sun gives props to bloggers for schooling MSM

Someone get it.

NY Sun
[...]that for all their brilliant staffers, resources, and reputation for authenticity, they can be fooled, and it is left to investigative Web sites to shout foul. In the Lebanon war this past summer, celebrated newspapers and television stations worldwide carried pictures showing that Israel had targeted two International Red Cross ambulances — a fabrication of Hezbollah that investigative Web sites ultimately exposed.It should be the other way around.[...]

Liberals are cheapskates

I'm not surprised.

Much of my "charitable" work is very direct, unofficial, and one-to-one with the kids in the neighborhood. Whenever my garage door is up, they start congregating because my garage is full of fascinating things that result in impromptu lessons in science or engineering that they'll never get in school and their parents are incapable of giving them. The kids are like sponges - they soak it all up and love it. Magnetism, aerodynamics, strength of materials, etc. Somehow, I have a way of presenting what would be normally college level stuff in a manner that a young child can comprehend. I can't explain how I do it, but they always walk away with a grasp of the basic concepts and filled with a desire to know more. How many adults could explain why an airplane stays in the air? There's a bunch of kids on my street who can ;->


POWERLINE
Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks has written a book called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. His conclusions echo all of the other research I've seen:
The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.

[L]iberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
Liberals tend to specialize in giving away other peoples' money.
H/T Tigerhawk

Do I creep you out?

Weird Al has a winner here.


Weird Al doesn't creep me out, but this asshat from the Muslim Thinkers Society does. The link is an audio clip from an interview on Glenn Beck's show where a dude from the MTS calls in. Chilling stuff. I would hope the new democrat majority in congress all listen to this Beck interview.

H/T Neocon Command Center

I'm not nerdy enough to want one of these


AN LED BINARY CLOCK

The thing costs between $20-$28 depending on the model, plus almost $6 for the cheapest shipping rate possible. I can get a cheap Chinese watch at Dollar Tree for a buck. This is not a product for geeks, its a product for morons with more cash than brains.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Glenn Beck presents Exposed

Watch it all. Scary stuff. I want to see the democrats plan for dealing with these Islamic nutjobs.



H/T Stop The ACLU

It was 20+ years ago this code comment was written

Going through some piles of ancient floppy disks I rediscovered some code. Usually ancient code isn't very interesting in modern terms, but this code embodied an IDEA that is still very interesting.

The comment below in green text was written back around 1984 on a 4.77mhz 8088. The program it was part of was absolutely unique in its day -- it took already compiled object modules produced by a commercial C compiler(Lattice), tore them apart, completely analyzed the logic flow in them, then rewrote the code to prevent the application being processed from accidentally overwriting DOS, the IVT or its own code due to some pointer bug.

When a bug was caught, the modified code produced a register dump and issued a message indicating exactly what module and line number the the error occurred on. The trapper code was of course replaceable and could just as well have performed a warm start and reinitialization of the app for something that simply couldn't be allowed to crash. The ability to have a self diagnosing and potentially self healing C code application in 1984 was a pretty heady notion. In a real mode environment with no hardware protections available at all, it was a near miraculous notion. It wasn't until the 386 chip and its V86 mode came along that outfits like Numega even bothered to attempt producing a similar result.

Similar code analysis magic constructed to build this 20+ year old app could be applied the output from mediocre compilers today (ex. GCC). Once you've scanned and identified all the straight line blocks of code, classified all the instructions as to what registers, flags, etc they touch, you're in a good position to rewrite those blocks with semantic equivalents that are smaller or faster than the stock compiler output. Think peephole optimizing. GCC's x86 peephole optimization capability is weak. A good assembler programmer can ALWAYS beat it handily.

Of course, once all straight line blocks are identified, its a simple matter to insert things like real time profiling counters. Its also a trivial task to insert code path coverage counters.

How many testing groups would like to know what parts of a program have and have not been hit during testing?

How many developers would like to know exactly what parts of a program people are actually using in real life as opposed to what the programmer imagines they might be using?

If an app contained a blob of code that is never executed by customers in the field or during forced error and unit testing, one necessarily has to question why that piece of code is even in the application -- its effectively "dead".

There are some tools around today that can do some of this, but some require source changes, others run the app under a debugger or other noxious schemes.

I believe I have a new programming project to fiddle with. We have come so far, yet some things at the lowest levels are still as bad as they always were. Maybe I can fix some of that. Not many care to play at this gritty a level, but its something I've always loved. Its real, very real. No hand waving. No bullshit. The bits don't lie. It appeals to my INTJ nature a lot.

Some will say, why not just fix GCC and other mediocre compilers? I could in the case of GCC, can't in the case of closed source stuff. Anyway -- I choose not to. How many versions of patches/mods for all the different compiler releases in the field do I care to maintain? The answer to that question is zero. People need older releases for various reasons (ex. the Linux 2.4 kernels refuse to compile with the GCC 4.1 compiler. Great coordination there guys! Siskel and Ebert give that clusterf**k two thumbs down). My approach is relatively compiler version independent, and if the compiler guys ever start producing the same code my scheme would, then my scheme essentially degenerates into a build time NOP when it can't find anything to improve.

I've seen the future. It happened over 20 years ago ;->


*NOTICE* *WARNING* *NOTICE* *WARNING* *NOTICE* *WARNING*

CHANGE this code at your own risk. It works, and works well. It could also be broken very easily by naive hacking.

This piece of code performs a complicated function and uses a recursive algorithm to do it. Pay particular attention to the storage classes of the variables in the scancode() routine!!

Imbedded in this code are HEX constants which are MAGIC numbers dependent on 8086/80186/80286 opcodes. Some pointer arithmetic is also very INTEL specific. INTEL isn't ever going to change these so I don't feel too guilty about hard wiring them in! Needless to say, any attempt to alter this code without a SOLID knowledge of INTEL's architecture at it's lowest level would be pure folly.

*NOTICE* *WARNING* *NOTICE* *WARNING* *NOTICE* *WARNING*

Penguins vs Pelicans

Cool National Geographic vid

CLICK HERE

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Which one are you?

Which South Park kid are you most like?

Stan

You're pretty normal. Infact you're usually the sane voice of reason when everyone else is going crazy.

Personality Test Results
H/T Dr. Helen

A trip down memory lane

Wow, some stuff here I haven't seen in a LONG time. I'll have to set'em up with a copy of DOS 1.0 though. No retro archive would be complete without that.

Retro Archive

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

After an Iraq pullout, then what?

OK, lets stipulate the democrats get their way and we start to pull out of Iraq at some point. Then what?

Michael Yon (see my sidebar links) is predicting major problems in Afganistan in the spring fueled by the poppies and dope runners. Might need to shore that front up. Let's say we double the US troop levels there to ~40K to help tamp down any potential issues.

That still leaves us with a lot of boots sitting around watching Deal or No Deal when there's still a bunch of terrorists afoot in the world. We're also left with a navy that's all dressed up with no party to go to until (Chavez or the PRC make their moves).

I propose the following course of action. Its a bold stroke that will kill many birds with one stone and dissuade the terrorists that pulling out of Iraq is necessarily a sign of weakness (even though we all know that's exactly what it is).

REDEPLOY 1/3 OF REMAINING TROOPS TO WESTERN ETHIOPIA

REDEPLOY 1/3 OF REMAINING TROOPS TO EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Ethiopia you say? Yep Ethiopia. It shouldn't be too hard to get the Ethiopians on board for this. Refugees, decades of crunching poverty, surreal wars with Eritria, etc should make the Ethiopian government quite amenable if we provide suitable bribes in the form of some decent humanitarian aid delivered in a lax enough manner that the kleptocrats can loot half of it for themselves. If Eritria wants in on the deal, that would be great too. They got ports that could be useful. The minimum they need to give is overflight rights. We can issue them an ultimatum - back our play or we'll just do it anyway and there won't be any cash-olla for you. They'll play.

Why Ethiopia? Look at a map. Ethiopia is strategically located between Sudan and Somalia. Naval support in the Red Sea and gulf of Aden can operate under cover of conducting anti-piracy operations. There has been a pernicious level of actual piracy in the region lately and this makes a perfectly good excuse for being there.

Several good things are going to happen as a result of this:
  • Some pirates get dead
  • The Sudanese govt gets real nervous and tones down the Darfur thing
  • The Islamists in Somalia get real nervous
  • Freelancer jihadis in Iraq follow us (the real goal here)
As the jihadis in Iraq follow us, they have to transit Saudi Arabia and or Yemen. Both of these countries are more or less onboard now. Yemen more recently since the jihadis have been cramping the profits of that country's gangster government. Terrorists were OK there before, but now they're messing with the profits and have become less welcome of late.

As freelancers leave Iraq, Iraqi's problems reduce accordingly. With the western province leaders on board now, some won't even make it to the border. The Saudis will sweep up some crossing the border. The Yemanis will get some, and the US Navy will get even more while doing their "anti-piracy" operations. Get'em on the move and they'll be more vulnerable than in the urban Baghdad setting.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Home Shopping

CLICK HERE

I was a lazy dumbass - the tyranny of the macros

I've been further fiddling with the program I talked about HERE.

This time I took a critical look at a bunch of C preprocessor macros I wrote back in the early 1990's. The problem with macros of course is that they get expanded into something. That "something" winds up getting slathered throughout the code and if not carefully considered can result in substantial code bloat. In this case I wrote about 10 new lines of code, twiddled the macros a bit and saw the size of the test suite plunge by about 4K. That's a pretty tidy reduction for a whole 10 LOC worth of new code.

It takes a pretty smart compiler to factor all the replicated junk out and pull it into an internally generated function -- and even then its only going to happen if you've chosen some aggressive space optimization options. Many compilers aren't all that aggressive about space optimizations to begin with because compiler reviewers and benchmarks focus mainly on speed rather than generated code size and often think they're smarter than YOU the programmer are and do things behind your back to actively subvert you if you do happen to want smaller rather than faster code.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Cat Stevens definitively linked to terrorists

Jawa Report has the rundown and clandestinely recorded audio of a radical imam implicating Stevens.

PEACE. TRAIN. right.

Happiness is knowing you still have "the touch"


For a long time I considered myself a "world class" x86 assembly language programmer when it came to squeezing the crap out of code to make it as tiny as possible (a talent too often ignored these days). Others try to make things fast, I mostly focused on making them small because the vast majority of code isn't terribly speed sensitive. The bulk of code in a program or operating system usually handles oddball cases, error paths, CPU errata, etc and isn't executed all that often, yet it MUST BE THERE for the code to be "correct". The smaller that necessary baggage is, the more memory is left over for running the code that does the useful things.

It has been a few years since I did any assembler programming though. Did I still remember all the dirty tricks, arcane minutia, and nasty swindles that are the stock and trade of a premier code tweaker looking for every last byte? I really wasn't sure.

So I've got this little program (actually its an API test suite) I've been evolving ever since the early 90's. Its a modest bit of assembler code, on the order of 12,000 lines with several thousand lines of C code thrown in as well.

Today I got "in the zone" for a few hours and whipped out about 400 lines of insanely compact assembler code. About 50 new functions and the new module weighed in just under 500 bytes. I just made the minor mods to integrate the new stuff into the project and the size of the whole dropped by a few kilobytes. Add 500 bytes of magic, and the whole goes down by 6X what was added. This is the way programs should evolve!

Yes, I still have "the touch", and the 400 lines of new assembler code functioned perfectly through 4,000+ testcase variations that use it very heavily.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

The final taboo -- a brave woman speaks out

Daily Mail

Taboos of course must remain unspoken. As a practicing male of the species I fully intend to uphold the code of silence™ here and just tempt you readers. After all, I have standards to maintain. I assure you though, this is a riveting story of horror, vileness, and torture the likes of which most decent men are never privy to. It is our nature to shy away from such things and let the women deal with it among themselves. Perhaps in the future I may be able to speak of such things openly after educating myself more, but today is not that day. You will have to click that link and read the account of another. It is beyond my ken at the moment.

Brilliant parody or "future history"?

Go read it all. The dems really are dumb enough to do exactly what is described here.

The Rumsfeld Interview
[...]Rummy: Sure Chris. You see between now and the confirmation hearings I will be going back to Iraq on several occasions. The media normally just covers bad news from Iraq but this time they will have no choice. They will have to get soldiers reaction to my resignation and how they feel about their mission in Iraq. A great percentage of the soldiers really believe in their mission and the American people will see that. Oh and the confirmation hearings are a trap for the Democrats. You'd think they would have learned from the Justice Roberts hearings but I guess not.

ALR: Can you share with us what you foresee happening at the confirmation hearings?

Rummy: Oh its going to be great theater. The back seat drivers will finally have to go on record for what they think is the best course instead of always complaining that we just missed a turn.
[...]

H/T TigerHawk

Friday, November 10, 2006

Draw your own conclusions

I offer this without comment because I don't know what to think of it yet. It purports to be a suppressed documentary/expose.



[UPDATE]
After a bit more research, I'm pretty convinced this is a fraud carefully woven around some genuine misdeeds. The very best propaganda is always woven into actual truth.
[UPDATE]

Nice F-14 tribute

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Fake Hybrid stickers - enjoy the chic without the cost

CLICK HERE

[its parody, but I bet they would sell like hotcakes]

How to "nationalize" Cold Cash jefferson in 08'

The US Constitution Aricle 1 section5 states:
[...]Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member[...]
Obviously, we can't get the 2/3 vote to boot Jefferson, BUT we can get a lot of democrats ON RECORD as having voted in favor of corruption.

Any vote other than to boot Jefferson can be used by republican challengers NATIONWIDE in political ads to accuse their opponent of being "soft on corruption".

This needs to happen NOW while the committee chairmanships are still under republican control and the issue can be FORCED onto the floor for a vote.

William "cold cash" Jefferson retains seat


In related news, Nancy Pelosi said in prepared statements that she personally was ready to lead "the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history."

So, she'll be getting a golden opportunity to remove an egregiously dishonest and corrupt democrat on her first day. I can't wait to see how she handles the Jefferson issue. I'm guessing nothing at all happens.

[UPDATE]
I'm informed this isn't really a "win". He now has to participate in a runnoff against Karen Carter. I'm betting he wins that one though since he'll have the power of incumbency and preferred committee assignments compared to a freshman.
[UPDATE]


Louisiana SecState
6111%Scott Barron(D)
1,0911%Regina Bartholomew(D)
1,1421%Eric T. Bradley(R)
19,97222%Karen Carter(D)
11,05212%Troy "C" Carter(D)
1170%Deven "D. C." Collins(D)
6591%John Edwards(D)
27,70630%William J. Jefferson(D)
3970%Gregory W. "Rhumbline" Kahn(L)
12,40513%Joseph "Joe" Lavigne(R)
3960%M. V. "Vinny" Mendoza(D)
16,62118%Derrick Shepherd(D)
2480%Lawrence William "Lance" von Uhde, III(R)

Pelosi's promises

Prediction: Stock market opens down sharply.


Huffington Post
If you honor Democratic candidates with your vote today, in the first hundred hours of a Democratic Congress: We will restore civility, integrity, and fiscal responsibility to the House of Representatives. We will start by cleaning up Congress, breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation and commit to pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending.[my note: riiight!!]

We will make our nation safer and we will begin by implementing the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

We will make our economy fairer, and we will begin by raising the minimum wage. We will not pass a pay raise for Congress until there is an increase in the minimum wage. [my note: is she promising a congressional pay raise here too?!?!]

We will make health care more affordable for all Americans[my note: i.e. massive tax increases], and we will begin by fixing the Medicare prescription drug program, putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices. We will also promote stem cell research to offer real hope to the millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.

We will broaden college opportunity, and we will begin by cutting interest rates for student loans in half.[my note: and raise taxes to compensate for this new give away]

We will energize America by achieving energy independence[my note: how?], and we will begin by rolling back the multi-billion dollar subsidies for Big Oil.[my note: so they scale back domestic exploration and research on alternatives right?]

We will guarantee a dignified retirement[my note: sounds a lot like more spending to me], and we will begin by fighting any attempt to privatize Social Security.

conspiracy crazed moonbat smashes voting machine

Morning Call
A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today's election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.

Michael Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police[...]
H/T Pajamas Media

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Murtha

WIN FREE MONEY from Moonbats (TradeSports)

The June 07' contracts look like a good bang for the buck. Some jackass is looking to buy 130 contracts at $10 right now. This is approaching a 20% annualized rate of return.

TradeSports
US MILITARY ACTION AGAINST NORTH KOREA

The contract will expire at 100 if the United States conducts an overt military action against North Korea, either within or outside of North Korean territory, on or before 11:59:59pm ET on or before the date specified in the contract. The contract will expire at 0 if no overt military action is taken[...]

[...]Any military blockade undertaken by the United States against North Korea or any inspection of North Korean vessels conducted by the United States military will not be considered an overt military action[...]

Monday, November 06, 2006

Moonbat (and republican) dirty tricks squad(s)

PLUNDERBUND
This year we have a secret weapon of our own.

But it won’t work without your help.

We are looking for additional, dedicated, progressive-minded volunteers for a well-planned but very secret mission behind enemy lines.

We need volunteers from all counties who:

1. have never voted in an Ohio primary election
2. can dress (and talk) about issues from a conservative perspective

Please contact me directly at JOSEPH@PLUNDERBUND.COM for more information.


[UPDATE]
Looks like the republicans have got their black bag crews out too if this Philladelphia Daily News article is correct.

I'm so fed up with all these attempts to game the election process that I have a proposal. How about we make running a false flag op a federal crime with a mandatory 20 year vacation at Club Fed for anyone involved in it? That would apply to the candidates operations, 3rd parties, etc. If you present yourself as something you are not, you qualify. Problem solved overnight. Nobody is dumb enough to risk 20 in the slam for this kind of marginal trickery.

In 04' there was some woman came to my house 4 times pitching for Kerry. Every time I assured her I was going to vote for him because it was the quickest way to make her just go away. The problem is that she was presenting herself orally as being with the League of Woman voters. She was not. Upon closer examination of her credentials and materiels, she was plainly with some moonbat Emily's List organization, not the League of Woman voters.

Volokh has lots more on dirty tricks in Ohio.
[UPDATE]

Sunday, November 05, 2006

The Air America advertising blackout list

This list of companies that MEdia Matters managed to obtain apparently didn't want any of their ads airing during Air America broadcast airtime. Sounds like a good list of people to patronize.


H/T Kuru Lounge

A wee little machine gun. Its so damn cute

Largest nuke ever (it was Russian of course)

Moonbat phones in for election results

Teen threatens father with grenade over cell phone bill

Its always that "independence thing" with teens. Just gotta do it their own way.

BBC
...a recent story involving a teenager who threatened her father with a hand grenade in an argument over paying for a mobile phone bill.

The father expressed surprise that his daughter had managed to get hold of a grenade from her friends, rather than simply use one of his own collection.

Seaplanes -- how NOT to take off


H/T Mr Completely

Saturday, November 04, 2006

DOD responds to bogus Army Times editorial

Note: The Army Times is not a DOD publication, its owned by USA Today.

DEFENSELINK

Hit the link above for a point by point smackdown.

H/T Wickedpinto

The dead will rise on tuesday



Just saying... H/T Six Meat Buffet

Software that worked (and still does) the SLED Editor

Its coming on 19 years now since I discovered this little gem of a plain text editor Sam Wilmott wrote. I even sent him some cash way back when because I was so impressed with its power/size ratio and its RAW FREAKING SPEED. I used it for many years while working at IBM. This tiny little editor (well under 20K), packed more functionality per byte than almost any piece of software I've ever seen. When other editors (like BRIEF) had text dribbling across a screen on an old 4.77mhz 8088 when you leaned on the PgDn key, SLED would make it fly by in a blur.

I continue to use it to this day (along with BRIEF) for writing code.

If you'd like to experience what a real software craftsman can do with a bit of code no larger than most avatar graphics images, download SLED and give it a try. Bits don't rot -- its every bit as good today as it was back in 1987, and that was very good indeed.

The Mexican Constitution (as regards foreigners)

Suppose the US were to adopt a policy of "reciprocity" regarding how foreign nationals are treated in this country? Suppose we were to treat them using the same policy that their homeland used to treat Americans?


Chapter III

Of Foreigners

Article 33 - Foreigners are those who do not possess the qualities determined in Article 30. They have the right to the guarantees of Chapter I of the first title of this Constitution, but the Executive of the Union has the exclusive right to expel from the national territory, immediately and without necessity of judicial proceedings, all foreigners whose stay it judges inconvenient. Foreigners may not, in any manner, involve themselves in the political affairs of the country.

Friday, November 03, 2006

US Marshals complete Falcon III roundup


US DOJ
[...]I'm pleased to announce that as of this morning, the U.S. Marshals Service has concluded Operation FALCON III, an intensive week-long law enforcement campaign in which more than 10,700 fugitives, 1600 sex offenders, 971 of whom were unregistered, and 360 gang members, were arrested. Operation FALCON can also claim seizure of over 230 firearms.[...]

[...]Joined by federal, state, and local law enforcement, the Marshals Service leads Operation FALCON, targeting the worst of the worst fugitive felons in the country.[...]

Florida teen scams $800,000 on eBay

Greed gets'em every time. After the first few hundred thou I think I'd have shutdown the op and blew town. GET GREEDY. GET CAUGHT. You could counterfeit $1 bills printed on lined notebook paper all day and never get caught. Start going for the $10/20/50's and you're gonna get nailed.

Local6
A teen in Winter Park, Fla., was arrested on suspicion of selling about $800,000 worth of computers that did not exist on the online auction site eBay, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.

Agents raided a Winter Park home on Aloma Road belonging to the parents of Thomas Thompson, 19, and took teen into custody Friday.

"Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Thompson was selling high-end computer routers on eBay," Local 6's Louis Bolden said. "People were actually paying for them but he never delivered the goods -- ripping them off for about $800,000."[...]

Wexler response to email about Flight 93 passengers

Got email back from Robert Wexler about the Flight 93 passengers who stormed the cabin and tried to retake the plane. I asked him why they'd not been awarded the Medal of Freedom.
November 2, 2006


Mr. XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX, FL XXXXX-XXXX

Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX:

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns regarding about commemorating the brave airline passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer, who sacrificed their lives to prevent an attack on the Capitol. Upon further research with other Members of Congress who may have already initiated action on this worthy cause, it is my hope that we may see greater recognition for these ordinary American heroes.

Thank you again for taking the time to write. Correspondence with my constituents is a very valuable source of information and is very helpful to me. I sincerely appreciate your input and hope that you will feel free to contact me anytime I may be of assistance to you. In addition, I invite you to visit
my website (http://wexler.house.gov) to help keep up with events in Washington and in South Florida.

With warm regards,

Robert Wexler
Member of Congress

Confirmation# 1000XXXX

DoD: 5 myths about the war on terror

DEFENSELINK
October 31, 2006

MYTH 1: Secretary Rumsfeld ignored military advice to increase troop levels in Iraq.
FACTS: The opposite is true. Rather than ignoring the recommendations of senior military commanders, civilian leaders have relied heavily on their advice.


* In the early planning phases of the Iraq war, for example, although Secretary Rumsfeld was ready to approve plans to deploy up to 400,000 troops if needed, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, opted instead for a campaign emphasizing speed rather than mass[...]


MYTH 2: The Defense Department has pursued a “stay the course” strategy that does not allow for adjustments in strategy.
FACTS: The suggestion of a static and unyielding approach to Iraq fails to take into account continuous adjustments in strategy that have been made on the battlefield.

Some examples:

* The program for training and equipping the Iraqi army was revised substantially to stand up a force better suited to internal security and fighting terrorists.

* The Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) initial plan to transfer sovereignty and hold elections was moved up to an earlier date, in response to the desire of the Iraqi people to take charge of their own country[...]


MYTH 3: The administration has been distracted from waging an effective war in Afghanistan by Iraq.
FACTS: Today there are more Coalition forces in Afghanistan than at any time since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.


* In March 2003, the United States had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan. Today, there are more than 21,000 U.S. forces either under U.S. or NATO command in Afghanistan or directly supporting missions there. Some 20,000 troops from 37 NATO and non-NATO nations are also committed to the effort[...]

MYTH 4: Violence in Iraq may have “cost more than 600,000 Iraqis their lives.”
FACTS: The study this figure is drawn from has been widely disputed.


* Steve Moore, ...[That] tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country. … [T]he key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. … [T]he Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.”[...]

MYTH 5: U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was “fired,” “removed,” or “cashiered” after suggesting the need for more troops.
FACTS: This is demonstrably false.


* Gen. Shinseki was appointed to a four-year term as chief of staff of the Army and served his full term. When Gen. Shinseki made his oft-cited statement about troop levels in February 2003 during a congressional hearing, it was already well-known that his term would end six months later. Serving longer would have been extraordinary. The only two men to serve longer than four years in the entire 103-year history of the position have been Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Gen. George Marshall.
H/T Ray Robinson

00' Flashback: Clinton gives bomb design to Iranians

Guardian
...In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.

The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work...
H/T Strata Sphere

04' Flashback: Iraq nuke materiels moved to Oak Ridge

Oak Ridger
...DOE only confirmed that 20 experts from its national laboratory complex packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources from a former Iraqi nuclear research facility...

...The Iraqi nuclear research complex where the materials came from "was once a central institution for Iraq's nuclear weapons program before being dismantled in the early 1990s, following the first Gulf War," according to federal officials...

04' Flashback: Libyan nuke materiels moved to Oak Ridge


Oak Ridger
...55,000 pounds of nuclear material and other sensitive equipment from Libya to Oak Ridge was just the "tip of the iceberg."...

...50 crates of parts and equipment associated with weapons work and four centrifuges, which are used in the production of weapons-grade uranium...

..."The first shipment contained designs, material and equipment determined by U.S. and British experts to be the most sensitive items in the Libyan nuclear weapons program," Abraham said. "All the ingredients were available for a weapons program to be developed."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham talks about centrifuge casings removed from Libya. The casings house the rotating machinery in a uranium enrichment centrifuge.
The January shipment also included four cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, which have already been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency and shipped to a facility in Ohio...

...reportedly, a ship transporting around 500 tons of material associated with Libya's weapons program is expected to dock at a port - possibly in North Carolina - later this month...

Campaign Posters


Click the image for lots more...

Thursday, November 02, 2006

NYT to validate validates Saddam WMD threat ?

[UPDATE2]
You can send "thank you" notes to William Broad (NYT reporter who wrote the article) at THIS NYT WEB PAGE
[UPDATE2]

[UPDATE]
NYT
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
H/T Ace and Stop the ACLU
[UPDATE]


National Review
...I'm sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?

What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been "no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat", for the past three years solid. Now we're being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.

Let's go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.

I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a "Boy, did Bush screw up" meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the "there was no threat in Iraq" meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh... al-Qaeda.

The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.

The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn't dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet. It doesn't work. It can't be both no threat to America and yet also somehow a threat to America once it's in the hands of Iran. Game, set, and match.

Palistinian terror leader endorsed democrats

WND
..."Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity...

DNC spends $50,000 support republican to replace DeLay

Houston Chronicle
The National Democratic Party has spent $50,000 promoting a nominal Republican write-in candidate to succeed former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a move the more prominent GOP campaign called a "desperate" effort to split the write-in vote...

...The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent more on the direct mail than Richardson has spent on his own campaign. In Federal Election Commission filings, the DCCC classifies the $50,000 expenditure as "opposition" mail...

...A spokeswoman for the DCCC declined to discuss its strategy...

Windows Vista due in January

THIS SYSTEM IS A PIG

Minimum: 800mhz, 512M ram , DirectX 9, 15G HDD, 128M Graphics card

OBL Implicated in Bamiyan Buddha Destruction


Middle East Times
...Trabelsi, who was sentenced in September 2003 to 10 years in prison for having planned a suicide attack on a military base, described in great detail how he and Bin Laden had used the statues as targets for shooting practice.

Documents found in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban attested to the influence exercised by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda on Mullah Mohammed Omar, head of the Taliban regime, which led him to decide to demolish the monuments...
H/T Gateway Pundit.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Irey plays hardball with Murtha

Ouch. This one had to sting.

Killer aborted hit on "red" Ken Livingstone

It is unfortunate he had to abort. Livingstone is a vile commie and one of the prime architects of the downfall of Britain.

Daily Mail
Michael Stone, the most infamous hitman of the Northern Ireland conflict, has confessed to planning to murder Ken Livingstone. The former Loyalist assassin has revealed in an interview how he stalked London's Mayor when he was leader of the GLC in the Eighties.

He was within three days of carrying out the plan, he said, but it was called off because the operation had been penetrated by an informer...

...Stone says he viewed Mr Livingstone as "a legitimate target" because he was giving support and credibility to McGuinness and Adams. He says of the assassination plot: "One of my biggest regrets is that I had to call it off."