Wikipedian Protester
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Year: 2007
Some Things Never Change
One of these things is that you will never find a more useless, self-centered, inbred, addle brained royal family than the House of Habsburg.
That being said, why the hell did this guy, get this back in the first place? Its a national treasure, not a plaything for the idle wealthy.
The estate is a duty to those who choose to serve their land in word and deed as nobility, not a toy to be discarded when bored.
Heir puts ‘Dracula’s Castle’ for sale
By ALEXANDRU ALEXE, Associated Press WriterMon Jul 2, 2:18 PM ET
A Habsburg heir is hoping someone will take a bite of his offer Monday to sell “Dracula’s Castle” in Transylvania.
The medieval Bran Castle, perched on a cliff near Brasov in mountainous central Romania, is a top tourist attraction because of its ties to Prince Vlad the Impaler, the warlord whose cruelty inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula.”
Legend has it that the ruthless Vlad — who earned his nickname because of the way he tortured his enemies — spent one night in the 1400s at the castle.
The Habsburgs formally put the Bran Castle on the market Monday, a U.S.-based investment company said. No selling price was announced.
Bran Castle was built in the 14th century to serve as a fortress to protect against the invading Ottoman Turks. The royal family moved into the castle in the 1920s, living there until the communist regime confiscated it from Princess Ileana in 1948.
After being restored in the late 1980s and following the end of communist rule in Romania, it gained popularity as a tourist attraction known as “Dracula’s Castle.”
In May 2006, the castle was returned to Princess Ileana’s son, New York architect Archduke Dominic Habsburg. He pledged to keep it open as a museum until 2009.
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Opposition lawmakers have claimed the government’s decision to return the castle to Habsburg was illegal because of procedural errors.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
I read this, and that’s what popped into my head.
Talking Trojan taunts victims
Malware authors have developed a talking Trojan capable of taunting its victims even as it goes about its work trashing their PCs.The BotVoice-A Trojan (http://www.pandasoftware.com/com/virus_info/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?idvirus=166596&sitepanda=empresas) informs victims that their Windows PCs have been infected as it deletes files. The malware uses Windows text reader to play the following message:
You has been infected I repeat You has been infected and your system files has been deletes. Sorry. Have a Nice Day and bye bye.
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Developers Moving Away from Windows?
One of the major draws of Windows is that everyone in the development community feels that they have to do Windows.
This advantage is decreasing.
Developers diss Windows client
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Going nicheThe Windows client hegemony is breaking down with developers targeting different operating systems and multiple client devices.
The latest Evans Data Corp poll of North American developers found 12 per cent fewer building applications for Windows than a year ago.
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Democracy Taken to Stupid Extremes
Ummm…This has fiasco written all over it.
On the other hand, Shatner and Nimoy are sure to get Knighthoods.
Brown calls for e-petitions to get debated in Parliament
By Chris Williams
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 15:22 GMTGordon Brown has thrown caution to the web, and called for a new e-petitions system which would force Parliament to debate issues popular with internet users.
Buried in a wide-ranging parliamentary statement on constitutional reform yesterday, he said: “I also encourage this House to agree a new process for ensuring consideration of petitions from members of the public.”
In a later briefing with journalists, the Prime Minister’s spokesman explained that a consultation would be held on setting the threshold figure at which a parliamentary debate would be triggered by petitions.
As evidence for the consultation, we’d submit the fact that according to the 2001 census, 390,000 Britons claim to belong to the Jedi religion. Perhaps quite a high threshold would be best, then.
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Ummmm….I Got Nothing Here.
This is too weird for me to comment on. I’m left speechless.
Chinese women crave Bill Gates’ spermGive me a baby, big fella
By Lester Haines → More by this author
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 08:50 GMT
Mobile computing: Opportunities and risk – Free whitepaperThere’s some good news this morning for Bill Gates: if he ever finds himself fallen on hard times he can always make a few quid offloading his sperm on eager Chinese female recipients.
That’s if China’s Self magazine is to be believed, because the IT potentate secured second spot in a poll which asked 1,000 women from 15 cities whose precious bodily fluid they’d most like to accommodate for some hot baby-making action.
Indeed, so sought-after is Bill’s magic water that he beat Becks and Brad Pitt into fifth and tenth places, respectively. The ideal sperm donor was not, however, George Clooney or Larry Ellison, but Hong Kong entertainer Andy Lau.
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Rich People Are the Only Ones Still Buying Houses in NY.
Condos in New York are seven figure, and sometimes eight figure purchases.
The very well off, as opposed to the hyper-rich, cannot afford this, and they buy into co-ops.
The housing market is losing ground everywhere except with the at the very, very, very, top.
Co-ops Slip, but Condos Lead Rise in Manhattan Apartment Prices
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEYWhile housing prices are falling in many parts of the country, the cost of a Manhattan apartment is continuing to rise over all. But a stark divide is emerging between the prices of co-ops and condominiums. More buyers are choosing condominiums over co-ops and are paying far more for them, according to studies being released today.
The average price of a condo in Manhattan rose by as much as 28 percent in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, according to data tracked by four large real estate brokerages. In the same period, the average co-op price dropped by as much as 10 percent. Buyers paid an average of $1.49 million for a condominium, compared with $1.13 million for a co-op, according to figures from Brown Harris Stevens.
Brooklyn did not share Manhattan’s price rise. There were more deals, but the average apartment price dropped by 4 percent, to $629,000, compared with last year, according to data from the Corcoran Group.
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Fred Thompson Leaked Congressional Investigation Details to Nixon
Fred Thompson leaking information to the Nixon White House?
Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson’s Watergate role
The Senate Watergate Committee chief counsel, Samuel Dash, crouched to confer with Fred Thompson (left) minority counsel, and Senator Howard Baker during a July 1973 hearing. (James Atherton/ Washington Post/ File)
BTW, what the is up with that hair? Looks like the 1970s were not a great time for hair (my picture on my profial there is circa 1979)
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | July 4, 2007
WASHINGTON — The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight — asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system — he telephoned Nixon’s lawyer.
Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, “At That Point in Time,” Thompson said he acted with “no authority” in divulging the committee’s knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon’s resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson’s actions.
“Thompson was a mole for the White House,” Armstrong said in an interview. “Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was.”
Asked about the matter this week, Thompson — who is preparing to run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination — responded via e-mail without addressing the specific charge of being a Nixon mole: “I’m glad all of this has finally caused someone to read my Watergate book, even though it’s taken them over thirty years.”
The view of Thompson as a Nixon mole is strikingly at odds with the former Tennessee senator’s longtime image as an independent-minded prosecutor who helped bring down the president he admired. Indeed, the website of Thompson’s presidential exploratory committee boasts that he “gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office.” It is an image that has been solidified by Thompson’s portrayal of a tough-talking prosecutor in the television series “Law and Order.”
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People that I Hate To Agree With
There are times when I find myself agreeing with people or organizations that I find abhorent.
This is one of those times.
First, Andrew Sullivan, Proud Endorser of the Racist and Sloppy Bell Curve:
The bottom line for Americans is this: George Bush’s friends do not go to jail. Your friends do.
This is a very simple matter. Either Libby is subject to the rule of law or not. Bush’s action is constitutionally solid but morally and politically indefensible – an act of arrogance born of permanent privilege that still, somehow, even after all these years, manages to shock.
And if that didn’t make me feel queasy, there is The Moonie Washington Times, whose sole purpose seems to be giving the New York Sun a run for its money regarding the hackticular nature of it’s news and editorial sections:
But none of this exonerates the commutation. Perjury is a serious crime. This newspaper argued on behalf of its seriousness in the 1990s, during the Clinton perjury controversy, and today is no different. We’d have hoped that more conservatives would agree. The integrity of the judicial process depends on fact-finding and truth-telling. A jury found Libby guilty of not only perjury but also obstruction justice and lying to a grand jury. It handed down a very supportable verdict.
Morons Who Get Elected:EU Edition
Well, it looks like the US hasn’t cornered the market on stupid.
EC wants to suppress internet bomb-making guides
By Lewis Page
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 13:49 GMTThe European Commission (EC) has announced plans to frustrate terrorism by suppressing online guides on bomb-making.
“It should simply not be possible to leave people free to instruct other people on the internet on how to make a bomb – that has nothing to do with freedom of expression,” EC vice president Franco Frattini said yesterday.
Mr Frattini is “responsible for Freedom, Security and Justice.”
If this guy were responsible for generating electricity from George Orwell spinning in his grave, he’d be doing his job well.
His current job? …. Not so much.
When asked how the EC planned to suppress web bomb manufacture instructions hosted outside EU borders, it appeared that officials planned to act at the level of ISPs in Europe.
The Times quoted a commission spokesman as saying: “You always need a provider here that gives you access to websites. They can decide technically which websites to allow. Otherwise, how would China block internet sites? There are no technological obstacles, only legal ones.”
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Holding up China as a model of internet access????? Puhleeze.
FTC abandons net neutrality
This should surprise no one, the Bush admin will always make the wrong choice, particularly when it.
Contact your congresscritters about this, and help get a network neutrality bill passed.
FTC abandons net neutrality
End of the internet as we know it
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 02 Jul 2007
ADVERTISEMENT
Click HereThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.
The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.
This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation.
“This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving dynamic industry of broadband internet access, which is generally moving towards more, not less, competition,” FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras wrote.
“In the absence of significant market failure, or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”
The report has caused outrage in the online community. Many are worried that any abandonment of net neutrality will harm competition, since it will allow big companies to outspend start-ups.
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Quote of the Day: Oliver Stone
Generally, I see Stone as a a silly conspiracy obsessed figure, but he nails this one.
Iranian president: Stone part of ‘Great Satan’
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“I have been called a lot of things, but never a great satan,” Stone said in the statement. “I wish the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.”
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Sony PlayStation 3 is Done. Put a fork in it.
They are so crushed by the Wii (what a stupid f$#@ing name) that they are going to pimp their already meager fan base.
Product placement won’t bother the fans, but the privacy issues of reselling gamer data will.
Look at Real. People hate them more than Microflaccid now, and there are multiple open source Real players because of this.
Sony PlayStation to sell user data to advertisers
There’s already plenty of product placement in video games, but Sony (SNE) appears to have plans to take the nascent industry — in which advertisers only spent $80 million last year — to a much more sophisticated level. The company has agreed to let Nielsen track the behavior of PlayStation gamers to let advertisers better understand gamers’ demographics, how much time they spend on a given game, and how closely they pay attention to the product placement. Sony and Nielsen aren’t being totally clear yet on how they’re going to acquire the information, but it could be a combination of self-reported data and stats gleaned directly from the consoles themselves somehow.….
Pending home sales index fall signals more weakness ahead – Jul. 3, 2007
So the housing market is not yet worse than a terrorist attack.
Also note that this is pending sales, and there will be more cancellations today than in 911.
Banks are tightening credit today, Greenspan flooded the economy with liquidity after 911, so this is going to get a lot worse.
Pending home sales index fall signals more weakness ahead
Reading of pending home sales sinks to lowest since September 2001, suggesting more pain for the housing market.
July 3 2007: 10:33 AM EDTNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Existing home sales are likely to see more declines in coming months as a key reading of pending deals fell to nearly a six-year low in May, a real estate group said Tuesday.
The National Association of Realtors said its index of pending home sales, which reflects homes under contract, sank to 97.7 in May from 101.2 in April. The latest reading is 13.3 percent lower than May 2006.
The index was created in 2001 to be a more forward-looking reading on home sales than the group’s existing home sales report, which charts sales at the time of closing. The pending home sales index tracks when a sales agreement is signed, generally a month or two ahead of closing.
The index was set at 100 at the start in 2001. The May reading is the weakest since September 2001, the lowest on record, when the Sept. 11 attacks hit consumer confidence. The latest reading matches the third lowest.
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India Has Beaten the USA at It’s Own Game, F#$%ed Up Weapons Procurement.
If you think that US defense procurement programs have a problem, you will get a chuckle out of the Indian Arjun MBT.
Indian Army to get 14 Arjun tanks for field trials
The Indian Army has agreed to take 14 indigenously developed main battle tanks (MBT) Arjun for field trials by September 30, it was announced on Monday.
The decision was taken after successful demonstration of all modifications including medium fording or crossing a water body to Defence Minister AK Antony and other senior officials at Avadi in Tamil Nadu where the tank is being built, a defence ministry statement said.
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While not officially going on record, the army is known to be extremely unhappy with the Arjun, having listed 14 defects that need to be rectified.
These include a deficient fire control system, inaccuracy of its guns, low speeds in tactical areas – principally deserts – and its inability to operate in temperatures over 50 degrees celsius.
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50°C is about 112°F. It’s a temperature that was seen in France during their killer heat wave.
And it appears that this saga will continue.
The Indian Army laid down its qualitative requirement (QR) for the Arjun in 1972. In 1982, the DRDO had announced that the prototype was ready for field trials. However, the tank was publicly unveiled only in 1995.
Arjun was originally meant to be a 40-tonne tank with a 105 mm gun. It has now grown to a 50-tonne vehicle with a 120 mm gun.
Wiki lists it as being a 58.5 tonn vehicle with a crew of 4, so it would be similar to the Leopard II. (It’s about 5 T lighter)
It’s main gun is rifled, which implies some British involvement, as they are only ones staying with rifled main guns.
It uses a hydropneumatic suspension. This probably does not gain much by way of performance, torsion bar seems to match that, but is more efficient space wise, as you don’t have to have a sub floor over the torsion bars, and it can kneel, possibly allowing for very low profile hull down positions.
35 years?????
What New York Times Says
I agree, I just wish that they had used the term “cover up”.
Soft on Crime
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But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.
UN Finds No WMDs in Iraq, Closes Up Shop.
We’ve known that Iraq had no WMDs since before the invasion.
Took the UN 4 years to acknowledge this, though.
UN Closes Iraq Weapons Inspection Unit
UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council has closed down the agency charged with monitoring Saddam Hussein’s illicit weapons programs.
Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to immediately abolish the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee, known as UNMOVIC. The 15th member, Russia, abstained.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, objected that the inspectors had not fulfilled their mandate of officially certifying that Iraq, at present, has no weapons of mass destruction. But he said Russia is willing to accepts that UNMOVIC serves no further purpose.
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Huge Indian Fighter Jet Tender Enters Final Stage : Military Aviation : Defense News Air Force Army Navy News
The Russians have the cheapest plane of the lot, and transitioning crews and maintenance personnel from MiG to MiG should be easier.
As to the price issues mentioned at the end, I would think that the F-16 would be the next cheapest, but I think that the Gripen would be cheaper than the F-18E/F.
I’ve always been a fan of the Gripen, so that may color this.
Additionally, the US might use export restrictions to attempt to kill a potential Gripen sale.
They tried this is South Africa, when they attempted to use export restrictions to get them to buy a US plane, but the response from South Africa was to forbid any US companies from bidding on Defense contracts, and the US relented.
Huge Indian Fighter Jet Tender Enters Final Stage
A scramble for a piece of the world’s largest fighter plane deal in over a decade moved into its final stage Friday with India examining the final bids from global weapons giants.
Indian defense ministry and industry sources said the choice appeared to have narrowed down to the Russian-built MiG-35 and MiG-29 aircraft, and U.S. offerings the Lockheed Martin F-16 and Boeing F-18.
A top defense procurement committee meeting had been expected to result in an announcement of the vendor of the 126 war planes, but an official statement late on Friday only said the tender has been “fine-tuned.”
The deal is potentially worth $9 billion to $10 billion.
Also in the race to replace a chunk of India’s aging fleet of 700 MiG-21s are Eurofighter’s Typhoon, Saab’s Gripen and Dassault’s Rafale and Mirage — although price considerations have left these contenders at a disadvantage, defense officials and industry sources said.
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Obstruction of Public Access: UK Edition
This is really about covering up pork, and outrageous uses of expense accounts by MPs.
UK gov fights public spending website
By Kablenet
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 09:27 GMTThe government is obstructing a bill aimed at establishing a new website for information on public sector spending.
The bill, which originated in the House of Lords, is now being led by Conservative MP David Gauke. It would require the Treasury to create a government expenditure website, as well as giving the government the power to extend it to other public sector bodies, but the government believes it would cost too much.
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PICTURE: Piasecki flies X-49A SpeedHawk compound helicopter-03/07/2007-Washington DC-Flightglobal.com
FWIW, the counter-torque is done with rudders in the propulsion propeller.
I’m thinking that allowing the main wing to pivot might allow for greater hover capability.
Neat stuff though.
PICTURE: Piasecki flies X-49A SpeedHawk compound helicopter
By Graham WarwickPiasecki Aircraft has flown the X-49A experimental compound helicopter for the first time. The modified Sikorsky YSH-60F, with wings and tail-mounted variable-thrust ducted propeller (VTDP), made the 15min flight on 30 June at Boeing’s Wilmington, Delaware test centre.
The first flight involved hovering, pedal turns and slow forwards and sideways flight using the Piasecki-designed VTDP for anti-torque, directional and trim control, says vice-president John Piasecki.
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