Month: January 2008

Wal-Mart Screws the Pooch on Digital Downloads

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So, after less than a year, Wal-Mart is abandoning its digital download service.

Its basic features were:

  • Just as (if not more) expensive as a DVD.
  • A draconian DRM regime which forced you to watch it on your computer and only that computer.
  • It only ran on Windows Machines.
  • No High Def.
    • Which doesn’t mean much to me, but for the technophile early adoptors, it does.
  • The DRM scheme allowed the studios to revoke your rights to the movies that you downloaded with no recourse.

To quote ars technica:

The message here is very clear: draconian DRM and unrealistic pricing are turning consumers away from legitimate retail channels and giving them a big incentive to adopt underground file sharing.

Criminal Probe of CIA Coverup Started

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This is a significant step, though it is my understanding that by assigning someone from Connecticut, it means that they are not technically a special prosecutor.

Obviously the fact that a criminal probe has been opened is significant, and the man assigned, John H. Durham, was the one who successfully investigated and prosecuted the FBI agents who protected James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi because they used them as informants.

However, I do not expect him to be given much in the way of freedom over his investigation.

Schadenfreude: Scaife Edition

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I posted about this in October when the WaPo covered this, and now Vanity Fair has a much more extensive writeup of the Scaife divorce.

So, the man who did his best to get a president impeached for sleeping around is himself a philanderer. He is a hypocrite who deserves any pain he gets.

FWIW, he should let his wife have that damn dog. In a divorce, you try to get out with your balls intact, the dog is a distraction.

Tom Lantos Retiring

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The reason given is esophageal cancer, but doubtless the challenge of Jackie Speier in the primary, where she was leading by 30% in the polls, had a lot to do with that too.

It comes down to the fact that he was a very strong hawk on Iraq, and any Iraq Hawk deserves to lose their seat.

FWIW, part of his statement is very disingenuous.

It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.

Of course, Leon Blum (France), Bruno Kreisky (Austria), both of whom were holocaust survivors and not in America, and, of course, Menachem Begin in Israel were all PMs and Holocaust survivors. (H/t The Reality Based Community)

This kind of ahistorical American exceptionalism is de regeur in US politics, and dangerous, because it leads to things like invading Iraq.

Kids Make You Say the Damnedest Things!

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My wife* says the Shema with my kids every evening after I read to them and tuck them in.

Tonight, Charlie was a little bit wired….In the same way that Bob Novak is a little bit treasonous.

So like always, I shout down to my wife in the computer room, “Honey, the kids are read for prayers.”

Then I think a second, and follow up with, “Like Baghdad is ready for the Ice Capades“.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Election Update

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Let’s start with simple not insane (Blago is another post, thank you very much).

It appears that Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet has been chosen the replacement for Ken Salazar in Colorado and we have reports that Governor Paterson is leaning toward Caroline Kennedy.

No opinion on the first bit, but I still think that everyone is going to discover that Kennedy will be the 2nd coming of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for the 2010 elections, and the Republicans will take that seat.

There is also a difference between winning an election because of your lineage, and getting an appointment because of your lineage, and while I find both distasteful, my Congressman is Paul Sarbanes, I find the latter much more profoundly disturbing.

In Minnesota, which is not crazy central, because that is Springfield, Illinois, we have had some interesting developments:

First is that the ‘Phants are threatening a filibuster against a provisional seating of Franken, despite the fact that they did this very same thing for Landrieu in the late 1990s, and they are using the Rod Blagojevich precedent “set” by Harry Reid as justification. (Thanks, Harry).

Also, the Coleman camp has pretty much ceded defeat in the current round, TheHill.com – Coleman team virtually guarantees lawsuit

Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) attorneys said Friday that there will be a legal challenge to the recount in the senator’s reelection race, and conceded that they are almost certainly the ones that will bring it.

“I think that an election challenge here is inevitable,” said Coleman lawyer Fritz Knaak, adding that there is “no doubt” in his mind.

Knaak then acknowledged that the actions of the state canvassing board will likely leave Democrat Al Franken ahead. Franken currently leads by 49 votes out of nearly 3 million cast.

That’s a concession that Franken got more votes, and they are going to try for a Bush 2008 move, because unlike Florida, Minnesota is doing this in an honest way.

In the mean time, Coleman is filing, or threatening to file, lawsuits at the drop of a hat, calling the process “Invalid And Unreliable,” unless they include about 650 additional ballots from Coleman strongholds. See also here and here.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has declined to take action on at least one of Coleman’s claims, though they have made it clear that this is because it’s premature, and not on the merits of the case, so that can hear it later.

The assessment at TPM Election Central, that this would likely prevent a resolution for weeks or months, is accurate, but that is a feature, not a bug, for the ‘Phants.

Edwards Calls for Complete Pullout of Iraq

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Edwards calls for a complete pullout, including training troops.

He’s right. The Iraqis already know the basics of combat, the finer points could be taught outside of the country to those select few who need this information, and the US military, particularly the army is hostile to the idea of teaching foreigners about civil society.

They see their role as engaging the enemy in the battle space, and destroying them, and that any peacekeeping or nation building is antithetical to their mission.

There is nothing to indicate any real rapproachment amongst the Iraqi factions, and our presence simply delays, and makes more bloody, any eventual resolution.

Having any number of trainers there entails logistics and security that would keep us militarily engage in Iraq for a very long time.

The Surge is Working!!!

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A string of suicide bombings in has hit Iraq: (see also here)

  • On Tuesday, a suicide bombing killed 36 and wounded at least 35 others in Baghdad’s Zayouna (the worst attack since August)
  • A female suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint of neighbourhood patrol volunteers Wednesday morning in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, reports Reuters. The attack killed 10
  • The abduction and killing of five relatives on Tuesday morning in Jalawla, one of the five killed was a policeman.
  • fighters from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia kidnapped a farmer and killed his son in Dhuluiya, and stole 200 of the farmer’s sheep. (not going with the obvious comment)
  • The severed head of a member of an called Awakening Council, the Sunni Militias created and armed by David Petraeus was found north of Muqdadiya.
  • Gunmen killed three people in a village 40 miles south of Kirkuk.

We need to get out sooner, rather than later. We are doing no good there.

Netscape Browser to Die February 1

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As if it hadn’t really been dead for nearly 10 years now.

It was the first browser I used, and I now use Firefox, which is its bastard child, but I have no sorrow over this news.

While some of their problems were created by Microflaccid’s monopolistic practices, the fact that it was something like three years between Netscape 4.x and Netscape 6.x.

I’ll shed no tears, but instead send you to JWZ’s resignation letter from Netscape Communications.

Heads of the 911 Commission Claim That the CIA Deliberately Obstructed Their Investigation

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The money quote is, “As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton have just made a specific allegation of a crime, obstructing a federal investigation.

There are people in the Bush Administration, and among the professional staff in the intelligence agencies, who

More Obama Asshattery

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This time, he appears to be going after Gore and Kerry.

In a speech this afternoon in central Iowa, Barack Obama seems to have widened his criticism of the politics of the past to encompass not only Hillary Clinton but John Kerry and Nobel Laureate Al Gore. Making an argument for his electability, Obama said, “I don’t want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats — we’ve done that in 2004, 2000,” according to a person at the event.

The first comment to the post says it very well, “His arrogance and sense of entitlement are not just inaccurate, his remarks are insulting and stupid.”(emphasis mine)

I would add that Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, and the problem with both campaigns is that they were unwilling to call out George W. Bush specifically, and the Republicans generally for their incompetence and corruption.

You also have Barack Obama going after Labor Unions political involvement:

And top union officials who support Obama’s rivals are in turn accusing the Illinois Democrat, who once sought their endorsements, of trying to damage labor’s political role. “I’m taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent,” Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s behalf, said, referring to the television host’s high-profile support for Obama. “It’s sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make.”

It appears that there is no Democratic constituency that he is unwilling to “Sistah Soljah”.

Economic Update

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The Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing index had declined for the first time in 11 months. Predictions had placed it at 50.5, rather slow growth, but it came in at 47.7, on drops in orders and production, and we have the same thing happening worldwide, with the Global manufacturing PMI falling to a 4½ year low, which seems to indicate that the rest of the world has not “decoupled” from the US economy.

Singapore’s economy is taking a hit, because Americans are no longer able to buy their stuff.

Then we have the other Mecca of Anglo-Saxon capitalism going through the same real-estate crisis that is hitting in the US

The latest figures indicate that 23 per cent of people – 9.5 million adults – were finding their current level of debt “unmanageable”. Although the Bank of England cut the base rate of interest last month, an estimated 1.4 million people will still have to pay more for their home loans when their fixed-rate deals come to an end this year, costing an extra £150 to £250 a month.

Sounds familiar.

Merrill Lynch has sold itself for some more cash, which seems to indicates taht there are some more losses, probably significant ones, that have not yet found their way to the balance sheets and quarterly reports.

In further banking news, General Electric and the Blackstone Group had to backoff of a buyout of PHH, a mortgage and auto-leasing company, because their financing fell through.

Finally, we have reports that dollar-based assets held by the world’s national banks have fallen to a record low. There is not yet a stampede to the door, but people are definitely standing up and stretching their legs.

The data indicated that of the $3.8 trillion in allocated reserves, about 63.8 percent was held in U.S. dollars, down from 65 percent at the end of the second quarter this year.

I’m Reall, Really, Really, Really Dull: New Years Edition

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It happens when you have kids.

The kids were determined to stay up to midnight, and in fact were determined to watch the sun rise.

So, they watched Nick, which had a countdown timer on screen, while I finished assembling the drawers of Sharon’s* new desk while she worked upstairs on her laptop on some reports for clients.

Unfortunately, I did not have the right screws, but a quick run to Target, actually two runs, I needed two different sizes of screws, fixed that.

At one point, she and the kids went out for ice cream, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I kept up work on the desk.

After I got the desk together, I rearranged the furniture, found a network cable, and set up the printer.

There were a number of fits and starts regarding getting the network to recognize the printer, and half way through, it was almost midnight, so I took a break, and went to the TV with the kids, and called Sharon* down.

I passed out the blowout horns (see picture below), and changed from Nick to one of the networks to see the ball drop in Times square.
After that, we switched to a local station to see the fireworks display on the inner harbor.

Thankfully, the kids were ready for bed and had no interest in seeing the sun rise any more, so we put them to bed, and about an hour after that, the printer was up and running as a network node.

For new years day, we went to the Baltimore Society of Model Engineers open house show, and looked at their intricate O and HO scale layouts.

It was amusing listening to a modeler talk about how he had just purchased a new engine, and that he needed to “dirty it up”.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

More Peculiarities in Bhutto Assassination

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First, we have reports that the Pakistani police prevented an autopsy, and now we have reports that Bhutto was to hand over evidence of vote rigging to US lawmakers on the day of her death.

“Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf ] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours,” the document says.

The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents.

What’s that phrase, “Will no one rid me of that troublesome priest?”

Musharraf definitely bears some of the responsibility for her death, as they clearly skimped on security in an attempt to reign in her campaigning, but it is increasingly looking as if his responsibility is broader and deeper.