Category Archives: News

Obama Obtains Bipartisian Unity in Congress.

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President Obama has achieved what was once thought of as the impossible. Both Houses rejected his budget unanimously.  Yup not a single vote. no president has done this much in the name of co-operation and unity in bi-partisian politics on Capital Hill.

Senate Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected President Obama’s proposed budget this afternoon. The final vote tally was 99-0.

Likewise, the House also unanimously rejected the budget in March.

Prior to the vote, Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions blasted the budget. “It was voted 414-0 in the House this year,” said Sessions. I suspect in an hour or so it will go down again on the floor of the Senate by unanimous vote. That speaks a lot. That says a lot. It indicates the sad state of affairs in which we are in. It’s deeply disappointing.”

Obama promised that Washington politics would be different.

Pi in the Sky

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Rasberry Pi

Rasperry Pi

In England some people have decided to do something about what they feel is a slipping in their computer skills as a nation,  They have been working on a $25.00 solution. The Raspberry Pi.  The boards are slowly being let out to the legions of waiting hackers ( I expect to get mine at around the middle of April. The Raspberry Pi has created a lot of chatter and plans. It will be able to run several OS systems including some pretty robust Linux based systems,  complete with the standard development  tools. Of all the different plans and hacks, the strangest idea may be comming from the folks at The Pirate Bay.

The idea is to set up drones flying over international waters and using the a Raspberry Pi as a portal to route traffic to secret ground based systems.  In a blog posting yesterday The Pirate Bay folks laid out their plans.

With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war.

We’re just starting so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore. These Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough.

But when time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy’s most resilient system. And all of the parts we’ll use to build thatsystem on will be downloadable.

They aren’t without their critics, and while I  believe the future belong to those who take bold steps, I cant help but wonder what these guys are smoking and what tint of purple haze are they in while they type this stuff.

Just wondering ..

Montgomerry TX, Militarized Zone

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Montgomery County crashed a drone into their SWAT team tank. I suppose we should just be grateful that it was a tank they crashed into instead of an officer or even an innocent civillian.

As the sheriff’s SWAT team suited up with lots of firepower and their armored vehicle known as the “Bearcat,” a prototype drone from Vanguard Defense Industries took off for pictures of all the police action.   It was basically a photo opportunity, according to those in attendance.

Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said his company’s prototype drone was flying about 18-feet off the ground when it lost contact with the controller’s console on the ground.   It’s designed to go into an auto shutdown mode, according to Buscher, but when it was coming down the drone crashed into the SWAT team’s armored vehicle.

The damage was not severe, according to Buscher, who described only some ‘blade strikes’ on the prototype drone that was being shown off to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s team.

Maybe Tom Kirkendall has a point when he questions whether the Montgomery County Sherriffs Department has too much money.  Montgomery County is just north of Houston’s Harris County and has some high value taxable lands in the Woodlands  and parts of  Kingwood.  Apparently the county received a Obaman TARP grant to buy one of these things.  So it isn’t just Montgomery county citizens paying for this thing, but all of us.  Do they really need tanks and drones?

Seems like they hold little regard for the people they are supposed to protect and serve. The safety of a drone will never achieve the safety of real piloted aircraft.  Pilots know that any chances taken with an aircraft endangers their life first. A drone operator has little at stake.  The  GAO has looked these droned with skeptism, and spoke of the risks involved.

In the 2008 GAO study, Gerald Dillingham, Director of Civil Aviation for GAO said,

“The concern is that you could lose control of that aircraft and it could crash into something on the ground or, in fact, it could crash into another air vehicle.”

The GAO study found that 65% of drone crashes were caused by mechanical failures.  The study analyzed Pentagon and NASA data on 199 crashes of drones on battlefields.

Before this Montgomery County crash, the only crash of a law enforcement drone was recorded in 2006 in Nogales, Arizona.   The Customs & Border Protection flight crashed in the desert due to the same “lost link” scenario that sent the Montgomery County unit crashing into its SWAT team tank.

When the link between the drone and the control console on the ground is lost, all drones are designed to steady up and glide to a landing.   In some cases, the drones already have a location programmed in for landing in the event of a problem.  In others, there is no such pre-determined landing zone.

Dillingham said that’s another dangerous problem with drones in urban areas.  He said,

“If you’re onboard the aircraft, you can tell that you’re in turbulence and you can maneuver to get the plane or the aircraft out of the turbulence.   But if you’re using a UAV and there are no sensors aboard, you don’t really know that and, again, if you lose that communication link as a result of that turbulence or for any other reason, then you have an aircraft that is not in control and can, in fact, crash into something on the ground or another aircraft.”

Montgomery Sheriffs Department had no comment.

Harry Reid’s Secret Plot to Take over the Internets

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You just can’t make up this crap.

Harry Reid is having secret meetings in a plot to have Homeland Security take over the Internet. Perhaps believing, “If the people didn’t like SOPA maybe they would like something worse”.

Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.

I guess my question, “Is this about protecting real security interest or is this another powergrab to protect Hollywood from the teenager  downloading the latest tunes?” He shows little concern on how the voter, or the civilian experts and is prepared to move ahead, despite the peoples will.

“It is my firm hope that the working groups will be able to achieve an agreement on legislation by then, but I believe the cyber threat to be of such urgency that we must act whether or not such agreement can be reached,” Reid wrote.

 Some people never never learn.

A Brilliant Idea

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I had the privilege working on a project a few years ago. It was an experiment for creating a drug delivery system for targeted cancer cures or MEPS. A lot of people poured their hearts and souls into, but so far not much has happened to forward the idea. Maybe there is hope:

Angela Zhang of Cupertino has an idea:

 … mix cancer medicine in a polymer that would attach to nanoparticles — nanoparticles that would then attach to cancer cells and show up on an MRI. so doctors could see exactly where the tumors are. Then she thought shat if you aimed an infrared light at the tumors to melt the polymer and release the medicine, thus killing the cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.

Angela is only 17 years old.   Angela, Please keep it up and pursue your idea.

 

Caustic Racial Politics

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A new law went in effect for the New Year in Chicago. This time it is Nannyism to protect surfs from caustic chemicals.

The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight.

While the new law might be considered a nuisance, it takes on a racial implication with Holders claim that asking for an ID is racial discrimination.

Eric Holder has been on a racialist bender the last few weeks.  Last week, he said his skin color is responsible for the fury of criticism over his Justice Department allowing thousands of guns to flood Mexico.  Friday, he blocked South Carolina from implementing a voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act saying it was racially discriminatory.

Sixteen states, including South Carolina, must submit all election law changes to the United States Justice Department for approval.  States also have the option of bypassing DOJ and going straight to court for approval, an option they should readily choose.  This law, unlike so many federal laws, actually has a legitimate Constitutional basis – the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which bars racial discrimination in voting.  Passed in 1965, it was designed to prevent states from drifting toward renewed discrimination.  It is now being challenged as unconstitutionally outdated by Arizona and Shelby County (AL) in federal court.

I believe its really racism of convenience.  Leftist prefer to call actions racist only if it suits their political agenda. If something promotes nannyism or big government then PC arguments don’t accept that an action is racist. But removing dead peoples voter rights is racist, because  there are more minority dead voters than dead WASP voters.

The GoDaddy Boycott Busts, Sort of

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Thursday was the scheduled day for the boycott of Go Daddy over SOPA.  Go Daddy has gone from supporting SOPA to pulling support from SOPA  to claiming SOPA and PIPA is a bad idea.  I don’t know how sincere they are but it’s apparrent they were bleeding customers and their trust.

While GoDaddy had previously withdrawn its support for SOPA, until Thursday’s statement, the company had not voiced public disagreement towards the bill,which the House Judiciary Committee had been debating before adjourning for the holiday.

According to Yahoo, about 70,000 domains had already been switched before Thursday’s planned boycott. While these numbers aren’t extremely consequential to a company that hosts 50 million websites worldwide, these withdrawals along with high profile moves from Wikipedia, Cheezburger and image sharing site Imgur seem to have been enough to force GoDaddy’s hand.

Now, I don’t believe for a minute that Go Daddy is genuine in their recant of SOPA, their only regret is that their customer base found out that they have Hollywood’s interest over their customers.  The damage is done, they’ve helped craft the bill and supported it through the committee hearings it really doesn’t matter any more whether they support it or not.   Until we see proof that they will actually fight online censorship.

Go Daddy isn’t the only company that has supported SOPA and PIPA there is News Corp (Foxnews), CBS (C-Net), NBC and Disney. Just about all of the media, We don’t hear much about boycotting them.  Go Daddy struck our ire because we expected them to support their customers and the open internet.

I seriously considered pulling my domain.  I decided to wait. I have 2 domains, and am well paid up until for the next several months. If I were to bail on Go Daddy Thursday, they would still have my money, yet not have to provide any services. This would hardly be punishing them. On the other hand I can’t see renewing my services with them, Later on this summer I will move my sites to Host Gator. I will do so when I have used up my contract, and have the time to ensure that I can move this blog safely.

 

Go Daddy Bites the Hand that Feeds Them

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Passing SOPA would be a web owners worst nightmare. Godaddy’s support of it is a stand against its customers,  SOPA and its sister bill, PROTECT IP Act, in the Senate is a bad idea that promises to censor and restrict the web as we know it,  and threatens the very existance of websites like this that don’t have a staff of lawyers and editors to maintain compliance.   It is understandable that if not to be expected that Godaddy has pissed of its customers base.

There has been a tremendous backlash against GoDaddy.

Talk of a Go Daddy boycott began yesterday on community link-sharing site Reddit, and quickly grew to include several influential business leaders and media personalities. Among them were Y Combinator founderPaul Graham, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh and celebrity/investor Ashton Kutcher. The company’s change-of-heart was announced today around the same time Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Tweeted he would be transferring Wikipedia’s domains from Go Daddy in protest.

Go Daddy initially shrugged off the protests, issuing a nonchalant response to let people know it hasn’t negatively impacted its business — which was the equivalent of shaking the hell out of a giant beehive and not expecting to get stung. Boycott participators responded by publishing step-by-step tutorials for transferring a bulk of domains to a new registrar, complete with recommendations to competitors.

Go Daddy’s response didn’t get to to the heart of it. They basically claimed that SOPA might be poorly written, although they support the basic idea behind it, they are withdrawing support. They didn’t offer to fight it it or withdraw support from the  Senate’s PROTECT IP ACT. It gets worse for Go Daddy.

Hosting and domain registrar company Go Daddy has lost more than 37,000 domains in the past two days due to the company’s wishy-washy stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Talk of a Go Daddy boycott began yesterday on community link-sharing site Reddit, and quickly grew to include several influential business leaders and media personalities. Among them were Y Combinator founderPaul Graham, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh and celebrity/investor Ashton Kutcher. The company’s change-of-heart was announced today around the same time Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Tweeted he would be transferring Wikipedia’s domains from Go Daddy in protest.

Go Daddy initially shrugged off the protests, issuing a nonchalant response to let people know it hasn’t negatively impacted its business — which was the equivalent of shaking the hell out of a giant beehive and not expecting to get stung. Boycott participators responded by publishing step-by-step tutorials for transferring a bulk of domains to a new registrar, complete with recommendations to competitors.

37,000 in two days before Christmas, looks like the beginning of an avalanche of bailouts. Now I’m left with a dillema.  This blog and the domain is hosted by Go Daddy, I’m paid up ahead, and I’ve been pretty happy with their service.  Host Gater is a local Houston Company has a good reputation, and is opposed to Govenment and Hollywood censorship. Their statement opposing SOPA:

Imagine if you were able to genetically combine Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Darth Vader and Barbara Streisand into one horrifically terrifying being. Now imagine that being is actually a piece of proposed legislature — the terrifying creation in your midst would then be the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which is currently being considered by the House.

SOPA, aka H.R. 3261 is a bill right now in the House sponsored by R-TX Lamar Smith. It’s not just any bill though, it’s a bill that would allow the USDOJ, RIAA, MPAA and anyone else who lobbies for the entertainment industry to effectively censor the internet to suit their needs.

So, I’ve got a lot to consider. moving the content and the domain is a scary thing,  a lot of work and some money. Perhaps if Go Daddy took a substantial stand to actually fight this thing my decision would be a little easier. A significant donation to someone like the Electronic Frontier Foundation perhaps?

Thoughts on Requiring an ID

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Eric Holder is blocking South Carolina’s new law which requires that voters provide ID to qualify their right to vote.  The Justice Department claims that requiring an ID is racist.  I’m not sure I understand why requiring folks to provide proper identification is racist. Is requiring travelers to provide an ID racist when at the airport? I wonder if the attorney general will demand that sellers quit insisting that gun purchasers provide an ID.

If someone can please explain to me why requiring an ID to vote is racist, than why shouldn’t the practice be outlawed on the more routine things. Voting is inherently more dangerous than buying a gun or flying    Perhaps it’s only considered racist when states require the ID, and alright when when it is a federal mandate.

A few weeks ago I was at the Toyota Center in Houston.  When I purchased a beer I was asked for an ID.  I’m a bald, greying 60 year old, I thought it was just silly. Now I understand it was racist.

Nightmare on the Interwebs

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Alexandra Petri isn’t the only one having nightmares:

Last night I had a horrifying dream that a group of well-intentioned middle-aged people who could not distinguish between a domain name and an IP address were trying to regulate the Internet. Then I woke up and the Judiciary Committee’s SOPA hearings were on.

It’s exactly as we feared. For every person who appears to have some grip on the issue, there were three or four yelling at him.

The experts testifying for SOPA and promising that SOPA won’t be disastrous to the internet, admit they don’t know anything about how it works.  The experts on the Web are the folks claiming an end to to the web as we know it.  Who do we believe Spielberg who makes Billions making movies, or the folks who actually built the internet?

There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you have to have some understanding of it. And when people are saying things like, “This is just the rogue foreign Web sites” and “This only targets the bad actors” and “So you want universities to host illegal pirated versions of copyrighted content?,” it’s enough to make you claw out large fistfuls of your hair. No! No! Nobody is hosting anything. This bill would require service providers to cut off access to entire Web sites where users are deemed to be engaging in copyright infringement, not take down stolen content they posted themselves. That’s already against the law. But no one seemed to be able to express this.

When you have a signed letter from the engineers responsible for creating the Internet pointing out that this bill would jeopardize our cybersecurity, balkanize the Internet and create a climate of uncertainty that would stifle innovation, it seems odd to ignore it. As a general rule, when the people saying that this will have a horrible, chilling impact on something are the ones who created that thing in the first place, and the people who are saying, “Oh, no, it’ll be fine, it only targets the bad actors” are members of the Motion Picture Association of America, it seems obvious whose opinion you should heed.

The problem is the folks with the most influence at the capital aren’t the people with the most knowledge, but the folks willing to spend the moist money for their cause.