Blackmoor Vituperative

I do not know anything about Lou Dobbs myself, so I have no idea if Geraldo is right about that. But Lou Dobbs aside, Geraldo has some great things to say about latinos and immigration.

Surprise Selection Shocks Nashville

NASHVILLE (The Borowitz Report) – President Barack Obama stunned the country music world today by picking up its highest honor, Country Music Entertainer Of The Year.

Mr. Obama was chosen unanimously, according to the Country Music Association, beating out such favorite as Carrie Underwood and Toby Keith.

In Nashville, country music insiders were shocked by Mr. Obama’s selection, given that he has only been in office for eight months and during that time has yet to record a single country song.

But Mr. Obama was gracious in receiving the honor, saying that he was “honored and humbled” by the award before excusing himself to accept this year’s Heisman Trophy.

ZDNet has an article title, “Blackberry the choice of organized crime“.

Gangs know what encryption is. They are using it in force at the street level, let alone at the very top. Rim’s BlackBerries are the ultimate in security for them. Everything is secured and impossible to monitor by police.

The gist of the article appears to be that encryption is bad, because there are bad people who use it.

“Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.”

Yes, criminals can and do benefit from the same civil rights as law-abiding people. This is not and shall never be a valid reason to deprive anyone of those rights, despite the absurd “security” at airports, the warrantless wiretaps by our Federal government, and the nigh-universal pre-employment “drug testing” humiliation of job applicants, all of which have become accepted by the somnambulistic American citizenry.

The pendulum has swung much too far in the direction of invasions of privacy by government and by employers (or even just potential employers). It is time for that pendulum to swing back.

Write to your government representatives, and demand that they respect the privacy of the people they ostensibly represent.

Refuse to consent to pre-employment drug testing (and post-employment drug testing, unless they have a damned good reason for asking — curiosity and “company policy” are not good reasons).

Be an American, not a sheep.

I started open carrying (that means having a pistol in a holster where people can see it, as opposed to having one concealed somewhere on one’s person) a couple of months ago, primarily because I had allowed my concealed carry permit to expire. After I renewed my concealed carry permit, I have continued to open carry, partly because the weather was warm until quite recently, and partly as a social experiment to see how people would react.

By and large, people haven’t reacted at all. Open carry is legal in Virginia, with reasonable restrictions (as long as one is at least eighteen, not drunk, legally permitted to own a firearm, etc.), and from my experience, most people understand that law-abiding citizens who carry firearms are just that — law abiding, and not something to cause concern.

Earlier today, I open carried at a Five Guys Burgers, and although I did not get harassed, I did have an unsatisfactory encounter — and it was my fault.

A friend and I had finished lunch, were throwing away the trash and getting ready to go help a friend move. A little boy, no more than five or six (if that) appeared out of nowehere, looked up at me with a nervous-little-kid expression, and asked, “Why do you have a gun?”

“Because I can’t carry a policeman,” I replied, kind of annoyed because the kid was between me and the door.

“Why?” he asked again, clearly confused by my answer.

“Because I pay taxes,” I said, and walked around him to leave.

I was driving away but not yet out of the parking lot when I realized that I had been an ass. I should not have been impatient and sarcastic with a little kid. Yes, I had somewhere to be, and no, I do not like children as a general rule, but he was polite, and he was just a little kid, and I should not have been short with him.

As I was leaving, I saw his dad leaning down to him, and them talking. Chances are, the boy had asked the dad about my pistol, and the dad had sent him over to ask me. It was a public place, and the dad was only a few steps away, so that was not an unsafe or even rude thing to do. Actually, I think that was a pretty cool thing to do.

But I dropped the ball. I should have taken just a minute or two to talk to the kid in a reasonable fashion. I am not sure what I should have said instead, but even “for personal protection” would have been better than my snarky replies, which accomplished nothing positive.

I will do better next time.

All the things your phone doesn’t do, Droid Does. This is so cool.

By the way, the “Droid’ trademark which LucasFilm claims to own is completely bogus — “‘droid” is just an abbreviated form of “android”, which is the common English term for a humanoid robot. You cannot protect generic terms, which are terms that are the actual name of the associated goods or services. However, LucasFilm can (and has, and will) bully people into pretending this trademark is valid because they can sue you into bankruptcy. Another example of what is wrong with the laws in the USA.

I know what I want for Christmas: Eyeclops Nightvision Goggles. I have no idea what I would use them for. I probably would not even leave the apartment with them. But man, that is just too cool.

The Wall Street Journal has an open letter from Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, Coke Didn’t Make America Fat.

He makes sense — far more than any politician or lobbyist I have heard in recent months. A pity that kind of common sense is so rare in the USA, or we’d not be in the physical, financial, and social shape we are in.

If you are considering migrating from another office productivity suite to OpenOffice (and if you are not considering that, you should), check out this Sun Microsystems on-demand webinar: tips and strategies for moving to OpenOffice.org.

I have this old image I found on the Internet , oh, it must be ten years ago, at least, of a female death warrior, or shadow knight, or death knight, who bears a passing resemblance to Lexa Doig. The problem is, I do not have the original: I only have a crappy, ten year old hardcopy.

If you can identify this image, or tell me where it came from, that would be just swell.

Edit: I found the original image, and replaced the poor scan above with the original. I still do not know where it came from. I wish I knew.

Red Hat has filed an amicus curiae brief in a major Supreme Court case. In the brief, Red Hat makes a strong case against software patents, arguing that the legal reasoning that led to software patents was flawed and that the pending Bilski case provides the Supreme Court with an important opportunity to rectify this long-standing problem with the patent system.

[…]

“Far from encouraging innovation, this proliferation of patents has seriously encumbered innovation in the software industry. Software is an abstract technology, and translating software functions into patent language generally results in patents with vague and uncertain boundaries,” wrote Red Hat VP Rob Tiller in the brief. “Under the Federal Circuit’s previous erroneous approach, the risk of going forward with a new software product now always entails an unavoidable risk of a lawsuit that may cost many millions of dollars in legal fees, as well as actual damages, treble damages, and an injunction that terminates a business. Only those with an unusually high tolerance for risk will participate in such a market.”

(from Red Hat tells Supremes: software patents stifle innovation, Ars Technica)

The issuing of patents was an experiment. That experiment has unequivocally failed. Getting rid of software patents is a good start.