Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul

Just before visiting Copenhagen (and taking a serious beating while visiting Copenhagen) Lord Christopher Monckton made this fantastic speech in Minnesota. He was up dere talkin’ eh?

More Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’

Related posts:
The Great Global Warming Swindle

DDT about to be reintroduced as pesticide

Challenging the Hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming

Heritical Thoughts About Science and Society

Why we love lawyers

Hattip BoingBoing

Hey kids! Lets play a game.

I dont know where Writerchick found this, but I really got a chuckle from it.

Hattip: Writer Chick Talks.

Police Called Over 11-Year-Old’s Science Project

Via SlashDot:

This is one reason that education in the US has become nothing more than glorified babysitting service.

“Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old’s science project, consisting of ‘a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,’ after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren’t being laid against the youth, but it’s being recommended that he and his family ‘get counseling.’ Apparently, the student violated school policies — I’m assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?”

There is a comment at the news link that said it best:

“Idiots. Another potential engineer frightened away by blind mindless authority.

This is why modern “chemistry sets” come with sand, salt and purified water, and no potentially dangerous chemicals. Take away the love of science and the love of experimentation, enforce rote memorization. And then the same vice principal will complain that America’s science standards are slipping.

In the long run we will cease to be a leader in science and innovation. But the good news is that as we become a third world country there will be plenty of jobs in the factories of other nations that come here for the cheap labor we will provide them in the future.”

Politics and technology.

This was a test post from the PoliTech Facebook page. Bear with me while I play with it and I may even do a tutorial.

My plan is to have every post done replicated to every account no matter which account is doing the posting. The first part is Facebook, then Twitter, then Slashdot Journal. Who knows from there.

This is also a wonderfully appropriate quote for our times:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

You say your worried about privacy in an ariport scanner?

If this is a hoax video, its pretty well done.

If this is an actual app, (I hear the application supposedly works by processing infrared light through a specific light filter … oookay) I might just quit resisting and buy an iPhone. Imagine the fun!

Concept: Moral Hazard

What happens when government intervention interferes with a society’s natural balance?

This CF&P Foundation’s Economics 101 video discusses the idea of “Moral Hazard”, which occurs when bad choices are subsidized.

This often happens when government intervention lets people take risks while having little or no skin in the game.

Housing policies, for instance, subsidized mortgages, thus enabling irresponsible borrowing and leading to bubbles and bailouts.

Politicians may be setting the stage for the next crisis with a too big to fail policy that will subsidize the biggest financial institutions.

Thanks to www.freedomandprosperity.org for the work.

Read more on the WIKI about the concept of Moral Hazard.

Then ask yourself, “How does this apply to ideas such as Government health care, Government run banks, Government run auto makers, and even Government financed science?”

Hat tip: The Hot Air

the Air Vent, the Galileo of our “scientific age”, and Lord Monckton

Interesting article on the Air Vent;

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner: the Galileo of our “scientific age”

Science has taken a leap four centuries back to dark age when science lost to theology. Then the butt of condemnation and punishment were just two souls – Bruno and, the better remembered, Galileo. Now it is a huge horde of scientists from across the planet, who dare challenge the mainstream belief in CO2-induced global warming or anthropogenically-induced global warming (AGW), that are being condemned with calls for punishment of these “traitors” for committing “high crimes against humanity,” “deserving Nuremberg-style trials,” ……… Reviling and calls for punishment are unending. If theology was settled then for a particular cosmological view, now it is “science is settled’ for AGW. Then it was cosmological data gathered through telescope versus theological view; now it is clean, hard core science versus manipulated science backed by political interests. Then it was Cardinal Bellarmine backed by Pope Clement VIII/Pope Paul V; now it is Dr. R. K. Pachauri backed by our political Pope, Mr. Banki Moon. More…

I have also linked to the Air Vent under the ScienceBlogs category.

On that note, here is a fun interview where Lord Monckton adresses a Greenpeace-campaigner on global warming.

70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Whether you liked the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace movie or not, this video review is brutally fantastic. Watch the first segment, and you’ll be hooked.

This video is also destined to be one of those Internet meme generators for a good long time, and if you skip watching this then you won’t know what the hell the related meme is in reference to, and who wants to be in left the dark and look like a newb?

Now where did I put those pizza rolls?

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7):

Watch the rest of the segments here. Or click the links below.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 2 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 3 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 4 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 5 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 6 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 7 of 7)

Hat tip: SlashFilm

And a big thank You to comedy writer and filmmaker Mike from Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the epic review itself!

Suspect: Santa Claus

The Known Universe by AMNH

Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction Illustrated

You can do some cool stuff using Google Wave:

Elaine Morgan: Did we evolve from aquatic apes?

Interesting talk about evolution, established paradigms, “Consensus Science” and “the impression that some parts of the scientific establishment are morphing into a kind of priesthood”.

Sportsmanship

Freshman Matt Ziesel scores a touchdown against Maryville. Below is a little write-up from the Ziesel family for those of you not familiar with Matt:

Matt is a special athlete who has Down Syndrome. He loves football and has grown up in an environment surrounded by sports.

His father is a coach/ athletic director, and all his siblings play sports. He grew up at athletic events, and has always been a cheerleader. He registered as a freshman at Benton High School -Saint Joseph, MO this year, and told his mother and father he wanted to play football.

The team takes good care of looking after Matt, and he is still the cheerleader on the sidelines. He puts his pads and helmet on, stands next to Coach McCamy and waits for his turn to play. Over and over during the course of the game Matt will say, “Coach McCamy, I am ready! I am ready Coach!”

On this Monday night coach gave him a chance. The Cardinals were down by a few touchdowns with 15 seconds left. Coach McCamy called a timeout and asked the coach of Maryville High School if they could run their “Matt Play”.

He agreed and this is where the video begins. Thanks to Coach McCamy and the freshman coach at Maryville, Matt and his family will cherish his moment forever!

- Sincerely The Ziesel Family

More here

Speaking Truth to Moral Adolescence

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives.

For a nutshell account of Haidt’s work and its various detailed implications click here: Compromising with Moral Adolescence: A Losing Strategy

This site closed for your protection as per Senate bill 773 the Cybersecurity Act of 2009

visit day by day every day

Article here

How big are we?

Not very as it were…

Hattip: Bad Astronomy Blog

Richard Dawkins on TED

I’m trying out TED. What better way to do it than to post this great talk by Richard Dawkins: An atheist’s call to arms.

“Going Galt” On Tobacco Taxes With E-Cigarettes

I’m not the only one, Ace of Spades HQ says:

“Going Galt” On S-CHIP [Komrad Vinnieovich]?

Thanks to President Barack Hussein Oteleprompter’s promise to not raise taxes on any family making under $250,000 a year (or $200,000 as an individual), some friends and I have decided that it’s a good time to quit using tobacco products. Because, after all, the new tobacco taxes only affect the rich. Or at least they will, because now only the rich can afford them.

Senator Lautenberg has $128,250 reasons to request the FDA halt e-cig sales and protect pharmaceutical companies and their gum, patches, and pills.

We switched to e-cigarettes three weeks ago and have not looked back. Technology trumps the taxman!

We like smoking, We refuse to quit, and the e-cigarettes are not taxed as a tobacco product. Plus they actually taste and feel like smoking even though the “Smoke” is only vapor.

Naturally there are already efforts to make the e-cigarettes illegal, so anyone interested in e-smoking had best get one while they still can.

You can still get NJoy e-Cigarettes at Costco’s web site. Just search for “NJoy”.

There is also a good forum with just about everything you need to know regarding e-cigarettes at the e-cigarette-forum. . Lots of information there about brands, form factor, refills, etc.

So far within the last three weeks … Politech, Idiocracy, several co-workers (5 actually!) and a brother-in-law have all made the switch. (Tobacco taxes in our state are already high and when combined with the new fed tax … suffice to say that tobacco prices are simply out of control)

Politech smoked one analog cigarette two weeks ago and found that he prefers the e-cig now.

Politech said that it tastes … cleaner. (plus he liked some of the other flavors available, like apple and banana)

Bush/Obama photo-morph

Judging by the current President’s decisions to continue with the many of the previous President’s policies , there is more truth to this photo series than some would be comfortable admitting.

ShrubMorph

Hattip: idiocracy

Also a housekeeping announcement, I have turned off comments for posts older than 240 days. I am doing this to control the endless spam, not to mention some trolls who have been commenting on really old posts lately. The troll brigade must hope that I’ll allow their crying, ranting and gnashing of teeth to go unchallenged if they comment on an old enough post. It was becoming tiresome.

Great Cartoon …

An important message from the entertainment industry

Bale Out – RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!

To download an MP3 of THIS AND the
NEW EXTENDED club mix, go here

EA “Spore” forum mod confirms Spore kill switch?

Spore DRM

An Electronic Arts “Spore” forum moderator threatens to disable the entire game for a user’s simply having asked about SecuROM in EA’s forums. This would seem to confirm that Spore does in fact have a kill switch built in, which is something that the EA apologists have continually dismissed.

“SecuROM as [sic] been discussed and discussed so much and it causes arguments in threads. If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fansite forum. If there is any change you will be able to read it on the official Spore site.

Please do not continue to post theses [sic] thread or you [sic] account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore.”(emphasis mine)

The admission of the existence of some type of “Kill Switch” is very interesting. EA seems to say that you must conform your speech to only what they want you to say … or else.

Quite a revelation!

I’d love to see them do it actually, as it would place an exclamation point onto the Spore class action suit. That we talked about on SlashDot last week. Not only mislabeling, deceitful practices and hidden malware, but threats, intimidation and possibly a total loss of the use of the game if you say something that may irritate EA.

Over at the Spore forum, it seems like anything even remotely speaking ill of the game is now immediately locked, not just discussion of DRM. Look here and here and here and here.

Anything negative about the game is being locked and/or tossed.

Wow … way to stay classy EA!

Update: It looks like some of those locked threads have now been flushed down the memory hole entirely!

With the above in mind, here is a screenshot of the EA forum entry under discussion…

(click to view in full screen)

MS Blog Announces Windows 7 Plans for New and Improved Bloat

Talk about not learning from one’s mistakes…

The Windows 7 Team

There’s a lot to building an org structure for a large team, but the most important part is planning the work of the team. This planning is integral to realizing our goal of improving the overall consistency and “togetherness” for Windows 7. So rather than think of one big org, or two teams, we say that the Windows 7 engineering team is made up of about 25 different feature teams.

In general a feature team encompasses ownership of combination of architectural components and scenarios across Windows. “Feature” is always a tricky word since some folks think of feature as one element in the user-interface and others think of the feature as a traditional architectural component (say TCP/IP). Our approach is to balance across scenarios and architecture such that we have the right level of end-to-end coverage and the right parts of the architecture. One thing we do try to avoid is separating the “plumbing” from the “user interface” so that teams do have end-to-end ownership of work (as an example of that, “Find and Organize” builds both the indexer and the user interface for search). Some of the main feature teams for Windows 7 include (alphabetically):

Applets and Gadgets
Assistance and Support Technologies
Core User Experience
Customer Engineering and Telemetry
Deployment and Component Platform
Desktop Graphics
Devices and Media
Devices and Storage
Documents and Printing
Engineering System and Tools
File System
Find and Organize
Fundamentals
Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
International
Kernel & VM
Media Center
Networking – Core
Networking – Enterprise
Networking – Wireless
Security
User Interface Platform
Windows App Platform

Though it’s fascinating to watch Microsoft alienate IT professionals by using such terms as “Plumbing” when describing operating system functionality, and yet still expect to be taken seriously, it’s really just a shame.

Microsoft’s Marketing people can keep assuming that IT folks are idiots who will buy into such nonsense and the IT folks will just keep using Windows XP for their current Desktop OS needs, all the while slowly migrating users to purely Linux, BSD or Apple Desktop environments (though the migration will go faster and faster as application developers catch on to the changing market). The IT folks will also likely keep pressuring the companies that they work with to follow their lead … just as when those same IT folks were alienated by, and migrated away from the Notes, Novell, and IBM-OS2 guys. Good luck with that Microsoft!

For those of you interested in a well performing version of Windows, take a good look at Tiny XP. It’s fast, it works, it’s bare minimum, and when you need a feature you can add it from your license copy of XP Pro. How is it that only the Windows user community can significantly “Improve” Microsoft’s OS?

Will Microsoft wait until Open Source OS’s have captured 20 percent of the market before actually engineering something new?

Windows must embrace true 64 bit, Multithreading, and need only run legacy applications in a Virtualized environment (Thinstall and VMWare are proof that this can be done, and done well).

MS needs to make optional such things as Internet Explorer, Media Player, and rid the OS entirely of all of the useless hidden DRM subsystems that eat away at Vista’s system performance (These hidden DRM processes do not serve Microsoft’s customers … you know, the people and organizations who actually PAY Microsoft’s bills).

Windows desperately needs “root” style user account and permission management (No! UAC security “theater” is not enough security).

I could go on all day, but it looks like running a copy of Windows Server 2008 is going to get you 90 percent of the way to “Windows 7″, and that all that this team seems intent on doing is re-adding the missing bloat.

Funny thing when reading the comments on the Team Blog, the MS team are currently being “gamed” into believing that perfecting Vista’s bloat is what the user community actually “wants”. These comments are obviously written by astroturfing stealth Apple and Linux commentors. It’s quite amusing really.

This would make a great T-Shirt!

Thanks to
idiocracy for the heads up. Though this poster is not yet “officially” endorsed by B.H.O.’s campaign, the art is being pushed as their own “symbol” by some off his strongest supporters. The poster itself remains really funny in either case.

One Nation, Under a New Obama Salute

If a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, Sen. Barack Obama will see fans meet him with his own salute like the one above. “Our goal is to see a crowd of 75,000 people at Obama’s nomination speech holding their hands above their heads, fingers laced together in support of a new direction for this country…

Idiocracy would like to see that too! We wonder if The Loyalty Inc. marketing company was involved with Microsoft’s Zune advertising!

Yahoo! Taking DRM Servers Offline … No Music For You!

You know, somehow, “We told you so” just doesn’t quite say it…

Yahoo! Music Store taking DRM servers offline, freezing out customers

In a move which at best could be described as unsurprising, Yahoo! has announced that it’s taking its Music Store DRM license key servers offline come September 30th… and freezing customers from ever registering their music with another computer. Ever.

TechDirt asks:

Did Yahoo Not Pay Attention To What Happened When Microsoft Pulled The Plug On Its DRM Server?
Yahoo! sent out an email to users noting that its DRM server will be shut down, preventing the “buyers” from moving the songs to new computers. This seems doubly ironic, given that Yahoo’s last two music bosses, David Goldberg and Ian Rogers had spoken out against DRM. While neither is still with the company, it’s rather amusing that Yahoo is now helping to prove the point.

Even the L.A. Times has some Opinion about this move:

Yahoo pulls an MSN Music (only faster)

This afternoon, Yahoo alerted customers of its erstwhile downloadable music store that it would no longer provide support after Sept. 30 (download the cheerful e-mail here).

Update: Yahoo tells Information Week it will reimburse users on a “case-by-case” basis, (so you may have to grovel, plead and beg them a little to continue to exercise your usage rights … but that’s ok, because you’re not really a Yahoo! customer anymore, you’re just another dried up revenue stream)

Yahoo! may possibly offer reimbursements or MP3 versions … or not … depending on Yahoo!’s latest whim (and whomever you happen deal with if and when you contact them). The FAQ is here.

If you were foolish enough to buy into DRM encumbered media, Yahoo!’s screwing you out of your music is really your own fault. DRM is simply bad juju all around that only hurts “Paying” customers.

Even though you may lose a track or two because of Yahoo!’s DRM we really should all be happy that Yahoo!’s music is finally being sold DRM-free on Rhapsody. (Hint: If you don’t want to grovel and beg Yahoo to keep that which you already paid for, rip your Yahoo! DRM encumbered media onto CD and then convert the CD to flak or a high bit-rate lossy format)

Update 2:

Yahoo! has announced what you can expect when you grovel, plead and beg them to continue to exercise your music usage rights…

Yahoo offers coupons for music that stops working

Yahoo Inc. is offering coupons or refunds to users who find songs they bought inaccessible after Sept. 30, when the company shuts its music-download service.

The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo’s new partner, RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who “have serious problems with this arrangement,” Yahoo said.

Yahoo opted to shut down its system to avoid “delaying the inevitable.”

You can get to your music, but only if you do a few tricks first…………..I do that to my dog.

First I show him a doggy treat. Then I tell him to “Sit”. Then I place the doggy treat on top of his nose … then I wait … and wait … until I see he starts to drool, then I let him actually eat the treat.

“Good dog!”

Great Fun!

Next Generation SSDs Delayed Due to Vista

Vista is the gift that just keeps on giving …

Speaking during SanDisk’s second-quarter earnings conference call, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari said that Windows Vista will present a special challenge for solid state drive makers. “As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk,” he said.

This is due to Vista’s design. “The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” he said.

“Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we’ll start sampling end of this year, early next year,” Harari said.

Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. “We have very good internal controller technology, as you know…That said, I’d say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment,” he added.

Read the whole story on C|Net

Lively discussion for this post over at SlashDot

The largest collection of Darwin’s work in history, now on the web!

This is awsome!

Darwin’s private papers online – the largest publication of Darwin’s papers in history. Read about it here. Browse the papers here.

This site contains Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

I know I know … “Darwin’s work is just a bunch of THEORIES!”
UPDATE:
Yep, Evolution sure is a theroy … and sound scientific theory can be used to predict things … like this: Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island

In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say.

If Darwin’s work is inaccurate about anything, it seems that the speed of the Evolution process may be somewhat underestimated.

If an island full of lizards can evolve so drastically in a mere thirty years, with what mankind is currently doing to itself, just how drastically are we affecting our own evolution?

Microsoft sees future IT workers as simple “truckers and longshoremen”

In an article describing Microsoft’s mainstream containerized data centers (named “C-Blox”) Microsoft general manager of data center services Michael Manos says his vision of the future of IT is IT workers who look more like “truckers and longshoremen than traditional IT workers”.

Microsoft To Mainstream Containerized Data Centers With C-Blox

Microsoft has developed its own specifications that include, for example, configuration for electrical components and the layout of physical servers, for its containers. Those specs make Microsoft’s containers different from anything on the market today, and a potential opportunity for future Microsoft products. The containers, which Microsoft calls C-blox, are largely self-contained and will require very little hands-on maintenance.

“The doors are closed, and because of the level of automation in our systems, we can run it and accept a certain amount of failure over time,” Manos said. Manos argues that it is more cost effective to build redundancy and automation into Microsoft’s data center applications and allow some hardware to fail than it would be to physically manage such a large data center. The hands-off approach also means design can be tweaked to allow for maximum cooling and energy efficiency without worrying about how accessible the systems are to human hands. Of course, Microsoft also builds backbones that link power, cooling, and bandwidth among the containers.

In the C-blox world, a truck drops off a data center container and then picks it up again in a few years when Microsoft is ready to switch over to new hardware. Administrators will only enter the physical C-blox in the rarest of occasions. “In that sense, your IT workers look more like truckers and longshoremen than traditional IT workers,” Manos said. It will also allow Microsoft to run the entire Northlake facility with a continuous staff of little more than 20 or 30 employees.

So are we now to believe that a “truckers and longshoremen” skills shortage shows need for an increase of the 85,000 H-1B visas already available? A related question; is Microsoft’s Michael Manos merely arrogant or is he simply stupid?

Thanks to Corbis for the image.

Blu-ray BD+ Cracked as Expected

In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) claimed that ‘BD+, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.

BD+ Unbreakable for 10 Years says Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group

Richard Doherty a Media analyist with Envisioneering Group says ” BD +, Unlike AACS, Which suffered a partial Hack Last Year, Won’t likely be breached for 10 years.” Doherty said “and if so The damage would effect one film and one player.”

He also said BD + Offers 4 time the safeguards on top of aacs against piracy. All Blu-Ray Players are equipped with BD +.

In today’s AnyDVD Press release:

Press Release: AnyDVD HD now with BD+ support

Film studios that have switched to Blu-ray may have crowed a little
too early because the much-praised BD+ copy protection is an ad
absurdum affair now, too. With today’s release of version 6.4.0.0 of
AnyDVD HD it is now also possible to make backup security copies of
Blu-ray discs protected with BD+.

Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group will have to revise his
statement from July, 2007 regarding BD+: “BD+, unlike AACS which
suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10
years”. It is worth mentioning that since he made that statement only eight months have gone by.

AACS marketers should however be heartily congratulated for harvesting millions from their “marks” (the stupid media companies). AACS always was and still is a masterful example of the big con.

Meanwhile it looks as if Sony may have incoroporated stolen technology for their Blu-ray system; Sony Blu-ray Under Patent Infringement Probe