UPDATE, Tuesday night, almost midnight: Stella is at her father's house, with
several other family members, dealing with such details as can be attended to at this early stage. I am back
at home... someone has to look after the cats. Many details about Carla remain unknown. Stella sounded very
sad when I talked to her late tonight. Anyone who has been through this herself or himself knows it is harder
to bear at some moments than at others. Thanks to all of you for your kind wishes, good thoughts and prayers;
Stella will appreciate them, and please know that I do as well. I am in no condition to do serious blogging
at the moment, but I may do some visiting on other blogs. Thanks for your patience.
(Original post follows.)
Stella's sister Carla (not her real name) is dead. She was several years younger than Stella, and had a
number of chronic and sometimes severe health problems that caused her to be frequently hospitalized. She
died at home, alone, apparently while Stella was out of town visiting other family members last week and
weekend, but her death was discovered only today. We know essentially nothing at this point about the
cause of her death. More information should be forthcoming tomorrow. Stella is devastated; I've never seen
her so crestfallen before in the approximately 23 years I've known her.
Tomorrow we are going first to Stella's father's home, possibly 30 miles north of here, then another 10
or so miles further north to Carla's apartment, to begin the inevitable long process of dealing with
Carla's estate. It would be sad in any case, and it is made sadder still by the untimeliness of Carla's
death... she was, by most reasonable standards, simply too young to die. I knew her only tangentially,
the way one knows one's partner's siblings, but even I feel keenly the tragedy of her dying too young.
I do not know how the next few days will play out. I am taking my laptop with me, and we are taking two
cars so that Stella can deal with returning Carla's car to their father's house, but apart from the
question of when each of us gets home, I may or may not have the ability to concentrate adequately to
do serious political blogging. I'll keep you informed.
... what you cannot gain by legitimate competition is an old tradition. A GOP tradition? well, that, too, but
in this case it's a Microsoft tradition. From
CNet News:
Report: Microsoft says open source violates 235 patents
Top Microsoft lawyer alleges in a magazine interview that the Linux kernel and OpenOffice.org violate hundreds of the company's patents.
By Ina Friedand Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 13, 2007, 7:35 PM PDT
Last modified: May 13, 2007, 8:30 PM PDT
update Microsoft claims that free and open-source software violates 235 of its patents, according to a
magazine report published Sunday.
In an interview with Fortune, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith alleges that the Linux kernel violates 42
Microsoft patents, while its user interface and other design elements infringe on a further 65.
OpenOffice.org is accused of infringing 45, along with 83 more in other free and open-source programs,
according to Fortune.
It is not entirely clear how Microsoft might proceed in enforcing these patents, but the company has been
encouraging large tech companies that depend on Linux to ink patent deals, starting with its controversial
pact with Novell last November. Microsoft has also cited Linux protection playing a role in recent patent
swap deals with Samsung and Fuji Xerox. Microsoft has also had discussions but not reached a deal with Red
Hat, as noted in the Fortune article.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is also quoted in the article as saying Microsoft's open-source competitors need
to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business."
"What's fair is fair," Ballmer told Fortune. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of,
intellectual property."
...
(The quoted update is by CNet, not by the YDD.)
Oh, yeah, right. Playing by the same rules... as Bill Gates did in the earliest days of MS-DOS? From the Wikipedia entry on
Gary Kildall,
creator of the CP/M operating system many of us came to know and love, which almost became the OS for the
IBM PC:
...
Kildall obtained a copy of PC-DOS, examined it, and concluded that it was a rip-off of CP/M. He took this
information to Gerry Davis, but Davis told him that intellectual property law for software was not clear
enough to pursue legal action (Davis later said that under current case law, he would have sued).[9] Instead
Kildall confronted IBM with the threat of legal action, and IBM agreed to offer CP/M-86 as an option for the
PC in return for a release of liability.[10] When the IBM PC was introduced, IBM sold the operating system as
an unbundled (but necessary) option. One of the operating system options was PC-DOS, priced at US$40. CP/M-86
shipped a few months later at $240, but sold poorly against DOS.[1]
...
(See the wiki for the footnotes.)
It seems to me a monster corporation built originally on possible skullduggery of this sort has little enough
room to lecture the open-source world on business ethics. I hope and presume that the big-name corporations
in the
Linux Foundation
(IBM, Intel, HP, Sun, Toshiba, Nokia
etc.)
intend to play hardball on this.
I know I've said it before, but let me remind everyone that patent and copyright, and hence all protection
of intellectual property, are intended to benefit society by fostering creativity, by rewarding creators of
novel and useful inventions or published works with exclusive rights to profit from their works for a limited
period of time. That's in the Constitution, in slightly different language; look it up. Whatever Microsoft's
stockholders may think, that, and not an endless stream of unearned dollars for Microsoft, is the reason
the notion of intellectual property exists in the first place. That's the baseline. Any legitimate debate
over IP matters must begin with that; otherwise, it's just self-interested demagoguery by corporate lawyers.
As a consequence, I have a problem with the whole concept of software patents. In my youth, the conventional
wisdom was that software should be copyrighted, not patented. Why? because, on one level, all software is
obvious... while there are certainly new concepts entering the world of software over time, one cannot
patent a concept, only an implementation. In my opinion (and of course I've long since been overruled on
this), copyright is the appropriate vehicle for protection of software property rights. Software is more
like a novel than an automobile engine: it is created in a language the words and grammar of which are
already well established, and the available plot formulas are limited in number... how many different plots
for English country house mysteries are there, after all... and the value is in the specifics, not in the
language (development tools or design) or the plot (purpose of the software, or interface to it). But as I
say, more than 30 years of court rulings have passed me by on that notion. (They're wrong, though. Really.)
In the days of the second generation of spreadsheet software, at one point,
Lotus sued Borland
over the latter's deliberate imitation of its menu layout. Says the wiki, "The United States Court of Appeals
for the First Circuit reversed the district court, finding that the menu system was a "method of operation",
like the arrangement of buttons on a video cassette recorder, and therefore not subject to copyright." OK,
it's more complicated than that, but basically you cannot seize an interface for your exclusive use by
claiming copyright infringement. But Microsoft appears to be doing just that regarding the most popular
Linux desktops, claiming patent infringement.
I have no expertise, let alone legal training, on which to base speculation on the success of Microsoft's
threatened actions. I do understand that this may have the potential to throw a spanner in the works of
businesses whose owners believe they should have options when it comes to software. Just as the fact that
polluting industrial plants have found
SLAPPs
useful in shutting down their critics doesn't make a SLAPP a moral or ethical practice, neither does the
fairly obvious fact that the largest of software companies can take legal action (justified or, as I rather
suspect, otherwise) for years on end until the little guy folds for lack of money for lawyers make such
legal action justifiable under any rational notion of a free market.
In other words, when it comes to the benefits to society of a (reasonable and regulated) free market, the use
of lawsuits or threats of lawsuits to shut down a competitor is a bug, not a feature.
Afterthought: I duly license all the software I use. I buy licenses for Microsoft software as required; I'm
in the business, and my career depends on it. I license and register shareware, including the TextPad editor
I'm typing this into, because it's the right thing to do. And I gratefully and cheerfully make use of all the
free and open-source software I can. For the record, back in MS-DOS days, I released one of the utilities I
wrote for my own use, a sort of interactive visual file comparison program (think "diff"; many similar tools
are available today) as shareware, and was amazed when a dozen people and companies actually paid for and
registered it. It even got published in a book of shareware sold at the local big-box bookstores; for a
few months, I felt as if I really existed. That is the way most software should work. I do not begrudge the
purveyors of commercial software their profits, but I do begrudge them their attempts to accomplish in court
what they could never accomplish in the marketplace.
We didn't celebrate with cards in my family... Hallmark had to wait until later in my life to make money off
of me... but we did usually take Mom out to dinner. I think she appreciated that much more than any card
we could have given her.
This photo-of-a-photo (I am reluctant to try to remove it from its frame and protective cover to scan
it) was apparently taken by Dad back before I was born; he was quite a wizard with a camera. We won't talk
about my unfortunate postprocessing, especially the unintended colorized effect. It is just barely possible
to tell from this thumbnail that Mom was beautiful in her young years. I am anything but surprised that Dad
was drawn to her.
Mom grew up on a farm in East Texas, a history that lives on in me. It's not that I grow things, but that I
have an East Texas twang in my speech; it manifests itself especially when I am tired. But let me tell you,
her family was a very literary group of farmers, and Mom sought out the best college education she could
afford. She was a graduate of Southwest Texas State Teachers College, now called Texas State University, in
San Marcos. She graduated with a degree in English and a teacher's certificate, and taught English in several
small and medium-sized towns in South Texas.
Mom was musically talented, and loved spending time at the piano, playing popular songs by ear (yes, of
course she could read music when she wanted to). Dad told a story of an incident early in their relationship,
in which Mom sang one of the solo parts in a college performance of Handel's Messiah. At the slower tempos
common in that era, a complete performance of Messiah often took over four hours. Dad dutifully attended, not
put off by the music, and certainly not by Mom's voice, which was low and lovely, but by the sheer length of
the work. There is no record of whether Dad fell asleep.
Mom occasionally participated in political discussions. Like Dad and me, she was a solid Democrat; unlike us,
she was able to keep her perspective on the topic under discussion, and was occasionally called upon to make
us reconcile our differences (not that there were that many) and speak more quietly. She was also the
household's grammarian, both by credentials and by inclination. She retired from teaching school to start a
family (that was usual in those days), but never gave up her intellectual pursuits, reading an astonishing
number of books of all sorts. Not until her last years, when Alzheimer's disease destroyed her brain and took
her fine mind from her, was she at last forced to give up her literary pursuits. Now that was a tragedy. She
died in 1990, of the usual complications of that same disease.
Can you tell that I was lucky in the Mom department?
With all precincts reporting in this 11-candidate City Council race, Melissa Noriega will be in a runoff
with Roy Morales. Ms. Noriega received 46.6 percent of the vote to Mr. Morales's 18.5 percent. Neither the
runoff in a field of 11 candidates nor Ms. Noriega's strong plurality today is a surprise. Thanks to all
of you who voted, especially those who voted for Ms. Noriega. Please remember to vote again in the runoff,
which is sometime in the first half of June... I'll post the specific date when I am sure of it.
One of my unfortunate neighbors required the first-named service, towing...
... but I have to wonder about that other service, recovery. Who hires the driver for that? Recovering
alcoholics? recovering drug addicts? recovering Republicans? You know what they say... friends don't
let friends drive drunk with power.
UPDATE: HaloScan comment posting has been disabled or defunct for several hours
now. Apologies. I can see those that are already there, but new ones vanish into the void. I presume the same
is true of a lot of HaloScan threads on other blogs. Hey, it's Saturday night; what are you doing blog-
surfing anyway? Myself, I'm going to kick back, open a Saint Arnold Brown Ale (Saint Arnold, not to be
confused with Saint Ronald, is our local and most excellent microbrewery, though "micro" may no longer be
appropriate), find a DVD to watch and forget about politics until midnight, by which time the City Council
At-Large District 3 results should be complete. See you later!
No, not "Hardware Wars"; that was a 1978 Star Wars parody. Now that the new computer is mostly set up and
working, I had an episode with the laptop this morning. I admit I've been hammering it pretty hard lately,
transferring lots of photos and other files, and my attempt to blog poolside marked the first time in a while
that I've run it from the battery. Squinting through my own reflection at the display, I could just barely
make out the "Black Screen of Windows Won't Start," which is just as terrifying as the infamous "Blue Screen
of Death" to me. Back inside, after a few tries on A/C power, I managed a Safe Mode boot, a bit of
exploration (nothing visibly wrong), and finally a reproducible regular boot. I believe the problem was
power-related. This does not give me great confidence, but at least it appears to work for the moment.
And while I was tending to Stella's cats, taking them out on the patio, snapping dozens of photos of them,
I could swear I saw a tiny wisp of smoke rising from the area of the flash...
Houstonians... remember to vote today. Melissa Noriega needs and deserves your vote!
HaloScan service has been intermittent yesterday and today. If you are lucky enough to get a comment popup,
be sure to Select All | Copy your comment (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C) before you attempt to post.
(UPDATE: see the HaloScan forum; Jeevan has posted about the reason for
the problems lately.)
John Brady Kiesling
is an honorable man who resigned from an honorable occupation... representing the United States of America
for 20 years as one of our diplomats... rather than soil his own or our nation's honor. He is the sort of man
who was hardly a rarity a few decades ago: not partisan in any meaningful way, utterly committed to his
nation, exceptionally skilled in the diplomat's arts, and... this is why he had to leave... determined to do
nothing, ever, to dishonor the great nation he represented. As the war in Iraq approached rapidly, in late
2002, Kiesling resigned his position as Political Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Athens, rather than
participate in the Bush administration's blatant misrepresentations to the world in pursuit of a preemptive
invasion. The resignation, five years before his nominal retirement date, was to his own financial and
professional detriment. And as he noted on another occasion, he served through all or part of six terms of
four presidents of both major parties, representing U.S. policy to the best of his ability in several
positions; no one would have blamed him if he had continued at his post through the current Bush's (first)
term. But people's consciences require things of them, and his required his resignation.
How can I be so sure Kiesling is who and what he and his admirers say he is? Simple: I've heard him speak in
person. Shortly after his resignation, he spoke for about an hour at Rice University, then took questions for
quite some time afterward. The presentation was jointly sponsored by Rice and by a local chapter of Amnesty
International. Much as a juror needs to see a witness face-to-face to evaluate his or her credibility, I was
fortunate to see Kiesling in person. This is what I concluded: when America lost Kiesling as a member of the
diplomatic corps, they lost a great deal.
Here is a sample of Kiesling's article on the Huffington Post, an article primarily in reaction to Tenet's
book, comparing the price he (Kiesling) paid for resigning with the price Tenet has not really paid for
not resigning. First, the personal aspect:
...
Intellectually, my decision to resign from the U.S. Foreign Service in February 2003 was a fine one. The
American people are less secure because of President Bush's policies, and soon they will be less prosperous.
But the brain circuitry that rewards humans for good decisions is the same circuitry our chimpanzee cousins
use. Happiness in social animals does not derive from being right. It comes from the social reinforcement we
get from our troop.
The U.S. government offers heroin-like rewards to those who play by its rules. I did not have Tenet's bedside
secure telephone or morning meetings with the President. Still, as head of the Political Section of U.S.
Embassy Athens I basked in the glory of a superpower. I chaired meetings of my acolytes, lectured
journalists, chatted with cabinet ministers, rode in motorcades with flying flags. Withdrawal meant long,
gray days and restless nights.
...
Then a bit about the diplomatic aspect:
...
Americans are no more disposed to employ our Cassandras than the ancient Trojans were. Accurate prophecy
regarding Iraq does not require brilliance or deep expertise. An open-minded person who watched the interplay
of nationalism and religion in the Middle East, anyone who listened sympathetically to ordinary Muslims,
could have predicted the response to our amateurish attempts at preemptive democracy. And now that foreign
policy pragmatism is socially acceptable again, the spies, diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics
are pulling out their private correspondence to remind us that indeed they knew better. They would have given
an honest opinion on Iraq back when it mattered, but their Commander in Chief failed to ask them for it.
...
That is the problem, isn't it? Many knew better, but stood by and did nothing to stop the rush to war. Our
self-anointed, Court-appointed Commander Guy didn't ask them for their opinions, because the only thing he
asks for is abject loyalty to his every whim, and a willingness to take the fall for the Decider if his
failed policies require it to save his sorry ass. Honest expert opinion? Bush has no use for that; he never
has, and he never fails to punish those experts who offer it unsolicited.
May there be more John Brady Kieslings in the world. May many such honorable men and women represent America
to the world again. We are going to need high-powered diplomacy in the face of dangers against which
high-powered weaponry is useless, and we'd better start developing the requisite diplomats as soon as
possible.
... and Tabitha is not as indifferent as she looks in this picture. Indeed, Tabitha loves being held and
kissed on the top of the head; nothing else elicits quite such a loud purr from her.
Some of you who are old enough will remember in about 1971 when one of the major chemical companies (Dupont?)
had a slogan, "Progress is our most important product." My first job out of college was for Texas Instruments
(heaven help me; the main function of that job was to make every subsequent position look good by
comparison), where we mocked that slogan: "At TI, change is our most important product." And so it is
in my office today: a large amount of effort on my part has resulted in a lot of change, most of which cannot
legitimately be called progress. Or I could quote the Red Queen's line to Alice: "Now, here, you see, it
takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run
at least twice as fast as that!" I do want to get somewhere else, but running twice as fast is not an option
for me.
All my personal tools are now in place. Most of them even work; sometimes it wasn't easy. To cite just one
example, the latest version of the editor in which I produce the YDD (and a lot of miscellaneous code on the
job) is Textpad 5. It is pretty much backward compatible with Textpad 4 syntax definition files, workspace
files, etc. Well, almost: if your workspace included a reference to a syntax definition file that lived (by
default) in a folder called "Textpad 4", you quickly find that all your workspaces have lost their syntax
coloration, etc. And the workspace file, a binary file, cannot be repaired short of doing a hex edit; you
just have to create a new one. Did no one at Helios run into this problem in testing? I guess I get what I
paid for, and that was about £16 about seven years ago.
And now, at last, I must face installing and configuring all my Microsoft development platforms and such.
I've been putting it off for several reasons: the installs themselves are lengthy and unpleasant, and at
least one of the products, the database SQL Server 2005, has an annoying habit of making startup and shutdown
of the whole computer painfully slow.
On the plus side, this new A/V software, NOD32, which comes installed on PowerSpec boxes these days (with
some very short license; I bought the full version to install when that runs out) appears to be less
crippling of ordinary use of the computer than Symantec was. I mean, is... I still have to deal with it on
my laptop and on Stella's machine. NOD32 hardly ever says anything unless you ask it. And its downloads of
definition files neither usurp every last processor cycle, nor pop a bragging box when they're done.
I intend to get as much of this done as possible before Stella gets back Sunday afternoon from somewhere in
Georgia. She flew into Atlanta yesterday, met her brother who took her to his family's home in Carrollton, and
drove this evening to Augusta to see her niece graduate from nursing school tomorrow. I think Stella is the
fastest gal in Georgia at the moment. In any case, when she returns Sunday, I hope to take a break from all
this setup nonsense, and plan to wait until sometime in June to replace the old computer's hard drive and
install Ubuntu Linux on it. In case you didn't notice, changing out a hard drive is a hardware problem.
Bryan? andante? Fallenmonk? anybody care to help out? (Just kidding. I can change out a drive. I detest doing
it, but I am capable of it when push comes to shove.)
Here ends the chatty techno-babble for the evening. I believe there's a sweet kitty love picture in the post
downstream/up-page of this one...
(Oops. Lightning storms. Glorious, beautiful ones at that. I'd better upload this while I can.)
For the special election in the City of Houston this Saturday, some polling places have been consolidated
with others. You may have to vote at a different location from your usual polling place. See
Harris Votes
to find your specific polling place for this election.
I hate to say it, but this is a common trick when Republans run potentially low-turnout elections, which
this one is because the ballot is so short. Exactly once, I showed up at my regular polling location, only to
find that I had to drive another mile to a school at a location unknown to me. That was, and is, simply
wrong. No amount of saving of taxpayers' money is worth monkeying around with the mechanics of elections.
Again, I ask you to vote for Melissa Noriega. You'll be glad you did.
The YDD's contact email address has changed. Please do not save the new one; it will change, too,
in a few weeks or months. Each time you wish to send a message, please go through the CONTACT link in the
masthead.
Too many enthusiastic political operatives have ignored my request and added the site's email to their lists
anyway. It is my intention that all email coming to me from the site should come through the current address
on the contact page. With luck, next time I'll remember to change that address before I am
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of other people's lists.
Many of you who blog know one or more of my stable email addresses. Those will continue to work fine.
Campaign managers: if you add this site's address to your list, chances are good I will either ask you to
remove it (especially if you are a Republican) or simply change the site's address again. If I
really want to receive your list, I'll provide you an address.
Via
The Truffle,
we found an
article
by Ken Fisher of Ars Technica about the new "pawn shop" laws springing up in many states that require people
who sell their used CDs to give almost unbelievable amounts of information about themselves to the record
shop, which in turn must post a bond assuring the state that they will collect this information:
...
New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the
local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll
certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information
and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the
dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to
get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the
"right" to treat their customers like criminals.
The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that
there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general. Yet John
Mitchell, outside counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, told Billboard that this
is part of "some sort of a new trend among states to support second-hand-goods legislation." And he expects
it to grow.
...
(Emphasis mine.)
One would think the industry would be relieved that the physical medium of a CD limits the ease of
distribution compared to, say, .mp3 files, which can be shared more or less immediately and without any
limit whatsoever. I don't do that, but younger people who shall remain nameless assure me that if you can
rip it, you can share it, and most things can be ripped. At least an original physical CD belongs to at most
one person at a time.
Here's a bit more on the extreme nature of these new laws:
...
In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint
will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver's license in those states. For retailers in Florida, for
instance, there's a "waiting period" statue that prohibits them from selling used CDs that they've acquired
until 30 days have passed. Furthermore, the Florida law disallows stores from providing anything but store
credit for used CDs. It looks like college students will need to stick to blood plasma donations for beer
money.
...
A waiting period? What are we selling here, an assault rifle?
Fisher links to an article (please visit and use his link) emphasizing the original purpose of copyright as
explained in the Constitution, namely, to provide incentive for creativity by granting the creator of a
written work exclusive rights for a period of time, while simultaneously preserving the benefits to society
of that work by assuring that it enters the public domain after some reasonable time. The notion was not new
when our Constitution was framed, but it was a powerful means of balancing those two opposing good things:
reward for creativity and benefit to society.
As copyright has been changed over the past two decades, neither of the original interests is well served.
As far as I can tell, only the financial interests of large multinational corporations and of their trade
associations benefit from this kind of craziness. ABC-Disney still owns Mickey Mouse; that's all that
really matters, right?
There will be several responses by residents of states which pass this crack-brained legislation. One will
be a decrease in new CD purchases, as people become reluctant to take a chance on something they
cannot easily unload later. Another will be a thriving black market in used CDs and illegal copies despite
lame DRM attempts. Yet another response will be an even greater volume of online music, both legitimate
purchases and... especially... rampant P2P sharing.
And my own response will become far more common among a variety of people. I buy very, very little music and
video, on any media whatsoever. I don't steal any, either. There's simply no need: the bandwidth of broadcast
plus cable plus the internet is so great, and so full of music and movies, that we have our fill at the click
of a remote or of a mouse.
There's also this: people will use primitive non-digital technology at home to copy works the old-fashioned
way. Not everyone requires perfect sound or video all the time. For example, I have a nearly complete set of
Star Trek Next Gen episodes that I recorded from the original broadcasts in the 1980s and 1990s; so far,
despite the wretched quality of the videos, I haven't felt a compelling need to buy DVDs to replace them. If
low quality were acceptable, one could set up a videocam in front of someone's TV, play a DVD and bypass DRM
altogether. I bypass it in another way: I have a very good memory for music, and in some cases can "play
back" a song using nothing but what is between my ears, not what is impinging on them. And so in conclusion I
give you this clip from a song by Paul Simon, quoted from my memory:
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long-distance call;
See how the camera follows us in slo-mo,
See how we look to us all (oh, yeah);
See how we look to a distant constellation that's
Dying in a corner of the sky;
These are the days of miracle and wonder, and
Don't cry, baby, don't cry, (don't cry, don't cry).
"The days of miracle and wonder," indeed. Our founders saw copyright as a means of balancing two social goods,
a device for insuring fairness and promoting creativity. Today's industry associations approach copyright...
and far more than copyright, including draconian license agreements for simple media and (ineffective though
it may be) hardwired DRM... as means of enabling them to sell something to you while keeping that same thing
from you, and criminalizing even your most ordinary usage of that thing. If we as a society had spent a
tenth the time contemplating the fairness issues as our alleged representatives have spent making it a crime
to deprive their corporate contributors of profits every time we even think of a song or a movie (or a book;
ponder that one if you want a good scare), we might see some semblance of that balance. I wouldn't
hold your breath waiting for that, though.
Oh, and anyone buying used CDs from me will get my fingerprints when they pry them from my cold, dead... um,
this slogan I'm coining isn't going quite the direction I had hoped...
Senate Vote Upholds Drug Import Limits
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: May 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 7 — The Senate voted on Monday to preserve current restrictions on the importing of
lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries, fearing that such imports could pose risks to
consumers, even with new safeguards.
By a vote of 49 to 40, the Senate approved a measure saying that imports will not be allowed unless the
secretary of health and human services first certifies that they “pose no additional risk to the public’s
health and safety,” and that they will significantly reduce costs to consumers.
...
Senators Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, were the
chief sponsors of the original proposal, which would allow imports.
“American consumers are paying the highest prices in the world for brand-name prescription drugs,” Mr.
Dorgan said. “We are trying to change that.”
Mr. Dorgan’s proposal would have allowed consumers, pharmacists, drug wholesalers and distributors to
import prescription drugs from Canada, Japan, Australia and European countries found to have regulatory
requirements comparable to those in the United States.
Arguing against the proposal, Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, cited an article in The New
York Times on Sunday that described how people had died after taking medicines contaminated with a toxic,
sweet-tasting syrup imported from China.
...
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was a pivotal figure. He is the chief author of the
bill overhauling the F.D.A. In the past, Mr. Kennedy has voted to allow drug imports, and he is a co-
sponsor of a bill to do just that.
But on Monday, Mr. Kennedy voted against Mr. Dorgan’s proposal, and encouraged others to do so, because he
feared that it would sink the overall bill granting new powers to the food and drug agency.
President Bush had threatened to veto legislation that allowed drug imports outside the existing system.
The White House said such legislation would “result in unsafe, unapproved and counterfeit drugs being
imported into the United States.”
Mr. Kennedy cited the veto threat in explaining why he voted for Mr. Cochran’s amendment.
Mr. Dorgan said the vote showed “the clout that the drug industry has here in Congress.”
...
The argument against importing medicine from China seems plausible, except that that was never the
intention of the legislation. All I ask is that American drug manufacturers offer Americans a price
comparable to their lowest price to residents of other nations. If reimportation of literally identical
medications (right down to the brand and manufacturer) from Canada are necessary to force Big Pharma to do
that, I'm in favor of it.
Several of my friends take prescription medications to stay alive, and I have two ongoing prescriptions
myself, for treating dental problems. I could theoretically do without mine, but for those who have to
have the medications to live, the expenses themselves can be life-altering or even life-threatening.
That's really not right.
I'm OK with requiring inspections in cases in which there are genuine questions of purity or chain of
custody, but those inspections cannot possibly add as much to Americans' cost of medication as Big Pharma
is adding out of pure, unchecked greed. That U.S. drug companies are allowed to stiff U.S. citizens is an
outrage... an outrage the Senate, under threat from Mr. Bush, just declined to address.
Please vote for
Melissa Noriega
for Houston City Council At-Large Pos. 3. Today is the last day of
early voting (sorry; I had hoped to put this post up a week ago); you can vote at any early-voting
location... see the
Harris Votes map for your nearest early voting
location. Or you can vote at your regular polling place on election day, Saturday, May 12.
Ms. Noriega has 27 years of experience as an HISD educator and community leader... and some time in the
state Legislature, filling her husband Lt. Col. Rick Noriega's unexpired term while he was called to duty
in Afghanistan. Those who knew her, knew of her leadership and commitment; they knew what to expect. The
rest of us had the pleasure of watching her serve with distinction in the Lege. Noriega is a Democrat,
though City Council races are by law nonpartisan. Her endorsement list includes a stellar cast of current
and former city elected officials, as well as the Houston Police Officers Union, the Houston Professional
Firefighters Association, the local AFL-CIO and many other unions, the home builders, the apartment
association, and the Houston Chronicle... in other words, a broad spectrum of people and organizations
involved in our city in a positive way, across the political and social spectrum.
Please vote for Melissa Noriega today or on Saturday. She is an asset to our city, and will be even more
so on the City Council.
Goodling and Lady Justice: The Original Cover-Up
By Paul Kiel - May 7, 2007, 5:30 PM
From National Journal's Inside Washington column (not available online):
Psst! Sources tell us that none other than Monica Goodling, former aide to Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, was responsible for draping over the ample bosoms of the Art Deco statues in the Justice
Department's Great Hall during the reign of the prim John Ashcroft. The coverings were removed, accompanied
by a sigh from an appreciative public, in 2005 ...
What more is there to say, except perhaps... who are the real tin boobs here?
This is the first post from the new computer with its wonderful display. I'm also using the latest version
of the TextPad editor. The blog's source files are actually still on the laptop; I'm not yet committed to
blogging from the new machine. This is a test. This is only a test. In the event of an actual blog move,
etc.
... and speakerphones; catastrophes and kings. I feel as if I should have one of those signs one sees
in workplaces in which hardhats are the usual headgear: "It has been 13 hours since the last workplace
accident." No, I was not hurt, but I certainly got a good scare: a new battery backup (UPS), straight
out of the box, of a brand I've installed and used before, set up according to directions, died with a
loud bang and a large spark when I attempted to plug the first item into it, a cordless phone in my
office. I've set up computers possibly 100 times in my career, a dozen of my own and a whole lot of
computers for other people at a previous place of business, and I've never seen a spark that big or heard
a bang that loud. That UPS died hard, with a vengeance. It took half the A/C power in my apartment with
it; it was a couple of hours until I could resume setting up the new equipment... with a mere surge
protector instead of the intended UPS. "How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?" I
assume you all know the canonical answer to that: "Change a light bulb? That's a hardware problem!"
Aside from that incident, the transition to the new computer is going smoothly, though it is taking an
inordinate amount of time that I could be spending some other way, say, blogging. Or perhaps doing
something income-producing. But the latter would be a bit difficult if I didn't take time out to resolve
these infrastructure issues.
Using that cordless speakerphone (yes, it survived), I just talked to Stella for over an hour. She has
some contract work in addition to her day job, and it means pulling occasional all-nighters the way many
of us did in college. As she occasionally does, she emailed me in the middle of the night, asking if I
was still up. Damn it, I still am. But neither she nor I had much of a restful or recreational weekend
(despite trips to two bookstores), and I was really glad to hear from her. It also occurred to me how much
more satisfactory a social phone call can be when it takes place using a cordless speakerphone. Nothing
beats f2f, but this comes a lot closer than a conventional phone... which is all I had while the power was
out, and might have been all I had for a long time if the defective UPS had blown out the cordless
speakerphone.
Maybe I'm too much involved in the technology around here, ya think?
Blogging will probably be suspended until tonight. As annoying as it is, I need to deal with
all these hardware issues in a reasonably short time. Blogging about kings (George in particular) will
just have to wait. Thanks for your patience.
Democrats’ Proposals Complicate Deal on Iraq Bill
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE
Published: May 5, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 4 — The aggressive attempts by Democratic presidential hopefuls to shape the war debate
are threatening to complicate Congressional efforts to reach a deal on the Iraq spending bill, as the
candidates’ calls for accelerating an end to the conflict compete with efforts by legislative leaders to
extend financing for the war.
Oh, yeah, those damned Democratic presidential candidates, daring to discuss publicly alternative ways of
ending the war. Don't they know this is complicating matters for that nice Mr. Bush?
...
The proposal by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to repeal President Bush’s war authorization in October
touched off a furious tussle on Friday among Democrats hoping to gain an upper hand with voters who oppose
the war. It prompted other candidates to seek an even swifter end to the conflict, which was what some
Congressional leaders had been trying to avoid as war-spending negotiations with the White House
intensify.
John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, said the plan was “a good statement to make,” but that
Congress should use the power of the purse to end the war. He compared the proposal to the 1971
Congressional action that repealed the resolution authorizing the Vietnam War, but noted: “The war went on
for another three years.”
Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, said he proposed a similar measure three months ago. In an
interview on Friday, Mr. Richardson said the plan by Mrs. Clinton of New York and Senator Robert C. Byrd,
Democrat of West Virginia, “only goes halfway,” because it would leave too many residual American forces
in Iraq.
Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware said that he had proposed in January the idea of repealing the
authority for the war resolution. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut praised the idea, but said
that it would not change the president’s Iraq policy. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois said October
was too late to begin bringing troops home.
...
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't see a problem...
...
Democratic Senate aides played down the influence of presidential politics on the negotiations. Through a
spokesman, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said he agreed that the alternative ideas
of rescinding the war authorization — or cutting off money for combat operations by next spring — merited
a review by the full Senate.
“They can kick and scream and bite and scratch out there politically,” Mr. Reid said, “but they haven’t
done that inside the caucus.”
... and neither do I. All presidential candidates have a right... and a responsibility... to discuss
publicly what they would do to end this awful war, even... especially... as the matter of funding
comes before Congress. Back before we had this "unitary Executive" nonsense, no one would have thought it
the least bit unusual. Indeed, it would have seemed downright... American... to hold this discussion in
public.
Why are the New York Times (and the Washington Post... see below) so in love with Mr. Bush's war?
The old desktop computer I spoke of a couple weeks ago came one step closer to failure tonight: the
DiskCheckup diagnostic tool finally reports an excess of read failures, as it did not report previously.
As with the previous instance of a problem, I first noticed it when Symantec A/V got "stuck" scanning
specific folders among some of the oldest archives I have on that computer. I never use those archives...
I used them to burn CD backups and kept them because I have disk space to, um, burn... and all my
daily-use software continues to work. But it is pretty obvious that the end is near, so I have no choice
but to replace the computer soon. It is the other workhorse for my business, along with this laptop.
At this point, I'm afraid to reboot the old computer; I believe the boot sectors are OK, but I'm not sure
if it will refuse to boot because of the S.M.A.R.T. errors (read: not-so-smart errors).
There should be no interruption in the blog: I've been blogging from this one-year-old laptop since the
first signs of a problem on the old desktop. But this weekend is liable to be chewed up by my attempt to
obtain, configure and install software on a suitable Windows XP Pro desktop computer. Don't be too
surprised if blogging is light. If you're bored in my absence (yeah, right), please read any of Terry
Pratchett's Discworld novels; I've been completely drawn in by Sourcery this week.
NOTE regarding an earlier post:
Nancy Pelosi
says the WaPo story about Democrats backing down is false. And I need to write on my dry-erase
board a hundred times: I will not believe the mainstream press without confirmation. I will not believe
the mainstream press without confirmation. I will not...
Sitting on the love seat on Stella's patio, a pillow on each of our laps, a cat on each pillow, the
pictures snapped awkwardly at arm's length. "With two cats in the yard; life used to be so hard...":
TABITHASAMANTHA
Samantha, who hates the orange focus assist beam more than most, stalked away soon after this was taken,
so there was no opportunity for a more level picture of her.
(Apologies to OWL of
It's Morning Somewhere
for borrowing the concept of her excellent blog name. It's not Friday here, but it's Friday somewhere,
and I may not be up until midnight here.)
UPDATE 2: please read
this.
Pelosi says the WaPo story is false.
UPDATE: Bryan of
Why Now,
in the comments, offers the following:
BS Alert - the WaPo may have jumped the gun on the article and reported as fact suppositions from aides.
Reid and Pelosi seem to indicate that nothing has been decided, and they both have enough conference time
to know better than to give anything away before you meet the other side.
I'll chase this down tomorrow morning; I don't have much left in me tonight.
President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with
Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring
troops home from Iraq.
Democrats backed off after the House failed, on a vote of 222 to 203, to override the president's veto of
a $124 billion measure that would have required U.S. forces to begin withdrawing as early as July. But
party leaders made it clear that the next bill will have to include language that influences war policy.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) outlined a second measure that would step up Iraqi
accountability, "transition" the U.S. military role and show "a reasonable way to end this war."
"We made our position clear. He made his position clear. Now it is time for us to try to work together,"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said after a White House meeting. "But make no mistake: Democrats are
committed to ending this war."
Bush said he is "confident that we can reach agreement," and he assigned three top aides to negotiate.
White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and budget
director Rob Portman will go to Capitol Hill today to sit down with leaders of both parties.
But a new dynamic also is at work, with some Republicans now saying that funding further military
operations in Iraq with no strings attached does not make practical or political sense. Rep. Bob Inglis
(S.C.), a conservative who opposed the first funding bill, said, "The hallway talk is very different from
the podium talk."
...
This is the solution I called "barely acceptable" in yesterday's
post
on Greg Sargent's interview with a congressional aide. At least it's not the "complete capitulation"
option, but whether it's the best Democrats could have gotten remains to be seen.
As the sainted Molly Ivins used to recast the old saying, God is in the details: what are the specific
benchmarks required of Iraq's government? and who decides whether they have been met?
It is not enough to have Bush certify to Congress that the benchmarks have been met; his credibility and
his reputation for being a man of his word both stand at zero at the moment. Some external bipartisan
mechanism must be put in place to verify that the benchmarks are met. Otherwise, Bush will certify
anything... anything at all... to keep the war going.
And thinking back to Bush's effectively running the U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq just before the
war (and then lying about having done so, saying that Saddam had run them out, a completely false
statement as a matter of simple fact), there must be a provision that if Bush tampers with the
benchmarking mechanism in any particular, either interfering with the determination of compliance or
attempting to fake compliance, the whole deal is off, and supplemental funding is withheld until troop
redeployment begins. One approach that could help with this is to build in frequent, small supplemental
appropriations, so that Bush can count on the full amount only if he complies with his own promises
regarding benchmarks.
I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said "trust but verify." I say we apply Saint Reagan's maxim to Mr.
Bush's benchmarking process.
An aside: I can't help noticing that King Bush declines to condescend to engage his own royal selves
directly in the negotiations. But hey, presidentin' is hard work, and we all know how he feels about hard
work. In contrast to Senate Majority Leader Reid's and House Speaker Pelosi's intensification of the
congressional schedule, Mr. Bush... along with the Iraqi parliament, I might add... continues to schedule
lots of time off. Maybe that's no bad thing in itself; maybe the nation is better off when Bush is on the
Crawford "ranch." But his failure to show up for these negotiations strikes me as an indication of
self-perceived royal privilege. No surprise there.
Greg Sargent
of TPM Cafe's ElectionCentral provides us one congressional aide's enumeration of the ideas being
discussed among congressional Democrats in the wake of Bush's veto of the supplemental funding bill with
a withdrawal start date of 10/1/2007. Of the options discussed... read 'em there; I'm not going to
paraphrase... one is just barely acceptable to me, and the other seems like complete capitulation to Bush
for no good reason. You'll know which is which.
Meanwhile, via
Fallenmonk,
we have
Russ Feingold's idea
of what Dems should do next, published on Huffington Post. Feingold offers sound thinking on the whole
matter, worth your time to read, but for those of you who are in a hurry, here's the essence:
I won't support a supplemental spending bill that doesn't have binding language to redeploy U.S. troops
from Iraq. ...
Precisely. As I said before: congressional Dems, hold fast!
US Senate Democrats fired a new shot Wednesday in the row over the firing of eight federal prosecutors, as
a key committee subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, compelled the top US law
official to hand over any e-mails regarding top White House aide Karl Rove's alleged role in the affair.
Gonzales, who has fought a lonely rearguard action to hang on to his job, has until May 15 to hand over
any data in the Justice Department's possession.
...
The White House has said that some e-mails related to the storm, over eight prosecutors Bush opponents
said were fired for political reasons, were mislaid.
...
No.
Randall Tobias
was "mislaid."
Paul Wolfowitz
was "mislaid." Emails are not mislaid. In any competent shop, it is very nearly impossible to delete
all copies, everywhere, of an email. The incompetency of the White House bosses aside, I find it
difficult to believe that the RNC servers are badly administered; when you have that kind of money, you
can hire the best sysadmins around. As we have discussed before, "the dog[gerel] ate my homework" just
won't cut it here.
If Gonzo is smart... and despite all his academic credentials, based on what I've seen in the past month,
I have my doubts... he will realize that whether or not he keeps his job, he is liable (and "liable" may
be the operative word here) to be in deep, deep trouble, sooner rather than later. Maybe it's worth it to
him to go to jail for Bush... but for Rove? Who, exactly, has the power of the pardon?
OK, Gonzo, Berto, Fredo, whatever your name is this week... it's time to cough up those emails. Now.
WASHINGTON, May 1 — President Bush vetoed the Iraq-war spending bill this evening, calling it a blueprint
for failure and defeat and intensifying a showdown with the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Mr. Bush said the bill was unacceptable because it set “a rigid and artificial deadline” for American
forces to withdraw from Iraq, in that it demands that they begin leaving by Oct. 1.
...
Oh, yeah. There's something rigid, all right, and we all know what it is. Bush gets hard just thinking
about forcing someone... anyone... everyone... to bend to his will, no matter the consequences.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney: you now own this war. You refused funding for... well, for what isn't exactly
clear, considering all the war supplementals already poured into the gaping maw of your cronies'
corporations with damned little to show for it, so let's just say for "your war" ... on terms the
American people were willing to tolerate, and you loudly rejected that funding like whiny children who did
not get exactly what they wanted.
Too damned bad. You should not be offered any other terms at all. Debate on the matter of
supplemental funding should cease right now. The matter should be at an end. You've made your bed.
You vetoed more than a supplemental funding bill. You vetoed more than a Democratic Congress. You vetoed
the manifest will of the American people as evidenced in the last election.
A huge number of Americans... Mr. Bush, ignore your own rule (as if that were anything new) and look at
the latest poll for the bad news... want America's participation in this war, which is ever more clearly
an Iraqi internal matter, to end as soon as is practical. You alone want to continue the war indefinitely,
or at least to the end of your ill-gotten presidency, for the sake of your imagined historical legacy.
Your legacy, Mr. Bush? What folly. Your legacy to history is secure: America bankrupted, America's once
superb military eviscerated, America's constitutional tradition of equal justice under law trashed like
yesterday's cat litter, America's youth dead in the streets of Baghdad fighting a war you started with a
lie, America's once sterling international reputation for tough but fair diplomacy replaced with a new
reputation as the biggest thugs in the neighborhood (but with a glass jaw), and Americans' own freedoms
and liberties bound and gagged by extralegal actions more characteristic of an Orwellian totalitarian
state than of the principles of our Founders. Oh yes, Mr. Bush, your legacy is secure.
So you send your buddy Veto over to open a can of whup-ass on us, the American people, the body politic
behind that Constitution you swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend. Now we know how seriously you
take your oaths, Mr. Bush. I wish you the worst fate I can think of: May history judge you fairly.
Can someone offer a satisfactory explanation of how we got from here...
... to here...
... in such a short time?
The first image depicts an event that apparently never happened, at least not as painted. The artist
used his artistic license (they issued those back then, you know) to conflate two events a few days
apart.
The second image regrettably did happen as depicted. The entire event was used to inflate one ego
beyond all reasonable bounds... at a cost to America that has yet to be fully determined.
Happy New MayDay, the International Day of the Wanker-in-Chief.
My web host's upstream network provider had routing problems for about a half hour. Apologies for any
inconvenience; if you're seeing this, the issue is resolved. These problems are not the fault of my
host, whose system was up the entire time; the problem was further "up" the internet than my host. I have
hopes that my host will change upstream providers, as these outages happen more frequently than I think is
acceptable. I do not intend to change hosts; my host itself has been on the whole quite reliable. If you
have trouble reaching the YDD in the future, you may want to try
for information about what is going on. For outages of more than a few minutes, especially during the
day and evening when I tend to be awake, I post info about the YDD outage on the Annex. If the outage is
extended, I use The YDD Annex as a temporary blog until the YDD comes back up. The YDD Annex is also my
hurricane home, for a variety of reasons.
On another ongoing topic, I have not purchased a new computer yet. After more than a week of phoning, I
was still unable to obtain an XP Pro computer from Micro Center. I grew tired of pursuing it; meanwhile,
the old computer continues to work, and the hard drive diagnostic finds no problems, despite the
mysterious bootup warning. Go figure.
My Ubuntu Linux distro CD has arrived, and I have turned my attention to finding a suitable older
computer on which to install it. When I try it out, I'll let you know what I think. I have much to learn,
but having no Linux jobs pending, I have plenty of time to learn it.
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page.
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Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least:
HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.
We didn't celebrate with cards in my family... Hallmark had to wait until later in my life to make money off
of me... but we did usually take Mom out to dinner. I think she appreciated that much more than any card
we could have given her.
