Day: January 5, 2006

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Warp Speed! (0pen Post)

Open Trackback Alliance

(Yeh, this is Friday’s Open Trackback Alliance post, slapped up Thursday night.)

Is interstellar travel on the horizon?

Maybe. And if so, it may be at “warp speed”.

The Department of Energy and the Air Force are funding research into a magnetic bottle/gravitational field drive that would in effect be the “hyperspace drive” of science fiction. But unlike most of the science fiction “hyperspace” drives, this one’s envisioned as being usable within the solar system, as well.

Man. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to vacation on Mars?

Yeh, yeh: I know they’re still working on building the tools to make the test beds to test the theory. But at least it’s a Step Farther Out.

h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor

Oh, also: Open Post. If you don’t know how to link to this post and trackback, drop me a note in comments.

Open Trackback Alliance

Dilithium crystals excited at Bloggin’ Outloud (where PUNishment is meted out unmercifully) and Stuck on Stupid (dig the new, uh… digs).

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Official Microsoft WMF Patch Now Available

Microsoft has now made an official patch available for the WMF vulnerability for all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 forward. See the notice at Microsoft’s site here, and select the proper patch for your system.

Official Microsoft WMF Patch Now Available

(Click the link, then look for “Security Update for the Windows Meta File Vulnerability Available”. OR just visit Windows Update. A direct download is more certain, though, with high-demand updates.)

OR

CLICK HERE

…if you want to go directly to the page with all the patches listed by Windows version.

Three ways to update, so you’ve no excuse.

🙂

Oh, and if you have previously applied Ilfak Guilfanov’s patch, uninstall it through Control panel before applying Microsoft’s patch.

PSA-pinned to Ferdy’s Bulletin Board at Conservative Cat

Update: All the security/OS wonks I usually listen to kept saying AV only a very few companies had some partial protection against WMF exploits. I just checked Grisoft’s website (remember: I’m concerned about computer security and have never suffered an infection by malware, probably because I practice semi-paranoid computing, BUT I am a tightwad, too. :-). All Grisoft’s products (including the Free Version of AVG) have offered at least this much protection against the WMF exploit since December 29–pretty quick response:

Exploit.WMF

These files exploits WMF vulnerability in Windows Operating Systems that allows malware code execution while WMF format file is opening. Unfortunately security patch for this vulnerability is not available at this time. AVG detects these files as Exploit.WMF and also as Trojan horse Downloader.Agent.

Not exceptionably bad. In fact, not half bad. Even unpatched systems can have such files noted for deletion or removal to a “vault” on normal daily scans (your AV software is set for daily scans as well as scans of all downloads, automatically, right? Right? 🙂

But. What about a visit to a web page with an exploit-embedded graphic? Better patch those systems, folks, even if your AV does offer some protection.

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Simple Rice Delight

I’ve not submitted anything to the Carnival of Recipes for a while, so I thought I’d ease back in with a really simple, simply delightful dish.

Growing up, I always knew if Mother made rice for a Sunday Dinner, we could expect one of my favorite desserts. Here’s how I make it today. Note again that I’m back to a “no amounts given” recipe. Vary at Will. (He won’t mind.)

Ingredients/process:

Rice, white or brown, doesn’t matter, as long as it is well-cooked and warm. Put some in a bowl. You choose the amount. Add grated nutmeg, butter or margarine, sugar and milk. Eat.

Simply delightful!

My only real variation is that I no longer use pre-ground nutmeg, if at all possible. Buy the nuts. Grate them with a fine-meshed hand grater. You can use a coffee mill to “grate” the nutmeg, but it’s easier to control amounts and avoid a “burned” flavor if you grate it by hand. Do stir the nutmet/sugar/butter well into the rice (letting the butter melt) before adding milk.

My last bowl of this came from a pot of rice that had been used for dinner, but still had some rice stuck to the bottom and sides. A few minutes’ soak with warm water and the rice–about a cupsworth–was free of the pan, and this tightwad was NOT going to throw it out when a zap in the microwave would turn it into Simple Rice Delight!

heh

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“If you k new Wiki like I know Wiki…”

“Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems”

You may have noticed that I sometimes link to Wikipedia articles. What you will not have noticed is that I only link to those Wikis that I have first read and verified to contain at least some accurate and useful material, and always the material that’s germane to the reason I link them. I’ve felt that in context, that usually works.

But along the way, I have read a LOT of Wikipedia articles that are pure balderdash.

Click the link above to read a very brief article on the weaknesses of Wikipedia, and an admission of one of its founding lights.

Be careful out there. While a Wikipedia article may have useful information, there is usually more reliable information to be found elsewhere. And there is always more complete info to be found outside either a Wikipedia article or the more traditional dead tree encyclopedia. More information is a Very Good Thing when attempting to resolve conflicting views on any topic. Dig in. letting yourself be spoonfed info is a poor way to develop a world view.

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ACLU: Shooting themselves in the foot

Stopping by to check my mail, I found this, and try as I might to NOT comment, well, if you know me by now, you know I had to at least touch on it anyway…

ACLU’s Full Page Propaganda In NY Times Part II

My take? Investigate away!

By carefully and wittingly conflating classes of behaviors in some cases and making false distinctions in others, the ACLU and its ilk seek to tar this president with the “spying on Americans” brush.

it won’t fly with most Americans. While many American’s brushed away the Clintoon perjury with “It’s just about sex,” it’s more difficult to brush this issue away with “It’s just about life and death–maybe mine!”

While the Clintoonistas get a bye for more serious and flagrant beavior spying DIRECTLY on Americans for economic and political reasons, quite outside the parameters of any legal authority, Bush is excoriated for exercising his Constitutional responsibilities by intercepting and surveilling communications with foreign agents KNOWN to be enemies of the U.S.

That’s not “spying on Americans”. It’s spying on terrorists’ communications, whomever they may be.

And that legitimately scares the bejazus outa the ACLU, especially since it has regularly engaged in active support of terrorists and may well be in a few terrorists’ rollodexes…

Note: what follows is a WAG (Wild-Assed Guess), pure speculation.

Frankly, I wonder (note again: COMPLETE SPECULATION in absence of any facts to date) if the ACLU’s lawyers aren’t worried that some of THEIR treasonous contacts (again, speculation) with terrorists may not have been monitored.

As I plainly said, I have NO WAY of knowing if this speculation has ANY basis in fact, but you know what they say about a stuck pig…

END WAG.

Now, a reasonable person might reasonably infer that the ACLU has lost its collective mind and has entered totally into the reality-based fantasyland inhabited by the denizens of Demoncrappic Underpants and the like And that such behavior will not endear it to millions of Americans who want the Islamofascist S.O.B.s who are intent on killing Americans dead, dead, dead.

It might also be reasonable to think that the ACLU may well fall prey to the Law of Unintended Consequences in ways it least expects…

I’m just waiting for the ACLU to shoot itself in the foot often enough that institutional gangrene sets in. Let’s see, by its actions, the ACLU has already said, “We want pedophiles free to promote having sex with your sons,” “We want you religious people to STFU!” and now, “We want to use the legal system to assure that terrorists bastards are free to make their plans to kill you.”

Expanded from a comment at STACLU.

[Edited a couple of the typos. Not going to look for the rest, though I’m sure they’re there.]

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STACLU: ACLU Founders #1 Crosspost

For the next few weeks, I am surrendering the space normally devoted to Thursday Stop the ACLU posts to crossposts from the Stop the ACLU site. This is from Gribbit:

We at the Stop The ACLU blog and BlogBurst have been founded with the goal of bringing public awareness of the Anti-American activities of the American Civil Liberties Union. The fact is, the only thing about the ACLU that is American is the first word in the title of their organization. And this has been true since their founding.

We have been focused on the two prominent co-founders Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman; but the truth is that there were 7 others. People like Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow just to name a couple. But the most notorious of the founding “fathers” of the American Civil Liberals Union (no I didn’t spell that wrong) was Elizabeth “Gurley” Flynn.

Ms. Flynn was the co-founder who ended up being the National Chairman of the Communist Party in the US. A devout Communist who made several trips to the Soviet Union after the denunciation of Communism by Roger Baldwin in 1940. A move which had motives other than those publicized.

The public appearance of the denunciation was to give the illusion of distancing active members of the Communist party from the ACLU. When in fact it was a statement meant to be felt by Josef Stalin. Stalin enjoyed the support of people like Baldwin in the United States before the outbreak of war in Europe. Baldwin and Eastman being the strict pacifists that they were, had a total opposition to the Soviet Union entering the war. But they also saw the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty as a crime against the good Soviet people. So Flynn expulsion from the Executive Committee was a farce.

Flynn was indoctrinated into the Socialist mindset by her parents. At the age of 16 she gave her first speech on socialism entitled “What Socialism Will Do For Women.” A speech which subsequently got her expelled from high school.

At the age of 17 Flynn became an organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW) and her career as a full time Socialist began. In 1920 she joined forces with Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, and John Dewey to form what we now know as the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1936, Flynn joined the Communist Party in the United States. She wrote a feminist column for the Communist propaganda sheet the Daily Worker. Two years later, she was elected to the National Committee.

During World War II, Flynn worked tirelessly to get equal pay for women and establish day care centers for working mothers. Efforts which we here at Stop The ACLU applaud. Because contrary to the popular leftist belief, we here have strong feelings about the true equality of men and women of all races, creeds, and religions.

In 1942, she ran for Congress At-Large in New York and received only 50,000 votes.

After the war in 1948, 12 members of the Communist Party were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government by use of violence. Flynn attempted to gain their release but in 1951 she was arrested in a “second wave” of arrests and charged with violation of the Alien Registration Act and sentenced to 5 years at Alderson Women’s Penitentiary.

During her sentence she wrote a book entitled The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (1955).

Soon after her release from prison in 1961, Flynn was elected National Chairman of the Communist Party in the USA. She made several trips to the Soviet Union where in 1964 during a visit she died. She was given a State Funeral in Red Square then returned to be buried with her subversive friends Eugene Dennis, Bill Haywood and the Haymarket Martyrs.

These are they types of people that we are dealing with. This is the type of beginning that the ACLU was given. This is why they have been focused on ending American traditions and changing the structure of our government as founded in 1789.

Reference

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 115 blogs already on-board.

Appendix: Note, if you will, that although the genesis of an organization does not always idicate contemporary views and behaviors (witness the Democratic Party which no longer has any ties to the classic liberal values of free speech, equality under the law and “one man, one vote” typical of the founding principles of American liberalism), in the case of the ACLU, the only evolution of its views away from its founders’ has been to “go underground” and deny the rationale behind its actions. But holding a smoking gun while proclaiming, “I did not take another potshot at the Constitution” belies its disingenuity…