So, the murkins have decided on another four years led by the dangerous idiot. (That is, if this "election" was kosher - which it certainly wasn't everywhere but apparently mostly so.)

The int'l observers - when not barred from entering the polling stations - observed:

"The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system. "To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski..."

Apropos electronic voting, Andrew Tanenbaum has this to say on his electoral vote predictor website:

"One thing that is very strange is how much the exit polls differed from the final results, especially in Ohio. Remember that Ohio uses Diebold voting machines in many areas. These machines have no paper trail. Early in the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. He later regretted having said that."

Terrific.

The Propaganda Remix Project has lots and lots of brilliant reworks of old propaganda posters; they also sell stuff via cafeshops.

Very good but way too real for my mental comfort.

Found this hilarious picture on the blog of an aussie geek.

Received this email a few days ago:
click here for the rest of the story...

This counterscript (german only) is a pretty fun step-by-step guide for annoying telemarketers.

Item 1:

"Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes BlackBoxVoting.org reported a vulnerability in the Diebold GEMS central tabulator. A local authenticated user can enter a two-digit code in a certain "hidden" location to cause a second set of votes to be created on the system. This second set of votes can be modified by the local user and then read by the voting system as legitimate votes, the report said."

Cool debugging feature, but totally inappropriate in critical software like that. Anyway, Diebold is enjoying good business with various US states and that's all that matters...NOT!
Link to the Diebold story at BlackBoxVoting, Link to Lessig's blog

Item 2:

"Microsoft Patents The Obvious (Again) Looks like Microsoft has yet again patented plainly obvious technologies that have existed for years and years. No, I'm not talking about their patent of the sudo command. This time Microsoft has been granted a patent for nothing less than using your keyboard to navigate a web page!"

Well, the Oz patent office actually gave some fellow a patent on the wheel...quite recently.
Link to the full story

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. envoy to Iraq wants to shift $3.3 billion set aside for Iraqi water, sewer, power and other reconstruction projects to improve security, boost oil output and create jobs, a U.S. official said on Monday.
...
Among other things, Negroponte proposed spending about $1.8 billion now earmarked for water, sewage and electricity to expand the Iraqi police, border patrol and national guard and increase the number of border posts, he said."

so the money earmarked for real rebuilding goes into war mongering. and oil, how can one forget the oil? and it's all for "security" boom-tish! and if you're not for all this bullshit, then you're a terrorist and unamerican and an "insurgent" how doublethinkingly convenient for the U.S. bastards.
Link to the reuters article

The US of A is really a lousy place to be. This is a quote from the Civil Rights Act (ha!) of 1964 which spells out how discrimination is bad:

"DISCRIMINATION BECAUSE OF RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, SEX, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN SEC. 703. (a) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer
...
(f) As used in this title, the phrase "unlawful employment practice" shall not be deemed to include any action or measure taken by an employer, labor organization, joint labor-management committee, or employment agency with respect to an individual who is a member of the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization required to register as a Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final order of the Subversive Activities Control Board pursuant to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950."

So if you're a communist, you're unprotected rightless discriminable scum. Brilliant.

Greedy bastards at work, is all. How I hate all that crap.

"Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games."

"Staff will also be on the lookout for T-shirts, hats and bags displaying the unwelcome logos of non-sponsors. Stewards have been trained to detect people who may be wearing merchandise from the sponsors' rivals in the hope of catching the eyes of television audiences. Those arousing suspicion will be required to wear their T-shirts inside out."

Link to the long and disgusting story

...but our Prime garden gnome is happy
click here for the rest of the story...

Apparently there are some voices of sanity within the EU commission:

"...it seems that public opinion and political realities in the EU are such as not to support an extension in the term of protection. Some would even argue that the term should be reduced. At this stage, therefore, time does not appear to be ripe for a change, and developments in the market should be further monitored and studied."

Very positive. If only working documents like these dictated the actions of the commission...
Link to the article

"Here's the scenario we must be all be prepared for: If the pre-election internal tracking polls and public opinion polls show the Kerry-Edwards ticket leading in key battleground states, the Bush team will begin to implement their plan to announce an imminent terrorist alert for the West Coast for November 2 sometime during the mid afternoon Pacific Standard Time. At 2:00 PST, the polls in Kentucky and Indiana will be one hour from closing (5:00 PM EST - the polls close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6:00 PM EST). Exit polls in both states will be known to the Bush people by that time and if Kentucky (not likely Indiana) looks too close to call or leaning to Kerry-Edwards, the California plan will be implemented. A Bush problem in Kentucky at 6:00 PM EST would mean that problems could be expected in neighboring states and that plans to declare a state of emergency in California would begin in earnest at 3:00 PM PST."

A disturbing view of the upcoming US election by Wayne Madsen. Do you doubt it? I wouldn't.
Link to the article at cryptome

150 to 6 with 10 abstentions is the tally of the UN world court vote regarding the Israeli barrier. And, of course, the Aussie politicians followed the US lead closely enough to taste yesterday's lunch.

"We believe that taking this matter of the security barrier to the International Court of Justice was the wrong decision," Mr Downer said. "Israel must find ways of defending itself against terrorists and it isn't reasonable to tell the Israelis that they can't erect a security barrier to protect the people of Israel from suicide-homicide bombers."

Argh, this world sucks so badly it's not funny. If those despair.com posters weren't so pricey...
Link to the Sydney Morning Herald article
Link to the Reuters article

"...But the court found that because the e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM, of the defendant's computer system when he copied them, he did not intercept them while they were in transit over wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even though he copied the messages before the intended recipients read them."

Hey, great, so the DVD contents you fools want to keep me from copying is also fair game: it's in RAM while I play it, so it's mine now! Thanks for that ruling! HHOS

Link to the wired story

Now where have we seen these kinds of activitites mostly during the last 80 years? This reminds me mostly of the Nazi "Blockwart" sniffing nosy bastardism.

"The truckers, who haul hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to spot "Islamics" on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few of them are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark. "I'll be honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops. There's still a lot of animosity toward Islamics." Eddie Dean of Fort Smith, Ark., also has little doubt about his ability to identify Muslims: "You can tell where they're from. You can hear their accents. They're not real clean people." That kind of prejudice is hard to undo, but it's a shame Beatty's slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always Sikhs who wear turbans, not Muslims."

Now that's exactly the type of person I'd like to sniff around my affairs.

Link to the Time article

...then I don't know:

Bringing up a new, far-reaching law proposal, having no hearings on it at all for just under 3 months, then getting it passed by senate without a single debate: what's that? democracy? I don't think so.

The target? anybody using P2P sharing systems, not just copyright violators. The name? the PIRATE act. The benficiaries: the Content Cartel.

More on this

As mentioned in my other posting there's this absolutely insidious law proposal floating around. Ernest Miller haspublished a superb rebuttal.

Link to Ernest's rebuttal

19. Juni 2004 13:24
Kreidefresser
HelpDesk

Der Prozess steht auf des Messers Schneide,
Da frisst der gute Blepp gleich Kreide.
War da was mit Copyright?
Das war doch gar nicht bös gemeint!

Die GPL ist null und nichtig?
Na ja, so ist das nicht ganz richtig!
Man hat SCO bestohlen?
Da sprach man doch nur in Symbolen!

Die freie Welt, sie wird verteidigt?
Nein! McBride war nur beleidigt,
Als IBM nicht wollte kaufen,
Das war natürlich dumm gelaufen.

Und jetzt will man sich besinnen,
Um neue Kunden zu gewinnen,
Doch denk ich, daraus wird nichts werden,
Denn Darl sitzt auf den falschen Pferden!

Schlussbemerkung:
So soll es allen Geiern gehen,
Die nach Belieben Recht verdrehen,
Die auf fetten Ärschen hocken,
Wissen eins nur: abzuzocken.

Link zum heise newsticker

MS is sueing a brasilian government employee who's had the audacity to think that MS is a bunch of evil people, and gasp said so: he's being quoted as saying that MS follows a strategy of sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Well, I say so, too: MS shall roast in hell, they'll be the first against the...nevermind, forget the HHGTTG.

His simple quote is the basis of MS's lawsuit, and this stinks to high heaven. Ah well, I don't buy MS products anyway, and publicity nosedives like that one will make sure that less and less thinking people do.
Link to Lessig's discussion of the issue

A very interesting speech by Cory Doctorow, given at MS Research a couple of days ago. The boiled-down version:

"Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT"

Link to the article

Tomorrow, Senator Orrin Hatch (R - UT) will introduce one of the most blatant attempts at copyright maximalization ever attempted - the INDUCE Act.

Now this stinks so badly out of every possible orifice that I don't include anything more here. If you want something to puke, look at the discussion at Corante.

So verislime of recent sitefinder !fame are tasked with running the upcoming RFID register. Time to dig up those Ham-on-steroids plans...
News Link
RMS about zappers

Ha, userfriendly tools start to emerge: c't has plans for an RFID detector online which would cost about e15 to build, and the german FoeBuD is already presenting the betas of its blocker box.

Somewhere in the privacy news, a couple of days ago:

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed yesterday that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred from revealing even the existence of the case until now. The lawsuit was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said. The group was allowed to release a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the government. "It is remarkable that a gag provision in the Patriot Act kept the public in the dark about the mere fact that a constitutional challenge had been filed in court," Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, said in a statement. "President Bush can talk about extending the life of the Patriot Act, but the ACLU is still gagged from discussing details of our challenge to it."

Disgusting.
Link to the news article

Y-que sells t-shirts. Almost-PC t-shirts. Nasty Y-que, bad dog! Cower! Squirm! That's it, good boy...says Big Brother G.

"The following merchandise found on your website constitutes a list of items that must be removed from your site, ads and keywords in order to continue advertising with Google AdWords:

Link to the y-que shop
the whole story
boingboing's coverage

the upcoming broadcast flag treaty is being discussed; the future looks even worse than usual. those greedy fascists behind the WIPO.
Here's Ed Felten on the insidious thing, and Ed Miller's very good coverage of the poison pills therein.

...Fourtou mit dem Vorstandsvorsitzenden von Vivendi-Universal verheiratet ist, einem der grössten Nutzniesser dieser Richtlinie. Hier wird ein grosses Demokratie-Defizit offensichtlich, das Assoziationen an einen Bananen-Staat weckt.", so Markus Beckedahl für das Netzwerk Neue Medien.

Aber jetzt wander' ich aus! manisches gelächter
Link zur quintessenz depesche

So an Austrian police man called a black person 'Scheiß Neger', the rough Austrian equivalent of 'fucking nigger'. And the state court ruled that this wasn't against human dignity.

Now the federal supreme court overturned that decision. This epithet is in fact against human dignity and racist. So far, so good (FSVO good).

However that court ruling does not have any effect for the police bastard in question. Brilliant. Austria shows the world again how banana republics work.
Link to the newspaper article

Now I'm very unhappy with ICANN's way of (not) doing things, but this is so disgustingly Bad that I've got to be on their side (for a little while at least): Verislime, the guys who can't even check the identifies of customers they're signing for now sue ICANN over their SiteFinder "service". Stupidity and greed are indeed boundless.

Mr. Moore seems to be one of the way-too-few murkins with a bit of common sense, a backbone and a loud voice.

I liked his Letter to George W. Bush on the Eve of War.

Regarding the year-long incarceration of 13 and 14 year olds by our friends, the murkins, this official comment:

"Age is not a determining factor in detention. We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us."

Assholes.
Link to BBC story