Dawn in a Cold Southern Sky

Twilight breaks the eastern sky
With reddish orange hues to the eye

Pushing back the darkness of night
Are the forces of morning light

No other daybreak can compare
To those in the frozen Florida air

        by Guillermo Zorro del Desierto y Juez de las Iglesias (Memo Juez)

I am not ignoring this blog.

New posts by me can be found on the interwebs:

Korn and Kontrust posts for the iPod series at Teatro Triste del Clown.

A new recipe at I'm Hungry.

And some new to me Franco-Celtic Bluegrass is featured at Musicality.

Big Brother Has Extended his Reach North

The_AV8R recently posted on /. an article entitled In Canada, No Expectation of Privacy On the Net. It brings back memories of the US Government illegally wire-tapping phones in the name of Combating Terrorism They passed laws to legalize it and making it retroactive by granting immunity to the telephone carriers by granting them immunity for obvious Constitutional Infringements.

It seems obvious Canada learned the lesson demonstrated in her Southern neighbour and decided to attempt to remove court oversight on police investigations tracing IP addresses back to a name, number and address. This is being introduce through the Ministry of Public Safety. It also proves that like the US, the Canadian Government has no clue about technology and the ease of IP Spoofing used by true Cyber-Criminals.

X Frontwoman Exene Cervenka Has Multiple Sclerosis - Spinner

X Frontwoman Exene Cervenka Has Multiple Sclerosis - Spinner

The Problem With Music

The Problem With Music: "50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children-- without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite"

A New Direction

Dirty Harry comes clean | Interviews | guardian.co.uk Film

Dirty Harry comes clean | Interviews | guardian.co.uk Film: "'I don't pay attention to either side,' he claims. 'I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they'll misuse it on ya.'"

Great Clint Eastwood quote!

+5 Comment

I am going to regret trumpeting my own horn, but I got my first +5 comment on /.

Read my award winning comment on $50 to Get XP On a New Dell. Or you can RTFP to see it in context.

NYC Man Sues JetBlue, Says Pilot Made Him sit on Toilet Seat for Most of Flight

NYC Man Sues JetBlue, Says Pilot Made Him sit on Toilet Seat for Most of Flight

Appendix:U.S. Navy slang - Wiktionary

Gotta love Naval Slang!!

Appendix:U.S. Navy slang - Wiktionary: "Sierra Hotel: Phonetic letters for SH, which stands for 'Shit Hot.' Refers to anything impressive or greatly exceeding what is required. Can also refer to the phrase 'Shit Happens'."

Stay the Course to Protect Freedom and Liberty

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal (Fair) Use

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use - washingtonpost.com: "The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are 'unauthorized copies' of copyrighted recordings."

This statement is completely contrary to all proceeding rulings that Fair Use included making copies of Music that you legally purchased for personal use or to share with your friends.

As of today, I will no longer purchase any and all music from any and all RIAA affiliated label and/or media company. I will be writing to all my favorite artists telling them good bye.

States to Track Drivers Through Licenses

States to Track Drivers Through Licenses: "States to Track Drivers Through Licenses
A federal program promotes driving license technology that allows the tracking of motorists even when they are not driving.

Electronic monitoring of motorists will soon expand dramatically as states including Arizona, Michigan, Vermont and Washington begin to use radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in drivers' licenses. These electronic chips broadcast the identity of any card holder to any chip-reading sensor within a minimum of thirty feet. The US Department of Homeland Security is promoting the tracking projects as part of its Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative."

The National ID initiative continues to prove the "Conspiracy Theorists" and Libertarians correct. This latest DHS implementation is one more step towards Big Brother.

Blogger Forces NASA to Tweak Climate Data [FOX News]

In a little reported event outside of scientific communities was made public by the Fox News Channel in an on air and online report entitled Blogger Forces NASA to Tweak Climate Data.

From the Article:

A NASA research department has admitted that the calculations it used to show an increase in U.S. temperatures were flawed, after a campaign by an amateur meteorologist using his blog.

Climatologists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have been forced to revise estimates after research by Stephen MacIntyre, who published his findings on his Climate Audit blog.

As a result of his calculations, which he e-mailed to NASA, scientists at the agency now say that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year in the United States since records began to be kept in 1880.

It's a shame when data is purposefully skewed to reflect agenda instead of Scientific Truth.

I have submitted this story to /.

Ron Paul

House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Ron Paul was one of the only two congressmen to vote against Big Brother.

House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com: "The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including 'obscene' cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.

"That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection."

Patriots or vigilantes? Florida's Minutemen on lookout for illegals -- OrlandoSentinel.com

Maryland To Tax Computer Support Services -- Tax -- InformationWeek

It seems the once "Free State" is unhappy about no longer being the State with Highest Taxes per capita in the Union. So to found yet their latest and greatest "Government Knows Best" initiatives the have decided to not only increase their Sales Tax from 5% to 6%; but also to apply to any and all IT/Computer Services including the coast of writing customized software.

When other States are courting the high paying IT industries to their State, Maryland has decided to tax it out of theirs.

Maryland To Tax Computer Support Services -- Tax -- InformationWeek: "The measure increases sales tax by 1% and adds computer support services, data center support, custom programming, consulting, and disaster recovery services to the list. Legislators approved the change as part of a tax package they passed early Monday morning."

Stupid stuff ,,,,

Warner Music Group: We were wrong to go to war with consumers

I have a hard time buying that a big multimedia conglomerate and RIAA member in good standing would inadvertently wage war on consumers.

This statement that all but resembles an apology is just the latest tactic by the greedy to lull the consumer into a false sense security.

MacUser: News: UPDATED: Music boss: we were wrong to go to war with consumers: "We used to fool ourselves," he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

Union Members becoming Fat and Lazy?

If I owned a Construction firm, I would offer the Union workers a meager $8/hour since their Union seems to feel that it is a good enough wage to outsource picketing my firm.

NPR : Union Outsources Picket Lines to the Homeless: Gary Chaison, who teaches industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said renting pickets sends a bad message.

"It's essentially saying that our own members don't have the time, the inclination — or the spirit — to walk picket lines and protect their jobs,' Chaison said. And if actual carpenters don't care enough about companies paying lower wages, Chaison said, why should anyone else?

"I'm trying to imagine what the civil rights movement would have been like if, in fact, they had hired demonstrators to walk down South," Chaison said.

Blog Action Day: Two Environmentalists Anger Their Brethren

This year's Blog Action Day is The Environment

I've longed maligned the Environmental Special interest groups as bunch of tree hugging wackos that are looking more for headline grabbing notoriety than actually addressing any REAL environmental concerns.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger: Two Environmentalists Anger Their Brethren:

Even if every American SUV owner were to buy a hybrid tomorrow, that wouldn't come close to offsetting the environmental damage being perpetrated around the globe. In fact, all the standards, cap-and-trade limits, and emission reductions that environmentalists have been pushing for may slow, but will never reverse, global warming.

And that is Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's inconvenient truth.

"There is simply no way we can achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions," they write in their introduction, "without creating breakthrough technologies that do not pollute."

Environmentalists, therefore, have missed a huge opportunity. Rather than being leaders in solving the global climate crisis, they are content to be doomsayers and scolds.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger first aligned themselves with like minded special interest groups to encourage a serious deep pocket investment of funds in developing alternative fuels. They quickly learned that these other groups had more important agendas.

"Labor groups were interested in protecting existing jobs in the US rather than creating jobs in the new-energy economy," Shellenberger says. "Environmental groups were more concerned with regulatory limits on greenhouse gases and raising fuel-economy standards." They had tried to be strategic by forming a coalition of interest groups, but interest groups were, in fact, the problem.

It is painfully obviously that as long as policy was shaped by special interests — including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club — there would be no policy other than short-term, narrowly focused fixes.

Immigration Raids Lead To Farm Labor Shortage - Bakersfield News Story - KERO Bakersfield

Immigration Raids Lead To Farm Labor Shortage - Bakersfield News Story - KERO Bakersfield: "BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- While harvest season is getting under way for some crops, fewer undocumented farm workers are on the job, fearful of immigration raids and deportation."

For those of you who think that it's a ruse for exploitation of immigrants. They really are filling a void.

WMFE Public Broadcasting Stations : Audio Reading Service

I drove to Orlando today and this is what I did from 12 noon to 2PM.


WMFE Public Broadcasting Stations : Audio Reading Service: "The WMFE Audio Reading Service (ARS) is a valuable community service that provides news and information from local newspapers to the visually-impaired and print-disabled of the Central Florida region."

With fall nearing, beer lovers celebrate brewing - CNN.com

With fall nearing, beer lovers celebrate brewing - CNN.com: "Finding The Best Brews If brewing your own is a little too much work, but you want to expand your beer horizons, look for recommendations at beeradvocate.com and ratebeer.com, which rank the best beers in the world. Both of these sites are dedicated to all things beer and feature lively online communities of beer aficionados from the world over. "