Sorry about the outage folks. We outgrew our old server and needed to move to a bigger, faster server.
TSA Tripped Up By Technology
We all can agree that the TSA agents tend to be operating at just above your average McDonald’s employee. (Perhaps this is part of why the Jihadists hate us – their inability to get past such simpletons) If not here’s some more proof: TSA didn’t believe the MacBook Air was a laptop (and therefore must be a bomb). Really though, if you’re going to make a laptop bomb wouldn’t you go for the 12lb gaming rig instead of the super thin 3lb MBA? Perhaps this terrorist was saving the rest of the C4 for later?
I am equally amused at the whole “turn on your laptop to prove its not a bomb” theory. As the MacBook Air proves, you can fit a fully functional lappy into a small space. Put the MBA innards into a Dell 17 inch “desktop replacement” and you have room for a 10+ lb of plastique! Hello TSA! Am I the only one that sees this stuff?
I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. “There’s no drive,” one says. “And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,” she continues.
A younger agent, joins the crew. I must now be occupying ten, perhaps twenty, percent of the security force. At this checkpoint anyway. There are three score more at the other five checkpoints. The new arrival looks at the printouts from x-ray, looks at my laptop sitting small and alone. He tells the others that it is a real laptop, not a “device”. That it has a solid-state drive instead of a hard disc. They don’t know what he means. He tries again, “Instead of a spinning disc, it keeps everything in flash memory.” Still no good. “Like the memory card in a digital camera.” He points to the x-ray, “Here. That’s what it uses instead of a hard drive.”
The senior agent hasn’t been trained for technological change. New products on the market? They haven’t been TSA approved. Probably shouldn’t be permitted. He requires me to open the “device” and run a program. I do, and despite his inclination, the lead agent decides to release me and my troublesome laptop. My flight is long gone now, so I head for the service center to get rebooked. – michaelnygard.com
What makes this worse is that the MBA is that new. It launched nationwide six weeks ago – this wasn’t some pre-production prototype. If you’ve been to a mall of any significance since then, you’d have seen it on a spinning, glowing pedestal a la the Apple store window. Perhaps we need to let the agents get out a bit, or perhaps we should raise our standards a tad.
Super Tuesday 2: The Divination
Well Super Tuesday II has come and gone with not quite the fan fare of the first. Most predictions held with Hillary pulling out two vital wins in Texas and Ohio, but the real story is slightly below the surface of the the win column.
#1 McCain is still struggling to convince Republican voters that he’s their man. Take a look at how Huckabee faired in the big states: 30% in Ohio and almost 40% in Texas. That does bode well for the candidate that “locked up” the nomination weeks ago. While McCain may be gaining the independents he seems to be losing the at least a third of his base. And without his base its unlikely that he will have enough votes to unseat either Dem. Think it’s just Huckabee’s charm? Look closer. Romni, Thompson and Giuliani all pulled statistically significant numbers (>1%), some as high as 4%. These candidates are not only out of the race but all have endorsed McCain. Which would mean that McCain’s negatives are high enough to only pale in comparison to Hillary’s.
#2 The Primary structure is messed up. The Dem side is worse but both sides are bad. Can someone explain to me the significance of Ohio? Don’t get me wrong it’s a great normal state, but WHY does everyone care about it? Or more accurately, why does it get a disproportional number of delegates? Let’s look at the numbers: Texas population: 22.8M delegates: 39 dems, 69 repubs. Ohio population: 11.4M delegates: 128 dems, 79 repubs. (Tennessee population: 6M delegates: 66 dems, 46 repubs.) Didn’t we outlaw the concept that some people’s votes only count 2/3 or 3/4 of others? -shrug-
Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day
In response the the Georgia Legislature believing it prudent to move Georgia’s northern border into Tennessee, the Mayor of Chattanooga issued the following proclamation:
PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and
WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and
WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and
WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and
WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and
Whereas, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,
NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that
I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as
“Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day” (Chattanoogan.com)
This country would be better off if we had a few more leaders with the balls to call out political tomfoolery with the right amount of sarcasm.
1st Sign Of The Apocalypse?
In a move this is bound to have many a wild-eyed programmer choking on his energy drink, Microsoft has announced an official nod to open source. While they will not be taking the plunge themselves, they promise no to sue open source programmers working with MS products (among other things). The move is not a total shift to the open model it is a significant step to at least play nice with OS projects. Here’s the meat of the press release:
As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.
Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol.
Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license. – microsoft.com