What... "executive privilege" might be LIMITED?

Talk about Christmas in July... we've got our first court ruling that the current administration's blanket claims of executive privilege (and, thereby, their ability to ignore congressional subpoenas) don't fly (link). Of course, there's appeals to go through (and you know they'll be drug out as long as possible), but it's a good start.

The only constant is change

Think back to the heady days of the mid-to-late '90s... the tech bubble was pretty much in full swing, and everybody was trying to sell you a computer. Along with Dell, still a major player in direct-to-customer sales, there was Gateway, which fought as hard as any of them for a share of the emerging consumer market (including TV ads, which weren't cheap even then, and Gateway-branded stores).

Now? Gateway has decided that their future lies not in custom-built computers, but in mass-produced gear for resale at Best Buy and the like (link). It's a bit sad, and it will be interesting to see how long they stick around hereafter.

Oh, and for today's schadenfreude, Alaska senator Ted Stevens (of "bridge to nowhere" fame) just got indicted (link), apparently for failing to report kickbacks from energy companies on his Senate financial disclosures. Normally, I would be a bit more reserved, as there are likely plenty of ways for him to wiggle free... but he's up for re-election this year, and, while people's memories are short, they're not that short, especially when his opponent will almost certainly remind voters repeatedly and enthusiastically.

FCC vs. Comcast - let the spankings begin!

This is something I would normally wait for the fireworks to finish off before commenting too much... but now it's personal. The FCC has long declared that Internet service providers (ISPs) should not interfere with their customers' access to the Internet (something that, for most end-users, would fall under the category of DUH)... with the exception that they're allowed to exercise "reasonable network management" practices (gotta love vagueness, don't ya?). Of course, this "network neutrality" concept is something that concerned techies tried to get enshrined in law a year or so back, but the major ISPs opposed it, saying it was unnecessary, no problems had occurred to date, yadda yadda... and, having the campaign contributions, they won.

So, Comcast decides that "reasonable network management" involves more than monitoring and capping individual users' use of the Internet, and moves on to interfering with the normal operation of services that many customers never use, so most web-and-email users won't know or care, things like BitTorrent. Unfortunately for them, while doing so, they steadfastly maintain that they don't do anything like that, or, if they do, they only do so during peak traffic times. Independent research by the likes of the Associated Press shows otherwise. Here's a link to a more detailed FAQ.

Amazingly (to me at least... not much faith in government, as I've said before), the FCC may have finally decided that enough's enough. Friday, they vote on punishing Comcast for violating the FCC's network neutrality principle... with Comcast already making noises about how, since there's no specific law about network neutrality, they can't be punished, and the FCC claiming jurisdiction under their existing powers. Here's a link to the latest.

Frankly, I hope that Comcast gets hammered hard and forced, at a minimum, to reveal the extent of their "reasonable network management"... you see, like I said, it's personal now. I use a program called "secure shell" that I use to talk to the servers at work from home, and vice-versa. One thing I use this for is to transfer backups off-site in case of fire or what have you (yes, there are better ways, but it's a shoestring operation I work for, and my home security meets or exceeds what's available at work). I do so in a reasonable, responsible way... there's only one "large" file I have to deal with, which I schedule for early Sunday morning to minimize interference with anybody else, even though the maximum throughput is well less than what my home connection could take. Normally, the transfer finishes up before noon on Sunday... it's still trying to go through as I write this. Further, the size of the file on my home machine hasn't changed since yesterday afternoon, meaning that my server keeps trying to continue the transfer, only to be interrupted by some mysterious condition in between my home computers and the servers... what do you suppose that could be?

At any rate, Friday's the day the fun should begin, as that's when the FCC vote is scheduled to occur. Stay tuned for chuckles, howls of rage, or the like.

Toons Incoming!

I've got a brother who's a "collector" of DVDs. He monitors various websites and catalogs, keeping informed of discs of interest coming down the pipeline weeks, if not months, ahead of their release. I don't share his sickness (my sickness lies elsewhere... :)), so the rare DVD that I'm willing to pony up for at release generally comes as a pleasant surprise to me.

So, for the rest of you in my boat, be aware that Vol. 4 of Animaniacs on DVD has been postponed... but that was to allow for this coming Tuesday's release of the first of Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid! Oddly, neither warranted inclusion in the Sunday ads for either Best Buy or Circuit City, so you might have to dig for them a bit to find them. Myself, if they're not handy next time I'm at Best Buy, I'll put in an order through Amazon.com.

Huckleberries are comin'...

...in fact, I stopped by a farmer's market earlier in the week, where "fresh" huckleberries were available... for $38/gal. A bit rich for my blood... here's hoping that's just a fluke price for early berries.

U.S. Government and Media... Please Make It Stop

Before I get to raving and moaning and such, let me just say that Fark.com is a great thing. It's where I got all the links for this post, and is, in my humble opinion, worth checking out.

Those of you that know me personally probably know that I hold the mass of humanity in pretty low esteem. Occasionally, I hold out hope for select individuals, but, time and time again, I've been shown that people are self- and team-centered to the point of actively damaging society as a whole... and it only gets worse the higher up the ranks you go. Here's a few examples... and these are just from TODAY's news.

• At the federal level, for the Republicans, comes news that the current administration's EPA wanted to find a way to define CO₂ emissions differently for automobiles and industry, to give a break to power plant operators (link)
• At the state level, for the Democrats, New York AG Cuomo's going further in his censorship crusade, attempting to strongarm Comcast into implementing his restrictions on Usenet, something I brought up earlier (link)
• Of course, you can hope that such issues will get brought up by broadcast media, informing the masses that government is That Messed Up... except, they're too busy editing out factual mis-statements by candidates to be bothered (link)

Now, the sad thing is that, with not that much effort, I could have found something suitable for any of those bullets for either "major" political party and most broadcast or cable news providers (and likely more than a few print providers, too). What pains me is that all of the above have principles that they should be aspiring to, as the "best" of us (that's how they got where they are, right?), yet they seem inclined to cast aside those principles if doing so will help themselves or their teammates out, or keeping to those principles would make life difficult.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot I can do about the media... being privately-owned, I have no influence other than to turn my back on them and deny them their advertising revenue, and that only goes so far. The politicians, at least those in my chain-of-government, I could, theoretically, vote out... but, while I am an Independent, I do have bare-minimum standards I stick to... namely, any candidate has to sound sane, something most third-party candidates just can't pull off reliably.

From what I can see, we're all headed for a Fall... anybody care to tell me otherwise?

Forgotten Blogs

I stayed away from blogging for a long, long time... not because I didn't have anything to share (and some may still debate that... :)), but because I feared that I wouldn't have enough to share on a regular basis, so my readership would spiral down to, well, just me... and that sort of digital masturbation just isn't something that appeals to me. That's why, when I started up this blog, I made a rule for myself that I would update it at least once a week, hopefully with something entertaining/useful... or else I would shut it down and be done with it. Well, it was a slow week, leaving me hungry for something to put forth... when I came across a mention of an old-time blogger that I hadn't read anything about in a long, long time.

Just for fun, I went and looked up the last place I saw him (link here)... and it's still there... with the last post he put up... back in 2005. Now, there are reasons for such things happening (people dying or discovering their inner Amish, for instance), but this is an odd case. You see, much like myself, he has a "XFire" tracker on his site, which shows that he's still active online (nearly 40 hours of World of Warcraft in the past week, nearly 2300(!) hours tracked total). Also, the site's a dedicated domain, implying that he's paid money for a place to host his views... and hasn't put it to use for years. Unless he paid a bunch up front, he's even decided to shell out more cash to keep it around (not a lot, but still...).

Obviously, I'm confused... do people "grow out of" their desire to blog? Do "popular" bloggers (the ones that get comments routinely from people they don't know personally) succumb to the negative feedback they receive? What compels someone to keep something around for years, when they obviously have no time/interest for it now or in the near future?

New Wii toys in the pipeline

On the off chance you didn't hear elsewhere, Nintendo's gearing up for more widgets to add to your Wii. Here's a link describing a new plugin for your Wiimote to improve its accuracy for certain games... there's also a microphone (think speakerphone, not headset) coming to support chat in certain games. Oh, and of course, new game announcements are coming out of E3 as well. Sniff around the site in that link I gave you, and you might find something to obsess over for a few months... :)

A Mass of Movies... two and a half quick reviews

It's not normal I see multiple things worth posting about in quick succession, but this is one such time.

First, the review-and-a-half. I meant to see Grindhouse when it hit the theaters, but I never got around to it. Just as well... Death Proof, one half of the set, was one of those rare films that I couldn't force myself to sit all the way through due to its badness. Terrible dialogue between shallow characters going on interminably to start a film does that to me.

If I had hit Grindhouse in the theater, I might therefore have missed Planet Terror, which is a fun, campy sort of film. It comes at you as only good "bad" films can, starting out doing its best to take itself seriously despite the "apocalyptic plague" storyline... but gets more and more silly as it looks to one-up the last scenes. In particular, "hero leading the convoy on a pocket cycle" and "gun-leg girl rocket-jumping over a wall" had me laughing out loud... it's not quite "Army of Darkness" silly, but it does quite well.

Finally, work being slow today, I hit Kung Fu Panda at the local theater. Yes, it's a pretty predictable storyline, but it's well executed... and Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman (the two that get the most screentime) obviously had fun doing the voicework. Even at today's prices, it's worth a matinee showing at least.

Random Wii Fun

Nothing worth an entire writeup on its own, but here's some Wii bits for you:

• If you have a spare 500 points lying around, you could do worse than Kirby's Adventure. Graphics and sound are pretty minimal (even by the standards of the day), but the gameplay's still there.
• Yesterday, I had a wolf spider crawling around on my TV screen while I had the Shopping Channel open, the white screen backlighting it nicely. I don't know why, but I decided to approach the spider with the "hand" created by the Wiimote... and it reacted! I probably spent at least a good five minutes slowly creeping up on the spider from behind, to have it wheel around at the last moment, getting more and more annoyed each time, before I finally swept it off with a magazine. Sometimes, cheap entertainment is the best.
• Somebody in my extended network of Wii owners has software for making advanced/modded Miis... I had noticed Scooby and Snakehead in the parade easily enough earlier, but yesterday I found Jesus. I'm just trying to picture him showing up in various Mii-enabled games...
• Depending on your tastes, "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King" may well be worth the $15 they want for it. I haven't played it through by any means, but... mechanics-wise, it's sort of like Harvest Moon meets Progress Quest... but it works well, at least judging by how long I spent there last night playing "just one more day". If it holds up under continued play, I'll likely give a more detailed writeup another time.
  

Blogging? DEATH.

Every so often, it's worth reminding oneself that the liberties one takes for granted are not universal. Try this one on for size... it's already the case in Yemen, and Iran's parliament is looking into the idea, that bloggers can be brought up on charges for the contents of their blogs... with penalties including death. The Iranian version apparently includes "disturbing mental security in society" by "promoting corruption... and apostasy". The short version: if we don't like what you're posting, because we feel it's against Islam (and/or the government?), we can legally kill you.

Here's a link for you to see for yourself. Here's hoping the Iranian people regain some freedoms in the near future... preferrably without the "assistance" of the United States.

"Annoyance Week" continued: Wasps!

So I came home from work today, put the car in the garage... and noticed a subtle sound. The best I can say is it sounded like the shadow of a wasp, if you will. Nonplussed, I looked around, I looked down, I looked up... and there, hiding in the old security lamp, right where the bulb would be, was a well-developed wasp nest. It's high enough up that I don't think it will be a problem for me day-to-day... but there may be chemicals in my near future.

Update: not even a week later, and I've gotten the chemicals to do the deed. I haven't been stung yet, but I did have one of the little buggers "bonk" me on the head, then harry me away. Death comes at sunset.

Merge those IT departments!

Let the fun my company's going through right now be a lesson to you all... if you're going to have multiple companies come together under a single "tech umbrella", do what it takes to merge your IT departments early.

About a year or so back, we acquired another company, placing both our current company and the new company under a single parent company... the intent being that IT and Accounting (at a minimum) would be moved to the parent, saving costs and/or improving reliability in the process. The problem is, that consolidation never happened. However, since there was still value to be had in sharing some systems, our department arranged with their department to install some software on their servers... and all was well, for a time.

About four months back, as a cost-cutting measure, their company laid off their last IT guy. Now, my background is more Unix/Linux, and they're a Windows shop, but I could have stepped in to start learning how they're set up to operate... especially on those "shared" systems... but they declined our help. Maybe they thought their IT layoff would be a momentary thing, or whatever... but it hardly matters now.

Today, they attempted to upgrade a server component for one of those shared services we use... it was expected to be about a half-hour downtime, which would have been tolerable. However, they neglected to let us know beforehand (a moderate sin in and of itself)... and they ran into problems severe enough that the system has been down all day (a system both of our companies now depend on to get any work done) while the vendor tries to bring it back to life.

Had they brought us into the loop earlier, I might be able to provide some useful insight into what's going wrong where... as is, I can only sit and stew while the tragedy plays out. Oh well, here's hoping things are working again for tomorrow... and here's hoping that this serves as a wake-up call for our sister company.