It's a new year, and for the people of Romania and Bulgaria, today is a very special day - today is the day those countries officially became a part of the European Union.

It's interesting to see the EU continue growing and more countries adopt the Euro as their official currency. There is a great deal of promise in the vision of a grand unified Europe, but each member still has many of the same challenges that existed before. By no means does admittance magically solve your problems. Things take time to change.

What we now call the "European Union" was originally started as the "European Coal and Steel Community" back in 1952. Over the years, it has increased in size six times, and the sixth increase officially occurred today with the admittance of Romania and Bulgaria. The EU is now 27 members strong and represents about 500,000,000 people.

The BBC put together a nice page showing how the European Union has changed over the years. Check out the EU expansion page.

Here is another article: Romania and Bulgaria join the EU

Some folks out there have given Apple a hard time for selling music on the iTunes Store that plays only in iPods, and some blame Apple for not embracing an open music standard (of which there is none that the record labels all approve of, there are only other versions of digital lock-in). Anyway, I really like Microsoft's approach to this dilemma.

With the new Zune music player due in stores this month, Microsoft has announced that online music purchased through MSN - Microsoft's very own music store - will not play on the Microsoft music player.

So here are two choices:

1. buy a provably awesome player (iPod) and music online (from iTunes Store), and everything will work beautifully together, or
   
2. buy a brand new music player with no user base, no add-ons, and zero reputation (Zune), and also pay for a 2nd copy of the songs you've already purchased online through MSN Music since your old ones won't work on your Zune.

Vendor lock-in may annoy some people, but hell, the least Microsoft could do was get it right. You're not supposed to lock yourself out, too!

BBC article: Zune problems for MSN customers

Borat is playing at the Lake Creek Drafthouse this weekend! See update below

Tomorrow (Friday November 3) is the opening day for Borat, a day I've awaited with much anticipation. But I just heard from the Alamo Drafthouse (by email newsletter) that they're postponing their opening! This looks like it affects the Drafthouse screens only, not all theaters. But I talked to somebody at Alamo by phone earlier today, and he said Fox was scaling back national distribution from 2,700 screens nationwide to just 700. So sucky.

Here is the full text of their email, sent early this afternoon:

Date: Thursday November 2, 2006 12:52:34 PM CST
Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control
BORAT'S ALAMO SHOWS POSTPONED
WITH ANY LUCK AT ALL, BORAT WILL STILL OPEN AT THE ALAMO SOUTH LAMAR ON FRI, NOV 10

It's a sad day at Austin Alamo HQ as we were informed today by Fox that we would not be receiving a print of BORAT this weekend. You can read more about FOX's rollback here. It's particularly disappointing to us because we've seen BORAT and it is awesome. We hope to show BORAT starting Friday November 10 at our Lamar theater, and we will know for sure on Monday, November 6, by 6pm. Check our website then for the latest news and showtimes.

Nobody is more excited about BORAT than we are and we hate to have to wait. When we do open the film we will have a stellar preshow of rare and imported Borat clips before the show and we may even dress up in green slingshot thongs (those of us who aren't handling food, that is). We hope those of you who are loyal to the Alamo will wait it out and see BORAT with us. Those of you who have bought tickets already can have your money refunded by forwarding your email confirmation to manager.lamar@originalalamo.com or manager.village@originalalamo.com depending on which theater you bought tickets for.

Thanks for your support and loyalty and please accept our apologies for the delay.

UPDATE: at 9:20 am on Friday November 3, John from Alamo Drafthouse sent me this update:

Kaan – Borat opens today at the Alamo Lake Creek in Austin. It’s the only drafthouse-cinema getting it on opening weekend in the U.S.!
http://www.drafthouse.com/lakecreek/frames.asp
- John

Still bummer news that they can't open the film in all Alamo theaters (and the other ~2,000 theaters nationwide that won't get it this weekend either). But hey, at least one Drafthouse has it. It's kind of funny, this whole situation of scaling back the opening weekend is probably going to create a stampede mentality to see the film, which can't be what production company intended to happen...

A recent Economist article (short version online: Really Big Oil; full print edition "Oil's Dark Secret", Aug 12th 2006) took a look at the distribution of oil reserves around the planet. As much oil as Exxon, Chevron and the other big companies control, they only represent something like 10% of all reserves worldwide. That's not much.

So who has the other 90%?

Individual governments, like Saudi Arabia and Venuzuela, and those state-controlled oil reserves are sold into the market, too (ever bought gas from Citgo? That's a Venezuelan state-controlled oil company). The whole process of who controls, buys and sells oil is fascinating to me. Everyone wants oil, especially the countries that don't have enough to meet their own demands. The U.S. is obviously at the front -- we use more oil than everyone else combined -- but China is on a steep incline of oil consumption (they're the second largest consumer of energy worldwide).

It's interesting then to see that Venezuela is really kicking up oil production for China (China seals oil deal with Chavez). It's good news for China, as this increase will help them continue to meet their increased domestic demands for oil. But it's also good news for Venezuela, because Chavez can sell more oil to China and - more importantly - less oil to the U.S., all without decreasing overall Venuezuelan oil exports.

So what? For starters, U.S. gas prices will probably go up a bit (Venezuelan oil imports are about 12% of total imported oil), but that could be the last straw holding together the already-weak U.S./Venezuelan relations. Without Venezuelan oil to buy, and it seems possible that Bush and his war-crazy hotheads will insist we go down to Venezuela and kick their asses to "protect freedom" (also known as, "take control of the Venezuelan government in order to protect U.S. interests in their oil supply").

And there you have it: our next "war".

Man, this is a glimpse of the future. I guess in 10 years we'll look back and laugh at how "small" a 10,000 x 10,000 pixel image is.

Record CCD image sensor has 111 million pixels

The actor who has portrayed Juan Valdez, the famous Colombian coffee farmer, is retiring after 37 years of promoting Colombian coffee to the world. His real name is Carlos Sanchez, and he's now 71 years old. Sanchez has played the Juan Valdez character since 1969.

I remember seeing this guy in tv commercials when I was a kid. It never occurred to me that Juan Valdez was a ficticious character. I guess it's just product marketing, like everything else these days. And of course, it's only the actor who is going away; Colombia's coffee federation is trying to find a new person to portray Juan Valdez.

More info from bbc.co.uk: Colombian coffee icon steps down

I received email a few days ago about a Vonage IPO happening, and it said I could participate in the IPO since I'm a customer. Initially, I stated in this post that this was a phishing scam. However, I retract that claim, and I no longer believe it to be a scam.

The confusion was over their dumb interface which prompted you to log in if you were an existing customer (presumably an existing customer of Vonage, which I am). But the authentication information is different for the vonageipo.com website, so you log in with your valid vonage.com info but it gives you an error. Try again with valid info, still get an error. Classic phishing behavior.

I don't know if they added text later (this was confusing enough that it was a topic on slashdot earlier today) or what, but I did the new sign-up (shouldn't everyone be a new sign-up, then? why offer "new users" vs. "existing users"? how dumb is that?) and it found my info based only on my account id.

So there you have it. Vonage is indeed doing some sort of IPO participation for existing customers, and the url is www.vonageipo.com. It's just a sucky interface that is liable to confuse you.

It's about damn time.

Makers of Soft Drinks Accept Ban in Schools

The nation's largest soft drink makers, under pressure from parents and health advocates, agreed Wednesday to halt almost all sales in elementary and middle schools.Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Cadbury Schweppes will sell only water, juice, tea and low-calorie drinks in schools under a deal brokered by former President Clinton and the American Heart Assn. The companies will limit soda sales in high schools to diet drinks, Clinton said.

Tom Cruise has confirmed that he is a lunatic.

"I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there."

I cannot imagine anything nastier than eating that stuff. Ewwwww...

The news headlines crack me up:
Cruise: I will eat the placenta
Tom's Placenta Snack
Cruise to eat nutritious placenta
Cruise: I'll eat my baby's placenta

Last week, there was talk of Motive's stock being delisted from Nasdaq (Motive may be delisted).

On Monday, it happened (Motive being delisted by Nasdaq).

According to the articles above, Motive was delisted because they could not comply with the SEC's filing deadlines, due to the company's decision to restate financial records all the way back to 2001.

Alfred Mockett, the new CEO, said:

"The restatements are not a reflection on our core business or strategic vision, but an indication of our commitment to address past accounting issues, correct them, and put them definitively behind us."

Is that a true statement? I don't know. Could be. But maybe not.

In fact, there's a realistic chance that Motive is on a permanent, unalterable downhill slide, and he was brought in as the fall guy. I hope they're paying him a lot of money, because it will be difficult to find a new job when your last position was standing at the helm of a company that went straight into the toilet. That will never look good on your resume, no matter how you spin it.

Motive stock is now trading on Pink Sheets for about $3/share. Latest price info here: http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=motv

A few choice tidbits from Extensive Cell Phone Use Linked To Brain Tumors:

... if you spend many years using your cell phone for at least an hour a day your risk of developing a brain tumor is 240% higher than a person who never uses one. ... even the location of the tumor tends to be on the side of the head where the phone is used.

Everyone probably knows by now that the Muslim world is really, really upset about the publication of insulting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Especially infuriating for Muslims is how many non-Muslims have dismissed their concerns with an attitude of, "It's not a big deal, sure it's offensive, but it's freedom of speech, get over it."

Well, an Iranian newspaper has decided to play the same game. The most popular newspaper in Iran, Hamshari daily, is launching an international competition to find the most offensive cartoons about the Holocaust.

This is the kind of thing they should have done from the start rather than destroying stuff. Unfortunately, any form of violence (such as burning the Danish embassy in Iran) isn't really going to win people over or make them see your point of view. Instead, it's going to make them mad. Not good for problem resolution.

But printing offensive cartoons about the Holocaust is perfect. The Muslims can use the exact same excuses and defenses that the non-Muslims used to dismiss their concerns in the first place.

From Iranian paper to run Holocaust cartoons:

Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.

Donald Rumsfeld and many others in the Bush administration have shown again and again that they are incapable of interacting with the rest of the world like mature adults. Look at Europe. Most of the European leaders demonstrate an attitude of "we'll do our thing, you do yours, just don't mess with me about it", while Bush and his staff are much more like bandits in the wild west. "Do what I say, or I'll shoot you in the nuts!", they seem to say.

Whether you agree with what they say or do is irrelevant to the point I'm making now. Doing the right thing is not related to the manner in which they do it. Doing anything in a brash, bullying, forceful way is usually not a good idea. Nobody likes a bully.

Rumsfeld just gave the best example of this attitude while giving the US citizens more "fear the terrorists!" hype earlier today (Terror threat is greater today).

"They [the terrorists] will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."

That pretty much speaks for itself.

Of course, there wasn't really any doubt about this. But our "leaders" usually try to avoid directly associating themselves with anything negative. That is to say, they can act like jerks but tell us they're not acting like jerks. And for some reason, that seems to work. But they usually don't act like jerks and tell us they're acting like jerks. So that's the interesting thing, I think.

Surely, Rumsfeld isn't stupid enough to miss the obvoius 3rd option: America could stop pissing off the Middle East, and the terrorists would then have no reason to be angry with us. Or is he? He and the rest of the Bush drones have a history of being big, tough bullies. Maybe they're all too dumb to realize every conflict does not have to result in a fist fight.

I bought one of the "old" 4-blade razors last year. Over the following month or so, I tortured myself with some of the worst shaving experiences I've ever had. The head is too large to get in tight spots, and the blades clog very quickly. Every stroke left me swishing through the water trying to unclog the blades. It took much longer to shave, and the experience was extremely annoying.

Why do I need 4 blades? The shave is worse, and costs more. What's wrong with 2 blades? They work fine. I did eventually throw my fancy 4-blade razor out and replace it with an old skool 2-blade razor.

So now Gillette is spending $6 million (!) on two Super Bowl ads to build hype for a new, 5-blade razor called "Fusion" (Gillette's New Edge). What a crock! The only reason razor manufacturers keep releasing new stuff every few years is that their rights expire and generic models flood the market. So we get lower prices with more choice. Good for the consumer, bad for Gillette.

The only way that Gillette (and Schick, etc.) can keep us buying their brand exclusively is to offer a product that isn't available elsewhere. With each new product, Gillette will hold exclusive rights to it for a period of years. Then they spend millions on fancy ad campaigns, hoping they can convince a bunch of men that they've been wasting their time with 1, 2, 3, or even 4-blade shaving razors. You need FIVE blades! See?!

Morgan Stanley predicts the new Fusion razor will grab 15% of the U.S. market this year. That is absolutely depressing.

This is pretty wild. Honda UK has just announced a car that can drive itself on the freeway (Honda Builds Accord with 'Autopilot' Tech).

It's called the Honda Accord ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist System). Using a millimeter-wave radar sensor on the front of the car, it can scan ahead for other vehicles and slow down/speed up accordingly. It also handles turns in the road by using cameras to watch the white lines separating each lane. The auto-pilot system requires the driver to touch the steering wheel every 10 seconds, so you can't fall asleep or hop in the back without the car noticing. But the article makes no mention of what the car will actually do if the driver doesn't check in. Will it coast to a stop? Will it turn off the road? Possibly slam on the brakes? Who knows.

This new Accord will go on sale in the UK in March for $25,880 pounds (US$46,500). The price seems a bit steep for a feature that requires me to stay behind the wheel, but I guess that proves I'm not the target audience. Driving on a freeway is easy, and it just doesn't seem worth the extra US$20,000 (I don't know what a regular Accord goes for, but I'm guessing around $25,000).

Finally, it isn't clear how well this will work, or if people will actually feel comfortable using it. Regardless, all Hondas are due to have ADAS by 2016.

Here's a little more information from a Honda press release dated September 1, 2005:

New Civic Leads Quartet of Models Debuting at the Frankfurt Motor Show

New Accord for 2006

An enhanced version of Honda’s award-winning D-segment contender will also have its first public outing at the show. As well as receiving an interior and exterior facelift, the Accord range will also benefit from the first application in Europe of Honda’s ADAS (Advanced Driving Assist Systems) technologies.

The innovative suite of systems is aimed at making the driving experience relaxing and, above all, safer. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which regulates the speed of the car and its distance to the vehicle in front, will be equipped. In addition, the European first Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS), which detect lane markings on motorways and applies the appropriate amount of torque to the steering, will also be available (as a factory-equipped option on right-hand drive models only).

After 19 years, Alan Greenspan stepped down yesterday as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Today, the UK Treasury announced that Greenspan will become the only adviser to the Treasury (Greenspan signs up to UK Treasury), helping the UK with global economic policy. They're not paying him anything, and he will be the only adviser to the Treasury. He's also launched a new consulting firm named Greenspan Associates. It will be interesting to see how his influence changes over the coming years.

From California tobacco smoke 'toxic':

California has become the first US state to classify second-hand tobacco smoke as a toxic air pollutant. The decision by the California Air Resources Board puts drifting smoke in the same category as diesel exhaust, and could lead to tougher regulation.

After plenty of speculation and rumors, Disney is officially acquiring Pixar in a stock-only deal worth $7.4 billion. Steve Jobs will become the single largest share holder with 7% of Disney stock.

This is good news for Disney, as the Pixar folks will provide a huge infusion of creativity and energy. But I'm not so sure it's good for Pixar. What will Pixar gain from Disney? Better distribution deals? Better marketing? Most companies would do well to have the Disney name on their product, but Pixar has proven themselves and created their own reputation of excellence and quality. And for the past decade, Pixar has already had marketing and distribution agreements with Disney. So I'm not too sure what Pixar stands to gain from this vs. the risks of being acquired by a mega company.

One key point of positivity: John Lasseter will remain with the group as a creative director. Lasseter is probably the single most important person to retain, and keeping him around is critical to the success of the Pixar acquisition. If John Lasseter ever leaves Disney/Pixar, or "transitions" into some other role, that will signal the beginning of the end for Pixar.

Disney to Acquire Pixar for $7.4B in Stock

Americans are a little closer to a non-prescription, over-the-counter drug to fight obesity (FDA panel OKs drug for obesity). Called orlistat (same thing as prescription Xenical), it will help block fat absorption in the body. Trials showed that over 6 months, people who took orlistat lost 5 or 6 pounds more than those without orlistat (not much other information on their trials, so it isn't clear if the study participants were eating well/poorly, or exercising at all).

The manufacturer is careful to set people's expectations realistically. John Dent, R&D executive at GlaxoSmithKline, said, "There is no magic pill for weight loss and orlistat is definitely not a magic pill. Orlistat is a tool that will help people control their calorie intake."

It will be interesting to see how the public responds to this. WIth 2/3 of the adult population obese or overweight, one might be tempted to think that most of those people would take a pill to lose the extra pounds. But social trends have been changing in recent years, and more adults say they are comfortable with being overweight. So will they care about this new pill? And if they do, will they try it out immediately? Or perhaps they'll wait to see if it's safer than the last anti-obesity drug, Fen-phen?

Levi Strauss has designed a pair of jeans that will have an iPod remote control and docking station in the pockets, and they will also have headphones attached. One pair will cost about $200, and should be available this fall.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a really, really dumb idea?

Levi Strauss Designs iPod Jeans

Young's decision yesterday to join the NFL is not much of a suprise, he's an amazing player. We watched the Rose Bowl from the hospital, easily the most exciting football game I've ever seen.

Longhorn is long gone -- to NFL

Pat Robertson is in the news again after he said God made Ariel Sharon have a stroke for trying to divide the holy land. I think God should end Pat Robertson's life for being an antagonistic idiot.

US attacks TV host on Sharon slur

As usual, when Pamela covers a story at Groklaw, it's extremely informative. She included specific details on the terms of the proposed settlement.

A Proposed Settlement in NY Class Action Sony Litigation

Starting in February, public libraries in Dallas can ban people who smell bad. They can also ban people for sleeping, eating, loud talking, fighting, bare feet, sex and washing. Is it a person's right to smell bad if they wish? Is it discriminatory to restrict public services (like libraries) due to excessive smell? Is this really such a big problem that they had to make a law about it?

Dallas bad smell ban sparks row

Sony has reached a settlement in a New York class action lawsuit regarding their awful DRM blunder. As part of the settlement, Sony will compensate those who purchased infected CDs and fix their computers (that's gonna be fun). Also, Sony has made 200 albums downloadable as a possible compensation, and Sony must make the albums available on iTunes Music Store.

Sony 'rootkit' settlement clamps down on DRM

Doubts on Tamiflu as four patients die

Fresh doubts have been cast on the efficacy of Tamiflu as a bird flu treatment, as one of the world's most prestigious medical journals published new reports of resistance to the drug and deaths in patients in Vietnam.

Menno de Jong and colleagues at the hospital for tropical diseases in Ho Chi Minh City have recorded in the New England Journal of Medicine that four of eight patients suffering from the H5N1 flu strain and treated with Tamiflu had died, including two who developed resistance.

Intelligent design supporters and opponents alike should be happy that intelligent design has been banned from classrooms as of today ('Intelligent design' teaching ban).

Here's why: even though ID proponents argue that they're not teaching creationism, they are in fact teaching a modified, updated, more current version of creationism. This is not an opinion, it is not subjective: if any topic is discussed in relation to God, it implies a certain amount of religious context. In biology, these discussions of intelligent design are about God helping out with evolution. The issue has nothing to do with whether you believe in God. Nobody has said "God doesn't exist", nothing of the sort. We merely have to recognize and accept that the topic has touched religious ground.

It should be a red flag as soon as any school topic discusses religion. Why? The United States Constitution says we should keep the church and state separate. That means religion should be taught in churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship. Not in a school. That's all.

This entire issue has been one of protecting and upholding our constitution, and has very little to do with religion at all (other than to say it should be kept separate from the state).

The ruling judge, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, said in his ruling:

"It is ironic," Jones said, "that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the I.D. Policy."

Broadband over power lines is coming to Texas, starting with about 2 million residents in north Texas.

Texas to get broadband over its power lines

Good news for the city of Austin.

The mayor, city council members, a bunch of other elected officials, and people from various associations are all working together to ramp up downtown Austin. (City of Austin to begin downtown planning process)

And the economy for the Austin area is set to grow at a rate of 4.58% over the next 5 years. This data says the Austin metro area will be the fastest growing area in the entire state of Texas. (Austin economy forecast to be better in 2006)

A hospital in Switzerland says it will allow assisted suicide on its premises for terminally ill patients. From the start of next year terminally ill patients in Lausanne's main hospital will be allowed to take their own lives on hospital premises, as long as they are of sound mind, are already too ill to return home, and have expressed a persistent wish to die.

Swiss hospital to allow suicide

Post on Austin Action: Walmart ditches Helotes plans. Nice.

Does the Iranian president like Israel, the United States, or Europe? Not at all. So it shouldn't come as any suprise that he would say, "they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets." (Holocaust a myth, says Iranian president).

Excluding the world view of a few fundamentalist nutballs, the Holocaust did occur, leaving an indelible mark in history. Most people agree on this. But if you take a step back, one can see that extreme comments such as this are caused primarily by frustration and unhappiness over the existence of the Israeli state. It is on this topic that he makes an interesting point, "Give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them [Jews], so that the Jews can establish their country."

It's only been a matter of weeks since General Motors announced they would cut 30,000 jobs and close 9 production plants in an effort to reach profitability. Today, Ford Motor Co. says they will make a similar move by cutting 30,000 jobs and close at least 10 plants (possibly more?) during the next five years.

Ford to slash up to 30,000 jobs, 10 plants

As of this week, the push for .xxx domain names is dead ("ICANN kills .xxx porn domain").

The creation of .xxx web domains would have provided an extremely valuable segregation of porn and non-porn sites. Just as .edu is for an educational institution, and .de is in Germany, .xxx would have been for porn sites.

Advocates hoped it would clarify website names, making it easy to block adult content from children by simply banning .xxx websites from a certain computer. Corporations could achieve the same results. But opponents feared it would make it too easy to find pornography, claiming it would create a "virtual red light district" on the internet. This argument is dumb, because anyone who has ever actually used the internet knows that it is already challening to avoid porn sites, much less difficult to deliberately look for them. Even legitimate web searches might return mountains of porn-related search results.

Should you decide to actually look for porn, you'll find that it's unbelievably easy. For example, Googling for "sex" returns 218 million results, and plenty of them are very obviously porn-related (page through the search results and you'll see, it's kinda hard to miss).

So how could it possibly get any easier to find porn sites if we had .xxx domain extensions? Isn't it obvious that there already exists an easy-to-find red light district without .xxx?

Microsoft has announced Windows Live, a new software service that does several different things. I haven't played with it much, but it looks like it's trying to compete with Google's numerous services and offer a little bit of security for Windows users. There's a news viewer (think news.google.com), an email client that's probably undoubtedly stole features/ideas from Google's excellent www.gmail.com, and there's some stuff aimed at improving Windows security. Given the existing options for web-based news and email, I believe the security features are what stand to make the biggest impact for Windows users. It claims to do "stuff like virus scanning, firewall settings, tune ups, and software backups".

For non-Windows specific stuff (news, mail), I cannot imagine leaving Google's excellent, proven applications for a new, unproven offering from Microsoft. Why should I? Microsoft has proven again and again that they cannot innovate; they simply steal good ideas from everyone else. Given this established fact, it leaves no reason for users to expect any new features in this "new" service. Instead, users should expect to see Microsoft's best attempts at ripping off old products from Google and Apple.

As a Mac user, it's amusing to read through the list of security-related "features" and "benefits" that are only just now available to Windows users (from Microsoft, not counting 3rd-party add-on software) - just about all of that security stuff has been present on Macs for years, and not a just-released, unproven beta offering like Windows Live. Apple left Microsoft in the dust a long time ago.

Microsoft will of course spend a great deal of time, money and energy trying to convince everyone how great Live is. And while there are other features beyond the security enhancements of Live, I think this post summed up Live very well:

"The company that invented software vulnerability has launched a new AntiVirus application. Microsoft executives say the new initiative, when combined with the relaxed security in such products as Office, Internet Explorer, IIS, and Outlook Express, allows the company's revenue streams to come full circle; making them both the cause-of and solution-to most of your computer's security problems."

John Murtha has been all over the news today for his stance on the war in Iraq (Top Democrat urges Iraq pullout). There are a handful of things that really set this guy apart from most people in the anti-war movement.

He's a member of the US Congress, and is a member of a House panel that oversees defense spending. In 2003, he fully supported the invasion of Iraq. He is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. Each of these points (and probably plenty of others) show that he has credibility in matters of war.

Considering Murtha's credibility and experience, his comments today are extremely striking:

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency, they are united against US forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence. [...] We need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis."

Wow. "We have become a catalyst for violence."

I do not support the war — I have no issues with the troops and their families, I think all of them have been asked to make a huge sacrifice — however, I do not support the war. But I know many people out there (especially here in Texas) are fully supportive of the entire Iraq effort. So I hope those pro-Iraq war folks are paying attention when somebody like this steps up to the microphone.

John Murtha is not some "quack liberal" or "anti-war hooligan" or [insert common derogatory term used by war supporters to describe anti-war people]. I'll bet he has more experience in war and military than most of the folks who say the US should remain in Iraq. But frankly, I prefer to pay attention to people who do have relevant experience, rather than listen to others who (like myself) have never been involved with the military and don't really know what we're talking about.

So instead of listening to you or me, let's listen to John Murtha instead: "we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis".

As things go from bad to worse, the SEC has launched an investigation of Motive. So not nice. It's not clear yet, but Motive thinks the investigation is related to the restatement of its financial results and stock sales by certain unnamed executives.

Having worked there for about 13 months (at which point I came to my senses and quit), this comes as no suprise to me. I worked in development, so I cannot comment on anything specific about Motive's financial dealings, but things sure seemed sketchy to me. Lots of re-shuffling of money, finances, sales, etc. I kept wondering if this was the kind of thing that bigger companies (like Enron) got busted for doing, but Motive was able to get away with it because they were relatively small.

Again, I can't prove anything, but I never, ever the warm fuzzies about how Motive handled itself financially.

Ouch, this is bad news for Motive. It's never good when two dozen shareholders sue your ceo, cfo, and the company itself.

Motive shareholders file class-action suit:

Some shareholders of Motive Inc. have filed a class-action lawsuit that accuses the company and two executives of misleading investors about the company's prospects before reporting quarterly results that fell well below forecasts.

The Austin software company declined to comment Thursday on the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Austin against Motive, CEO Scott Harmon and Chief Financial Officer Paul Baker.

Three other law firms issued news releases Thursday saying they also plan to file class-action lawsuits against Motive. Shareholder lawsuits are not unusual when a company's stock takes a drastic dive.

Attorney William Federman, whose Oklahoma City law firm filed the suit, said about two dozen shareholders have joined the suit.

"It's difficult to judge the damages, but it appears to be well in excess of $10 million," Federman said.

The lawsuit claims that Motive executives knew demand for the company's software was decreasing but continued to issue positive sales projections. Specifically, the suit points out that when the company released preliminary second-quarter results July 11, Harmon said revenue didn't meet expectations because of a missed deal and a shortfall in consulting services, but he expressed confidence that general demand for its management-automation software remained healthy.

On Oct. 4, the company warned that third-quarter results would fall below forecasts and said it would look at the possible sale of its automation-software business and focus on its telecom products because of disappointing financial results. On the news, Motive's stock fell 36 percent to $4.01.

The company also later restated first- and second-quarter financial results, causing the stock to drop to $3.66 a share. It rose 20 cents Thursday, or 5 percent, to $3.95.

Interesting op-ed piece from the Los Angeles Times: The dark side of faith. Excerpts below...

Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.

This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.

He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. -- which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) -- also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

More bad news for people at Motive: Layoffs will occur.

Austin software provider Motive Inc. confirmed Thursday that it will lay off some employees, following a warning Wednesday that its third-quarter finances won't meet expectations. Although a number wasn't disclosed, Cybele Diamandopoulos, Motive's director of public relations, says layoff details will be disclosed when the company releases its third-quarter financial report Oct. 26.

Hopefully, another one of these crony bastards might get what he deserves if they can follow through with a conviction. And of course, DeLay and his crony lawyer are complaining about this being a "witch hunt" by an evil Democrat. That makes sense, right? I mean, come on, this is America, land of the free, where a congressman should be allowed to pay his wife and daughter $500,000 for providing "big picture, long-term strategic guidance and helping with personnel decisions" and "assissting in arranging and organising individual events"!

If those are the going rates for "strategic guidance" and "event planning", I think I need to switch careers.

Details from Jury indicts top US congressman:

The Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives Tom DeLay has been indicted with criminal conspiracy by a grand jury in Texas. The charge relates to a campaign finance scheme in which two of Mr DeLay's associates also stand accused. Mr DeLay, the second-highest ranking member of the house, said he would step down temporarily to answer the charges. He is a key fundraiser for President Bush and is seen as yielding immense political influence. Three of Mr DeLay's former aides had already been charged with illegal fundraising.

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This satellite photo of hurricane Rita was taken at 11:15am EST Friday.

From hurricane updates at www.nhc.noaa.gov:

WTNT63 KNHC 211955
TCUAT3
HURRICANE RITA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
255 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005

DATA FROM RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT RITA HAS REACHED

CATEGORY FIVE INTENSITY WITH ESTIMATED MAXIMUM SUSTAINED SURFACE

WINDS OF 165 MPH.  THIS WILL BE REFLECTED IN THE 4 PM CDT ADVISORY.

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All kinds of data out there tracking hurricane Rita and its projected path. This one shows the storm moving inland just to the east of Austin, and it's pretty likely that we'll see at least 50 mph winds on Saturday as a result of Rita. More info at crown weather.

Recent polling data shows that support for Bush is dropping, even among those who used to support him. Interesting bits snipped from the article:

• about 60% said Bush does not share their priorities for the country
• about 60% said they were uneasy about Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq
• about half said he has strong qualities of leadership
• about 60% said the country was "pretty seriously" on the wrong track
• about 40% approved of Bush's overall performance

We're about one month away from the biggest change in bankruptcy law in more than 25 years. Nolo posted a good article about the coming changes. Here's the high-level info:

After eight years and three failed attempts, the credit card industry has finally got the bankruptcy law "reform" changes they've been lobbying for. Signed into law on April 20, 2005, most of the new law will take effect 180 days later, on October 17, 2005.

The new law, which marks the biggest change to bankruptcy law since 1978, prohibits some people from filing for bankruptcy altogether. And for those who manage to qualify for bankruptcy, it makes it harder to come up with manageable repayment plans and it has fewer protections from collection efforts than the prior law.

BBC.co.uk posted these illustrations showing how the flood waters are spread through the city of New Orleans, and how the drainage plan will work. They're kinda high-level, not a too much detail, but still informative.

Michael Brown, director of FEMA, said the victims in New Orleans are responsible for their own situation. Specifically, according to CNN, he said, "Unfortunately, [the death toll in New Orleans] is going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings. I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there."

So let's get this straight: the director of FEMA is telling the world that it's the peoples' own fault for getting caught in this situation. Everyone got that?

Now we'll go back to November 2004, when Shirley Laska published a column discussing the potential outcome if Hurricane Ivan had hit New Orleans. She cited specific details about what would have happened, including:

• huge storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain (her prediction was correct, Katrina caused this),
• levees between lake and city break and fill the city with water up to 20 feet deep (again, correct prediction, Katrina caused this too)
• flooding of suburbs with water pushing as far as seven miles inland (I don't have exact numbers on this, but I think this is either correct or really close to what Katrina caused), and finally
• inundated areas south of Mississippi River (again, correct, Katrina caused huge destruction all over the area)

Less than one year ago, Shirley wrote: "Up to 80 percent of the structures in these flooded areas would have been severely damaged from wind and water. The potential for such extensive flooding and the resulting damage is the result of a levee system that is unable to keep up with the increasing flood threats from a rapidly eroding coastline and thus unable to protect the ever-subsiding landscape."

Additionally, she points out that researchers had already estimated that 40% of the New Orleans population (1.2 million total, so we're talking about 500,000 people) would not evacuate if "the big one" threatened and an evacuation was ordered.

Her column goes on and on, and it's absolutely frightening that she wrote all of this nearly one year ago. You could almost believe that it had been written yesterday, after Katrina had already devastated New Orleans.

So Michael Brown, who's fault is it?

Is it the citizens' fault for not leaving, even though researchers already knew a large percentage would not follow an evacuation order?

Or could it possibly be the government's fault for being informed about scenarios such as this, with fully detailed articles such as Shirley Laska's, only to follow it up by doing absolutely nothing to prepare for this situation? (And by the way, hers was not the only voice that warned officials of this scenario.)

As quoted in this BBC article, Pat Robertson just told viewers of his influential TV show, the 700 Club, "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he [Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

Newsflash to Mr. Robertson: If you are trying to convince everyone that you did not call for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, as you clearly seemed to be doing in the press this week, you might consider refraining from making comments like, "we really ought to go ahead and do it". You are making yourself look like an idiot, along with the rest of the United States citizens. I wonder, would this country, and indeed the entire world, be a better place if somebody assassinated you instead of Chavez?

The leader of the free world, George W. Bush, gave a speech today. He said some stuff, and probably talked about a bunch of different things.

I think I read somewhere that he said, "I apologize that I am still unable to correctly pronounce the word 'nuclear'."

Did I listen to his speech? No.
Did I read about it? Nope.
Am I gonna? No way.

Things are heating up between the United States and Venezuela. Hugo Chavez threatened to stop exporting Venezuelan oil to the U.S. (Venezuela is the 5th largest oil producer in the world, exporting 1.3 million barrels per day to the U.S. alone). Meanwhile, Venezuela is building a large-scale satellite tevelision channel that will present Latin America as it really is, not the way that CNN and other biased U.S.-based news agencies choose to portray it, so the people of Latin America will start to see the reality of Latin America, not a sugary, watered-down version from U.S. media. And the US State Department is all bent out of shape because religious fanatic Pat Robertson broadcast that the United States should assassinate Chavez. Right or wrong, folks in Venezuelan are obviously unhappy about this, and the State Department is scurrying to condemn Robertson for being an outspoken idiot. Robertson's actual words were, "We don't need another $200bn war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." I'm not saying Chavez is a great guy or anything (apparently he's not), but there are certain things a high-profile radio broadcaster should avoid talking about, and one of them is discussing which world leaders the US military should assassinate.

And now that everyone is paying attention, Pat Robertson has come forward to say, "I didn't say 'assassination', I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted." So did he really mean we should send special forces down to Venezuela to kidnap Chavez? Or did he actually mean we should devise a scheme to assassinate the leader? Personally, I think it's nothing short of expected that Robertson would tell everyone he did not mean assassination, especially since it's a crime in the United States to assassinate the leader of any other country.

If you think Bush should meet with Cindy Sheehan, you can cast your vote by adding your name to an online petition. If you're not in favor of their meeting, obviously you'll want to avoid the above petition. (Perhaps somebody will create an anti-Sheehan petition asking for Bush to not meet with her?)

Anyway, at the time of this posting there were 18,579 signatures on the petition. I wonder how many it would take to have an impact.

Copied directly from slashdot:

The Zotob MS05-039 worm mentioned on Slashdot last Sunday may be the most recent virus that has gone global, hitting Windows 2000 desktops at CNN, ABC, the New York Times, and many others. The virus is spreading around the world rapidly as compromised systems become bots and propagate the worm, with reported outbreaks in Germany and China. InformationWeek has a decent article titled Zotob Proves Patching "Window" Non-Existent. Microsoft calls it a "low impact" threat and tells you What you should know about Zotob. Symantec has W32.Zotob.D removal instructions. Trend Micro thinks that this is a new, different worm altogether and says it is one of the fastest-spreading infections in history.

Soon, Round Rock (and thus Austin, along with the rest of central Texas) will have their own IKEA.

A 20+ acre site in Round Rock at I-35 and Chandler Road will be the location of a new IKEA store that's set to open in 2007. The IKEA company said it will occupy a 252,000 sq. ft. building and employ 250-300 people. Construction starts in 2006 with a targeted opening date in the spring of 2007.

More details here: IKEA to open Round Rock store in '07

Apple Japan has sold more than a million songs to Japanese consumers through iTunes Music Store since last Thursday. According to Steve Jobs, "iTunes has sold twice as many songs in just four days as all the other online music services in Japan sell in one month. iTunes has become Japan's number one online music store in just four days." Slightly more details available here: iTunes Japan shifts 1m songs in four days

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Just before September 11, 2001, Bush's approval ratings (compiled from 15 different polling organizations, including Gallup, Time, ABC, CBS, etc..) were in the 50-60% range. Then September 11 hit and suddenly everybody loved Bush! His approval rating jumped to the 80-90% range. But since then, his approval ratings have steadily dropped down into the 40s - lower than his pre-9/11 ratings.

So the poll data shows that the U.S. population likes Bush less and less as time goes on, and there's no sign of that changing.

I wonder if he knows how to pronounce "nu-cle-ar" yet.

Microsoft is all over the news today after they revealed the official product name for the next version of the Windows operating system. But the actual product won't be available for another year (possibly longer).

They missed a huge opportunity to come up with a unique name, and I'd like to know how much money they spent before deciding on "Vista". I just google'd "vista" and it shows 20,400,000 results. Nice.

The Register put together this informative, concise description of what Vista will offer, according to the announcement video (Microsoft passes da Vista baby):

The corporate video accompanying the announcement went some way to filling in the details. It seems using Vista will, at last, enable you to: sit in front of a computer, show someone your tablet PC, show someone else your mobile phone, get into cars while carrying a laptop and walk through sun-soaked rooms with highly polished floors, even while being buffeted by pulses of multicoloured light.

According to the video, it will also make you clear - confident - connected. Which sounds like the job description for a Microsoft major accounts manager, or possibly a mafia hitman.

Oh well, at least Microsoft can start printing up the baseball caps, T-shirts and coffee cups that journalists, partners and developers will be happily dropping into wastepaper bins within minutes of the official launch.

After a 5-4 vote in Kelo v. City of New London, the United States Supreme Court ruled that local governments may now seize peoples' homes and businesses, whether the people consent or not, so that their land can be used for private economic development.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, one of the 4 justices who sided with citizens and home owners (and thus, ruled against the rights of governments, big business and wealthy land developers), wrote,

"Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded.

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

Who among us can say she already makes the most productive or attractive use of her property? The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory.

The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

This is really, really bad for homeowners and small-business owners in the United States, and further empowers the wealthy class, who arguably have too much power already.

So be prepared to say goodbye to your home, and welcome more Target and Home Depot stores instead. That's what you wanted, right? To have your home knocked down in exchange for another huge retail store... isn't that the American Dream?

This case was brought by 15 homeowners of a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut fighting to keep private property that they have owned for many years (one of them is an 80+ year old woman who has lived in the same house for her entire life). The city government of New London wanted to take their homes, destroy the buildings, and use the land to build a hotel, health club and office building. According to the Fifth Amendment, governments are allowed to take private property if the land is for "public use", but that used to mean something like laying new railway trarcks, building a new school or public park, not building a privately owned hotel or health club, or another Home Depot.

Before this ruling, any big business has been able to (and often does) use their financial and political power to influence city and state governments to act in the interests of that business, not in the interests of the citizens or tax payers. This kind of thing already happens all the time, all across the country. City and state governments are constantly falling over themselves to offer incentives and special deals to big companies if they would please, please, please just open a huge office building or factory in their city. The eternal claim is that big companies will bring jobs and boost the local economy. But who funds these big business deals? The taxpayers. And now, citizens won't just watch the government hand over their tax dollars, now they'll watch the government kick them off of their own property, then turn around and use their own tax dollars to fund (both directly and indirectly, through perks and incentives) the very businesses that displaced them.

Case in point: Dell Computer is currently being sued for using fear tactics and unfair bargaining to win $240,000,000 (!) in tax credits from North Carolina, and another $37,000,000 in local subsidies from the city of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County (both in North Carolina). The bottom line is that the local and state governments in North Carolina are falling over themselves to lure Dell to build a new manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem. The governments are going to throw nearly 300 MILLION DOLLARS at Dell, and run through a laundry list of city improvements, new roads, and other local changes (the local government will pick up the tab on that, but it shouldn't be more than 10 or 15 million...). Read about it yourself here: "North Carolina residents sue Dell to keep their $270m", or go here for the full details of the Dell/North Carolina agreement, complete with full terms and conditions.

After this ruling, the local government can now seize and destroy the private homes owned by local citizens, so that instead of Dell showing up and taking more than a quarter of a BILLION dollars from your local and state economies, they might take your house, too (and your neighbor's), so they can build a factory that will allow them to make even more money than they already have. And don't go looking to the government or the courts for assistance -- it's the government and courts that made things the way they are, so you can bet your ass they're not gonna do a damn thing to help you. That's just super, isn't it?

Here's a good article providing background information for Kelo v. City of New London: "House not for sale", an article at The New York Times: "Justices Uphold Taking Property for Development", an article at CNN: "High court OKs personal property seizures", and another at CNN Money: "Eminent domain: A big-box bonanza?".

I've been following this for a while, and I'm glad to see that Austin skaters will soon enjoy a 12,000 sqft. public skatepark, free for all to use. The skatepark is being built in Mabel Davis park (click here for a map).

Here's a nice write-up in the Daily Texan: City will build skatepark - The Daily Texan - Top Stories, highlights below.

After six years of pushing for a city skatepark, the skateboarding community will finally have their haven. The City Council approved the construction of Austin's first public skatepark at the May 19 council meeting. Construction begins this month and should be completed by the end of the summer.

"I promised a whole bunch of kids a long time ago that we would build this skatepark, and I'm very pleased to be able to deliver on that promise today," Mayor Will Wynn said in a written statement. "This skatepark is going to rock."

Netcraft: Lax Security Cited in Massive Credit Card Data Theft

Inadequate security at credit card processor CardSystems Solutions Inc. is being blamed for a break-in that has exposed more than 40 million credit card accounts to potential theft. The company says the system compromise was discovered May 22, after a MasterCard inquiry into a wave of fradulent transactions.

MasterCard International said it "worked with CardSystems to remediate the security vulnerabilities in the processor's systems. These vulnerabilities allowed an unauthorized individual to infiltrate their network and access the cardholder data." Officials at affected institutions were not specifying the vulnerability and exploit used to breach CardSystems' security. The CardSystems web site runs on the Windows 2000 operating system and Microsoft IIS Server 5.0.

Oh joy, a credit card processing company had an insecure Windows machine running Microsoft's IIS webserver, it got owned by some haxor who stole credit card data for 40+ million accounts that belong to regular ol' people who didn't do anything wrong. That's just effing super.

This is one of the most twisted stories ever. Details available here: Sperm: Court dismisses man's theft claim against lover who kept semen, or through these Google results.

What it basically boils down to is a man and woman had a an affair 6 years ago. Affair? Yes. Sexual intercourse? No. But she did perform oral sex on him, and afterward she saved the semen (without telling the man) and used it to artificially inseminate herself (again, without the man's knowledge). She was successful in impregnating herself with his semen, and eventually gave birth to "their" child. Two years would pass before the man found out he was a father, thanks to the woman filing a paternity claim against him. DNA tests confirmed that he was the father, and basically he's been forced to pay $800/month in child support to this lady for the past 3 years (and probably for the remainder of the kid's life).

It is absolutely stunning that the courts upheld her side of the story, saying that the semen was "a gift, an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee." This entire thing is just wrong.

Firefox, one of the best things to happen to web browsing in a long time, recently hit 25,000,000 downloads. That's pretty damn huge, and is yet another wake-up call to Microsoft that their self-proclaimed "dominance" of the web browser market thus far has been largely due to them practically forcing Windows users to surf the internet with Internet Explorer and nothing else. Blah, everything coming out of Microsoft is a bunch of marketing nonsense, but it's nice to see the masses exercising their ability to choose something better.

Wowza, this is crazy neato. "Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy" describes the work of scientists in Shanghai who created human-rabbit embryos. This raises all sorts of interesting questions... should these things be considered people or house pets? Do they have rights? How will they fit into society?

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras - a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

...

Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.

Yesterday, Apple announced all kinds of neato stuff, including iPod Shuffle, the Mac Mini, iWork, and a new version of iLife... (drool)...

This is just sad... Verizon got all bent out of shape when the City of Philadelphia tried to offer free or low-cost citywide wireless internet access, including in low-income neighborhoods. So Verizon lobbied heavily, and it looks like they won: Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell just signed legislation that gives phone companies (like Verizon) the right to deny municipalities the ability to build their own wireless networks. See "Law restricts municipal Wi-Fi networks" for more details.

The Chief Idiot of Disney, Michael Eisner, and one of his idiot minions, Dick Cook, have announced their intention to create Toy Story 3 without Pixar Animation ("'Toy Story 3' in the works"). Basically, Pixar and Disney had a business agreement that is up for renewal, and Pixar realized that they were being screwed in many