Neuratron - PhotoScore Midi- Really cool possibilities with OCR I see some potential for a geek band. Moby, I got your number.  ¶ 4/30/2005 08:31:00 PM 0 comments

  JazzFest ends tomorrow Toots and the Maytals help wrap it up; next week back to gospel on Sunday.  ¶ 4/30/2005 04:50:00 PM 0 comments

  Did MSNBC Know Liddy's History?
The wisdom of conservatism
On August 26, 1994, Liddy told his radio listeners: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." Liddy's advice that day was explicit: "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches."  ¶ 4/30/2005 12:57:00 PM 0 comments

  City Journal The not always subtle sexism of conservatism is right on the front cover this issue.  ¶ 4/30/2005 11:58:00 AM 0 comments

  Employee Free Choice Act Sounds nice but let's be honest, they should of buried this bill yesterday on Workers' Memorial Day. It has a near zero chance of making it out of Congress in effective form.  ¶ 4/30/2005 11:29:00 AM 0 comments

  Kurtz ‘Bioterror’ Case a River of Darkness I kinda like the scrappy little The New Standard. This story's continuing line had been below the radar until I saw it here.   ¶ 4/30/2005 11:23:00 AM 0 comments

  Gannon upset, not invited to big dance   ¶ 4/29/2005 04:48:00 PM 0 comments

  DOJ Ear-And I'm sure they think God's, too.   ¶ 4/29/2005 09:07:00 AM 0 comments

  Blog Bites Bias On this matter of bias in my blogging:

My journalistic ethics prevent me from allowing that into my writing unannounced. I will do my best to always give the simple truth. If I call someone an idiot- they're probably an idiot. Well, at least a moron.  ¶ 4/28/2005 01:30:00 PM 0 comments

  Spit-Boy takes a crack at the wonders of the universe I watched this video from Hardball on the web the other day. Matthews had the Baptist minister Terry Fox and Eugenia Scott, executive directer, National Center for Science Education, discussing design vs evolution in education.

What raised this beyond most other moments was Scott's reaction when, after the minister's position had kinda fallen apart, Matthews tries to draw her into something where he can wrestle with her on the point. Matthews asks her how she thinks the world began. She gets this look on her face and says, "Who cares?". How very refreshing. She just kept lasering in the point, are you gonna teach science or are you gonna teach something else?

Yo, Spitboy, I share that Catholic upbringing with you and also that shared history of the Church. I've thought about the very different approach in our early religious education from the fundamentalist one to these matters. These Bible-thumpers seem to be set on a course that will require the re-learning of lessons learned hundreds of years ago by the Catholic Church. And these narrow-minded fundamentalist idiots seem unable to grasp how the outcome of those lessons, Humanism, brought about our country.

And, Spitboy, all that stuff about big explosions and stuff, well, it just adds to my wonderment.  ¶ 4/27/2005 04:44:00 PM 0 comments

  Political Courage The real nugget to come out of this is the group of GOP senators braking ranks and not helping Frist in his presidential aspirations. The Repugs use discipline for this kind of thing, let's see what they come up with.  ¶ 4/27/2005 01:22:00 PM 0 comments

  FOIA- Why the Repug's hate it. ACLU (they love to hate 'em) has gotten somewhat of a look inside the torture dome.  ¶ 4/27/2005 08:39:00 AM 0 comments

  Storm brewing over online data from National Weather Service - Computerworld This idiot senator from PA is still wiping the lobbyist juice from his chin. How many of these private services have their own space gear? And if they don't have their own where do they get it from? Do they pay for it (and I don't mean copying costs)?  ¶ 4/26/2005 08:36:00 PM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine... Buzz... what was that thing about email and pot? I think Jeff has a lot to offer, you just have to wade through a lot of fluff. At least once a week he posts something that is so out of touch because he has stretched to connect it to blogging and digital communication/media. You're tryin' too hard there, Jeffy-boy.

This thing about the Chinese protests gets shot down quickly and rightfully so. And I'll have to give Jeff credit for his graciousness in a seeming acknowledgement of just how flakey he was.

  ¶ 4/25/2005 09:45:00 PM 0 comments

  OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today(sic) This guy Taranto has reached a new low in his endless defense of the Repugs. To equate Finney's sexual abuse along with her experiences with Bolton and then dismiss both is stretching the bounds of good taste and sound thought. Just a little bit too rabid.   ¶ 4/25/2005 06:20:00 PM 0 comments

  Please, please, please, please... That isn't to say that Shrub didn't have significant leverage in his talks with the Saudi prince. But against the backdrop of results of the recent vote in Saudi Arabia, I wonder what the Prince got in return.  ¶ 4/25/2005 05:18:00 PM 0 comments

  law.com - Straight talk- from a lawyer! If this schmuck, I mean shark, gets a job out of this... well, it'll be so cool.   ¶ 4/25/2005 07:12:00 AM 0 comments

  eBay.com Item- Strange Bid History As I said, I'm kinda new to this eBay thing. But...
This bid situation looks a little strange. Within a 35 minute span, five successive bids were made pushing this computer over $1200 and twice the worth of it. three of the four bidders have no previous purchases.  ¶ 4/22/2005 10:19:00 PM 0 comments

  Cardinal Ratzinger's Challenge (washingtonpost.com) Cardinal Ratzinger's preconclave address:

"We are moving," he declared, toward "a dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."

In a far off land, one of those of extreme clime that seems to lead to contemplation of the sublime, there sat two men. As it was, they were wise men and their discussion of the weather soon led to the hallowed.

From one emerged a wondrous creed, an existentially complete inspiration of symmetry and piety. Throughout this rarified land, the temples and holy places began to quake. All the holy objects and beatified icons wept tears of blood as this sanctified verse was carried on the ethereal wind. In the moment agape, an eternity passed as a cloud before the sun.

Bathed in the awe, washed by the rain of epiphany, the other man meditated. Looking to the sky, he spoke these words:

"Yes, this is true but there are many other things just as true." And God cried.  ¶ 4/19/2005 08:22:00 PM 0 comments

  Heads-Up CompUSA's ebay store continues to post refurb's (this one was put up the 16th, but they could change it) with a one year warranty.  ¶ 4/18/2005 11:42:00 PM 0 comments

  She works I fired up the new HP PSC1610 I also bought at HP-Marketplace. Prints and scans quite well. The one thing I can say about the printer that is somewhat negative is that it seems a little noisey.

An HP 935xi camera from them is on the way. It is a refurb with a one year warranty (I checked, the refurbs on HP's own site have a one year warranty).  ¶ 4/18/2005 11:11:00 PM 0 comments

  If you throw enough.... Some of it will look as if it is sticking. Anybody, who isn't desperately casting about for justification, knows the reasons upon which the war was sold to the American people. I guess one of the fears of the Repugs was that Kerry would remind people about our experiences with swallowing that high sounding kind of rot. Sorry kids, our government is no different; politicians don't go to war over those things. Give it up you sanctimoneous suckers.  ¶ 4/18/2005 10:45:00 PM 0 comments

  eBay Store - hp marketplace: An adventure in online buying Back in December when Ol' Paint, the Celeron HP Pavilion I had blown smoke into for a number of years, finally bit the dust I was left scrambling for a computer. I walked into a local computer repair shop, finding the case for a similar model that I was able to slap in my HDD and RAM. For $15.00, Ol' Paint's heart and soul rode again. But I knew I was just forestalling the inevitable. I had been contemplating a hyper-local web project and decided now was the time to buy the equipment needed for a small media business. I keep missing the calls from the VC guys so I have a small budget to work with.

When I first mentioned this, referring to myself as a miserly Luddite was a bit of an over simplification: I've held down the position of consumer reporter and taken an MS certification course. But there is enough truth to that characterization, at least on a comparative basis, to be worth saying. I combed the internet, local sale papers and manufacturers' sites to find what I thought was a suitable compromise of technology and price. My target was the HP Pavilion a736n. It had an Athlon 64 processor so I could look forward to it being compliant with 64 bit processing without waiting for the price drop of the coming Pentium 64 bit chips. It had the connectors on the motherboard for a Serial ATA HDD and the slots for up to 2 GB of memory. Ol' Paint II was conceived. Bringing it home was going to be somewhat difficult.

It was then that I took my first serious plunge into the online shopping pool. I started bidding on ebay for some different computers but found that I was impatient with that and http://stores.ebay.com/hp-marketplace had a refurbished a736n as a "Buy It Now" for $539 plus shipping. Their item description stated there was a one year warranty from HP. The computer arrived about two weeks ago and that's when the fun began. The box was clearly marked as being a refurbished computer and having a 90 day warranty. The same day I contacted HP.

When the nice fellow in India at HP's call-center discovered he was up against an unordinary problem, he turned me over to Sam in stateside sales. Sam said the people in corporate were astounded by all the HP one year warranties offered and stated that despite what the ebay site said, HP's only shopping presence on the web was http://hpshopping.com . I was left with no idea what the relationship was between HP and the ebay store. I had selected the manufacturers' and retailers' adjunct ebay stores as being the most likely to be hassle free but it certainly didn't seem so at this time.

New Age is the company that runs the ebay store. The ebay store and the New Age site looked serious and legitimate. But the web is a funny place (think about how authentic "phishing" attempts look when you receive them). At the New Age site, Bill DeLacy, vice president of Sales, U.S. Consumer and Supplies, at HP is quoted as stating that New Age's execution has been "flawless". I then googled DeLacy and HP. The quote came up (in the top three results) and enough of the other results that came up made me even more uncertain, given what was an obviously large disconnect on the warranty issue and that DeLacy really was an executive for HP. So late that night I fired off an email to the general counsel's address taken from the HP site. This email did move through the HP corporate structure and get notice but I couldn't be sure of that at the time.

The next day I contacted customer service for New Age's ebay store and talked with Sylvia. She was still maintaining that there was a one year warranty and said I should tell them it was bought from New Age. She even sent me an invoice to use as proof of purchase. I, once again, immediately contacted HP and found their answer was still no one year warranty. It was enough for that day, I was tired and had other things to do. I had received a response from HP asking if I could be identified. I guess standard form for their corporate compliance office. My email to HP was going to be forwarded through HP. At that time, I was still uncertain about that.

I contacted New Age, again, the next day. This time I asked to speak to a supervisor. I spoke with Jamie Tumas. This was the first conversation from which I came away with the impression that this issue would be resolved in my favor. I don't know if the email to HP had found the way to his desk yet, but I know that it eventually did. Later that day I received an email from Amy Bockman, the sales manager for the New Age account at HP, asking me to contact Tumas. He had offered me 10% off my purchase price and I went for the advertised warranty. The next day, after some back and forth, my account was credited with $99.99; the cost of a two year service agreement from HP (the closest thing available). But the story doesn't quite end there.

It was now ebay's turn to screw up. Because of the partial refund, my ebay account was showing that I needed to pay for the computer, again. I contacted Jamie and he said they could help with that. Ebay was nice enough to inform me (after a couple of days and a few emails)that the dispute was being withdrawn and no action would be taken against my account. Mighty nice of them.

The computer is great. It needs some more memory to perform as I need it to but the only problem I had with the computer itself was that the disc for Encarta 2004 wasn't included. Javier Fiqueroa, Executive Quality Case Manager at HP, (thank you, very much, email to HP) offered to have it sent. I don't need it. He told me if there was any problem, to let him know. He was great.

When you work as a consumer affairs reporter ("On Your Side", whatever) the stories that bring the greatest vindication generally fall within two categories. Once in a while, you get a story that is a "gotcha"; somebody is perpetrating a serious fraud or crime and you are able to address it. But you are more likely to find the ones that in a way support what is the master narrative: That everybody is honestly trying to do their job and most issues can be resolved through communication and a thorough presentation of the facts. This was one of those. I don't know that it would have been resolved this way had I been the average consumer. I know that there are some good reasons for the confusion. The length of warranty offered by HP varies depending on the class/price range of the item. I know that http://www.compusaauctions.com/ has recently had refurbished HP's described as having a one year warranty. When I contacted them, they also said the warranty was provided by the manufacturer. I'll send them a link to this. But they have other problems; the product specifications (at both CompUSA's auction site and their ebay store) for HP products don't always match those at HP (not to mention that rebate problem that CompUSA has had). And then there are the differences in doing business that our high tech world presents.

This isn't the same world of business where Jamie could have walked out into the warehouse and seen the 90 day warranty stickers on the boxes. Somehow, word never drifted up the chain. I contacted Bockman at HP and hp-marketplace when they continued to post descriptions of refurbished computers with one year warranties on ebay after all this occurred. I asked how long the 90 day warranty had been the standard for home computers. The listings were changed the next day but neither responded to me. And the site is still having some problems. If you go to the descriptions of the computers at New Age's hp-marketplace ebay store, you'll find the 90 day warranty in one part and down further in the description it is stated that they have been refurbished to "class A" standards and have a one year warranty.

I am not shopping at hp-marketplace by accident. I've found their prices tough to beat. I've purchased a new printer/scanner/copier from them. I haven't fired it up, yet. I continue on my tech buying spree and will continue to look there.  ¶ 4/16/2005 03:35:00 PM 0 comments

  City Journal Autumn 2004 | The Frivolity of Evil by Theodore Dalrymple Blah, blah, blah and blah. Long-winded chap starts out painting a basically rich picture of the levels of human misery, only to try to bend (wrench) it to a purpose he has in mind.

Any attempt to try to fully refute, rebut and broaden his thesis would consume far more time than either of us has. I think we can stipulate on a couple of points. Sometimes in a weird, ironic kind of way I blame some of our current problems on those goofy hippies of yore (the notion that freedom of action brings responsibility for choice wasn't really brought home philosophically). The notion of the frivolity of evil has been touched upon a number of times before in far more literate and expansive ways. There is considerable truth, I think, to the notion.

Whipping the strawman of "elites" (remember the doctor's point about what happened to them under a dictator) is an almost universally used pseudo-intellectualized preamble to the march of fascism and totalitarianism. It would behoove us, intellectually, to look elsewhere for our solutions. I think to say these changes in society were driven by "elites" is such an over-simplification to make that an unrewarding direction of inquiry in which to go. I think it is more in the direction of our notion of frivolity of evil.

Consider the point that maybe a whole lot of shopkeepers decided, independently, that they could make lots of money selling beaded headbands and bellbottoms to these hippies. Cynically, of course, I think something along that economic line and the drive of a large demographic of young people trying to have sex were far more decisive driving factors than any "elites".

And, finally, I always try to find the simplest answers to these questions. Point one: Any notion that tries to limit the range of human potential and experience is suspect on the face of it. Secondly: wrap all the factors that the doctor thinks bears on this into one society and then ask yourself why the Scandinavian countries aren't overrun with his tawdry hooliganism.  ¶ 4/15/2005 08:41:00 PM 0 comments

  New House bill protects political bloggers | CNET News.com Not too late for this to screw-up but there appears to be a nice little synergy going on with the right things happening.  ¶ 4/14/2005 04:18:00 PM 0 comments

  law.com - Calabresi Hits a Homer- Admonished for performance enhanced intellect Quoting from the New York Law Journal article:

"I'm not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual. When somebody has come in that way they sometimes have tried not to exercise much power. In this case, like Mussolini, he has exercised extraordinary power. He has exercised power, claimed power for himself that has not occurred since Franklin Roosevelt, who after all was elected big and who did some of the same things with respect to assertions of power in time of crisis that this president is doing.

"It seems to me that one of the things that is at stake is the assertion by the democracy that when that has happened it is important to put that person out, regardless of anything else, as a statement that the democracy reasserts its power over somebody who has come in and then has used the office to…build himself up.
  ¶ 4/13/2005 07:19:00 AM 0 comments

  Bill would allow "intelligent design" for science classes (phillyBurbs.com) I'm doin' my best here to resist a rant. Let's just say that these goofy bastards are just a step away from having kids taught that we were created by alien visitors.  ¶ 4/11/2005 11:29:00 PM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine... Hoodwinked by a handshake Simply, fallacious group-think bought up by the MSM. Instead of viewing this through the prism of their own perspective, how about going with a far simpler explanation? Neither the Iranian nor the Israeli wanted to appear as an uncivilized heathen at the Pope's funeral.  ¶ 4/11/2005 10:54:00 PM 0 comments

  Yahoo! News - Ex-White House reporter is lightning rod on panel about blogs I could see Gannon/Whatever as the subject of a press club panel, but sitting on one? They're free to invite anybody they'd like. So tell me, please, what part of the professional (or even amateur) experience does he bring to the table? How to give a BJ to keep that job?  ¶ 4/11/2005 06:50:00 PM 0 comments

  Poynter Online- E-Media Tidbits- Drank the Jarvis-Aid Paul Grabowicz-
"The article also cites a judge's ruling supporting the Times' right to print the (Pentagon) papers: "A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know."

Today that description of the press seems to better fit bloggers than the venerable New York Times."

Possibly the goofiest thing I've ever read from Poynter.  ¶ 4/11/2005 06:38:00 PM 0 comments

  CNN.com - CBS stringer arrested in Iraq - Apr 8, 2005 Ten bucks says that, after they have kicked the stuffing out of this guy, they will never admit to having been wrong.  ¶ 4/10/2005 02:08:00 PM 0 comments

  GOP source of Schiavo memo confirmed: Media Matters for America Blight bling blogs wrong again:

The anguish of a family and the death of woman are not safe from political exploitation by the Repug's.  ¶ 4/10/2005 01:52:00 PM 0 comments

  eBay Store - hp marketplace This is still developing. My adventure in online buying hasn't exactly been smooth.  ¶ 4/09/2005 09:52:00 PM 0 comments

  The Jawa Report: Pulitzer Prize Given to Terrorists This momo referring to AP, based on some lame blight bling blog work on photos, is stirring this pot full of propaganda. The crux of the matter is the ability of native photographers, working for AP, to move through their society and confound the control of news this administration has sought.

A further result of the cultural shift these idiots are after is the general decline in the reluctance of our soldiers to take a shot at a journalist.  ¶ 4/05/2005 09:32:00 PM 0 comments

  Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq | The Register I guess a dad must be really proud when his daughters have got the balls, that Shrub didn't have, to serve in a combat zone.  ¶ 4/05/2005 12:50:00 AM 0 comments

  Global warming and me I just pulled a good one. After eight years of not defrosting the freezer (and I figure about seven and a half years of living without ice cream in the house), I punctured the freon tube in the wall of the freezer while breaking that streak. Why didn't I leave well enough alone?

Yeah, I know; I shouldn't have been using a sharp object. It was just that for so long I had used a knife to trim back the face of the glacier pushing against the refrigerator door. The frosty slab had long ago pushed away the freezer door that now sits under my sink. It lay there today as pieces of a former ice age passed through the disposal to raise the sea levels. Never mind the freon release.  ¶ 4/02/2005 10:53:00 PM 2 comments