Doctor Recommended
100% All Natural

Simple answer: neither one has bothered to do a simple google search on Ron Paul.

Ferguson is your cookie cutter neocon talk-show radio host, whom also shares the same birth year as myself — thus making him the youngest nationally syndicated radio bobblehead.

On a recent Paula Zahn segment of CNN he suggested that Ron Paul’s discussion of Blowback last week was frivolous, fallacious, and a way to boost his media exposure.

Regardless as to whether or not the “theory of blowback” is valid whatsoever, Ferguson and others fail to realize that Paul has been giving speeches and writing articles on this very topic before the Iraq War even began. It is not new, nor is it his own fringe theory.

In fact, Michael Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden Unit, has gone on record suggesting that bin Laden’s actions were in direct response to America’s foreign policy throughout the Middle East — that it was blowback.

Which brings us to Eric Dondero, who served on Ron Paul’s election committee for several years. Mr. Dondero recently published a letter admonishing Ron Paul’s alleged “Blame America” statements at the debate, therefore now Dondero intends on running against Paul for the Congressional seat in Texas.

While I have never met Mr. Dondero, a cynic could call his accusations shrewdly timed and carefully calculated.

Dondero also seems to have ignored the dozens of essays and speeches written and delivered by Paul during Dondero’s term of service (1997-2003), many of which lambaste the shortsighted foreign policies executed and promoted by the administration and Congress.

From the horses mouth:
- Ron Paul’s articles at LewRockwell.com
- Paul’s articles at Antiwar.com
- A couple of his books (1 2)

Note: I lament the attack on Congressman Paul for several reasons, the biggest of which is that he is an amigo of both the Internet (never voted to tax or regulate it) and innovative technologies in general (he is staunchly anti-regulation/free-market). Geeks and nerds have someone to actually root for this time around.

Even though I don’t agree with all of his observations, War Nerd is one of the most lucid and witty writers around.  And his latest column certainly does not disappoint.

His creative lampooning of the State and its proponents reminded me of one of histories most ironic committees: the State Failure Task Force.

One thing that the current president of A&M does that his predecessor did not, is to continually email all of the faculty, staff, and student body throughout the semester.

These emails range anywhere from a summary of recent fundraising milestones, capital investments, and faculty hirings to the discipline of students that perpetuate “hate” crimes.

His name is Robert Gates and after 4 years at the post, he has just tendered his resignation. His previous line of work included a long stint at the CIA, where he ultimately became the director of the entire organization (’91-’93). Upon leaving, he eventually would become the president of A&M in August of 2002.

A year or so after arriving in Aggieland, he was offered the head job as the new Director of National Intelligence, a job he declined and one in which he wrote a lengthy email to faculty, students, and staff about shortly thereafter. However, it seems he could not hold out forever, as he is now in the process of being confirmed as the new Secretary of Defense.

I never really met the guy, though I shook his hands on two separate occasions (at each graduation). In fact, the only gripe I have involves an electric golf cart.

You see, among the various perks a college president has, one is always discretionary money. A story was published in the school newspaper several years ago, about how Gates can now be seen driving around in one of those $30,000 golf carts. And among other details it was noted that the money came through private channels.

As a poor college student, upon learning this revelation, I immediately proceeded to email the president@tamu.edu to find out what charities and foundations he utilized to purchase said vehicle. And I received no reply.

Yes. While Bonfire was canned, grades were excluded, diversity shenanigans were blazed, trademarks were infringed and other drama took place, the one thing that really bugged me was the golf cart finance mystery.

While I remain a harsh critic behind the business model of Higher Education, I think that Gates did as good a job as anyone else in his position — which is to say, the school ranking did not decline during his tenure…

And this brings us to his replacement, which involves dorm gossip in the spring of 2001.

While I will refrain to name names, a certain individual in the know (his father was a large donor of sorts), mentioned that then both college president Ray Bowen and football coach R. C. Slocum would receive the axe in the next year. They were just not “moving with the times.” And sure enough, a year later they were both handed a pension check and began the loathesome past-time of lounging and layabouting (sic).

Now, if you’re familiar with Texas politics in the past 20 years, there was a three-term senator by the name of Phil Gramm who bested a libertarians only friend in Washington D.C.: Ron Paul — but this is neither here nor there. Prior to his election in 1985, Gramm had been a economics professor at A&M. And if you did your math, you can see that Gramm vacated his senatorial seat in 2002, which coincided with A&M’s presidential search.

You see, reportedly Gramm was offered the presidential gig at A&M, however, Gates already had his foot in the door as he was currently an interim dean of sorts over at the Bush School of Government at A&M.

And guess who has a lot of clout on campus, despite the fact that neither he nor any of his offspring ever attended the university? Yep, ol’ George Bush Senior. And guess who he helped ascend up to the list of candidates?

Well, do you remember that time many moons ago when Bush Sr. was the president? Guess who was the director of the CIA at that time? That would be the one and only Robert Gates.

Gates ultimately got the nod, got the job and Gramm was left to cruise around on the $1500/plate lecture circuit.

And now that Gates has left the building, perhaps Gramm might finally get the job. Who knows, he might even get a new golf cart.

Note: realpolitik aside, I doubt that Gates will take an anti-war stance as the new Secretary. He might “let” Iran play around with sand castles and dune buggies, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on an end to the Eyeraki War anytime soon.

You may have heard the term Darknet mentioned throughout your days on the internets.

In a nutshell, it is simply a private virtual network in which its members only share with people they trust. If you have used IRC, there are private, password protected channels that only friends can join. That is a very low-tech, yet effective proto-darknet.

In the era of lawsuits from the RIAA et al, a new generation of wares is being developed to increase a users anonymity and security. This includes the use of file encryption, proxies to continuously route and reroute traffic, and masking schemes designed to prevent the public from peering into their metaverse.

Enter AllPeers. Sean Lynch, a friend of mine, pointed me to it today and after testing it out, it seems like a usable proof-of-concept peer-to-peer darknet.

It is currently in beta mode and it shows, you can only share 300 files at a time and there are no subdirectories.

It plugs into your browser through a Firefox extension (other browsers will be supported later on). And because you only share files with people you know, there is really no way the RIAA can trace this kind of thing unless the developers install a backdoor into the software… or if the RIAA tries to trick you into sharing files with them.

It also claims to use SSL encryption and BitTorrent, however seeing as you are only sharing with a few friends, there shouldn’t be much of a need to distribute and balance the load. Also, based upon a Wikipedia entry, it seems that it is built on a bug that might be “fixed” and in doing so, would terminate its ability to act as a P2P application.

Note: this is different than a “BrightNet” like Offsystem.

Exhibit A: This video of some people that really should not be wearing skin-tight clothing, singing about some kind of granola crunching nirvana that has never existed.

Look, “the Internet” is just a gigantic collection of independently run networks. Some are privately owned, some are owned by NGO’s and others are financed via taxes.

There are over 150,000 routers that relay packets back and forth, many of these are owned by large companies.

Some of these companies want to charge variable rates — and already are charging variable rates. It is a concept that is neither new, nor foreign to the service world. For instance:

• Broadband rates versus dial-up, OMG! Can you believe there you are charged based upon how much you use? Different tiers even?
• Yield management takes place in the aviation industry (e.g. first class, business)
• Postage is a variable rate (e.g. while parcels may take the same “routes” they are charged based upon their size, destination and a host of other factors)
• Cellular packages (e.g. family plans, whenever/where ever minutes, roaming)
• Seating at entertainment venues (e.g. front row, floorside, benchside, 50-yard line, nose-bleed)
• Lines at an amusement park (e.g. general admission, Flash Pass)
• Insurance premiums (calculating your health, life, and car insurance all involves numerous continuously-changing variables which helps makes spreading risk an efficient enterprise)

The problem with the telecom industry however is that it is a highly regulated industry. It is not the product of a free-market distribution of resources. And none of the “net neutrality” legislation will fix it.

Rather than deregulate the industry, “net neutrality” will only add more costly and inefficient layers of regulation and oversight to it. After all, oversight and execution of the policies have to be financed somehow, guess who gets to pay for that?

What costs money? You see, in order to make sure every packet is living in some kind of Egalitarian-world, equipment will need to be installed to monitor and analyze the packets. And don’t forget the new civil servant positions that must be erected to analyze the data reports. Guess who finances that now? And so on.

Having a hard-on for Google and other web services is not going to nullify the laws of economics, namely scarcity. And any kind of nationalization of the network will result in a terribly ineffective method at distributing scarce resources.

If you are frustrated with dropped or static-filled calls today, imagine having a dropped call in the future because network operators can no longer discriminate (oooo, an evil word!!!) and reallocate bandwidth based upon peak usage.

Chuck Norris really should round-house kick this fallacious argument into the recycle bin. Bring back the freedom of contract.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is hundreds of pictures worth?

Remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989?  What about the Tank Man, the unknown rebel who stood in front of a column of tanks?

Here is some very interesting video coverage of the event synched with dramatic music.

Via Cantillon’s Paradise.

Who owns your body? If you do not personally own your body, who does?

Does the State? Does a supernatural entity? Do your parents still own you?

Despite fighting wars in the name of “freeing slaves,” humanity is by-in-large still enslaving one another through acts of fiat legislation. One such instance involves that of organs. Do you own your organs? If you do not, then who does? Regardless as to how you answered, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that the State claims ownership of yourself and your bodily parts — organs included.

Furthermore, this mental ownership exercise can continue to the microscopic level, including that of genes. Who owns your genes?

While these questions of ownership run around in your mind a germane tangent that meanders into this topic is that of genealogy. The National Geographic Society, along with IBM, has put together an endeavor called the Genographic Project. Basically they are trying to get individuals throughout the entire globe to self-administer a test - swabbing your inner-mouth cheeks - whom in return then send these samples back to National Geographic labs for further analysis.

Unsurprisingly, the project is not without its critics who believe the native indigenious people around the world are being exploited by, in their own words, racist scientists. The word “biopiracy” appears several times in their press release condemning the project, which is seen as “eugenics” in nature – suggesting that the results may be used to prove one group is inferior to another. They also suggest that firms may try to commercialize and “patent” whatever oddities or new things they discover.

This same claim of “biopiracy” was recently leveled upon Google whom is helping J. Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project fame. Several years ago Wired magazine published a detailed writeup of Venter’s latest project, which is to sail the seven seas in search of microbes and fish whose DNA he can analyze and hopefully “patent.” Google is reportedly allowing Venter to use their computer resources to analyze and catalogue each genome.

The issues that are being skirted around by all parties involved on both sides of these projects is the issue of property, what is it and who can own it? This is where “intelletual property” (e.g. patents) and the State do a great job of perverting contract law. If I own my body, then I own everything in it, including my DNA. One firm in San Francisco believes that I can copyright my DNA, ultimately suing for copyright infringement. The market for such as service, is being touted as a way for celebrities and VIPs to protect their image and “likeness.”

Sooner or later, the State and proponents of IP will have to face the music in terms of what “intellectual property” is and is not. While this is being sorted out, one thing is for certain: it is not physical.

If it is not physical, then is not property in the classical definition of the word. So assuming that IP concepts such as copyright and patent are heretofore invalid, then how can this quagmire surrounding native peoples and microscopic fish genomes be sorted out?

Another question that should be asked is, can things in nature, things that nature invented, be patentable? While it may be the case that a scientist discovered “gravity” can someone “patent” it? You may laugh at this example, however this is precisely what has happened to the field of biology, as firms and universities have been granted patents for what nature actually built. Techdirt recently highlighted one such instance,

Metabolite claims a patent on the discovery of a correlation between raised levels of the chemical homocystein, and a defficiency in two B-vitamins. This is a naturally occuring phenomenon, but the company demands a royalty any time a B-vitamin defficiency is tested using this knowledge. As the court itself has put it, the case revolves around whether a company can “claim a monopoly over a basic scientific relationship used in medical treatment”. If so, we’ve noticed that legs tend to kick when a mallet hits the knee; it seems like a good way to test a patient’s reflexes. Our application is in the mail.

When the dust clears, in terms of free-market libertarianism, the issue of “biopiracy” should be non-existent. Neither Google nor Venter own anything more than the fish they caught. Similarly the National Geographic Society does not own the people or their genomes it has received samples of. Nor can these firms “patent” something they do not own, such as the various genomes at stake.

By granting a monopoly on research and development in these areas of discipline to these firms, the State and proponents of IP are simply hindering economic development and retarding innovation. Innovation such as the ability to discover genetic predispositions years in advance – deadly defects that may go unnoticed until it is too late to fix and repair.

And if you do not own your body, let alone genome, then who owns your voice?

Apparently the Congressional committee for Human Rights Abuse is now petitioning a number of tech firms such as Microsoft and Google to appear before a board of inquiry, to find out why they are complying with China in censoring search terms (among other things).

Is this not one of the most bellicose chutzpah’s you’ve ever heard? Where on earth does anyone in Congress (sans Ron Paul) get off at pointing a condemning finger at anyone outside the beltway? It’s not like Congress doesn’t already eavesdrop or prevent certain things from being published. Who voted to invade a country and continues to occupy it? Last time I checked neither Bill Gates nor Eric Schmidt were setting up roadblocks, dropping paratroopers into neighborhoods or hijacking an entire economy.

At the same time, I am not ignoring the fact that it is the Chinese politicos who are also to blame for censoring darn near everything.

Perhaps the People’s Congress should subpoena the sycophants in DC and vice-versa. Then we could find out who has the best form of censorship…

Jesse Ogden pointed to what is perhaps the most pithy example of the intellectual prowess of Ann Coulter, an Amazon.com interview.

Upon reading it, I honestly believe the nucleic acids in my left nut are more adept and resourceful than the likes of her. I do not see how it is possible to be as witless and inarticulate as the “Blond Bombshell” is and be as widely syndicated and revered as she has been.

Though, it could be toss up between WorldNetDaily’s poster-girl and Michelle “I-heart-bondage” Malkin, thanks to Anthony Gregory. Mr. Gregory reviewed Malkin’s latest book which not only glorifies FDR’s internment policies but encourages and lauds the despotic Star-chamber behavior which Ashcroft & Co. have been operating under as of late:

“[In] times of crisis, civil rights often yield to security in order to ensure the nation’s survival. What is legal and what is necessary to preserve the Republic sometimes diverge…. In defying a Supreme Court order to restore habeas corpus, Lincoln refused to let the ‘government itself go to pieces’ for the sake a (sic) single law.” (163)

That Lincoln guy is certainly the role-model to justify your actions by, not like he waged a ruthless war and violated the civil rights of anyone that he disagreed with.

Time to rotate the hands.

Who’s A Rat? New Web Site Turns Tables on Informants:

BOSTON, Aug. 17 /PRNewswire/ — The Internet has some interesting uses, but one new Web site proves we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Unveiled today, Who’s A Rat (http://www.whosarat.com) is the first site to allow users around the country to post local, state and federal agents’ and informants’ names, pictures and related information.
[...]
“Every month, nearly 100,000 Americans are arrested on drug charges,” explained Sean Bucci, founder and president of Who’s A Rat. “What’s more, there are over 2 million people in jail in this country because the government dedicates most of its resources to the `drug war’ - yet drugs are more readily available and cheaper than ever. Although Who’s A Rat was created to assist individuals involved in any criminal matter, we expect it will be particularly helpful to those with drug charges against them.”

Reminds me of Matt Smith’s column two-years ago which listed the phone number and address of the up-to-no-good John Poindexter — satellite photos and map directions were even posted online for everyone to see. Here is an overview from Wired on that.

Via DiVERSiONZ.

And in apple pie America they censor… the web:

Courtesy of Richardson High School sophomore John Swanson (my younger brother).

I suppose this post didn’t help at all.

I was poking my head around the Hacktivismo website (the creators of the Six/Four System which is used by Ultramagnetic).

Now, I’m sure most of you are somewhat familiar with current cryptography exporting laws (they’re openly discussed in Hollywood movies like Mercury Rising and Swordfish). Check out this part:

3. You cannot download this software from us if you are an entity on the “Denied Persons List” published by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security. The Denied Persons List is published here or here [text file]. The most recent changes to the Denied Persons List are published here.

Well, I hope your name is not on this List of Doom™, though, my bet is you already know if your nombre was scribbled into the nanny’s blackbook. And here is another record of Bad People®: OFAC list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.

I’m starting a new venture in which I sell high-quality tin-foil hats and you buy them in bulk. First come, first served.

Soup Nazi aka NSA

Our War With France:

France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its “rightful” place as America’s equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.

I try not to post anything by politicians, policy wonks or any other charlatans on this blog, because I respect the level of intelligence, civility and wit of my audience. I thought however, what a better way to start the weekend than with the perfect example of hubris combined with jingoism.

Be afraid of le Gauls, they might be hiding under your bed or behind your clothes in your closet. As you read this, they could possibly be poisoning your water supply and are probably planning an invasion of Louisiana as we speak. And they are most assuredly going to sabotage the vernacular - sacré bleu!

Sounds like the classic case of who-gives-a-shit.

For what it’s worth, there’s an online petition sponsored by the EFF to effectively “Take a Stand Against the Madness; Stop the RIAA!” The goal was to gather 10,000 signatures through the weekend, with mine it came to 23,980… so those that can count/read can see that they made their goal. Anyways, fill it out if it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside — I know I’ll be warm for the next few years.

Yea, I know, it lists substandard reasons but so did this.

Were you the kid in college that founded the “Hilary-Rosen-is-God-and-I-will-participate-in-snuff-videos-with-God” club? Well aside from her homoerotic tendencies, what other activities were you both involved in? Persecuting consumers for shits and giggles? Smashing the bourgeois and proletariat before dinner? Stealing candy from babies and closing lemonade stands? Yea, she’s the retiring chief executive of the RIAA. And if you loved her, you’re going to love the man who can wear her pants and glide in her shoes: Mitch Bainwol (finally a name we can really parody).

Bitch Mainwall is not your ordinary charlatan. Nope, he’s had experience in the industry that keeps giving and giving as a congressional lobbyist and former aide-de-campe of Napoleon himself. Built from the fallen corpses of the mightiest Demopublicans and Republicrats, he knows whom to guilt, whom to please and whom to discombobulate. Rain or shine, he can do whatever it takes to make sure the sound waves you are listening to are not from endangered monkeys, Madonna or Metallica.

Vote Bitch: A Mountebank Every Technocrat Can Be Proud Of®.

Coming to an ISP near you, Fall 2003.

Well, I was talking to Satan today, he said that a number of pigs managed to somehow fly over the River Styx and land in what are now several ski lodges in what used to be the Nine Circles of Hell.

My friends, the RIAA is now offering amnesty to “pirates,” “thieves” and Pee-Wee Herman.

All you have to do is:

According to sources, the RIAA will not pursue legal action if infringers delete all unauthorized music files from their computers, destroy all copies (including CD-Rs) and promise not to upload such material in the future. Each infringing household member will have to send a completed, notarized amnesty form to the RIAA, with a copy of a photo ID. Those who renege on their promise will be subject to charges of willful copyright infringement.

Word on the street has it that SCO will be offering a similar option to thieves of it’s operating system in the near future.

Damn those malicious thieves!

Secure IDE:

ABIT’s SecureIDE will keep government supercomputers busy for weeks and will keep the RIAA away from your Kazaa files.

Thanks to ze Taiwanese you can now kinda sorta fight back against The Man. Actually, here is how it works:

For MAX3, the ABIT Engineers listened to users who were asking for information security. SecureIDE connects to your IDE hard disk and has a special decoder; without a special key, your hard disk cannot be opened by anyone. Thus hackers and would be information thieves cannot access your hard disk, even if they remove it from your PC. Protect your privacy and keep anyone from snooping into your information. Lock down your hard disk, not with a password, but with encryption. A password can be cracked by software in a few hours.

How do you like them apples?

Additionally, you know how I put forth a prediction as to who the RIAA was targeting? Well, that riddle has been partially solved, as explained at Slashdot:

“Slyck News seems to have found a pattern in just what files the RIAA is searching on to find offenders. It seems the RIAA is targeting a wide reach of music, including Hip Hop, R&B, Rap, Rock, Pop and Country songs. Artists such as Ludacris, Michael Jackson, NAS, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat and Musiq were very common throughout the subpoenas. They’ve even created a helpful chart showing exactly what artists and songs seem to get one flagged.”

And if none of those links work well, try out this guys site, he put the Excel list into a regular txt so we can all view it easily.

Note: and as Marc2k pointed out, maybe the RIAA is actually doing us a favor, look at the list of songs that are being targeted (kidding kidding, we all love Snoop Dogg).

Lastly, my friend Bill Malloy put together a quick letter you can write the talking head that apparently represents you (farcical aquatic ceremony indeed) and petition for some sort of grievance or for Viking reparations… because they pillaged your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpa. Damn them.

I was looking at the EFF’s recent article on How Not To Get Sued by the RIAA for File-sharing and thought this was an interesting point:

2. The RIAA appears to be targeting subpoenas at users who allow their computers to be “Supernodes” on the FastTrack P2P System (used, for instance, by KaZaA and Morpheus). In order to further reduce the risk of having your ISP subpoenaed or of being sued yourself, we recommend that you make sure your computer is not being used as a Supernode. To learn more about Supernodes and how to make sure your computer is not one, look here: http://www.whtvcable.com/fasttrack and http://helpdesk.princeton.edu/kb/display.plx?ID=9245. See also Disabling the Supernode function with KaZaA (PDF 331k).

Now for those of you that are unfamiliar with a ‘Supernode’ here is a good explanation as to what it is:

Supernodes are an essential part of the network. When being a Supernode, other users in your neighbourhood will automatically upload to your machine a small list of files they are sharing, whenever possible using the same Internet Service Provider or located in the same region as you. When they search they send the search request to you as a Supernode. This request will also be forwarded to other supernodes. The results are then send back to the user. The actual download will be directly from the computer who is sharing the file, not from you. The download goes from them to the person who wants it, peer-to-peer.

Any computer using Kazaa (Lite) can become a Supernode if they have a modern computer and are accessing the Internet with a broadband connection. Being a Supernode does not affect your performance noticeably.

Now, keep in mind, the RIAA is apparently targeting Supernode users, the question is however, why?

I’m wondering how Kazaa users will be able to communicate without Supernode users. Maybe the RIAA figured out that the Supernode users are an important glue within the entire system and without the coordination/communication that goes on between ‘normal’ and ‘Supernode’ users, file sharing would either be more difficult or impossible. If that is the case, than targeting these users first would be a smart move for the RIAA.

Remember, these Supernode users aren’t even necessarily trading the most files (or any for that matter), but what they are doing is assisting/aiding the swapping of files by acting as a decentralized shard in a DNS-like system.

Let me know if you see any other article that discusses this idea, I’d like to know the method to their madness (other than eating lots of paint chips and/or being a militant vegan).

I’m torn between finding my IP address in their database and receiving a summons or warrant from everyone’s favorite uniformed officers:

Subpoena Username Query Form

Concerned that information about your file-sharing username may have been subpoenaed by the RIAA? Check here to see if your username or IP address is on one of the subpoenas filed with the D.C. District Court. This information is drawn from the court’s publicly available PACER database and will be updated when that system is updated.

Username or IP address:

For more information on limiting your liability, check out How Not to Get Sued by the RIAA for File Sharing (and other Ideas to Avoid Being Treated Like a Criminal).

And as luck would have it, none of my 27 IPs attached to my huge datacenter(s) are found in this Database of Love™. I’d like to thank my mom and dad for this opportunity…

Everyone’s favorite consumer charlatan advocate group is of course, in the news more and more, this time, as Pete at DiVERSiONZ points out, the RIAA does not care who actually downloads very popular Milli Vanilli songs. Nope, if you clicked the “Download button” no matter how old you are (gramps included) you’re totally guilty of being a Section 8 malfunction that should be dumped into File 13 (theft?).

So… I was wondering what would happen to the 12 year-old cousins I have, I mean, they are vile degenerate philistines that must be placed under State control. If they are allowed to roam the Internet, causing suffering and mass starvation for thousands of artists who knows what wars they might cause in regions far far away.

Call in the Marines, the true enemy is file swappers, a menace to society the RIAA.