No, really. Here’s his platform, according to a news story:

higher taxes for the highest income earners or would require tough energy conservation standards to wean the country off its dependence on foreign oil while dealing with global climate change.

He said his universal health-care proposals would take power in the health-care sector away from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. He also called for more subsidized housing and rejected privatization proposals to help save Social Security.

“I don’t believe in privatization. I don’t believe in raising the retirement age or in cutting benefits. We need to find a new revenue stream,” he said. He has proposed raising the Social Security wage earner cap to far above its current $90,000 level.

His energy policy precluded nuclear power and would penalize corporate polluters with heavy fines — producing revenues that would be reinvested into aggressive renewable energy research and programs.

So, an Edwards presidency would involve a complete takeover by the government of the lives of all Americans, from cradle to grave. The reason is that obviously humans are incapable of caring for and planning for themselves. As the industries Edwards plans on taking over become cartelized, unionized, and monopolized (which they desperately want and hope for) and it raises the cost of living for everyone, and the quality of service drops to unimaginably poor levels, the resulting America would resemble this:

The Onion’s take.

I saw this on IMDB today.

Concerned about the current negative image of the American military in many countries, Paramount Pictures and Hasbro, the toy manufacturer, have decided that in their forthcoming film featuring comic-book patriot G.I. Joe, the character will become part of a multinational force, the London Daily Telegraph reported today (Tuesday). Even the character’s name has become an acronym for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, the newspaper said. Word of the makeover is likely to anger U.S. conservatives, the Telegraph noted.

So Joe is still a murderer and a terrorist, but now he’s under the command of a UN type-of-thing … wait. What the hell does that mean? Global Integrated what? It sounds like a prosthetic limb. It sure doesn’t sound like any organization I’ve ever heard of. Who’s this guy supposed to be murdering anyway?

I do this stuff for a living, so I thought I’d pass on some of my knowledge. These rules only apply to Windows users. Mac users are too rich to care, and Linux is immune.
You do not need an antivirus scanner if you know what you’re doing. I don’t have one in Windows, and I have no viruses.
1. Do not click on embedded ads in websites that promise “free registry cleaner” or “speed up your internet connection” or ads that look like Windows error messages. These ads are fake, and will infect your machine with spyware or adware if you click on them.
2. Do not type URLs (ie. thestressblog.com) into the browser’s address bar. Type the address into a Google search box and let Google give you a safe link to the site. If Google doesn’t think the site is safe, it will not give you a link, and will tell you to stay the hell off it.
3. Do not use Internet Exploder to browse the web. Use Firefox or Opera and add the Adblock Plus extension using one of the subscriptions. This should allow you to browse unsafe places like Myspace and pr0n sites safely. What’s that? you don’t use your computer to look at pr0n? neither do I. Nobody does.
4. Do not use local, ISP-based email. Use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail (or if you really don’t know what you’re doing, AOHell). This will have 2 positive effects: The first is that these services, rather than you, become responsible for managing your mail. If you were capable of managing your mail, you’d probably be getting paid to manage other people’s mail. The second positive is that these services filter dangerous botnet mail. Mail that spreads viruses, spyware, phishing scams etc. which usually originate from the Russian mob.
5. Always delete mail that comes from an unknown source. These messages will try to trick you into buying useless crap you don’t need at prices you can’t afford. And they can be botnet attacks.
6. Before you invest in an antispyware program, check spywarewarrior.com’s list of rogue antispyware programs. There are about 8 legitimate programs, and hundreds of programs that are actually spyware.
7. Buy a router (I’ve said this before on this site) and use it as a firewall instead of the crap that comes built into Windows, or one of the big security suites like Crackafee or Nrotten. With a big security suite, you’ll gain security at the expense of annoying and confusing messages and questions — and a severe loss of performance.

Note about performance: If you want a faster computer, don’t believe some bullshit ad on a website. The quickest way to increase performance is to add RAM. If you’re talking about 3d games, improve your video card. Windows can only do so much with the garbage hardware that most people buy. And most people don’t understand the impact RAM has on performance. I’m not trying to downplay the differences between the old Pentium4 and the new dual-core chips. Certainly, there’s no comparison. But you can’t change CPUs without changing the board and RAM too — maybe even the hard drive and video card (due to the change in architecture that took place a few years ago). RAM is going to make a big difference without much money or time spent. It also may prolong the life of the computer by several years.
If you’re getting popups complaining about viruses or spyware, you have viruses and spyware. Stop what you’re doing, call someone and pay them to fix it. It’s not something you can do yourself, and no program can do it either. It takes someone like me who spends all day doing it. I have heard many horror stories about people who went on with an infected machine for months and then lost all of their data. Is that what you want? Do you want a letter from your ISP telling you that your PC is being used for illegal activity? Guess who is liable in that situation?

Al Gore has captured the first ever Nobel Jackass prize. Instead of a large cash award, this particular award carries with it an even greater honour: Gore will receive a sack full of his weight in horse manure. Bill Clinton, reached for comment on his “Everyone Has AIDS” tour, said “That would be one big pile of crap”.

Wait, I read the story incorrectly. It seems Gore has won the coveted “peace prize”. A member of the committee explained:

We gave him the peace prize because he quit in 2000. Had he won the presidency, his administration would no doubt have launched post-9/11 attacks on half the nations in Africa, Burma, as well as most of the Middle-East, resulting in millions of deaths. We think it’s great that he had the humility not to inflict himself on the world.

Next week: George W. Bush captures the Nobel prize for Physics, after it is discovered he has displayed a form of galactic wrongheadedness never before encountered.

I have upgraded to WordPress 2.3 and there is an important new feature: metadata tags. There is a textbox under the blog writing textbox where you can enter tags for your posts. This information is like the subject line in an email, and it will help int he longterm grouping and organizing posts which have similar subjects together. For this purpose, there is now a Tag Cloud in the sidebar on the right.
I’ll see if there’s a way to go back and quickly tag previous posts, but I’m not optimistic, since there are thousands. Let’s focus on the future.
I’d like to tip my hat to mudshark, who already noticed the new feature and made use of it before I posted this. Nice job.

Well, not really. But during testimony in a file-sharing legal case today, Jennifer Pariser, Sony’s head of litigation, made some odd statements (which close aids have attributed to an overly tight necktie). The story on Ars Technica goes like this:

Pariser has a very broad definition of “stealing.” When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” she said.

According to Pariser, we should all be paying for every copy of the same song we have. So let me sketch out a possible situation here. Let’s say you have a computer, a CD player, an iPod, and a PDA you can play song on. If you want the song to play on all of these sources, you must buy the CD, and download and pay for the song 3 online additional times.
Furthermore, these statements were made in a courtroom, meaning Sony feels that the best way to achieve this goal is to attack consumers with the legal system. The enforcement mechanism of the legal system is the State and its storm troopers. No sane human being that doesn’t have a direct link to the RIAA/MPAA cartel thinks this view is correct morally or legally. But I guess we should expect immoral and illegal behaviour from a corporation which at one point installed rootkits on their consumers’ computers in violation of numerous privacy laws.

In other news, the world’s best band, Radiohead, is offering their latest record for free, in a strange and inexplicable break from the music industry’s war on consumers. These dangerous cretins must be brought back into line. Sue them Jennifer! sue them now!

I’ll be upgrading this site to WP 2.3 in the next few days. I mention this because on Slashdot today, there appeared an incorrect and misleading article in which the writer claimed that this new version sends confidential information about registered users to WP developers.
Matt Mullenweg shot this down quickly, but I want to reiterate that WP 2.3 does not send any confidential information to anyone. You are safe to continue using this site.

Excerpt from an interview with Linus Torvalds:

Interviewer: Out of curiosity, do you have anything to say to hardware manufacturers who refuse to release datasheets or specifications about the functioning of their hardware so it could operate with the Linux kernel?

Linus: Is “I hope you all die a painful death” too strong?

Recently, the CPU manufacturer AMD purchased ATI, which makes graphics cards. ATI graphics cards are used extensively, and there is a 50/50 chance you have one yourself. For years, those of us that had ATI cards had to deal with substandard open source drivers and a proprietary driver that ATI refused, at first, to develop. If the proprietary driver was under development, chances are it would take 6 months until it was ready, and then would provide buggy, unstable performance, and, being proprietary, could not be included with the Linux kernel. ATI’s linux driver support was, in short, painful. Recently, however, AMD decided to release all of ATI’s specs to the public and work with the open source community to build working drivers that can be included with the kernel and provide full hardware acceleration out of the box.
This is such a stunning reversal. When I heard about it, I almost passed out. ATI has now passed Nvidia, its leading competitor, in open source support, something I never thought would happen. AMD has now released over 900 pages of specs and more are on the way. The only way they could top themselves is if they released the specs for the older Radeon and Rage chips too. Then, drivers could be developed for older graphics cards, some of which are still in use. Those of us who use Linux should support AMD’s heroic decision by buying AMD chips and ATI cards from now on.

Folks, this is what’s being done on Linux these days. My desktop is very similar to this. I don’t have all of these features enabled because I don’t currently have a powerful CPU, but this is a lot closer to mine than anything else I could find on Youtube. The window manager is called Beryl, and it is what is causing these effects, including the 3D cube (Skydome) effect and all of the neat things done with the windows. For all the hype about Vista’s “Aero” desktop, Microsoft could only do about 1% of this. Maybe open source really is better than proprietary? In case you’re wondering, this fellow is using Ubuntu, with the Gnome desktop, using Beryl as the WM, with what looks like full desktop effects enabled. The total cost of the software on this computer is $0.00

I’ve been reading Philip Norman’s book “Shout”, a history of the Beatles. A substantial portion of the book is about their manager Brian Epstein. “Eppy” died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills 40 years ago on August 27, 1967. The Beatles, as we think of them, is the work of Brian Epstein — it’s a simple as that. Yes, the music was written by John and Paul, for the most part, but consider this:

* Brian fought for the group to get their first recording contract, and introduced them to George Martin, himself having a major influence, although only on the music.
* Brian fired Pete Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr. Best was a terrible drummer who Martin refused to record with the others.
* Brian changed their image from leather jackets tough (which they weren’t good at - they weren’t tough), to business suits and short hair. He stopped their smoking on stage, made them smile and have fun and play to the audience. Lennon would have preferred leather and bar-fights every night.
* Brian’s attention to detail meant the group never had to worry about where they were playing, what songs they would play, how much money they would make, what hotel they were staying in etc. Brian kept people on hand at all times well funded to take care of whatever the boys might want. Epstein’s ability to take care of small details was astonishing. After his death, the absence of this stabilizing influence helped lead to the group’s breakup.
* Brian diffused two major scandals. The first was Lennon’s infamous “We’re more popular than Jesus now” interview. Brian arranged for Lennon’s apology after releasing statements clarifying what John was trying to say. This helped the burning of Beatles merchandise, which was going on in the American South, come to a swift end. The other scandal was when McCartney admitted he’d taken LSD. Brian immediately arranged for the entire group, including himself, to admit the same. The tone of the admission not only diffused the scandal, but soon after, a drug legalization campaign started which changed the discussion entirely.
* Brian arranged for the Beatles to begin making movies, and, under his watch, 2 great films were made; A Hard Day’s Night, and Help! There was even talk that The Beatles might be the next Marx Bros!

More testament to his positive influence is what happened after he died. The group only survived 2 years, until September 1969, without Brian. McCartney released his disastrous “Magical Mystery Tour” film, to ruinous reviews. This film tarnished the Beatles’ reputation for perfection and infallibility - a reputation Brian created and protected zealously. Shout suggests Brian wouldn’t have allowed McCartney to release Mystery Tour. Lennon’s inexplicable belief in the artistic talents of Yoko Ono was allowed to sneak onto the White Album in the form of the hideous “Revolution 9″ which it seems to me features Ono screeching in an attempted bowel movement which lasts an excruciating 8 minutes. The group, with McCartney as their new leader (”Leading us in circles” as John put it) all of a sudden manifested personal tensions that had not been apparent before (when Brian was taking care of the little things).

Brian was not perfect. He was a kind, generous man, but he was a terrible negotiator. Brian and The Beatles were robbed by terrible deals Brian negotiated throughout his career. Although the group became rich, they failed to earn even 10% of their full potential, and most of the blame can be placed on Brian. His generosity meant that fans never had to pay much, that is to say, what they might have paid, to see The Beatles in concert. Brian’s personal life involved homosexuality and drug abuse. Eventually, his entire life was about blackmail and drugs. This was his undoing. However, to his credit, he tried on at least 2 occasions to dry out.

There is a petition to have Brian Epstein inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. It is a no-brainer for anyone who loves The Beatles. Please sign here.

A beauty pageant winner from South Carolina was asked the following question: “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?”
South Carolina answered as follows:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
Here is a Youtube video of the answer. It is painful to watch, yet I cannot look away. I was reminded of Britney’s statement on how we should all just shut up and support Shrub.
It appears this girl answered the question without meaning to. Here are some answers I can think of if she’s ever asked this question again:
“Because Americans don’t give a shit about the rest of the world.”
“A fifth of Americans also voted for Shrub.”
“They keep changing the maps every time the US conquers another country and wipes out its civilian population”
“Because the US education system isn’t designed to teach useful or practical information, it’s designed to teach ‘diversity’”
Feel free to add your own.

Libertarians