• Be careful what you agree to…

    I read this after installing the newest Microsoft “security update” unfortunately. I’ve now agreed for Microsoft to connect to my machine and “fix” stuff whenever they feel like it.

    If you caught our recent coverage of the Windows Media Player trio of security holes you may have followed a link to the TechNet download site for a patch, or you might have activated Windows Update. If you did the former (though, oddly, not if you did the latter), you would have been confronted with an End User License Agreement (EULA) stating, most ominously, that:

    “You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management (‘Secure Content’), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.”

    Not so comforting, coming from a company that accidentaly distributed virus-infected software recently.

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  • CEOs don’t need banks — they have their companies

    Great column by Arianna.

    To the ever-growing mountain of evidence that corporate kingpins live in an entirely different world from the rest of us, we can add the latest revelations about the gargantuan loans CEOs receive from their companies: the $408 million WorldCom loaned to former boss Bernie Ebbers a month before thousands of employees began getting their pink slips, the $3.1 billion Adelphia Communications loaned to John Rigas and his kin, the $162 million Conseco loaned to Stephen Hilbert, the $88 million Tyco loaned to Dennis Kozlowski and the millions upon millions in less ostentatious — but no less outrageous — raids on company coffers by senior executives across the corporate landscape.

    …

    WorldCom — which defaulted on $4.2 billion of its own loans yesterday — is charging Ebbers 2.3% on the $408 million he owes.

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  • I love this cartoon

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  • For those obsessed with…

    what search strings caused people to find your site, I give you:

    Disturbing Search Requests

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  • 2 things in honor of the Catholic Church

    1. Boondocks comic strip

    2. Pedophiles against gay rights

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  • Oh yeah, this is why I left the South

    In Alabama this weekend:

    An evangelist who was asked to sing at his wife’s uncle’s funeral claims he had a revelation from God that led him to insult mourners and say that the dead man was damned.

    Orlando Bethel said he spoke words that “the Lord revealed to me.” Preaching over a microphone at the Greater Pine Grove Baptist Church, he told some 100 mourners they were “fornicators” and “whoremongers.” He said the deceased, Lish Devan Taylor, had gone to hell.

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  • Saturday blog gathering

    I was in attendance at the Choire / Bazima gathering on Saturday night at Dick’s Bar, so go look at some … of the … photos. I finally got to meet Sam, one of the drivers of traffic to my site and a very sweet (and tall!) boy. He was part of the Texas contingent that included the delicious and charming Glenn (aka Dan‘s roommate – another new acquaintance), who makes me remember the things I do like about that part of the country, and the adorable Dan’l. I like a boy who can mention the Radical Faeries and a book on The Origins of the Avant Garde in France on his info page.

    I can’t remember Scott wearing a tiara, but he’s wearing it in all of the pictures. Andy and I didn’t get much of a chance to talk in the chaos.

    I also met Chris — a fellow Arkansan! She and I shall have to meet and discuss this further.

    What was with the smoke in that place? Even the smokers were complaining about it!

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  • Hitting the Trifecta

    Professional stand-up comedians know that Sept. 11 jokes are radioactive. Not even the bravest have tried to turn the deaths of some 3,000 people into a laughing matter. But President Bush has forged ahead anyway. Bush has now been telling the same, spectacularly tasteless joke to a variety of mostly Republican audiences as part of his stock stump speech for the better part of four months now.

    This is its basic telling:

    “You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream weÂ’d get the trifecta.”

    According to the transcripts, this joke usually elicits laughter from the mostly GOP crowds to whom Bush tells it.

    Not only is the joke tasteless — lucky me we got 3,000 Americans killed — it’s not even true. The president never mentioned those conditions in his campaign, or while pushing his huge tax cuts.

    Bush was already facing the certainty of deficit spending at the end of the summer of 2001, well before the attacks of Sept. 11. Some $4 trillion worth of budget surplus vanished over the spring and summer that year, and budget experts sounded the alarm about looming deficits then. The Congressional Budget Office warned Bush on Aug. 29 that Social Security funds would be needed to balance the books, forcing him to abandon a campaign promise not to use the retirement fund for other government spending.

    His tax cuts are the reason for the deficit, and most of them haven’t taken effect yet.

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  • Paul Lombardi

    Inspired by Sam, I located the video of Paul Lombardi in his sleeveless t-shirt covering the “Opening of the Pools” in NYC.

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  • Silly homos affecting Amazon recommendations

    As I was getting ready to purchase a few gifts for my Mother’s birthday, such as this recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, I see the usual Amazon thing of “Customers who bought this also bought”… which gives me

    Blinded by the Right by David Brock (No, don’t go buy it!)

    Weird.

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