It's been a while, but tonight I stumbled on this fascinating bit of literature.

Go ahead, count the memes. Then read it again and count 'em a second time :)

Maybe, if we're really lucky, this is an indication of better trolling to come in the future? I'm tired of the half-assed trolling we've been seeing here in the past year or two.

it, will, of course, just be buried by the "liberal media" to the point where nobody says anything of it.

UAW Files Charges Against Romney on his Auto Bail-Out Profiteering.

After all, what's several million dollars between friends?

This story was news yesterday afternoon. I understand that what I submit is not allowed to make the front page, ever, but I'm not the only person to mention it.

Or does the message in Star Wars not properly jive with the conservative bend that slashdot wants on their front page? After all, love, hope, and freedom don't exactly fit well with the ambitions of Ron Paul and the "every (white, Christian, wealthy) man for himself" mentality.

Someone else provided this link last week:

US Presidential Election 2012

So why then will I vote for Obama, knowing that indeed he is barely any less conservative than Romney? Well, in my case a President Romney could be immediately catastrophic for my profession. An extension of President Obama, however, would be bad but not catastrophic. Hence, this vote is simply for self-preservation at this point. Hopefully some other time we will see a third (really, second) party candidate who is viable to win the seat and change something.

It is also interesting that on the libertarian - authoritarian axis there is not a single candidate from the left who scores above zero. Meanwhile most of the candidates on the right are authoritarian or score zero.

Hadn't seen this before:

Of course, you can't be someone's friend and foe simultaneously. Looks like he accidentally hit the former wanting the latter, then corrected it. So really, I just gained a freak.

I suspect it relates to the fact that I recently pointed out that Ron Paul is full of self-righteous shit and doesn't give a fuck about the rest of the world. Not sure, but just a guess...

First, I laughed that anyone would think they could pull off such an absurd stunt. Then, I cried when I realized that tragically some people mistook it for being connected to reality.

I'm referring to the "documentary" Dreams from my real father, which claims that Barack Hussein Obama Jr is the son of Frank Marshall Davis, who they allege to be a leader of the American Communist Party. To make it even more exciting, the film claims that Obama's mom and "dad" met while the latter was filming a porno starring the former.

So to get this straight, the documentary - which is today the 14th most-popular instant title on netflix - alleges:

• Obama's mom was a porno actress
• Obama's real dad was a communist
• Obama's name and official identity are lies - right down to the birth certificate that lists him as "Barack Hussein Obama Jr".

I'm just waiting to find someone who subscribes to both this crackpot "theory" and the birther movement, since the two can obviously not both be true. Of course, birthers won't let something like reality or logic get in their way...

I am one of a very large number of people who received the obviously bogus text message yesterday telling me that I had won a raffle for a $1,000 Best Buy gift card. The text message directed me to the domain

With a "secret code". I had a few minutes to kill, so I went there from a browser on my linux system and entered a completely different code (turns out, much as expected, you can enter whatever you want into the "secret code" box). This directed me then to

Rather unsurprisingly, these two domains are both less than a year old (the latter being the older, at around 3 months, the former was registered yesterday), and both registered through namecheap.com .

I contacted namecheap.com via their abuse address, and they have so far played every stupid run-around trick they could think of to avoid doing anything. In other words, they know they are aiding in a criminal act and they don't give a shit as long as they get paid.

Not that this is new, many registrars before them have gone down the same path.

Romney is already incapable of winning this election, but that won't stop dedicated activists from trying to steal it for him anyways . We should recall the massive voter suppression efforts the Bush administration and their friends executed in 2004 in Ohio, by intentionally under-supplying voting machines in economically disadvantaged precincts which cause some people to wait several hours to vote while voters in more affluent areas voted in 10 minutes or less.

Now, the Tea Party is targeting likely democratic voters to get them dropped from the rolls for eligible voters.

Whether this is about race or not, this does show one thing. The GOP is indeed united in one thing above all else - their hatred of Obama. They don't care what they have to do to get him out, what laws they have to break, what kind of underhanded tricks they have to pull. Of course this shouldn't surprise anyone after what happened in 2000. And 2004. And 2008. And the midterms in 2006 and 2010.

The next guy to lose the presidential race to Obama recently commented on a problem with his wife's plane, which had to make an emergency landing in response to a fire:

This is also driving a slow-growing twitter tag of #RomneyPlaneFeatures.

However this will never be anywhere nearly as mentioned here as the "58 states" comment that Obama allegedly made in the 2008 campaign.

I see that user has written all of five comments - all in journal entry discussions - as of this time. They did, however, take the time to add me (and only me) to their foes list. Welcome to my freaks list, whoever you are.

Both Intel and AMD came out last week with chips that are focused on "Windows 8 first" and don't even pretend to be openly documented or available to all. That both would so suddenly reverse course on being open was a surprise. There are good reasons why Microsoft needs advanced access to integrate their software with innovative new processor technologies, and why AMD and Intel might be persuaded to cooperate. Together they are defending the "Wintel PC" ecosystem against the world's largest corporation by market capitalization, Apple, who is engaging in "vertical integration" by designing software and processor and other platform technologies together in a way that optimally balances the tradeoffs between what hardware best does and software best does. That is powerful leverage. But for Intel and AMD - and you and I - this is a trap and the consequences of this solution are dire.

It's about software patents. By Microsoft convincing Intel and AMD to focus on Windows only for the launch of these new power technologies, to secretly work with Microsoft on development, Microsoft get a jump start on the software patents. While the hardware interface is obfuscated Microsoft has six months to a year to file for patents on every possible software use of the hardware interfaces they can think of to use it. You can bet they're churning out patents by the hundred as I type this on things anybody reading the plain specifications would find obvious but the patent office will not. Microsoft will own utterly all the software uses of this hardware innovation, and by extension prevent all progress it enables that Microsoft does not control. Because of the ridiculous way patents work, this hands Microsoft complete control not only of these innovations but the entire systems which use them, of which they compose only a miniscule part.

Then when the facilities are openly documented and the open systems come out that leverage these technologies: BAM! Software patent lawsuits out the wazoo, and the Windows monopoly is protected against competition and progress for another human generation - unless Intel and AMD are killed utterly. Much like Samsung makes the touchscreen and owns huge patents on the technology, and then Apple and Microsoft sue Samsung for making devices incorporating touchscreens because they patented software that interprets certain software implementations of swiping and tapping.

As an unintended consequence Intel and AMD -only- get to move forward if Windows moves forward since Microsoft has all the patents on using the technologies they invented. By selling Microsoft this advantage for whatever they got in return, they've mortgaged their future to a single vendor and lost their ability to compete in open systems against ARM and Android. They've sunk their own boat. They can expect that Microsoft will use that lever to best advantage against their "partners" Intel and AMD, as Microsoft never misses a trick in that regard.

Intel has announced that "future platforms" with their technology will be open to Linux. AMD has announced that "Hondo" is being retrofitted with Android. Unfortunately, it is already too late. They have been cooperating with Microsoft secretly for many months before these announcements. The first patent applications on the most obvious uses of this hard-won hardware innovation are almost certainly already filed, with more to follow.

Don't pay to make yourself a victim again. Avoid these chips and anything tainted with this technology. Make AMD and Intel start from scratch, open from the start, if they want your money. At least then the open software implementations have a fair shot at establishing free and open prior art before Microsoft's lawyers have a chance to file their stupid software patents. Only with open hardware with well-documented interfaces available from the start can progress move forward, and even then only if the people who want to do interesting useful stuff step up and publish at least one way to use it before somebody who wants to control it utterly and prevent others from using it can whip up their patent thicket applications and beat them to the patent office.

I probably shouldn't acknowledge this guy with a journal entry, but since he just wrote one with my name in it I thought I'd make an exception. I won't even go so far as to say that he is of any particular philosophical persuasion, rather that he must be one of the following:

• Incapable of reading and comprehending the written English language
• Lying about actually reading what I write
• Just simply trolling me

It started in an earlier JE I wrote. Slashdot user mcgrew raised an actual point, which I gave my own response to. The rest comes after that.

It was a perfectly sane and reasonable conversation up to that point. Then the user who wrote the journal entry mentioned above inserted their completely irrational "interpretation" of my comment. The only question really is whether or not they actually read the comment, as no reasonable person could possibly reach that user's conclusions from doing so.

If the user is just trolling me, they have indeed succeeded in wasting my time but nothing else. Not much of a victory for them, really.

Unsurprisingly, after being the VP nominee for barely a week, Paul Ryan has already stolen music for his campaign. Of course his predecessor Sarah Palin (who, like him, failed to defeat Obama-Biden when paired with a boring wealthy white guy) set a precedent by using a Tom Petty song (amongst others) without permission.

Paul Ryan's choice? We're Not Gonna take It by Twisted Sister. It turns out Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider ain't gonna take this.

From Dee Snider's web site:

Not that Paul Ryan knows anything about working for money.

With all the news about Missouri republican senate candidate Todd Aiken's unbelievably idiotic statement about rape and pregnancy, I just had to know what the brilliant minds at Conservapeida (alternately "the trustworthy encyclopedia" or "the encyclopedia that only Jesus can edit", depending on whom you ask) had to say on it.

I just looked at their front page, and was not disappointed. Two amusing clips from their "news" column on the right-hand side of the page:

and:

It's amusing to see how the world looks from their perspective once in a while...

First, a new fan:

What was interesting about this, though, was that I received a message about them adding me to their friends list before I received a message about the comment they posted to my journal entry. I then looked through their comments, and found a message they wrote, before being told of that same message.

Apparently, some messages are sent closer to the time of the event?