"If you understood everything I said, you'd be me" - Miles Davis
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
"Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" - Homer Simpson
Safety Warning. Not for use as a stroller. May contain parts. Manufactured in a facility where one or more of the following may be present: Peanuts, almonds, unfiltered water, oxygen, ultaviolet and infrared radiation, sunlight. Use only as directed by your legal counsel. Do not use during earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding or presidential election years. Use of handles may promote RSI, see your doctor or therapist before opening. May be flammable when exposed to open flame. Not for use as a stepping stool or adult seat. May cause injury if dropped from a height. Does not enable user to fly. Do not eat.
If erection lasts for over 4 hours call friends and brag. Persons attempting to find a motive in this blog will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. We don't need no stinkin' badges.
Same-day service.
Unplug after use.
Slippery when wet.
Ignore this notice.
Use only as directed.
Consume in moderation.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Your mileage may vary.
For external use only.
Don't try this at home.
No purchase is necessary.
You must be present to win.
Do not think of an elephant.
Other restrictions may apply.
Apply only to affected areas.
Part of a daily balanced diet.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
You need not be present to win.
No user-serviceable parts inside.
Do not exceed recommended dosage.
Offer void where prohibited by law.
Do not remove under penalty of law.
You have the right to remain silent.
If swallowed, do not induce vomiting.
Valid only at participating locations.
Freshest if used before date specified.
Prices subject to change without notice.
Do not fold, staple, spindle or mutilate.
Contents may have settled during shipment.
Caution! The edge is closer than you think.
In emergency, break glass, pull down handle.
Product is sold by weight and not by volume.
Do not use if safety seal is torn or missing.
If condition persists, consult your physician.
Detach and include upper portion with payment.
Nutritional need is not established in humans.
Objects on screen are closer than they appear.
Satisfaction guaranteed; return for full refund.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
May be used as flotation device in case of emergency.
Please note locations of emergency exits upon arrival.
No animals were harmed in the production of this page.
Caution: Dates on calendar are closer than they appear.
Please leave as clean on leaving as you would like to find on entering.
Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Do not use if you have ever had an allergic reaction to this product or any of its ingredients.
WARNING
Business is unpredictable and unsafe. The Internet is dangerous. Many blogs have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the blogs.
The Internet is covered in slippery slopes with loose, slippery and unpredictable footing. The RIAA can make matters worse. Patent trolls are everywhere. You may fall, be spammed or suffer a DOS attack. There are hidden viruses and worms. You could break your computer. There is wild code, which may be vicious, poisonous or carriers of dread malware. These include viruses and worms. E-mail can be poisonous as well. We don't do anything to protect you from any of this. We do not inspect, supervise or maintain the Internet, blogsphere, ISP?s or other features, natural or otherwise.
Real dangers are present even on the Web. E-commerce is not the mall. It can be, and is, steep, slippery and dangerous. Web features made or enhanced by humans, such as firewalls and spam filters (if any) can break, collapse, or otherwise fail catastrophically at any time. We don't promise to inspect, supervise or maintain them in any way. They may be negligently constructed or repaired. The web is unsafe, period. Live with it or stay away.
Stay on trusted sites whenever possible. The terrain, in addition to being dangerous, is surprisingly complex. You may get lost. Carry food, water and an APU at all times.
Ads for things you don't want and other objectionable content can arrive from nowhere. This can happen naturally, or be caused by people around you that are being used as bots. Spam and disgusting images of all sizes, including huge images, can arrive, or pop-up with no warning. Use of spam filters is advised for anyone approaching the Internet. They can be purchased or rented from us. They won't save you if you get hit by something big or on a port you left open. A whole DOS attack might collapse on you and squash you like a bug. Don't think it can't happen.
Public opinion can be dangerous, regardless of the forecast. Be prepared with extra damage control, including press releases. Ticking off the blogsphere can kill you. The Streisand effect can turn a simple nastygram into a deathtrap.
If you make hasty comments about those in high places (making unsupported comments that reduce the image of a person, often posted quickly and without thinking) without proper thought and, or allow your employees to do so, you are making a terrible mistake. Even if you know what you're doing, lots of things can go wrong and you may be sued for libel. It happens all the time.
We do not provide rangers or security personnel. The other people on the web, including other visitors, our employees, agents, and guests, and anyone else who might sneak in, may be stupid, reckless, or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminally insane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly malware and ready to use them. We aren't necessarily going to do anything about it. We refuse to take responsibility.
If you surf at work, you may become pre-occupied with it. This is true whether you are experienced or not, trained or not, equipped or not, though training and equipment may help. It's a fact, surfing at work is extremely dangerous. If you don't like it, surf at home. You really shouldn't be doing it anyway. We do not provide supervision or instruction. We are not responsible for, and do not track how much time you surf at work (although we could if we wanted to.) As far as we know, your employer may find out and send you plunging to unemployment. There are countless tons of loose management staff ready to be dislodged and fall on you or someone else. There are any number of extremely and unusually dangerous conditions existing on and around the Web, and elsewhere on the Internet. We may or may not know about any specific hazard, but even if we do, don't expect us to try to warn you. You're on your own.
Rescue services are not provided by us, and may not be available quickly or at all. Local computer geeks may not be equipped for or trained in hard drive recovery. If you are lucky enough to have somebody try to get rid of a virus or find that deleted file, they may be incompetent or worse. This includes your local computer store. We assume no responsibility. Also, if you decide to participate in a rescue of some other unfortunate, that's your choice. Don't do it unless you are willing to assume all risks.
By entering our site, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care or any other duty. We promise you nothing. We do not and will not even try to keep the premises safe for any purpose. The premises are not safe for any purpose. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about any dangerous or hazardous condition, whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about anything else. If we do make an effort to fix an unsafe condition, we may not try to correct any others, and we may make matters worse! We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may give you bad advice. Don't listen to us. In short, ENTER AND USE THIS SITE AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!
Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.
Consumer Notice: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.
Advisory: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Known as 'Tunneling,' This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain Suggested Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
Public Notice as Required by Law: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a 'Gluing' Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
Attention: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.
New Grand Unified Theory Disclaimer: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are 'Rolled Up' into Such a Small 'Area' That They Cannot Be Detected.
Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
Component equivalency notice: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
Health Warning: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
Upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy Heron.
Despite a thrilling "Fatal IO Error 9" it works just fine. I guess it wasn't quite fatal.
Only partly fatal. Slightly fatal, but not completely.
I did have to futz with Thunderbird to get it to open links in Firefox. TBird
thought Firefox was called "mozilla-firefox". And I'm beginning to think that
they shouldn't have gone for Firefox 3 beta-half my extensions don't work and
it's like my thumbs have been cut off.
P.S. Arrrggh!! FireFTP doesn't work! If I can't use FireFTP to update the blog I'll
have to fall back to using the command line. I've been using FireFTP for years
and I've totally forgotten what to do.
P.P.S. Scrounged the newest beta of FireFTP. It works, so here's to
untested software.
"Since 2004, the Pentagon has spent roughly $16 billion annually
to maintain and modernize the military's business systems, but most are as
unreliable as ever-even as the surge in defense spending is creating more room
for error. The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent
from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon
officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it's
virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the
department's brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still
unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress
required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can't
be.
...
"In the Defense Department, what you have now are material weaknesses that
are in every single area, in every part of the department, so deep and so wide
you do not really have any way of figuring out where money is being spent," says
Linda Bilmes, a federal budget expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Every year, the Pentagon tries to justify its budget request to Congress by
submitting three years of financial data: "actual" performance for the past
fiscal year plus projections for the current year and the next. But because of
the lack of reliable accounting, these totals are largely fictional. That, in
turn, raises major questions about whether the government will be able to meet
skyrocketing commitments for future spending on ships, planes, and high-tech
ground weapons, especially given the expected growth in spending on Social
Security and Medicare, and the impact of tax cuts.
According to David Walker, who recently left his post as head of the Government
Accountability Office, the failure of the Pentagon's outdated and incompatible
systems to keep tabs on expenditures-even as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
eat up an ever-bigger chunk of the federal budget-puts several Defense
Department agencies high on the G.A.O.'s list of federal programs that are
mismanaged and prone to fraud, waste, and abuse."
"...David Byrne's booking agent at William Morris Agency, Mark
Geiger, has been soliciting offers from a number of different promoters around
the United States for Byrne/Eno live shows, promising the set list will consist
of at least 40% Eno-era Talking Heads material.No word yet on if he's had any
takers. Most of the tour is already booked."
What I would like to know is where Mugabe gets the non-Zimbabwean money
to pay for freighters
full of guns and
banknote printing?
I'm assuming foreign companies and countries want payment in a currency that
isn't suffering from 165,000% inflation.
"Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night."
"Oh sure, it's easy to look back now with our twenty-twenty
hindsight and our armchair quarterbacking and whine and moan about how it all
went wrong. But what about the case for blowing up the moon at the time? For
literally dozens of years the moon had menaced Western Civilization with its
eclipses and its werewolf hordes and its sinister seduction of our seas, all the
while dangling its massive stony bulk above us with nothing but universal
gravitation standing between the free world and a cold and moony end! Oh, the
usual crowd of peaceniks and anti-kill killjoys would have had America stand
idly by and do nothing, leaving frightened children and Brookings scholars to
tremble under their beds at night while our nation's nocturnal nemesis
threatened once again to plunge from the heavens and squish us all, but 9/11
taught us that we can't wait for danger to become dangerous before we
pre-re-endanger it back! And by defeating the moon America would ensure not only
its own security, but the destruction of al Qaeda's deadly space laser, the
liberation of the moon men from the terrible tyranny of the Crater King, and the
second coming of Astro-Jesus!
Of course by now everybody thinks they're an expert on every little accident
that's happened in the moon war. Oh, we didn't send enough troops, oh, we didn't
plan for the aftermath, oh, the explosions launched millions of tons of
radioactive moon rock into the atmosphere and killed hundreds of thousands of
people. Well, boo hoo hoo! Nobody said this war was gonna be perfect. It's
true, if Giblets had to blow up the moon all over again he would have made some
changes, like firing Donald Rumsfeld and putting more boots on the ground and
getting more international support. But would he oppose the moon war
altogether? Well that's the kinda crazy talk we were only hearing from
namby-pamby pot-smoking puppet-wielding moon hippies like Al Gore and Zbigniew
Brzezinski and their Stalinist fellow travelers at International ANSWER! And
what was their solution to the rapidly growing moon crisis? Nothing but peace
songs and patchouli smell and nothing!"
""Screw this dump!" says Giblets. "This universe is old and fat and smells like smelling and Giblets is busting out!"
"Should we go over the wall or take the tunnel?" says me. I been diggin a tunnel.
"Nuts to the tunnel!" says Giblets. "What we do is we make like we're sick. Then when God comes in to check on us we punch im in the liver an run out the door!"
"They'll be on the lookout so we're gonna need disguises if we wanna make it the resta the way," says me. "If we bop Europe an Australia on the head we can sneak out in their continent costumes!"
"Then it's only three hundred eighty thousand miles to the moon. We can swim for it!" says Giblets. "Giblets's crater friends can smuggle us to the border from there."
"We'll haveta travel undercover if we wanna stay aheada the law," says me. "By the time we reach the checkpoint I'll be Henri DuMarche, international financier, socialite and diamond thief, an you can be NGC 5024, a mild-mannered globular cluster.""
