Horologium

2003-04-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

Yikes!

"Saint Paul", at Fraters Libertas, had an interesting experience with the "Thomas" guide that indexes all legislation introduced into the U.S. Congress. The hair-raising part, however, was when he looked at a series of bills introduced by Jesse Jackson, JR (D-IL), the son of everyone's favorite racial agitator. A list:

the right of convicted felons to vote

the right for all citizens to an education of equal high quality

the right for all citizens to health care of equal high quality

the right for abortion on demand

the right to housing

the right to a clean, safe, sustainable environment

the right to full employment

the right to equal pay for equal work

the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Look, ma, Karl Marx has been reincarnated as a congressman!

St Paul does a better job than I with the material; just read his post and cringe.

(Link courtesy of Chaz Hill.)

2003-04-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

micautoreg—wtf?

Somebody is banging on the doors of my computer, and I'm not quite sure what is going on.

Over the past two days, McAfee Personal Firewall plus has logged over 850 events that it has blocked. One particularly persistent individual, whose IP address is 80.202.177.4, logged 67 separate attempts to connect to port 1528 of my computer. I have no idea what the "micautoreg" program or service is, but he's been banging away at it. I banned the bozo when he started pinging me again this evening.

The bizarre thing is that all week long, PF+ logged only one odd event against my computer, until yesterday. There was an inordinate number of unsolicited connections headed my way, and a lot of them appeared to be coming from major servers. I wonder if I am catching the edge of a "Distributed Reflection Denial of Service" (DRDoS) attack. If that is the case, I wonder which server is being targetted.

2003-04-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

German regrets—too little, too late

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder now says he regrets the "exaggerated remarks" he employed during his reelection campaign last year, one in which he savaged President Bush, his advisors, and his foreign policy.

It's a little bit late for that, Herr Schroeder. As the Bush administration has pointed out, your remarks (and those of some of your ministers) have poisoned relations between your country and ours, and there will be no reconciliation until either the Social Democrats (in Germany) or the Republican Party (in the US) is voted out of power. No words can repair our relations, and the rift is entirely of your doing. The outraged howls from the European media when Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney make slight criticisms of the "Old Europe" show that is a one-way street; if Bush had used the language against you that you used against us, the European press would be hiring assassins to take Bush out.

Schroeder was probably shocked that the US didn't quietly allow him to criticize us, as past administrations have allowed our ostensible allies to attack our positions. He misjudged our "stupid cowboy" president, who apparently believes that words have meaning, that hardball diplomacy must be returned in kind. He (and France's Chirac, and Belgium's Verhofstadt) didn't count on the average American to hear about (or care about) their comments. Perhaps they can blame the combination of Fox News, the blogosphere, and the rest of the "right-wing dominated" media. (Oh, wait, belay my last...)

Reuters points out this indicator of US-German relations:

Bush pointedly did not congratulate Schroeder on his narrow victory. The two have not spoken since November. German media have reported Bush has declined to take calls from Schroeder.

I believe that Schroeder went way over the line in his efforts to get reelected, and it appears that Bush feels the same way.

Sorry, Herr Schroeder, nobody bought your bluff, and your busted flush isn't going to beat a full house.

2003-04-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Starbucks buys Seattle's Best; Anti-Globos get the vapors

Local Giant Starbuck's Coffee announced that they were buying out their chief competitor, Seattle's Best Coffee. In typical Seattle fashion, this sent the left wing of the city into freak-out mode. Undoubtedly, the caffeine made the situation worse. (grin)

The Seattle Times has asked readers to share their thoughts. Several of the commenters state that they dislike Starbuck's because their coffee is over-roasted, but a number of the readers launch broadsides against the whole corporate/environmental thing. Some unhinged examples:

I see this happening everywhere. It's another example of American homogenization offering us no other choice. I will continue to purchase coffee from small growers utilizing the Equal Exchange method with growers and importers and I will choose to buy and drink only organic, shade grown coffee. These importers are more interested in supporting the local economies and ecology where the coffee is grown. I rather doubt if Starbucks gives a damn!

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As a staunch avoider and protester of all things Starbucks and an fairly avid drinker and appreciator of Torrefazione coffees, I will now have to avoid another coffee that I enjoy and make sure to support our local coffee companies such as Vita and Vivace. Long live the independents.

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I buy from mom & pop stands most of the time here in Kent. Poverty Bay coffee is especially good, & more environmentally sound than the more popular coffees. The only time you'll see me at Starbucks would be when I'm travelling. Both SBC & Starbucks tend to over roast their coffee, and/or leave it in the machine too long, giving it a bitter taste.

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I strongly dislike this idea. Starbucks claims they won't mess with SBCs previous mixtures, etc., but as a large corporation, how can we trust them? I apologize, being a Washington (Seattle) native, I realize that Starbucks was born and bred in Seattle.

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The funny thing is that most of the anti-corporate lamenting is misplaced. Seattle's Best is owned by an Atlanta-based corporation, AFC Enterprises, which also owns Popeye's Fried Chicken and Cinnabon. However, Seattle Coffee (which operates Seattle's Best and Torrefozione Italia) has 150 outlets, while Starbucks has 6,241.

2003-04-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

I would like to give a special thanks to Page, who was kind enough to take note of my disappearance and let everyone know what happened to me. She was the first person to link to me last year, and she has been a source of encouragement for me during the past few weeks.

2003-04-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

How did I end up back on blogspot?

Well, when I registered the Horologium domain last year, I registered through Geocities (now YahooDomains). They are supposed to automatically reregister the domain on a yearly basis and charge it to my Visa. It appears as if they finished the process halfway. Hosting Matters did a whois, and found it is registered through March 2004. This is interesting, because when I do the whois, it shows as expiring in March 2003. In any case, the Internic info shows an expired domain, and my URL is inaccessible. My e-mail accounts (I have several on the domain) are gone, and my website shows a "page cannot be displayed". YahooDomains has not responded to my e-mail yet, asking what is going on. Because the domain is active, I cannot change registrars. They have not charged my account, but I have no problem with paying them to do what is spelled out in their user agreement.

I will be posting here until the issue is resolved, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for the situation to be resolved anytime soon.

2003-04-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

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