Lawyers ride shotgun for open source

via CNET News.com: "Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor who has represented the Free Software Foundation in legal cases, said that he will help run the new Software Freedom Law Center, which is set to be announced on Tuesday.

The center said in a statement that it will employ two full-time intellectual property attorneys, who will help provide consulting services to nonprofit open-source organizations. The staff count is expected to expand to four later in 2005. The help they provide could include training lawyers, supporting litigation, dealing with licensing problems and keeping managing contributions to open-source projects, the center said."

Quote of the Day . . .

goes to Kos: "But at the end of the day, whether they'll ever admit it or not -- we were right, they were wrong. Reality isn't being too kind to their side. "

With links.

Quote of the Day (Option 2)

via Daily Howler: "The state of our discourse is weak, very weak, and the academics and journalists who steward that discourse are, routinely, deeply dysfunctional. And by the way: In such a world, it’s easy for spinners to confuse and mislead us about the current state of [Social Security]."

Quote of the Day

via NYT Editorial, The Wrong Attorney General: "The attorney general does not merely head up the Justice Department. He is responsible for ensuring that America is a nation in which justice prevails. Mr. Gonzales's record makes him unqualified to take on this role or to represent the American justice system to the rest of the world. The Senate should reject his nomination."

Sam Rosenfeld: Idiots (and Jackals) Have Taken Over the Asylum, er, House

via American Prospect Online: "The insurgent energy of the conservative movement still undergirds the ruthlessness and tenacity of the GOP leadership, while the party’s pro-business ideology ensures a far more holistic and thoroughgoing marriage of K Street and Congress than was ever the case under the Democrats, who always had countervailing ideological impulses and interest-group pressures to mitigate their corporate cronyist tendencies. All in all, it really is a whole new ballgame in Congress, a level -- and a quality -- of institutional abuse, cronyism, and corporate looting that recalls the Gilded Age far more than the Foley Era. Republicans haven’t fallen from grace, and they haven’t lost touch with their roots; they are governing as they are wont to govern. If Democrats want to cast themselves as a reform party, this is a point they’ll need to press upon the public. It’s best not to get distracted with misplaced apologies."

Dissecting Mac Mini

photo travelog on the journey to the center of the mini. via modyourmac.com.

Man receives Mac Mini. Immediately goes to pieces. Photos of same.

More Unoriginality on SS

My quick synopsis of today's Blumenthal Guardian column, featuring a guest appearance from Our Man on Wall Street, Robert Rubin.

The math: Bush Administration times 2 = Regime change here at home. Sid tells the lefty Brits (G readers) who might not already know, that Bush is taking the juice he earned from the "accountability moment" and launching in earnest "an assault on the social contract" embedded in the the New Deal reforms, "seeking to blast away at its cornerstone, social security." Achieving this requires, as the now-infamous Wehner memo gleefully acknowledged, hoodwinking the American people into believing that the system is bust, bankrupt, flat broke.

But wait.

Stay tuned for reaction from the reality-based community in . . . 1 . . . 2 . . 3 . . .

"It's a badly, badly flawed plan," Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director told [Sid.]

Okay, rather subdued reaction, but it no doubt conceals a fire of contempt for the intellectual primates now running things in the District.

"From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060."

That's more like it, Bob.

So then he dazzles Sid with a bunch of insanely complex calculations, involving algorithims and some shit, and, like a zen master, calmly notes that the Bush plan would cost at least $2 trillion (with a T as in Too Effing Much) for just the first 10 years, and another $4.5 trillion for the ten years after that.

Moving to the whiteboard, Bob shows Sid what happens next: an exploding deficit, rocketing interest rates, tanking consumption, with overall productivity and growth going into the crapper. This while crowding out debt capital necessary for private sector investment. Then the really exciting part: markets lose confidence in fiscal policy and then the economy in general, and, hey, guess what? Mission Accomplished. The New Deal undone. Or at least America will once again look like like the pre-New Deal era; soup lines and woooden barrel overalls for everyone, well, except some.

So what is Sid's takeaway from this. It's "Hey, Democrats, stay tight and disciplined, like the kids in Drumline (at the end, not at first when that one kid is a big slacker), and don't play along. Let the Republicans go it alone in convincing the bluehairs, et al., that attacking the one thing that keeps the heat on or pays the mortgage is actually a really a good thing." Blumie expects major backlash. Except he calls it the "unleashing of political furies" like the wonky wordsmith he is. And so we come back around to the theme with which he starts the piece (his 9th grade English teacher would be proud):

Bush appears intent on regime change at home. In his first term, he promised "compassionate conservatism." In his second term, he pledges casino conservatism, the restoration of boom and bust, which he calls "the ownership society." He has gambled his presidency on it.

Straight Shooter

Quote of the day:

The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism, we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot.

Richard Armitage, outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, in an interview with The Australian newspaper, on his regrets from the past four years.

How Patents Work

A neat introduction to Patents from the fine folks at Howstuffworks .com: "Patents are a palpable, legally-binding manifestation of a person's genius and innovation; they allow a person to actually own an idea."

With a nod to the Patentability Blog for the heads up.

Brass Tacks and Social Security . . .

and why trying to find a "third way" or even remotely looking to compromise with Bush or outfox him politically will only result in misery.

Josh Marshall offers a brilliant piece on strategy in the looming Social Security fight and why the doomed-to-failure angle exemplified by Rahm Emanuel's appearance on Russert cannot work. (Yeah, I know that's redundant).

What Emanuel (and Gene Sperling) don't get, according to Marshall, is that they can't do politics in this fight, like they could in the Clinton administration.

But when you hold the White House, [reliance on tactical positioning, using small rhetorical or policy distinctions] really can work -- because you have three levers of power, the executive branch, the bully pulpit and the veto pen. That power gives you control over the terms and pace of the debate. And those let you bring clever tactics and fancy footwork into play.

But the Democrats don't have any of that today. They're completely excluded from power in Washington. The only effective power they have is the ability to deny the president the cover of bipartisanship in enacting his agenda when his agenda conflicts with their fundamental principles.

Marshall sounds a bit harsh (tough love) when he says it sounded a little sad when Emanuel told Russert (a la Bush) that he would not "negotiate with himself" over specifics, as if he or any House Democrats will get to negotiate anything.

So I say again (to myself, softly but with firm resolve), the key takeaway is that Democrats must be fighting the good fight as the Opposition. Sure this is obvious, and oft-repeated. But you still hear our leaders talking as if they are at the table. WE ARE COMPLETELY SHUT OUT OF GOVERNMENT. We cannot pretend that we are partners with our brethren across the aisle. At least not in the SS debate. I am virtually the last to say so, but it still needs saying, Dems are currently a minority, opposition party (at least at the national level); all strategy must flow from that knowledge. Let's not kid ourselves. Because you know . . . there's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.


So Marshall, no fool, concludes:

Should the Democrats have an alternative beyond just saying 'no'. Yes, they should. And they have a very good one. But it is very much the secondary part of the strategy. And their alternative can only be comprehensible and effective if the primary part is made sufficiently clear: that Democrats don't believe Social Security is in crisis and that whatever long-term funding challenges it faces do not require a fundamental revision of the structure of the program, let alone phasing it out as President Bush wants to do.

This is what opposition parties do. State their contrary vision where they have one, vote their principles on matters of fundamental political difference, and build a clear contrast on key issues which they can take to the voters in the next election. All the more so when the facts and the people's values are on their side. That's democracy.

Target Iran?

On occasion I find that the comments section of Kevin Drum's Political Animal blog offers the most compelling thoughts on the topic at hand. Such is the case in today's discussion headed by Drum's take on the Seymour Hersh New Yorker piece about ongoing U.S. covert operations in Iran and the administration's purported plans of overt confrontation with the Mighty Mullahs.

For instance, one reader notes:

There are actually quite a number of Bush positions (private accounts, changing SS, torture, environmental policies, Patriot Act, Iraq, etc, etc) that I could be swayed on if I felt like there was an open, honest debate. What I reject most is the subterfuge. That THEY don't trust the American people enough to discuss issues and defend their arguments honestly.

Personally, I am not likely to be swayed, but it touches on the administrations's unvarnished contempt of "the people" that has always pissed me off and causes confusion as to why no one else seems to be as bothered. Except my mom. She knows the score.

This next one presents a very plausible doomsday scenario (wherein US air strikes precipitate hundreds of thousands of volunteer jihadists crossing over the border into Iraq in a classic pincer movement) and concludes with this insightful, if awkwardly stated prescription:

One thing is certain. Democrats should be piling on the Republicans that they are incompentants. They should be open in stating that Bush is a slip shod regime, the neocons are a rogue, even criminal ideology, that neither they nor Bush know what they are doing, and the more they do, the more they invite ruin. This is clearly the case. And it positions the Democrats to take advantage of Republican's mistakes, when they make them as surely they will, when the republicans actions prove the Democrats correct, Democrats will have credibility.

That kind of piling on was what the Kerry campaign should have been doing. They made an effort, but Kerry's wildly ill-advised assertion that he would have invaded anyway, despite what we knew about WMDs, made the case for his own greater competence that much more strained.

Moreover, Dems can't just wait patiently for administration overreach to present opportunities. Loyal, but highly aggressive opposition must be the party's default footing. I mean, jeez, too much more overreach and we may be beyond reversing the mistakes of this President.

Here's a good summary from Crooked Timber of a World Affairs Council "presentation by Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, on Iran’s nuclear ambitions."

More Reality-Based Information About Social Security

A rundown of recent SS articles:

The American Prospect hosts a comprehensive survey on the issue they call BUSH'S HOUSE OF CARDS: The Privatization Fraud, A Prospect Special Report.

As noted earlier, Roger Lowenstein actually dissects facts in his NYT magazine piece.

And, of course, Krugman lays it out plainly again:

White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact.

Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security.

But there's another parallel, which I haven't seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it's happening again.

Kevin Drum takes a look at the recent Washington Post poll, noting that a majority of those polled apparently buy Bush's fearmongering and lies, but they still trust Democrats to do a better job handling Social Security.

Time dips its toes in the scary waters of calling out the Wartime President on his dissembling. And even Fox News gets into the act. No, really. Chris Wallace. Fox News. He dareth to contradict shameless shill of all shills, Dan Bartlett. (Shout out to the Daily Howler who must read every newspaper and catch every news commentary program to bring the righteous bitterness. And I mean that in a good way.)

Wiki war born out of Walt Disney deal

via MercuryNews.com: "The battle between the two Silicon Valley wiki companies began in earnest this week. The outcome could say something about Silicon Valley's model of turbo-charged venture capital, and when it's a good time to take money and grow quickly -- or hold off.

A wiki, in its simplest form, is a single Web page that can be written upon, and edited, by multiple users at once. Companies are beginning to use wiki software to help their employees coordinate on team projects.

A few years ago, Ross Mayfield, chief executive at Palo Alto's Socialtext, staked out prime wiki territory as an early player in the space.

His company has since signed up 75 customers, 15 of which are among the 500 largest U.S. companies -- and he'll be announcing two more shortly, he says. Until recently, all appeared to be smooth sailing: Silicon Valley angels invested more than $500,000 in his start-up. He has stayed hunkered down, employing only 10 people, even after getting angel money. His team all work from their homes. He still takes all his own calls."

Social Security: A Question of Numbers

vit The NYT Magazine: "The campaign to privatize has not only been about ideology; it has also focused on Social Security's supposed insolvency. Moore's book calls Social Security a ''Titanic . . . headed toward the iceberg'' and a program ''on the verge of collapse.'' A stream of other conservatives have bombarded the public, over years and decades, with prophecies of trillion-dollar liabilities and with metaphors intended to frighten -- ''train wreck,'' ''bankruptcy,'' ''cancer'' and so forth. Recently, a White House political deputy wrote a strategy note in which he said that Social Security is ''on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness.''

The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.

But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is.

Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged"

The Open Source Future

via The Tao of Mac: "Ten Open Source Projects Worth Keeping Track Of"

Paul O'Neill Wants Us All To Retire As Millionaires

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, in a NYT op-ed, offers a plan which appears to turn Social Security from a "tax to fund entitlements" program to a mandatory retirement savings one. Here are some snippets:

My answer is that we should establish a process that will produce a substantial annuity for every American at retirement age. By substantial, I mean at least $1 million. In order to create a real, fully financed annuity of this size, people must begin saving when they enter the work force. The saving needs to be continuous, and it needs to be left intact so that compound interest can work its magic.

* * *

Let me define what I mean by financial security. Financial security begins with ownership of real assets; so the money saved each year in this plan would be the property of the person who saved it. I would use the existing Social Security collection process because it is already in place, everyone understands it and its costs are relatively low.

The money would then be invested in broad-based index funds with an objective of matching the overall rate of return for all investments in the United States. These funds typically have very low costs because they're not actively managed. That means there would be no windfall profit for stockbrokers in this system.

Further to the definition of financial security: it means enough money in retirement for all needs - food, clothing, shelter - and including medical needs like prescription drugs.

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly says that trying to fund O'Neill's plan with the 12.4% tax on income that currently funds Social Security won't get close. A comment thereto notes an interesting proposals:

If you check out the section on Social Security reform at "Build a Better Mousetrap" you will see a proposal which takes the privatization issue away from Republicans and puts them on the defensive. In brief, the suggestion is to take the cap off earned income (currently about $87,000), tax all dividends and capital gains (currently completely tax free for FICA purposes), and use the additional revenue to lower tax rates for everybody. Then allow the saved percentage to be invested in a private IRA. The whole program will be revenue neutral- no borrowing up front as Bush's proposal would require.

and another interesting comment:

Social Security reform is extremely easy to do, actually. Only a two-step process.
1. Remove the $87,000 (guesstimating here, but it's somewhere around that) cap. Tax all income at that rate. There is no reason Ross Perot can't help out a few small people.
2. Make it illegal for the government to 'borrow' from the Social Security accounts to cover for budget shortfalls in other places. This is the single thing that puts Social Security at risk. Note that the government doesn't have a good track record at the moment of paying off debt.
With these two simple steps, Social Security will be solvent way beyond my lifespan (and I am 24).

This post reminds me, I need a better template.

Frank Rich: All the President's Newsmen

via nyt online: "But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all 'journalists,' was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced 'cheap shot journalism' in which 'the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective.'

This is a scenario out of 'The Manchurian Candidate.' Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's 'Nightline' recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, 'Stolen Honor,' under the rubric of 'news' in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of 'objective' news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry."

Politics

Bush exaggerates a few facts about Social Security

via CBS Marketwatch: "Bush vs. The Facts:

Bush: 'As a matter of fact, by the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now.'

The facts: The Social Security system cannot go 'bankrupt,' for it has no creditors. By law, the trustees will continue to pay reduced benefits even if the trust fund is exhausted. Payroll taxes will continue to come in and benefits will continue to be paid.

According to the trustees' intermediate economic forecast (neither doom nor boom), the trust fund will be able to pay about 73 percent of scheduled benefits in 2042 and about 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2078.

Future presidents and Congresses could also choose to fully fund scheduled retirement benefits from general tax revenue.

Bush: "In the year 2018, in order to take care of baby boomers like me and -- (laughter) -- some others I see out there -- (laughter) -- the money going out is going to exceed the money coming in."

The facts: According to the SSA, costs are projected to exceed income, including tax revenues and interest income from the trust funds' bonds, starting in 2028, not 2018. The 2018 date is when tax revenues alone no longer meet costs; workers have been paying extra taxes since 1983 to build up the trust funds' assets for just this eventuality.

Bush: "The problem is, is that times have changed since 1935. Then, most women did not work outside the house, and the average life expectancy was about 60 years old -- which for a guy 58 years old, must have been a little discouraging. Today, Americans, fortunately, are living longer and longer. I mean, we're living way beyond 60 years old, and most women are working outside the house. Things have shifted."

The facts: According to the SSA, the life expectancy for a 65-year-old man in 1940 was 76.9 years. Today, a man aged 65 can be expected to live to 81. Most of the increase in life expectancy in the past half century has been for infants, not for the elderly.

The increase in the percentage of women working outside the home has boosted Social Security's resources, rather than depleted them. Today, many women who worked receive a widow's pension rather than their own earned benefits. All the payroll taxes they paid are funding someone else's retirement.

The Daily Howler's take on the piece: "Nutting wrote the kind of report that should have appeared in every newspaper–and on every TV channel as well. When a president convenes a major forum and proceeds to make outrageous misstatements, that is the biggest news of the day. And the American people need to be told that this event has occurred. They deserve to be shown the actual facts. And they deserve to be told, quite directly, that their 'president' has been misstating facts."

Kennedy Policy Speech at National Press Club, Jan. 12, 2005

via his Senate web site: "I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like privatizing Social Security, redistributing the tax burden in the wrong direction, or packing the federal courts with reactionary judges. Those proposals were barely mentioned - or voted on - in an election dominated by memories of 9/11, fear of terrorism, the quagmire in Iraq, and relentlessly negative attacks on our Presidential candidate.

In an election so close, defeat has a thousand causes - and it is too easy to blame it on particular issues or tactics, or on the larger debate about values. In truth, we do not shrink from that debate.

There's no doubt we must do a better job of looking within ourselves and speaking out for the principles we believe in, and for the values that are the foundation of our actions. Americans need to hear more, not less, about those values. We were remiss in not talking more directly about them - about the fundamental ideals that guide our progressive policies. In the words of Martin Luther King, 'we must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.'

Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us. If the White House's idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we're not interested.

In fact, our values are still our greatest strength. Despite resistance, setbacks, and periods of backlash over the years, our values have moved us closer to the ideal with which America began - that all people are created equal. And when Democrats say 'all,' we mean 'all.'

We have an Administration that falsely hypes almost every issue as a crisis. They did it on Iraq, and they are doing it now on Social Security. They exploit the politics of fear and division, while ours is a politics of hope and unity.

In the face of their tactics, we cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again, and deserve to lose. As I have said on other occasions, the last thing this country needs is two Republican parties."

At the heart of the open-source revolution

via CNET News.com: "Although his latest effort is unfolding in comparative obscurity, many in the open-source world are hoping, along with Kapor, that he gets this one right and that the results once again rearrange the dynamics of the computer industry.

Having made his fortune during the heyday of proprietary software, the 54-year-old Kapor finds himself at the forefront of two foundations devoted to open-source software development. He is both president and chair of the OSAF and chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, the group founded by Netscape Communications to develop its browser and later spun off by Netscape acquirer AOL Time Warner.

The goal of the foundations isn't to create a new killer app but rather to use the open-source development model to dislodge Microsoft's Web-browsing and e-mail software titles from their dominant market positions."

Electronic Discovery: Huzzahs to PGE . . .

. . . for starting an excellent blog on the subject. Here's an example from recent case summaries:

In re Telxon Corp. Sec. Litig., No. 5:98CV2876 and No. 1:01CV1078 (N.D. Ohio July 2, 2004) (unsealed January 11, 2005)

Magistrate Recommends Default Judgment Against “Big Four” Accounting Firm for Electronic Discovery Abuses: Recommending that default judgment on liability be entered against third party defendant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, the judge stated “it would be difficult for anyone to argue that PWC’s conduct over the course of the litigation, particularly its repeated assurances to the court and to the parties that it had fully disclosed all relevant information, was not due to willfulness, bad faith or fault.” The judge criticized PWC for, among other things: failing at the start of discovery to check thoroughly its local servers and its archives for relevant documents, failing to produce documents as they were kept in the ordinary course of business, failing to reproduce thoroughly and accurately all documents and their attachments, and, prior to litigation, permitting the destruction of documents despite committing to their preservation. The court stated the only conclusion it can reach “is that PWC and/or its counsel engaged in deliberate fraud or was so recklessly indifferent to their responsibilities as a party to litigation that they failed to take the most basic steps to fulfill those responsibilities.”

Plus, they maintian an E-Discovery Case Database.

See also, Eight Simple Steps for Doing Effective E-Discovery from DiscoveryResources.org.

Test post

I am doing 43 things.

And They Really Expect America To Believe These Lies?

via Reuters: "President Bush launched his plan to revamp Social Security with a push to convince the public and Congress that it faces a crisis, even though supporters of the government-run retirement program say he is exaggerating its financial problems.

"By the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt," Bush said on Tuesday as he launched what the White House says will be a big push to build support for revamping the program.

While nearly everyone agrees the retirement program faces a long term financial shortfall, private account opponents say Bush is exaggerating its problems in order to make a case for private investment accounts."

The Daily Howler retorts: "Has there ever been a bald-faced liar to match George W. Bush? At yesterday’s forum on Social Security, the president told a series of dumb, stupid jokes for an audience of perfectly decent Americans.

What is wrong with Bush’s statement? Workers who are in their mid-20s will, by and large, begin to retire shortly after the year 2040. And will Social Security be “bankrupt—flat bust,” as their joke-cracking president said? Sorry. According to the CBO, the system will still pay full scheduled benefits until the year 2052. After that, will SS be “flat bust?” No, it will not, as Bush knows. After 2052, the system will be able to pay 81 percent of scheduled benefits. Even adjusted for inflation, those benefits will be far more than SS recipients are getting today.

Understand: If no changes are made to the system, recipients will get substantially more in 2052 than recipients are getting today! But incredibly, your lying president tells decent citizens that the system will instead be “flat bust!” And by the way: Even according to the pessimistic forecasts of the SS trustees, the system won’t be “bankrupt, flat bust” when young workers start to retire. According to the trustees’ gloomy projections, the system will pay full benefits until 2042. It will then pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits, more than recipients get today.

No, Social Security won’t be “flat bust”—or anything like it—when young workers start to retire. But George Bush lies the way other men breathe.

George Bush, a gut-bucket liar, has lied to the public for the past five years. But so what? Timid, store-bought, thigh-rubbing pundits have stared into air as the lying has grown. Tomorrow, we’ll start to look at the press corps’ accounts of Bush’s astounding remarks on SS. But the time has finally come to insist that Big Major Pundits stand up and speak. Five years ago, the press corps pretended to be upset by ginned-up “lies” from Candidate Gore. Now, a president lies right in their faces, about the day’s most pressing issue. It’s time for the press corps’ conclave of cowards to be battered about their group silence.

US gives up search for Iraq WMD

via Washington Post: "Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.

"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward."

via Metafilter on same: "Don't you get it? Being wrong doesn't matter anymore. I'm not sure when the switch flipped, but above a certain level, the idea of being held accountable just doesn't apply.

Download free music, cheat on your taxes, try to marry someone of the same sex, sure, they'll come after you. But once you get above the new glass floor, you just can't fall back through."

and more:

"In complete seriousness, I expect him to resign, after apologising to the world, and the American people, specifically those whose loved ones are dead as a result of his error. Make no mistake, either: it most assuredly is his error. It doesn't matter what the source is. The troops aren't going to move unless the President gives the "ok" for it, and in this case, it was most definitely an "ok" that he gave that night before all hell broke loose.

It boils down to a simple question: If starting a war on false grounds isn't reason enough to say you're sorry; isn't reason enough for -someone- to lose their job, what is? Seriously, what is? I want to hear some options.

Instead, he's giving out fucking freedom medals to the masterminds of this disaster. This is hubris at its best (or most horrible, depending)."

and from the Rude Pundit: "But, you know, there's something interesting that happens whenever you engage anyone who believes these things in a conversation: they get really, really defensive about Bush. And not in a coherent way. And not even in the knee-jerk-"I-support-my-President" kind of way. No, it's more of an "I don't wanna talk about it - shutupshutupshutup" kind of way, with ears covered and eyes clenched shut. In other words, they know. They know it's all been a huge failure. But they don't wanna know. And it's just easier to pretend that everything's fantabulous than face that horror, that abyss, of mistrust, of awareness of one's own complicity in the voting booth."

The President's case for war, Oct. 2002:

"While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, "The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction."

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?"

* * *

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network.

* * *

The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.

* * *

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

* * *

After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.

* * *

Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security and for the people of Iraq. The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of Afghanistan's citizens improved after the Taliban.

* * *

Members of Congress are nearing an historic vote. I'm confident they will fully consider the facts, and their duties."

A cowed Congress can't say no. Not wanting to sound like a bumper sticker, but Bush lied and thousands died. Big time.

More on same, from Matt Yglesias at the American Prospect: "Let me just reiterate for about the millionth time that, contrary to the ex post rationalizations from the right, it's simply not the case that "everyone" -- or even almost everyone -- thought Saddam Hussein had WMD at the time the war started. That was a period when this really was the consensus judgment of the international intelligence community, and that's one of the reasons it was possible to gain UN support for a resolution demanding the re-introduction of inspectors.

Then the inspectors came back to Iraq and went searching around. They didn't find any WMD stockpiles or evidence of advanced WMD programs. They did find some banned missiles with ranges beyond what was permitted by the Gulf War cease-fire. Those missiles were duly destroyed. At that point, rational people began to think that the intelligence consensus was, perhaps, mistaken. It already became clear that several of the specific charges the Bush administration had raised were false, and that despite repeated statements from administration officials that they were sure Saddam had WMD, they couldn't provide the inspectors with any useful clues to their whereabouts. But the United States wasn't being governered by rational people, so they, along with their cheerleaders in the press, proclaimed that if inspections weren't finding the weapons, that wasn't because the weapons weren't there but because the inspectors were corrupt, incompetent, or something like that. Therefore, an invasion was necessary.

This judgment -- the judgment that took us to war, the judgment that's led to all the many American casualties and the many more Iraqi casualties, didn't reflect any sort of international consensus whatsoever. If people aren't aware of that fact (which they largely aren't) it's because the "liberal media" was so busy gearing up to "embed" reporters and put on a show of patriotic pomp when the shooting started that they couldn't be bothered to tell anyone what was going on. Needless to say, unlike with the Killian memo story, no one has been held accountable for this and no one ever will be."

Should Old People Have Plumbing?

Matthew Yglesias via American Prospect Online: "Last week, Peter H. Wehner -- Karl Rove's deputy inside the White House -- shared with us, in a leaked memo, his view that 'no one on this planet can tell you why a 25-year-old person today is entitled to a 40 percent increase in Social Security benefits (in real terms) compared to what a person retiring today receives.' This was part of his explanation of why the forthcoming Bush plan should solve the phony Social Security 'crisis' by freezing the growth in benefits -- thus offering the retirees of the future a 40 percent cut in promised benefits.

One's suspicions that the Bush economic policy is being crafted in the Gamma Quadrant are only bolstered by talk of this sort, since, on the planet where I live, Earth, plenty of people can tell you why this should be so. As a member of the About to Be Screwed Generation at the tender age of 23, however, a special obligation rests on me to explain why we shouldn't pay for the fiscal profligacy of the Bush era by slashing my Social Security benefits. The underlying issue here is what's known in the business as shifting the program from its current 'wage index' system to a 'price index' system. Right now, a retiree's initial benefit level is linked to, among other things, the growth in average wages rather than the growth in the Consumer Price Index.

The most basic reason why I'm entitled to wage-indexed benefits is, simply: That's what the law says. Since wages normally grow faster than prices, this means benefits get more generous in real terms over time. Just as 2004's wages are more generous than the wages paid in 1974, so, too are the benefits paid in 2004 more generous than those of 1974. And every month, my tax dollars are paying for those more generous benefits. This is OK for two reasons. First, since 2004's wages are more generous than 1974's, I can afford to pay more tax in absolute terms than could the young journalists of 1974. Second, the prog"

U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses

via washingtonpost.com and TPM: "D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack."

How big is Bloglines?

via SiliconBeat: "Why is Bloglines so popular? Aside from being reliable and easy-to-use, our guess is that it has something to do with what Paul Graham said about Web-based applications in his recent book, Hackers and Painters. 'The idea of 'your computer' is going away and being replaced by 'your data.' You should be able to get at your data from any computer. Or rather any client, and a client doesn't have to be your computer.'' As a Web-based application, Bloglines offers that convenience."

MacWorld kicks off with budget iMac

Awesome. I Want.

via CNET News.com: "Apple opens the Mac community's annual gathering in San Francisco by pulling the wraps off a sub-$500 PC and a flash-based iPod."

The new Mac Mini will go on sale Jan. 22 and will cost $499 for the base model, or $550 for one with a bigger hard drive. The device marks one of Apple's boldest moves yet to expand PC sales beyond a loyal but limited market of Mac addicts. The iPod and Apple's iTunes music store have been responsible for a dramatic surge in Apple revenue, but to date there has been little evidence that those products have done anything for Apple's PC business.

Apple Computer introduced substantial new updates to its iLife package of multimedia software on Tuesday, including powerful new tools for manipulating digital photos and recording music.

The new version of iPhoto, contained inside the iLife suite, gives people the ability to edit pictures in ways resembling the basic features of the high-end Photoshop software from Adobe Systems. New video editing software will support high-definition video cameras, and the GarageBand music recording software contains new tools for recording multiple members of a band.

Unlike most similar devices, the Shuffle has no display screen to show songs or playlists; it consists only of a slender white rectangle with the trademark iPod navigation wheel on one side. The company is instead highlighting the random-play aspect of the device, although this is a common feature on virtually all MP3 players.

"iPod Shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "With most flash-memory music players, users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music. With iPod Shuffle, you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen."

Slashdot on same.

IBM Offers 500 Patents For Open-Source Use

via Lessig: "IBM has announced the pledge of 500 patents to a 'patent commons' for 'open source' software development. That means people developing software licensed under a license certified by the Open Source Initiative can be assured that IBM will not assert these 500 patents against them -- at least so long as they don't sue IBM or another open source developer for patent related issues. (Steve Lohr's got a piece in the Times.)

This is important news. It further demonstrates IBM's commitment to making free software and open source software development flourish. And it could well inspire others to follow. Ideally there should be a trust that these patents could be contributed into. We'll have to get the commonists to get to work building such a thing."

Cnet link to IBM announcement.

Slashdot on same.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

via Democracy Now!: "We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies. "

Keith Yamashita Wants to Reinvent Your Company

via Fast Company (Nov. 2002): "All meaningful change starts with the right aspiration,' insists Yamashita. 'Doing strategy is ultimately about engaging human beings to take a leap. The animating question is, What will you become?' That means unearthing what's true to the company's core, or, as Yamashita calls it, the north star: 'A powerful north star answers questions like, What are we doing that's different from what everyone else in our industry is doing? Why do we exist? What makes employees passionate about their work? What excites our customers?'

The challenge for executives is to manage the tension between an expansive purpose and the day-to-day shocks of the business environment. 'The way to make sense of that dilemma is to initiate a conversation about what's purpose and what's just practice,' says Yamashita. That's what Fiorina did from the moment she stepped into the job at HP. Her mantra was, 'Preserve the best, reinvent the rest.' What's the best at HP? Says Yamashita: 'Popularizing technology in a way that's intimate, useful, humane, and high quality.'"

Beyond Thinking Different to Doing Different

via Brand Autopsy: "Bruce Mau, a designer, thinker, articulator, and massive change provocateur, has a lot of ideas on a lot of things. His Incomplete Manifesto for Change is a list, an incomplete one at that, of 43 ideas to get you beyond thinking differently but doing differently. As 2004 turns to 2005, the message of doing differently is one we should all heed. Enjoy."

Do you have what it takes to join Google?

via CNET News.com"It just helps us attract a different class of people," she said. "There are some people that complete the test that don't even want a job at Google."

The 21-question test includes problems such as:

• Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.

• How many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face? What colors would you choose?

• This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness.

Software firms want copyright law rewrite

via News.com: "A group of large software companies has taken the first step toward inciting a tussle with the telecommunications industry by asking Congress to rewrite copyright law so alleged Internet pirates can be more easily targeted by lawsuits.

The group of companies, which is known as the Business Software Alliance, counts as members Microsoft, Autodesk, Borland, Intuit, Sybase and Symantec, among others. The group released a general outline of its suggestions on Thursday in a white paper that effectively describes its legislative proposals for 2005. The companies say they fear a revenue-sapping future in which software programs are traded as frequently and readily on peer-to-peer networks as MP3 music files are today.

One current law that the software companies single out for criticism is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which established a turbocharged subpoena procedure designed to let copyright holders unmask infringers. The law was considered a workable compromise when enacted in 1998, but a series of subsequent court decisions have created an 'impediment to effective enforcement,' the paper says.

Emery Simon, a top BSA attorney, declined to be more specific about the group's proposals, but any attempt to revise the law could place its members at loggerheads with Internet service providers, which historically have been loath to act as online cops or face liability for what their users do. Verizon Communications and Missouri-based Charter Communications have led court battles against the Recording Industry Association of America to curb the scope of the DMCA--and, in the process, effectively preserve the privacy of their customers."

Recommended Reading: Trade Dress Rights in Musical Instruments

via The TTABlog: "Robert M. Kunstadt and Ilaria Maggioni present an entertaining and enlightening discussion of current trade dress law in the context of the design of a guitar, in 'Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Trade Dress Rights in Musical Instruments,' 94 Trademark Reporter 1271 (November-December 2004)."

Clients to Law Firms: Change or Die

via law.com: "As we welcome 2005, our corporate landscape is littered with the remnants of companies (including law firms) that failed to see the future and seize opportunities. It's time to heed their warnings. Clients are already demanding change from their law firms. Unless you want to join the other fossils, it's time to change your ways."

Top Intellectual Property Law Issues of 2005

via GROKLAW: "It's usual at this time of year to try to figure out what the future holds. I asked Henry Stimpson if he'd poll the folks at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, a Boston IP law firm (with a really lovely website), and give us the firm's assessment of what to keep an eye on for the coming year, as far as IP law is concerned. He graciously agreed. What I found most interesting is what they say about more conflict expected between patents and antitrust law."

Since When Is It Illegal To Just Mention A Trademark Online?

via Techdirt: "There are some strange things happening with trademark law, and it certainly seems to go beyond the scope of what it's intended to cover. The point of trademark law is to prevent someone from passing off their goods as someone else's. It's to avoid confusion. A trademark shouldn't be considered something that you have absolute control over -- but just in situations where confusion can occur. However, that's not at all how it's being used. Instead, it's being used to stifle any kind of comment that someone doesn't like. About a year ago, we wrote about the somewhat bizarre case where the Greater Toronto Airport Authority told a silly site that posts photos of urinals (pretty much just for the hell of it) that they couldn't mention the name of the airport for no clear reason other than that the GTAA didn't like it. The owners of that site, Urinal.net, have now been approached again by someone who is trying to stop them from posting perfectly legitimate information. In this case, complaint is coming from the Marco Beach Ocean Resort, who is claiming that it's somehow illegal to use their name on the website. Urinal.net has responded by (amusingly) distorting the name enough to try to get around the request of the lawyers who contacted them. Part of the complaint seems to concern the fact that the anonymous contributor mentioned that the urinal is viewable from the lobby. Of course, courts have ruled that simply passing on content sent to you via the web or by email does not make the person or company passing on the info liable for its content."

Bill Gates CNet Interview

via News.com: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?
No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future."

Geico To Continue Keyword Battle Against Google

via MediaDailyNews: "Geico might have lost the first battle in its trademark infringement suit against search giant Google last month, but officials from the insurance company vowed that the war is not yet over.

'The fact that a search engine can make money from our trademark is fundamentally wrong,' said Geico's general counsel, Charles Davies. 'We continue to believe that the sale of our trademark is wrong, and we will continue to litigate this issue,' he said."

The Care and Feeding of FOSS: The Lifecycle of Software Technology

via Mooview Scientific Consulting: FOSS has generated a remarkable amount of debate, both informal and in the courtroom. To those of us who lived through the sixties, some FOSS advocates make statements are reminiscent of the idealism of that time – the sharing, the community feeling, the spirit of cooperation, and most of all, the "Up yours!" to the big corporations and big government. Listening to the most dedicated FOSS advocates, one could easily imagine the speaker was talking of civil rights, war protests, or women's suffrage.

On the other side, some commercial enterprises see FOSS as a nuisance at best, and at worst a threat to capitalism itself, or (a few absurdly claim) unconstitutional and un-American. Listening to the strongest FOSS critics, you might think communists are landing on America's shores, and our modern way of life and economy will come crashing down if FOSS is allowed to survive.

Both sides are wrong. There is a natural "lifecycle" to software technology, which includes both commercial periods and FOSS periods. Those who understand this pattern can work with it and thrive. Those who don't understand the pattern, or who choose to fight it, are in for a lot of frustration.

In this essay, we'll explore why almost all software technology will go through stages that include a commercial, for-profit period, but ultimately end up FOSS. We'll look at why commercial involvement is a natural and positive force, and why FOSS is the inevitable endpoint of most software technology.

The essay slashdotted.

I/P Task-Based Billing Codes

via I/P Updates: "The Conference Board of Canada has published a 'Task-Based Billing Intellectual Property Code Set' which, although it uses some Canadian terminology, provides task and activity identifiers that are better-suited for intellectual property matters than the 'Uniform Task-Based Management System' used by many large clients.
Task-based billing is a system of using commonly-accepted codes to describe tasks that are performed as professional services. during legal services. For legal services, the system grew out of the need for better analysis and cost control over conventional systems that merely break charges down by date of service. By requiring bills to be categorized by according to a standard set of tasks and activities, rather than by matter and day of month, clients can sometimes get a better handle on where their legal dollars are going."

McGeady Not Looking to Make Friends

via Soccer365: "Celtic teenager Aiden McGeady has declared he is ready to take on Neil Lennon's mantle as the most unpopular player in Scottish football.

Lennon, who quit the Northern Ireland national team following a death threat, has carved himself a reputation as a trophy winner who also usually manages to upset the opposition. The midfielder is coming to the end of his career and might even leave in the summer when his contract expires.

At 18, play-maker McGeady is at the other end of the scale and has been the Hoops' great success story of the season. But the youngster, who was on target in yesterday's 2-0 win at Hearts, has already courted controversy by turning his back on Scotland to play for the Republic of Ireland."

The Best Links 2004

according to kottke.org: "In lieu of a book or magazine compilation of the best writing of 2004, here are some of the best things I linked to in the past year. The list consists mostly of magazine and newspaper articles with a few other types of media sprinkled in and is more objective than my favorite weblogs of 2004 list."

The Diamond-Orszag Alternative

via TAPPED: "Those of us who think there's a need for a liberal alternative to the Bush Social Security phase-out plan may want to take a look at the CBO's new analysis (PDF) of the proposal that's been put forward by Brookings' Peter Diamond and Peter Orszag. This is basically an effort to fully-fund projected benefits without any major changes to the structure of the program. Perhaps its most noteworthy feature, however, is that it attempts to do this while simultaneously just writing off the trust fund that Social Security has accumulated since the early 1980s, rather than simply insisting that the general fund repay its obligations rather than keep giving tax cuts to the rich. There are some policy reasons to think that's a good idea (and some reasons to think it's a bad idea) but it's pretty terrible to concede so much to the Greenspan/Bush shell game."

Perverse Polarity

via Washington Monthly: "It is a clich to observe that the parties have drawn further apart, the center no longer holds, and partisans on both sides have withdrawn further into mutual loathing and ever more-homogenous and antagonistic groupings. Where the analysis goes wrong is in its assumption, either explicit or implicit, that both parties bear equal responsibility for this state of affairs. While partisanship may now be deeply entrenched among their voters and their elites, the truth is that the growing polarization of American politics results primarily from the growing radicalism of the Republican Party."

Sprucing up open source's GPL foundation

via CNET News.com: "Modernization is coming to the General Public License, a legal framework that supports a large part of the free and open-source software movements and that has received sharp criticism from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

GPL author Richard Stallman said he's working on amendments that could deal better with software patents; clarify how GPL software may be used in some networked environments and on carefully controlled hardware; and lower some barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.

In the 13 years since the current GPL version 2 was released, the license has moved from the fringes to the center of the computing industry. GPL software is now common at Fortune 500 companies and endorsed by most large computing firms. But that prominence has made some eager for an update."

Slashdot on same.

DeLay the Traitor

via The Stakeholder: "'I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today.' Floor Statement of Tom Delay on Kosovo, 4/28/99"

Details, Details

via TAPPED: "President Bush will spearhead an election-style public relations campaign early next year to try to convince Americans that Social Security is in urgent need of change but will keep dollar and cent details deliberately vague, analysts and officials say.

With Bush's political capital riding on a successful overhaul of the popular retirement program, the White House and its allies plan to bombard the public with presidential speeches, television and radio ads, newspaper op-ed articles and grass-roots rallies between now and early 2005.

'It's going to be a battle royal, very much like an election campaign but over an issue rather than a candidate,' said Stephen Moore, executive director of Club for Growth, a Republican group that hopes to spend $15 million on a media campaign backing the White House...."

U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-Sufficiency

via nytimes.com: "In one of the first signs of the effects of the ever tightening federal budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched.

As a result, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or eliminated programs that were intended to help the poor feed themselves through improvements in farming, education and health."

No cuts here.

Also, Leaving the College Students Behind (via Tapped): "Bush's latest salvo in the creation of an ownership society where everyone is on their own will be keenly felt by college students next year, who will see a reduction in eligibility for financial aid and reduced Pell Grants."

Bush's War

via Daily Kos: "So, who is to blame for all the deaths in Iraq? Let's mull this one over a bit, shall we?"

A Response To Time

via MyDD: "Dear Time Editors:

My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of 'slaps in the faces' to us families of fallen heroes.

First, the Secretary of Defense--Donald Rumsfeld--admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the 'death letters'--as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season?"

Make 2005 the Year You Start Your Own Firm

via Law.com: "But if you let your fears or inexperience paralyze you, you won't go very far. No matter how long you practice, a situation that you've never before encountered will arise. Get used to it. All you can do is prepare as best you can. "

There Is No Social Security Crisis

via American Prospect Online: "I was -- and the bulk of young people still are -- the victim of a massive fraud, perpetrated by Social Security abolition advocates and unfortunately re-enforced from time to time by liberals seeking an argument against Republican tax cuts. This fraud, which is ongoing and in which a lazy media has been complicit, is crucial to understanding the politics of Social Security."

Come See Our Hideous Slab

via sfgate.com: "Screw it. Let them build the Slab. It's too late, anyway. It will be our own private joke. It will be our memento of a dreary and war-torn time. Tourists will look at it and skip the photo. We will look at it and go, oh yeah, that was from a time when San Francisco and California and the nation as a whole were all mired neck deep in war and gluttony and bitter divisiveness and fiscal abuse, and no one seemed to give a damn and if you did you were considered a traitor.

And the City was broke largely because the state was broke and the state was broke largely because the wildly irresponsible and reckless BushCo imbeciles ran us all into the goddamn fiscal ground and gutted the value of the dollar and put our country a trillion dollars in debt, and they just laughed like drunk hyenas the whole time as they cashed in their oil portfolios and mapped out bombing routes in Iran.

It will be our soulless and generic little landmark. It will stand for decades to come and we will say, sure it's ugly. Sure it's a giant concrete slab. Sure it's graceless and uninspired and brutish and an architectural embarrassment and sure it is, perhaps more than anything else, one massive and rather humiliating missed opportunity.

Hey, that's America in a nutshell, sweetheart. That's the Bush era, right there. You want grace and beauty and dreams all coupled with soaring notions of hope and progress? Move to France, hippie."

Required reading regarding your financial future

via Blog Maverick: "Rather than shaving off all the pork we feed our politicians, and beyond in order to create funding to meet our obligation, the President has decided to relinquish part of the obligation back to us, in hopes that each of us make more than the government could, and pay for more of our own, and our childrens future. To put it another way, keep some of your social security contributions and play the financial markets lottery.

In his challenge, Mr Kinsley correctly describes why it wont work. Let me give you two examples why its even worse than he describes."

Google wins in trademark suit with Geico

via CNET News.com: "Google scored a big legal win Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that its use of trademarks in keyword advertising is legal.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Google's motion to dismiss a trademark-infringement complaint brought by Geico. The insurance company had charged Google with violating its trademarks by using the word 'Geico' to trigger rival ads in sponsored search results. Geico claimed the practice diluted its trademarks and caused consumer confusion.

The judge said that 'as a matter of law it is not trademark infringement to use trademarks as keywords to trigger advertising,' said Michael Page, a partner at Keker & Van Nest, which represented Google."

More from eWeek.

Davenetics has fun with the Geico keyword.

MPAA targets core BitTorrent, eDonkey users

via ZDNet: "The Motion Picture Association of America launched a new legal campaign Tuesday targeting the BitTorrent and eDonkey file-swapping networks, two technologies widely used to trade movies online.

Ratcheting up its previous online antipiracy efforts, the Hollywood group is working with law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe to target and arrest individuals who play a critical role in the functioning of each type of network.

Criminal actions have already been filed in Europe, including the seizure of seven Net-connected servers, with their operator still wanted by French police, a representative of the French government said."

Where's venture capital headed in 2005? Spam, for starters.

via SiliconBeat: "Here's a noteworthy summary of where venture capitalists predict their money will be going in the coming year, published today by the National Venture Capital Association. There are many VC views represented, but we'll just pick on one: the revolution in advertising.

There's been a lot of hype about this, and some VCs see the revolution continuing next year -- notably that 'brands' will follow us wherever we go. Big company brands should forget advertising in newspapers or on TV, they say; instead, they should bombard people with messages directly on their cellphones and other devices."

Lawsuit: Software should not be copyrighted

via CNET News.com: "Computer software should not be protected by copyright laws designed for music, literature and other creative works, according to a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court in San Francisco.

Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time.

The case seeks to clarify which laws the $100 billion U.S. software industry should use to protect its products. Currently, software makers like Microsoft use both copyright and patent laws to protect their creations, as well as 'clickwrap' agreements that stipulate terms of use.

An official with a software-industry trade group said that not every software product is protected by patents.

'If you eliminated the ability to sue somebody for copyright infringement, you would eviscerate our ability to go against pirates,' said Emory Simon, counselor for the Business Software Alliance, which estimates that U.S. businesses lost $6.5 billion last year to piracy.

Aharonian argues in his complaint that software copyright laws violate the right to due process enshrined in the U.S. Constitution because they do not provide clear boundaries for appropriate use. That means industry players and courts do not have a clear idea of the rules"

via Techdirt: "His argument is, basically, that a copyright on software is too restrictive, without clearly stating what the rules are for making use of the copyrighted material. . . . While it's an intriguing idea, it seems like a very shaky legal argument, and not one that many judges are going to buy. It may draw some attention to the issue of intellectual property reform -- but will probably strike too many as "too far out there" to take seriously. You can almost hear the disbelief coming from folks at the BSA responding to the lawsuit, astounded that anyone would take this line of reasoning against software copyrights."

via IP Central.info: "Reading between the lines of his website on the case, his request that a court declare much of copyright law unconstitutional for vagueness is made with tongue firmly in cheek. But a law suit has one big advantage over the endless reports by learned commissions and journalistic moaning that characterize this topic -- people are forced to pay attention to a law suit because they never know what some crazy judges might do, especially out there in California.

Software is not in any immediate danger, though, so one can also see this glass as half full. Software companies, like many others, have been fretting about the law in this area for a time, so the suit may actually give them an opening to think about designing a better system for protecting software that would combine the best features of patent and copyright."

Google hit with trademark suit over 'Scholar'

via CNET News.com: "The American Chemical Society has filed suit against Google, alleging that the search giant violated a trademark held by the group when it launched the Google Scholar search tool.

The suit, filed Dec. 9 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that Google's use of the word 'scholar' violates a May 2003 trademark held by ACS for the name of its Web-based academic search tool, SciFinder Scholar. In the suit, ACS, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, demands that Google cease and desist from using the word 'scholar' in the name of its tool in order to prevent confusion among users.

Both SciFinder Scholar and Google Scholar are designed to let individuals search previously published academic research. The fundamental difference between the two products is that SciFinder Scholar is used to index information stored in the ACS databases, while the Google tool indexes research already made publicly available on the Internet."

Using Genetics to Rev Up Metabolic Machinery

via ScientificAmerican.com: To accomplish its remarkable metabolic and antiobesity tasks, PPAR-delta evidently modifies the composition of skeletal muscle in the mice. Muscle consists of fast-twitch fibers, which rely on sugar for fuel and are used primarily for rapid movements, and slow-twitch fibers, which convert fat into energy and are responsible for sustained activity. The transgenics had double the amount of the fat-burning, slow-twitch muscle compared with normal littermates.

The increase in slow-twitch fibers, usually associated with long-lasting, vigorous exercise, also translated into greater endurance. On the mouse treadmill, the transgenics could run 1,800 meters, twice the distance a mouse normally runs before exhaustion, and for an hour longer than the usual 90 minutes. "We nicknamed them ‘marathon mice' because they behave like conditioned athletes," says Evans, whose study appears in the October PLoS Biology. He suspects that changes have also occurred in the cardiovascular and nervous systems, both of which are intimately linked to the muscles. He has not yet seen any serious side effects from the extra PPAR-delta.

What it Takes to Be a Famous Mark

via I/P Updates: "This October 2004 Report by the INTA Dilution Committee addresses what is required for a mark to be found famous in the context of a claim for trademark dilution."

Is eBay the future of Web politics?

via ZDNet: "A panel of Internet gurus gathered on Friday at the fifth annual Votes, Bits & Bytes conference in Cambridge, Massachussetts, held by the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School to discuss the impact of Internet business models on online politics.

The panellists said the most valuable lesson online campaigners may be able to garner from Web-based companies is that building a sense of trust remains at the centre of winning loyalty from customers or political followers."

A Liberal War On Terror

via Orcinus: "Peter Beinart's recent piece in The New Republic [Fighting Faith] raises a reasonable problem: Why haven't liberals gotten behind the war on terror, given that most terrorists' political and religious beliefs are diametrically opposed to progressive values?

Good question. And the answer is contained within it, to wit: Liberals have not supported the current war on terror precisely because it does not confront the real nature of the terrorist threat.

Liberals, I believe, would enthusiastically support a 'war on terror' that recognized its broad nature, its root sources in radical fundamentalism, and its asymmetrical shape, and responded appropriately. Unfortunately, the DLC-style leadership we've been getting from atop the Democratic party, cheered on by folks like Beinart, has been too timid to articulate that kind of vision."

see also TNR reader responses to Beinart.

Josh's take at TPM.

How Trademark Owners Can Fight Phishing

via I/P Updates: "According to Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) statistics presented in the December 8, 2004 issue of the World Trademark Report, the number of active 'phishing sites' reported for October 2004 was 1,142 with an average growth rate in located phishing sites between July 2004 and October 2004 of 25%. The statistics reveal that the number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns in October numbered 44. Some 73% of these were banking institutions, 14% net service forms, 7% retailers and 7% miscellaneous. The average site of a phisher is online for only 6 days."

One Stop Shopping

via Timothy K. Armstrong blog: Some Resources on Open Source

Democrats lost the battle, not the war

via Salon.com : "A longer perspective is more pertinent and more relevant to the future than listening to televised imbeciles maundering about the 'death of liberalism.' (Had the Democrat won by three points and a couple dozen electoral votes, nobody would be touting the 'death of conservatism.') Progressives and reactionaries in America have both survived much sharper electoral rejections than this one. Both sides tend to overreact to such rejection in an election's emotional aftermath.

Exaggeration is the rule, not the exception, in the post-election autopsy. Sweeping pronouncements about this year's close, hotly contested campaign should be considered skeptically, especially when Republican propagandists start to talk about their 'mandate' and their 'permanent majority.' Such claims are convincing only to citizens (and journalists) suffering from amnesia."

Bush's night of the long knives

cia Salon.com : "Powell had wanted to stay on for six months of Bush's second term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the president insisted on his swift resignation. Immediately, Condoleezza Rice was named in his place. She had failed at every important task as national security advisor, pointedly neglecting terrorism before Sept. 11, enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program (while suppressing contrary intelligence), mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East 'road map.'

But Bush's performance princess was his favorite briefer; ever devoted, the unmarried Rice in an unguarded moment once called Bush 'my husband.' As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was as agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on she figured out how to align with the neoconservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

Powell's sack and Rice's promotion are more than examples of behavior punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the purge of the CIA and the State Department -- a neoconservative night of the long knives. Bush's attitude is that of the intimidating loyalty enforcer he was in his father's political campaigns."

What is encryption?

via Techworld.com: "Data encryption has become a sad necessity for responsible data managers. However cryptography is jargon-heavy even by the discouraging standards of the IT world – symmetric and asymmetric cryptosystems, public versus private keys, digital signatures, hash algorithms, RSA, DES, Rijndael, PGP, MD5, SHA-1, https, secure sockets, Camellia, IDEA; what does it all mean? What are the differences? Relative advantages and disadvantages? Hopefully this article will clear some of the fog."

Federal Judge Tosses Porn Purveyor's Copyright Suit Against Credit Card Companies

via law.com: "Ruling from the bench, U.S. District Judge James Ware tossed out a copyright and trademark infringement suit brought against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. by Perfect 10 Inc., which publishes an adult magazine and operates an adult Web site.

Perfect 10 claims hundreds of Web site operators around the world are selling its trademarked images of women -- and that the credit card companies that process these transactions are liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.

Andrew Bridges, a partner in Winston & Strawn's San Francisco office representing MasterCard, said Perfect 10 was trying 'to impose a commercial blockade on anyone accused of infringement.' Ware found the credit card companies 'are not obliged to manage their merchants away from infringement,' Bridges added. "

Perfect 10 v. Visa International, 04-0371 (N.D. Cal.)

Something Borrowed By Malcolm Gladwell

via The New Yorker: At issue in the case wasn’t the distinctiveness of Newton’s performance. The Beastie Boys, everyone agreed, had properly licensed Newton’s performance when they paid the copyright recording fee. And there was no question about whether they had copied the underlying music to the sample. At issue was simply whether the Beastie Boys were required to ask for that secondary permission: was the composition underneath those six seconds so distinctive and original that Newton could be said to own it? The court said that it wasn’t.

The chief expert witness for the Beastie Boys in the “Choir” case was Lawrence Ferrara, who is a professor of music at New York University, and when I asked him to explain the court’s ruling he walked over to the piano in the corner of his office and played those three notes: C, D-flat, C. “That’s it!” he shouted. “There ain’t nothing else! That’s what was used. You know what this is? It’s no more than a mordent, a turn. It’s been done thousands upon thousands of times. No one can say they own that.”

Factory of the Future?

via MSNBC : "Sources familiar with Myhrvold's strategy say that he has raised $350 million from some of the largest companies in high tech: Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia and Apple. Google and eBay also recently invested. With this large bankroll, the company is out buying existing patents in droves. (Myhrvold won't comment on these activities, but sources say he has already purchased about 1,000 patents.) The strategy is to set up a sort of patent marketplace. Patent owners get money upfront for the dusty ideas sitting on their shelves, the investors get the rights to use the ideas without being sued and Myhrvold gets to rent those same ideas to other companies that need them to continue creating products. Intellectual-property experts say his plan is audacious and unprecedented, customized for a new, rapidly dawning business environment."

Mr. Misery

via rabbit blog" "Of course it absolutely goes without saying that I don't fucking know Smith and I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about. I don't know what it feels like to be him, and I can't judge anything he does or pretend to know what was in his head, and I have no right to even ponder. He owes me nothing. In truth, I loved loved loved his first album, really liked his second, and then I sort of lost interest. I saw him play at a record store in '96 and he was very quiet and shy, in a way that made you want to hug him. Everyone says that about him, really. But when I read about him now, it just gives me this sick feeling in my stomach. It just makes me want to kick his ass. Stop making yourself so fucking small, stop flinching, stop undermining everything you do, stop hiding, stop shrugging it all off, stop it with the whatever and the so fucking what. All that shit just flies in the face of this obvious romanticism that he couldn't own, or wouldn't. If you're an artist, if you're romantic about yourself and your life, own that shit. Instead, it's "Aw, who cares? I'm not what you think I am. Forget about it." And then you put a knife to your heart? What could possibly be more dramatic than that? You creep along and shrug and diminish yourself, and then choose the most dramatic exit possible? My feeling is that if you could live in a more outward, dramatic, bigger way, in the way that some force inside you clearly needs to live, it wouldn't be necessary to exit prematurely.

Today is Wednesday, a good day to stand up for all of the pretty little things you make, no matter how weak and vulnerable they make you feel. Take your pretty little things to town and show them off, goddamn it! Own your vulnerability and sadness and fear and don't hide them and scoff at people who ask after them. Or, if you're not really that sad or fearful, try to be a little bit more accepting of someone who is. Why does everyone think it's so fucking queer and insane to feel sad, or to be preoccupied, at times, by dark or melancholy moods? It's on our TV screens, it's in our movies, but most of us walk around like our lives are chirpy perfection. Or we're just so fucking over it. You know, whatever, no big deal. Or we're insanely happy, but no one actually wants to hear about it. Maybe we're all just afraid of emotion, in any form. Bleh!"