Google sued over "click fraud" in Web ads

via Reuters.co.uk: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A seller of online marketing tools said on Wednesday it sued Google Inc., charging that the Web search giant has failed to protect users of its advertising program from 'click fraud,' costing them at least $5 million.

Click Defense Inc. filed its lawsuit, which also seeks class action status, on June 24 in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California."

Support The Troops

via Salon.com : "George W. Bush said Tuesday night that Americans should support the troops by flying a flag on the Fourth of July or lending a hand to the families of soldiers serving in Iraq. We've got another idea: How about making a responsible plan for taking care of injured soldiers when they come home?

That's the moral obligation of the administration that sent them to war in the first place, and it's not doing a very good job of it. Just before the president spoke Tuesday, his administration acknowledged that it's short on money for providing medical care to veterans because it vastly underestimated the number of soldiers who would need it.

According to today's Washington Post, the Department of Veteran Affairs predicted that just 23,533 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan would need medical treatment this fiscal year. A more realistic projection? The VA now says the number is more likely to be 103,000.

We're not so hot at math, but the administration's initial projection was off by, what, a factor of four? How could they have gotten it so wrong? VA Secretary Jim Nicholson told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Tuesday that the initial estimate was based on data from 2002, which would explain a lot. Back then, Dick Cheney was telling Americans that their soldiers would be 'greeted as liberators' in Iraq, and Donald Rumsfeld was telling the soldiers themselves that the war 'could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.'"

Hoops in the MSL?

First rate suggestion via Celtic Quick News comments:

"People have talked for the last 10 years about two things - breaking into emerging markets and developing a feeder club(s). Now just this season a new team has started to play in the American MLS called Real Chivas (the nickname of a team from Guadlajara, Mexico) [actually he's mixing up the 2 separate expansion teams, but whatevs, Ed.], they based themselves in LA and tried to market themselves towards the MLS growing Latino fanbase. They are now attracting in the region of 27,000 to each game.

So the idea is Celtic buy an MLS franchise, base it in a city with a large Irish immigrant population (such as Boston), kit them out in the Hoops and use them as a feeder team. There would be all sorts of possibilities."

Not bad. But a couple things: First, Boston equals bad idea jeans, they already have a local team and people will just get confused with the basketball brand, and second, the wage structure, centralized contracts issues would likely make it difficult for the club to be a true feeder. But as a scheme to push the brand in North America, introduce the kids to the glorious and noble history and traditions of the club, I say solid idea.

Now, who has any money?

Patent absurdity

via Guardian: "If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman "

The Military Industrial Congress

via Washington Post: "Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, a Vietnam War hero and 'top gun' fighter pilot, serves on the House subcommittee that appropriates money for the nation's defense. The California Republican also lives on a yacht berthed on the Potomac that is owned by the president of a local defense firm whose contracts Cunningham has supported."

The Latest Downing Street Memos

via The Nation: "A March 8, 2002, options paper prepared by Blair's national security aides noted that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was 'effectively frozen,' its missile program 'severely restricted,' and its chemical and biological weapons programs 'hindered.' Saddam Hussein, it reported, 'has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbors.' This paper also said the intelligence on Iraq's supposed WMD program was 'poor.' It noted that there was no 'recent evidence' of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda.

All of this contradicts what Bush told Americans before the invasion of Iraq. He and his aides claimed that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program, that Hussein was producing and stockpiling biological and chemical weapons, that Baghdad was in cahoots with al Qaeda, and that the intelligence obtained by the United States and other governments (presumably including the Brits) left 'no doubt' that Iraq posed a direct WMD threat to the United States.

The British memos are further evidence that Bush overstated the main reasons for the war. They also show that his key line of defense is bunk. When confronted with questions about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush and his allies have consistently pointed to bad intelligence. But the previously released Downing Street memos and the new ones indicate that the Brits--who had access to the prewar intelligence--saw that the WMD case (based on that intelligence) was, as Jack Straw observed, weak. One might ask, why did they have such a different take than the one Bush shared with the public?"

Gaggle Got Ya, Scott?

via First Draft: "Q Yes. Is there any idea how long a last throe lasts for?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve."

The Post-Mortem Post-Mortem

via Salon : "The results of Terri Schiavo's autopsy are in, and they make one Senate Majority Leader look very foolish. According to Pinellas-Pasco, Florida medical examiner Jon Thogmartin, Schiavo's brain had suffered massive and irreversible damage; it 'weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain.' Thogmartin also refuted assertions from Shiavo's parents and some members of the GOP that Schiavo could have recovered: 'This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.' But the kicker for those who tuned in to the footage of Schiavo seeming to follow the movement of helium balloons with her eyes is that the autopsy results show that 'the vision centers of her brain were dead.' In other words, Schiavo was blind."

Protecting Soft IP

via
electronic design: "Software-only solutions have been the norm, but the more-available hardware-based encryption is gaining in stature. It addresses problems that software can't solve alone.

Keep in mind that hardware-based security actually pinpoints two parts of the puzzle. The first involves secure storage and manipulation of keys needed for encryption on which authentication is based. The second is hardware acceleration required to perform the necessary encryption and decryption in a reasonable amount of time.

A number of different products are available. Atmel's Secure Memory devices store small amounts of information (typically only the keys themselves) in an EEPROM and perform password and authentication protection. M-Systems' DiskOnKey and DiskOnChip implement security to protect flash memory that may contain applications and data. Going even further is Cirrus Logic's ARM9 series of microcontrollers. Its security on-chip uses the Maverick Key memory and the MaverickCrunch encryption engine."

Change or Die by Alan Deutschman

via Fast Company: "What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren't just the hyperbolic rhetoric that conflates corporate performance with life and death? Not the overblown exhortations of a rabid boss, or a slick motivational speaker, or a self-dramatizing CEO. We're talking actual life or death now. Your own life or death. What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most?
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Yes, you say?

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A Handful of Timely Tips and Tricks

About Money:

Last week I was invited to speak to a group of 200 students at Duke University. The organizers gave me pretty much free rein in picking my topic, so I decided to talk about this:

How to make a million dollars is: a) something students are interested in, and b) something I am qualified to talk about. And the talk went really well. So well, in fact, that I have received requests for copies of the presentation.

I did not make a tape, so what I have done here is lay the talk out in writing for you to read at your leisure. I hope that it is helpful to you, and and that it shows you how to begin walking down the path to wealth.

Let's get started on making your first million dollars...

Productivity:

Once people got organized and they can handle tasks well, usually they want more out of their time. They want to accomplish more things. When I present an introduction on time management in the organization I am working for, I got these questions a lot from people: “How can I really can more done?”. In my opinion, there are six tips that I had to assist you on getting more done:

The Internets:

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet: The Web is learning new tricks every day. These surprising sites and services will help you solve problems and save time--and one might even make you a star.

Digital Photography:

The New York Times’ David Pogue offers 10 suggestions for better digital photography. Some notables:

* Extend the camera’s battery life by turning off the screen display and use the old-fashioned viewfinder.
* Pre-focus action shots by “half-pressing” the shutter to bring the camera into focus before your kid jumps in the pool.
* Turn off digital zoom. It only gets you grainy photos. You’re better off using optical zoom on a high-quality picture setting and cropping the photo in an image editor on the computer after the fact.

Lifehacks

Silicon Valley bosses get 57% pay rise

via Guardian Unlimited: Onlineblog: "The Mercury News tracks salary, bonuses, options gains and other forms of pay collected by local executives, and its latest What the Boss Makes reveals that the valley's top executives saw their pay rise 57% last year to a collective $2.1 billion."

Winter rains make hiking to cascades spectacular

via Santa Cruz Sentinel: "Thanks to a season of unfettered rain, this spring brings you some truly over-the-top waterfalls in Santa Cruz County.

Visitors to Big Basin State Park’s spectacular waterfall row — Berry Creek Falls, Silver Falls, and Golden Cascade — might think that the new waterfalls look a lot like the old, but it’s all a matter of perspective.

You can get such a change of perspective in a day trip to one or more of Big Basin’s bountiful cascades or to any of the other gushing glories found in the county and beyond.

Our search for the combination of most accessible, most impressive and most photogenic led us up into the San Lorenzo Valley for a day of awe-struck wandering."

Semantics, Last Refuge of the Shameless

via Salon.com:: "At a press conference Thursday, Salon asked Republican Sens. Pete Domenici and Ted Stevens how they squared Frist's attempt to filibuster a judicial nominee in 2000 with his claim -- and theirs -- that filibusters of judicial nominees are unconstitutional and unprecedented.

'Ask him that, ask the leader that,' Domenici said. 'We don't question his vote. It's our vote. I voted to close the debate [on Paez]. You ask him about his vote.' Stevens, who had spent much of the press conference shouting about the Democrats' filibusters, chimed in: 'We're not asking questions about other people. You're here to ask questions of us.'

After the press conference, Frist's press secretary, Amy Call, approached us to try to explain how Frist's vote in favor of a filibuster in 2000 isn't inconsistent with his claim now that filibusters are inappropriate, unprecedented and even unconstitutional.

In 2000, Call said, 'Individual senators voted against cloture. That's not what you're seeing here. What you're seeing is the leadership of the Democratic Party putting together filibusters.' What ensued next was the following conversation in which we tried -- really, we did -- to understand why the Democrats' filibusters of judicial nominees are worthy of outrage from a man who once attempted to filibuster a judicial nominee himself."

The Lies that Killed

Juan Cole on the inevitability of Bush's move against Iraq and the lies as to when he decided on war, via salon:

When Newsweek's source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush administration.

Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq, including more than 1,600 U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by President George W. Bush and Di Rita's more immediate boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic and military no man's land beset by bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and political gridlock.

And we now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq.

* * *

The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision was far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug. 7, just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington, Cheney said in California that no decision had been made on Iraq. When Bush met with Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002, CNN reported that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the Middle East, steps in Iraq." On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney was interviewed by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked, "Will militarily this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would it cost?" Cheney replied, "First of all, no decision's been made yet to launch a military operation."

* * *

The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to unseat Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama Siblani on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" program on March 11, 2005, when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. "He told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe 13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq." According to Siblani, Bush added that "he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States." Siblani points out that Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.

* * *

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in "The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of principals on Jan. 30, 2001. He writes that after Bush announced he would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "unleash Sharon," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. "The hour almost up, Bush had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and [Joint Chiefs chair Gen. H. Hugh] Shelton, he said, 'should examine our military options.' That included rebuilding the military coalition from the 1991 Gulf War, examining 'how it might look' to use U.S. ground forces in the north and the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was about Iraq." Bush hit the ground running with regard to Iraq, shunting aside key U.S. foreign-policy goals -- such as a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- in favor of exploring military options against Saddam Hussein. O'Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the reluctance to commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the Vietnam War, had ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.

An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and highly manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. 'Look,' he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way...'" When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida operation, Bush insisted, "Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look into Iraq, Saddam." According to Clarke, Bush said it "testily."

Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12, "talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq.'" Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq, it has become increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most senior.

* * *

Nov. 27, 2001, was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. "General Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq." Franks knew exactly what the call portended. "Son of a bitch, I thought. No rest for the weary." There would be another war. The die had already been cast.

On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, "In principle, Bush and his national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S. officials say. 'The question is not if the United States is going to hit Iraq; the question is when,' says a senior American envoy in the Middle East." The article notes Bush's oft-stated caution that no final decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from Turkey. Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one of the coauthors in the Middle East, he is likely the one who got the quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?

Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, "Intelligence Matters," that on Feb. 19, 2002, he visited the U.S. Central Command. Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war in Afghanistan. Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned senator, "Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to prepare for an action in Iraq." The implementation phase had already begun.

Tags: Iraq War

Fibber Frist's Filibuster Fiasco

via Center for American Progress:

Documents obtained by American Progress show Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist participated in an effort to block one of Bill Clinton's judicial nominees via filibuster, then lied about it.

In recent weeks, Frist has been relentlessly preaching about the evils of judicial filibusters. Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 12, Frist said filibustering judicial nominees is 'radical. It is dangerous and it must be overcome.' Frist called judicial filibusters 'nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority.' When Bill Clinton was President, however, Frist engaged in the same behavior he is now condemning.

In 1996 Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Conservatives in Congress held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in an attempted filibuster on March 8, 2000. Bill Frist was among those who voted to filibuster Paez.

On March 9, 2000, Former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) issued a press release describing the intent of the Paez filibuster vote the day before. The release says Senator Smith "built a coalition of several moderate and conservative Senators in an effort to block" Paez's nomination. [4] Frist was a part of that coalition. Smith did not organize the filibuster to get more information on Paez (after all his nomination had been pending for four years). He organized the filibuster because he had already decided Paez was "out of the mainstream of political though and...should [not] be on the court"

US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'

via Guardian: " The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.

The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.

In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

'The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions,' the report said. 'On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."

* * *

Yesterday's report makes two principal allegations against the Bush administration. Firstly, it found the US treasury failed to take action against a Texas oil company, Bayoil, which facilitated payment of "at least $37m in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".

The surcharges were a violation of the UN Oil For Food programme, by which Iraq was allowed to sell heavily discounted oil to raise money for food and humanitarian supplies. However, Saddam was allowed to choose which companies were given the highly lucrative oil contracts. Between September 2000 and September 2002 (when the practice was stopped) the regime demanded kickbacks of 10 to 30 US cents a barrel in return for oil allocations.

In its second main finding, the report said the US military and the state department gave a tacit green light for shipments of nearly 8m barrels of oil bought by Jordan, a vital American ally, entirely outside the UN-monitored Oil For Food system. Jordan was permitted to buy some oil directly under strict conditions but these purchases appeared to be under the counter.

The Jordanian oil purchases were shipped in the weeks before the war, out of the Iraqi port of Khor al-Amaya, which was operating without UN approval or surveillance.

Investigators found correspondence showing that Odin Marine Inc, the US company chartering the seven huge tankers which picked up the oil at Khor al-Amaya, repeatedly sought and received approval from US military and civilian officials that the ships would not be confiscated by US Navy vessels in the Maritime Interdiction Force (MIF) enforcing the embargo.

Odin was reassured by a state department official that the US "was aware of the shipments and has determined not to take action".

The company's vice president, David Young, told investigators that a US naval officer at MIF told him that he "had no objections" to the shipments. "He said that he was sorry he could not say anything more. I told him I completely understood and did not expect him to say anything more," Mr Young said.

An executive at Odin Maritime confirmed the senate account of the oil shipments as "correct" but declined to comment further."

Schumer Prior to Floor Speech

via Daily Kos: "Why are the Republicans doing this when, in Schumer's words, there are 25 Republican Senators who believe in the filibuster? Four words.

The Extreme Religious Right. James Dobson & Co. To put it plainly, this is Schiavo Part 2. Frist has made a despicable Faustian bargain - do what Dobson tells him on the Nuclear Option, judicial nominees, and just about everything else, and they will back him for President in 2008."

The resignation of Scott McClellan

Olberman's Blog via MSNBC.com: "Whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.

Whenever I hear this White House talking about ‘doing to damage to our image abroad’ and how ‘people have lost lives,’ I strain to remember who it was who went traipsing into Iraq looking for WMD that will apparently turn up just after the Holy Grail will — and at what human cost."

Laura Bush, Comic: They're Not All Laughing

via nytimes.com: "To the Editor:

I suggest that Laura Bush wake her husband up around 9:30 p.m. and travel around and look at the folks in this country working the second and third shifts on their second and third jobs in an attempt to make ends meet.

The Bushes are so far out of touch with reality and the working class in America! We are the ones who are desperate: desperate for decent jobs, and desperate for affordable health insurance and housing.

I don't think Chippendales can help this desperation.

Debbie Twyford Morrow
Raleigh, N.C., May 3, 2005"