deadissue.com

A streetlight with no courage flickers insanity across sidewalk split all over with tufts of grass and dirt plump up and down so a bug with something to do maneuvers over one mountain then another without fear or even the memory of ever being late for anything besides that one time it all went bad during a burrow into soft soil already occupied by tens of tens of however many smaller bugs with enormous strength and blood-curdling shrieks yet not a wing among them so the mad hurl in reverse worked like a charm and a little bit of pain the only cost, though from that experience a reluctance to slow down or think carried nerves and appendages onward and upward often away from everything except food and moisture and artificial lighting. (7/26/2006)

Someone I consider a good friend and part-time mentor on technical matters (captain_menace) had a request for some good stories that weren’t sports related, and I’ve been thinking about it for a couple days now. Mostly about how difficult it is to approach the task of writing here with such a concept as my goal. The past month has been a continuous riff on all I consider to be wrong in the world besides Chuck Hagel and Google, with the committed analysis of an optimist rarely seen within any of the paragraphs, and especially not within any of the most crafted paragraphs, tending to become more precise in terms of their darkness with each added moment of attention.

Though it wasn’t only the state of human suffering that bothered me, but also the state of Boston sports in general…as right now I’m only rooting for the Celtics to lose enough games to score Greg Oden in the draft & for Boston College to make it through the brick-wall portion of their upcoming ACC schedule in spite of the fact that their best low post player got kicked off the team for no doubt something canibis-related. Continue reading →

On Martin Luther King Day, he did not disappoint his closeted cross-burning audience one bit:

Grand Wizard (aka Michael Savage): But basically, if you’re talking about a day like today, Martin Luther King Junior Day, and you’re gonna understand what civil rights has become, the con it’s become in this country. It’s a whole industry; it’s a racket. It’s a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males’ birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn’t qualify for it. (Audio)

A portion of this entertainer’s audience happens to post on Control Congress, and upon realizing that fact, I’ve had to voluntarily take a step back in recent weeks. This sort of a thing can’t be treated lightly, certainly not without the goods in hand, along with deadbolts straight out of the box and into every possible enrty from the outside. These people have managed to accomplish a lot of things with gasoline in the past, but I’m betting on something a bit less photogenic. Indeed, these armies he’s gathering have been at the ready for years, just waiting for someone to send out the signal. Prison is no joke in this country, so the press being all over one of their deeds in a matter of minutes simply won’t do. No, they’re coming in that front door one of these nights. What can I do about it besides load up on guns, locks and booby traps?  Continue reading →

Hillary said that she was “in it to win it”, but I had no idea that meant something like this:

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage? This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campe is asking about Sen. Barack Obama. – Insight Magazine

Insight admits to not having checked out the backstory they were provided, but stands by the connection of this fabricated lead to the Clinton campaign. The immediate reaction I had was to connect Insight with NewsCorp and Rupert Murdoch, though it did seem like poor politics to set the bar so low at this point in the game. After a couple minutes of research, I realized that the connection here is much more grave, as Insight is under the control of a Korean I happen to consider more unhinged than Kim Jong Ill and Byung Hyun Kim put together, none other than the Reverend (cult leader) Sun Myung Moon. This lover of bulgogi is also the owner of a world renowned ‘nigger-hating’ standard bearer known as the Washington Times.

At this point I don’t know what to believe, but if there were ever a Japanese-American running for President, you can be sure that this organization would be photoshoping his/her head on every piece of animal porn they could get their hands on. Just put it out there, repeatedly, and understand that as long as the job gets done, whatever had to fall along the way…be it journalism, integrity or the faith of Americans in the inherent goodness of of their fellow man…at least no nigger, Jap or hyphenated loud mouth broad is going be delivering a State of the Union address anytime soon! Of course, if Condolezza Rice happens to run, they’ll give her a pass. The sniper rifle and noose can certainly be put up in her case.

Whether or not any of this plays out in a big way down the stretch is probably a given, as once the suits who own The Washington Times directs an editor somewhere else to run something, it is not whether the story is reliable or not, but just that it is out there in the first place. Do you think somebody like Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh cares about whether or not a story is legit. Do you think the FoxNews network gives a story like this a second thought before making it part of their playlist for the day? Of course they don’t, and if the real story comes out, they’ll talk around it by throwing out the ‘liberal media bias’ argument and condemn journalism as a whole, then perhaps chalk it all up to ‘what goes around comes around’.

The holiday season was extended for my family, as the stomach flu that ravaged most of the northeast this past month happened to hit our relations near and far like something out of a Stephen King novel, pushing back the Christmas party in Weymouth. Max and Sam lived it up with their cousins, made their papa proud. Van Helsing’s oldest daughter MacKenzie played referee quite brilliantly, releshing the chance to shine as the “big cousin”, and perhaps was the only one in the house who could calm Maxwell down at any moment. He was looking up to her, taking direction from her, and smiling when she gave him a hug. Madison, her sister (closer to Max and Sam’s age but a year or so older), was uneasy about the boys having free reign with her toys, but she too seemed to be appreciative of the sense of order MacKenzie was providing. Helsing shared some of his stash, rare I.P.A. I can still taste, and on the drive home everyone slept. Even mama.

1) “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War” – Senate Judiciary Committee – Senator Feingold, Chair – Tuesday, January 30 at 10:00 AM
2) Dusty has much love for Senator Hagel and TWO posts within a week on him. The first is a video of him gettin’ jiggy wit that leadership bug that’s going around, and the second an interview he gave that has to be read by anyone who is serious about “being informed”.
3) Jurassicpork drops it like it’s hot with his excellent piece on the difference between Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney – Halliburton Rising
4) Recently The Feed has been providing my daily sports fix – everyone should check it out.

Two election workers have been convicted of rigging the recount in Cuyahoga County to avoid a more thorough review. Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were both found guilty of felony negligent misconduct of an elections employee and misdemeanor failure of elections employees to perform their duty. A documentary that was released in 2006 captured the very scene that has now been proven to be criminal, and having seen it myself, it was obvious from the start that the sample ballots provided for the recount were not chosen randomly. Hacking Democracy was aired on HBO and featured the story of someone I consider to be a patriot, a woman named Bev Harris, who will undoubtedly go down in history as one of those Americans we grew up learning about in school. When the teacher informed us of how incredible our democracy is, and how this is so based on the possibility of any one of us making a difference that could change our country for the better in enormous ways, most likely they were speaking of someone like Paul Revere.

Bev Harris is that type of a character in the history books of our great grandchildren, but unlike Revere’s heroics, she will not need the fictional puff-up of a Longfellow to earn her relevance. Anyone who is not familiar with this woman should check out Black Box Voting (permanent link posted under ‘Activism’), which is the organization she founded after having discovered Diebold’s source code in a public domain on the internet one night. The mission began as a fact finding search for any and all information pertaining to electronic voting machines, as she had read in the news that a machine in Florida had tallied negative votes for Al Gore in 2000 and was as flabergasted as the rest of us were. The difference between all of us and her though, is that she was determined to dig around and see what she could find. The executives of Diebold have often accused Bev of ‘stealing’ their source code, though once questioned on the specifics, they certainly admit that they failed to secure it and that anybody could have done the same exact thing. Indeed, throughout this story Diebold has presented arguments that require only modest questioning in order to crack. Continue reading →

From 9/13/04 – Only updated with photos and sadly, still relevant

The magical mystery jar of Vietnam history now has four hands grasping for the contents inside, with respective campaign riffraff of both the guilty fiends howling indictments at one another for stealing the classified cookies and exploiting their deliciousness for political gain. In terms of legitimate behavior of powerful men and women in this country, the campaign Mafioso, talking heads and the fiends themselves have managed to inspire dictionary publishers all over the world to engage in heated debate over the need for a completely new word to describe it. Scholars, writers and satirists are in a state of panic as these past few weeks of buffoonery have raised the bar, and many fear that old time favorites such as ‘farce’, ‘mockery’ and ‘ludicrous’ just won’t get the job done anymore.

There is no rioting, mass panic or spontaneous combustion to report from all of this just yet, but experts predict that a few more baseless statements and they may have to raise the nation’s irrationality alert level to red for the first time in nearly four years. State governors were notified of the potential crisis and some immediately instructed public access stations to roll continuous emergency broadcast episodes of ‘Mr. Wizard’ and ‘3-2-1 Contact’ in hopes that the swelling would go down.      Continue reading →

1. Van Helsing emailed a link to a great article that ran in the Wall Street Journal about a handicapper whose skill in picking winners has made him a target of Las Vegas, with lines changing up or down based solely on his picks being published on his website or emailed to his subscribers. The bookmakers in Vegas subscribe to his site and when his picks are announced, spikes in the betting on those specific games will show up…check this out: The Man Who Shook Up Vegas

2. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has been a favorite of mine for quite some time, and he’s getting louder by the day having taken over the top spot on the Judiciary Committee from Arlen Spector. One document I have here is a bill he’s introduced to go after war profiteers – Statement on Introduction of the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 (1/4/07) – He’s also been on AG Gonzales about his idiotic interpretation of Habeus Corpus (Video) – As well as the case of a Canadian man who was apprehended in an airport and sent to Syria where he was tortured (Video – I’m looking for the 60 mintues from a year ago on this story) – Several clips from last year I’ve archived and will seed if anyone’s interested in acquiring all of them – but here are some links to earlier posts on Leahy – Senator Leahy 3/31/06 – Book Burning at the Associated Press 3/23/06 – Senate Hearing on Warrentless Wiretaps 2/7/06 – Stay tuned, as Leahy isn’t running for President, but is going to make more of a difference this year than anyone who is.

3. The End of Football – Jim from Borrowed Suits banged out a great read pertaining to the end of this season for the Patriots. Dr. Thompson shows up for a paragraph at one point!

4. I generally resist posting on what I’m currently listening to, but this one show I pulled the other night, currently seeding, is from 1969 – Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash Studio Sessions – and for any fan of music on any level, I’d highly recommend you hop on this torrent ASAP!

770 – Number of detainees held at Guantanamo since 9/11/01 (1)
10 – Number of detainees charged with a crime (1)
9 in 10 – Chances that a Guantanamo detainee was turned over to Coalition forces by an Afghan or Pakistani citizen (11)
5,000 – Average dollar reward that leaflets airdropped over their countries promised for every “terrorist” turned in (11)
5:3 – Supreme court vote delcaring Bush’s military tribunals unconstitutional (2)
51 – Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s job approval rating (3)
70 – Number killed in the bombing of a university in Baghdad yesterday (4)
50 – Number of active duty military officers delivering an Iraq pullout petition to Congress today (5)
74 – Minimum number of days before US bombs Iran according to the Arab Times in Kuwait (6)
1 – Number of pilotless US spy planes shot down by Iran in recent days (7)
3,300,000 – Number of dollars George Michael made on New Year’s Eve in Russia (8)
75 – Number of minutes he had to perform for the money (8)
2,130,000 – Number of Google results on a search for “Britney Spears pussy photo” (9)
754,000 – Number of Google results on a search for “Britney Spears crotch photo” (12)
620,000 – Number of Google results on a search for “Britney Spears beaver photo” (10)
650 – Number of posts on deadissue (including this one)

As a developer I definitely look down upon Microsoft’s strategy of exclusivity regarding the inability of other operating systems to run applications built using the .NET framework, but as an investor or an employee of the company it would most likely allow me to sleep better at night. The fact is, no other single software firm in the global market could survive doing what Microsoft has done with .NET, and while regulation is lax here in the United States, in Europe it’s a different story. As of today Microsoft has produced the court ordered source code it had avoided producing in the past, possibly avoiding a daily fine of 3 million euro, backdated to July. Whether or not this satisfies the European courts, or provides Sun Microsystems and Linux the information they need to remedy the compatibility issues remains to be seen.

It’s a given that in spite of this issue, KnowToys Inc. will continue to utilize .NET mostly because our databases were all built using Microsoft Access. The data stored through the use of our shipping application is grounded in Access and our reporting work is done using SQL, so to build applications in say, Sun Microsystems’ J2EE rather than .NET would be borrowing trouble in my opinion. This isn’t the case when we’re building from the ground up though, as there are considerable advantages to using J2EE depending on the situation. Continue reading →

Not only does this government institution have it’s own Pauly Shore movie, but now thanks to Sonicrusk, I’ve come to find that it has it’s own stamp as well!  In keeping with the theme, perhaps their next one could feature the public defender – looking sharp in that business suit, underarms stuffed full of file folders with papers falling out, hands pinched on the tips of inside-out pockets.  Another could celebrate over a hundred years of rape in overcrowded prison cells.  Indeed, they’re merely scratching the surface with this concept.

The cash rewards handed to men we hardly knew in Afghanistan in exchange for “terrorists” has loaded Guantanamo up full of people we have no evidence against. It wouldn’t make sense to conduct business this way unless the intent of it all was to appear crazy and irrational enough to break all the rules. Consider the speech Bush gave to the nation two nights ago, coinciding with air strikes on AlQaeda in Somalia that resulted in zero success, and a roundup of Iranian nationals that had been approved six months prior by Bush. For consecutive actions to synchronize so well out of a necessity determined by facts “on the ground” rather than what is going on politically here at home, then let’s also assume that Barry Bonds never used steroids, OJ didn’t kill his wife and everyone reading this is only a day old. Ridiculous doesn’t adequately describe all of this well enough, but I suspect it does in fact describe the level of cunning that remains and perhaps has always been peaked out at such a sadly pathetic level since day one. To honestly believe that they’re fooling anyone at this point is indicative of something far more troublesome than the actual things they do during these publicity campaigns. Notice that the rest of the world is insisting we go fuck ourselves at this point, a sentiment that will be on full display during our Secretary of State’s official tour of the region that is saying it loud and often.

Notice that Saudi Arabia summoned our “serious” emissary (Shooter) for an explaination of how we should specifically go about fucking ourselves…a procedure that involved Saudi oil money funding Sunnis, the initial enemies we were fighting over there in Iraq rather than here, in an effort to slaughter by proxy the Iranian rooster in the fight, a scrappy bunch of Shia maniacs who like to pray and decapitate infidels, and so the President cites Syria and Iran with innuendo and most likely zero evidence from the raid of Iranian offices within Iraq in his speech, puts them “on notice”, while leaving out the Saudis who told of their funding of terrorists in front of the international media. It’s about as confusing a series of events as you’d see on any episode of Sesame Street or perhaps Barny and Friends, and oh so scary. The only real question in all of this is whether or not the moves are driven by stupidity alone or a combination of stupidity and an assumption of the American public’s stupidity. I’m going with number two, simply because of the air strikes in Somalia. Because the obvious intent of doing that was to provide the idea that terrorism is still everywhere, all the time, right next door to where you live…if you live in Africa. Shit…Nixon could say the war was concluding, kill a million people with bombs and napalm that he’d deny ever happened, and STILL catch every single playoff game on the television this time of year! George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are to Nixon what Kevin Federline is to everything that surrounds him. Talentless when it comes to the games that they chose to have define their legacy, and with the amateurish maneuvering of the past week, I’m convinced that they have no idea of how bad they really are at this. And THAT is the scariest aspect heading into 2007…that there’s an international Katrina on the horizon and they’re again prepared to fight it with the best political phrases and publicity stunts that money can buy.

Condoleeza Rice happens upon a “real leader” in the Senate today

Secretary of State Rice is a competent actress, and does quite well when it comes to memorizing and delivering her lines. As a high-profile figure within this administration, she regularly exhibits a quixotic acumen found most often in public relations firms representing the interests of smokestacks, fully-automatic, low tar and the like. On a good day she’s globetrotting and meeting with groups of men who preside over nations where women are known to set themselves on fire on account of shame or false witness or the hope of a better draw next time around. They’ll pretend to believe that this emissary from the United States is making decisions that could effect them in some way, and for the sake of hoopleheads both here and there, duel podiums will be situated between microphones and flags for the sound bite and photograph that says nothing more than “I was there”.

The title she carries brings to mind the concept of a powerbroker making things happen behind the scenes, yet a half hour into testifying before hostile senators of both parties today, it was quite clear that the gap between Rice and Colon Powell is enormous. Both put on their marketing caps when told to do so, but you get the feeling that at least Powell was dying inside while it was going on. Condileezza Rice on the other hand is aware that what she’s saying is hogwash, but is happy to spit-shine the fantasy as long as she can still play piano in exotic parts of the world once in a while. At least until today that was the case, as Senator Hagel introduced this perpetually overmatched woman to life outside of Madison Avenue. It shocked her brain like a tall glass of Ike I’d imagine, or perhaps she walked away with the thought that telling lies for a living was no longer the right thing to do.

I’ve been a fan of his for quite some time now, and today he was real. The opinion he shared isn’t one he’s recently developed, unlike 95% of his colleagues. He hasn’t kept it under wraps up until now either, but instead has shown a largely scared shitless media and DC vortex what a real leader actually looks and sounds like. Back in February I said Hagel in ’08, but to hell with all that for now, as in this moment right here I’ll take a Senator. America needs a Senator or two at this stage of our implosion and wouldn’t you know it, Chuck Hagel is still the one calling this thing what it is. Condoleeza Rice was his foil in flesh today, though the truth he’s been slinging for well over a year now was bound to catch up to the rest of these hacks sooner or later. A certain GOP Senator from Oregon is happy to take credit for ‘getting the ball rolling’ on his side of the aisle, but the truth is, Hagel is a man amongst mostly children in that body, and even though he won’t get the credit he deserves, I honestly don’t think he gives a damn in that regard.

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of service-oriented architecture (SOA) by providing a definition, examples and diagrams. The concept is analyzed through the use of several sources and then applied to our own internal shipping application here at KnowToys Inc.

Introduction: SOA is perceived to be a tremendous tool for IT for many reasons, though fundamentally it is inherent across almost all areas of business that the goals achieved by working inward as opposed to outward are ideal under any circumstances, and so the focus of my analysis led me towards this benefit gained through SOA perhaps more than any other. The practice of acquisition and consolidation carries along with it some unavoidable tasks dealing with the merging of metadata into current systems, ensuring customers are able to be serviced in short time, and providing users the tools necessary to allow for minimal drops in productivity, quality or service levels. SOA solutions are built to mitigate these unavoidable challenges.

Outside the realm of transition though, there are many applicable uses for SOA applications throughout the business world when also dealing with pre-existing conditions. Areas are identified where instead of a user working with several applications interacting with even more data repositories, an application is built that brings these many functions under one roof. Customers may use SOA products to conduct business that before was handled in person, or the website that used to perform a limited number of services becomes expanded to include twice as many. With these examples in mind, I perceive the crux of SOA to be just as much a frame of mind as it is a technology, with the emphasis on finding more uses for something that is already present as opposed to creating something new. Continue reading →

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on 12/24/2006:

“…I didn’t want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again.”

Wall Street Journal: Will you accept a second term if it’s offered to you?

“Impossible. I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term.”

President George W. Bush on 1/4/2007 (12 days later):

“I believe Prime Minister Maliki has the will necessary to make the tough decisions.”

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