Saturday, March 21, 2015

More stories

Woah! Just seconds before I was going to hit the "publish" button for this post, someone slammed this story against my eyeballs.
The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. He says that’s a ruse created because he discovered shocking CIA secrets and claims he was tortured by federal agents.
I haven't really read the piece yet, but so far, it seems to be very much up my alley. (Do people still say "up my alley"? That expression seems a bit quaint...) Let us discuss this matter later on. I mention it now simply by way of handing you your homework assignment.

Another Republican fishing expedition. Now we know why the Republicans are making such a big stink over Hillary's use of a private email server, even though Colin Powell and other Republicans did the same thing. They want to go fishing.

Once again, they have decided to use the services of Larry Klayman -- who is a staunch proponent of using the FOIA, but only when doing so serves the interests of the right wing, or a faction thereof. (Notice that the guy never uses the FOIA to, say, ask for the release the still-hidden JFK files.)
Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of emails that she believed could be considered official government communications, but she deleted 30,000 emails that she considered to be personal.

The Justice Department describes Klayman’s call for a subpoena as “speculation” in its brief.

“Plaintiff provides no basis, beyond sheer speculation, to believe that former Secretary Clinton withheld any work-related emails from those provided to the Department of State,” the agency says.
The faux-hip presumption of malefic intent works well when right-wing nutjobs talk to other right-wing nutjobs, but it is not a sufficient argument in a legal filing.

Steve King makes it official: He says that American Jews are betraying Judaism if they vote Dem.
The president’s policies throughout the Middle East have been a disaster. I would say to them, name a country where we have better relations today than we had when Barack Obama took office?’ And I gave that in speeches in about six weeks until some lad stood up and said, ‘I can name you two, they are Cuba and Iran.’”
Let me ask a cognate question: Can you name a country with whom we had better relations thanks to the Dubya administration? I don't think you can.

Obama's Middle East Policies have indeed been a disaster -- but only because Obama (until very recently) would not stand up to Israel, and because he has continually kowtowed to the Saudis. The region is a disaster because we've taken sides in a Sunni-Shiite conflict which has nothing to do with us. It's a disaster because Dubya's Iraq invasion was one of the biggest upfucks in all of human history. It's a disaster because we twisted the "Arab spring" to our own selfish purposes.

Every Republican this side of Ron Paul has signaled a desire to make the exact same mistakes -- and to make them even worse. A Republican president would have had us fighting against Assad in 2013, resulting in a Syria ruled by ISIS or the Nusra front. A Republican president probably would have ginned up war against Iran years ago.

Hate to say it, but thank god for Obama. The difference between Obama and Romney has been the difference between small-D disaster and capital-D-and-italics Disaster.

King must be insane if he thinks that America has warmed up to Iran in recent years. Is King really operating under the delusion that Stuxnet and our support for MEK somehow improved relations with Iran? Seriously? Does King really, really, really think that way? Is this guy taking massive amounts of hallucinogens or is he trying to create a work of surrealist literature?

As for Cuba: For more than a decade, American spooks have been secretly meeting with, making deals with, seducing and paying off various "next generation" Cuban officials. This outreach program is a simple function of Fidel Castro's advanced age, and of the (usually justified) presumption that everyone has a price.

One final word about Steve King: He is, of course, one of the biggest clowns in Congress. In fact, I would say that King exemplifies the reason why most American Jews (at least the ones I've known) would rather eat vomit than pal around with the teabaggers.  

Windows 10:
I look forward to the new operating system. Although Windows 8 had a few good things happening "under the hood," the horrific design of that OS transformed my computer into a hellscape which I had to wipe off of my C drive before two days had passed. For some insane reason, Microsoft decided to make things as annoying as possible for standard desktop users.

Win-Ten-Ten looks like a much more obedient puppy. And -- surprise! -- it'll be a free upgrade, even if your copy of Win 7 kinda sorta "fell off a truck."

But there's a catch. Win-Ten-Ten is already out there as a technical preview -- and it has a built-in keylogger. The preview version of W10 also captures your voice commands. Nothing you do is private. Absolutely nothing nothing nothing.

I don't care how innocuous your online habits are: Anyone who uses such an OS, even as part of a temporary testing program, is an indefensible idiot.

So the big question is: Will the regular release of Win-10 contain a keylogger? If so, no go.

The presence of a keylogger goes a long way toward explaining why they are making the thing available for free, even to pirates. The company has to make money somewhere. If they aren't getting it from the consumer, they may be getting it from the illimitable coffers of the American spook community.

Look at it this way: It's not as though W7 is broken. It still works fine. It's what we all know. Win-Ten-Ten isn't even worth the investment of $0 if your privacy concerns are met with Joe Isuzu smiles and slick-and-slimey assurances: "Hey, you can trust us."

Update: This video says that the keylogging isn't nearly as bad as some other sites have claimed. I'm skeptical. When it comes to privacy, I tend to presume the worst. Still, the video does show you how to turn off the keylogging. 

3 comments:

Stephen Morgan said...

Windows 10 ought to be Windows 9. 3.1, 95, 98. ME, Vista, 7, 8. 8.1, 10. Doesn't make sense.

As for making money, very few copies of Windows are sold separately, most are sold to vendors an then included with hardware. Microsoft are also trying to make the system "Freemium", then make money on the "ecosystem", by selling things through their version of the App Store, by converting Office to a subscription service rather than a piece of software for sale.

They're also likely to save money on support and such things if they can get everyone onto Windows 10 and off Windows XP and Vista.

That's the modern software market.

jo6pac said...

https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/03/20/is-matt-dehart-being-prosecuted-because-fbi-investigated-cia-for-the-anthrax-leak/

More from Marcy

Thanks for the info on ten, I'll ask my computer guy next week about this.

Gus said...

Well, mainstream support for windows 7 has already ended, as of January. Meaning no more service packs or enhancements. Extended support goes until 2020, after that, no more security updates. So 5 more years of Windows 7 being viable. Of course, by then, we'll have another Windows operating system either released, or close to release. I also wonder, can you actually pay for Windows 10 so as not to have the logging, or is that not going to be an option?