You Carry an IPOD? Want More Space? This is a RAID

Wright This Way has apparently way too much money and time on his hands. He gets 4 Ipods and arranges them into a RAID array.

Sheesh.

And while we’re on the subject of MP3’s why has nobody come up with a reasonably good mobile MP3 disk changer? Think of the advantages, here… Assuming 128kb streams, you could do up 120 hours of music. Which, even in my case… I spend a LOT of time in the van.. I’d end up having to change out the disks, say, once per month.

Billy Beck, last October described the scene….

…during the recent island excursion, I happened to spend a few minutes in the atrium of Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. (Oh wait… it’s now “Hartsfield-Race-Grifter-Maynard-Jackson International Airport”. I almost forgot.) Sitting there, I observed a line of troops in desert camo, standing two-abreast in the outlet of a corridor into the atrium space. On a signal, they took up their gear and began to move out, in column. They made their way through the atrium, and the whole place — perhaps three hundred people (it was early) — stood up as one, rendering a thunderous ovation for the whole time that the troops were in sight.

Lamed by the spectacle, I couldn’t move to get out my camera. I wish I had, though. It was terrific.

This description of Billy’s was my first thought as I watched this ad that the Budwiser folks ran during the Superbowl.  If you didn’t happen to see it, check it out.

It shames me that so many Americans would find such a ‘welcome back’ out of the ordinary. That it is, in fact unusual is the shameful legacy left behind by the anti-Vietnam war nutcases. (Sigh) Which leads me, logically, to the question of what the anti-Iraq idiots have cost us? It’ll be decades before we get that list completed, I think. But it doesn’t take a great deal to understand that they’ve cost us more by far than they’ve given us.

Too bad I don’t get into airports much.

(Updated for flow and correction 0208051603)

Slashdot notes

“Basically, if you use Firefox today, you’re not susceptible to any spyware, other than what you download when you’re on Kazaa…The spyware writers target mostly Explorer users because that’s the most fertile feeding ground for piranha-like (spyware) attacks. They’ll watch as Firefox becomes mainstream, they’ll see opportunity there and start targeting them.”

So if these slimy so and so’s can do this, why can’t Google work up a toolbar for it? Are you listening, Blogger/Google?

Glenn links to a bit in the Rocky Mountain News by University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos who says in part:

To the extent that Churchill was hired because he claimed to be a Native American, he would seem to be guilty of academic fraud. But the situation is worse than this.

Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar University, has written a paper that outlines what looks like a more conventional form of academic fraud on Churchill’s part. According to Brown, Churchill fabricated a story about the U.S. Army intentionally creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837, by simply inventing almost all of the story’s most crucial facts, and then attributing these “facts” to sources that say nothing of the kind.

“One has only to read the sources that Churchill cites to realize the magnitude of his fraudulent claims for them,” Brown writes. “We are not dealing with a few minor errors here. We are dealing with a story that Churchill has fabricated almost entirely from scratch. The lack of rationality on Churchill’s part is mind-boggling.”

A foaming liberal making up stuff and teaching it as fact?

Move along, folks. Nothing new here, nothing new at all.

McPhillips and Beck are commenting about Imus on his new set.

I’ll add my two cents, which includes the reference to 15 years of radio work… 10 of it in morning drive.

Their comments are valid; Imus is out of his element and the show won’t work. First, because the gink has a face just made for radio… a point which the new more open set reinforces.

Secondly because the better look won’t help what comes out of the fool’s mouth, which has always been the problem with getting better numbers, anyway.

That could be easily demonstrated in my view, by getting someone like a Mike Smirkonish, or Neal Boortz in the same time slot on another network.

Imus was fine when all he had to do was intro a song, and try to gernerate a laugh or two. Even in the old setup, Imus doing talk was a stretch… albeit a manageable one for a segment of the listenership.  For most it was unlistenable (As evidenced by his listenership numbers in the radio markets he’s in), but it was enough to survive in a timeslot that MSNBC couldn’t do anything with.

In the new set, it’s unwatchable, as well, and MSNBC will be looking for a replacement soon enough.

I’ve just started playing with Bloglines as a way to keep up with a large number of feeds at once. Napsterization now reports that Bloglines has been snapped up by Jeeves.  This marks THE entry into blogdom for Jeeves.

Interesting.

Update: The internal Bloglines feed confirms this news.
They promise no major changes for at least a while. I’ll be watching.

Michael Barone explains why President Bush is giving the left such fits… he’s effective and will be moreso this term.

“Bush carried 31 states that elect 62 of the 100 senators. He carried approximately 250 congressional districts, to about 185 for Kerry (the final counts aren’t in). Bill Clinton was re-elected with 49 percent of the vote in times of apparent peace and apparent prosperity — the most favorable posture in which to run. George W. Bush was re-elected with 51 percent of the vote in times not of apparent peace and apparent prosperity. Clinton’s 49 percent in retrospect looks like a ceiling for his party. Bush’s 51 percent may be more in the nature of a floor.

This thinking of Barone’s would seem to be the agreed to by the polling trends of late…

They’re all trending upward.  As Boortz notes this morning,

Following the successful elections in Iraq that even the media couldn’t gloss over, a new poll puts President Bush’s approval rating at 57%, according to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Also included in that poll was the question of whether or not sending troops to Iraq was a mistake. Almost the same amount – 55% – said no, it was not.

The Democrats made Iraq their number one issue. It defeated John Kerry, lost the Democrats seats in both houses of Congress and in all levels of government and the trends have gotten even worse for the Democrats since those elections, as all the ‘sky is falling’ nonsense from the Democrats gets exposed as the bilge it is. The Democrats for example swore that the Iraqi elections would never happen. Of course, they did… and the result os a lot of face lost for the Democrats who are now looking for cover for their misdeeds on that one… and that’s only one problem of many such.

The degree of losing face is why the Democrats are opposing Bush on everything he does… including stuff they called for during the election; They’re simply desperate.

John Venlet at Improved Clinch points out this morning that David Brooks seems to think so.

“Within Brooks piece one can read phrases like “ownership society,” “asset-based welfare,” or this especially egregious phrase “…we would turn more people into capitalists if we distributed capital more broadly.”

Perhaps Brooks has forgotten the number of dollars of wealth redistribution we’ve done in the name of the eradication of poverty… all without any degree of success in terms of creating capitalists. Instead what we got was a class of denendancy. What Brooks proposes here would unquestionably produce more of the same.

I’ll give John Credit for having the courage to read his stuff for the purpose of debunking it. … Usually, for my own part, after reading Brooks I usually feel needful of a shower.

Captain’s Quarters has been all over them, and so has Michelle Malkin. Between the already existing coverage, I’ve not bothered with it… and in any event, a ‘journalist’ spinning left is hardly news… particularly this guy, who I’ve blogged before. and so I’ve not bothered much with it. However, it’s starting to look like Eason is about to get hung by his fellows. And that, my freinds, is news.

Check their two sites; They have more this morning.  The NY SUN and Kurtz, are expected to, as well.

The Democrats claim that, as you might expect.
However… “No”, says a great read by David John and Keith Miller.
It goes into great detail why as usual, the Democrats have it dead wrong.
RTWT

Here’s an example of comment policy in action.

Arne Langsetmo wrote:

Another RW foamer just can’t handle the troot, eh? Someone points out that you’re full’o’shite (and an ever nastier liar than Ann Coulter), and you ban them. ROFLMAO. Haven’t changed a butt, have you, Bithead. . . .

Or did you just ban everyone because you can’t handle people pointing out your cluelessness?

Whatever. How thoroughly Republican of you. . . .

Cheers,

And what would you have to do with the truth, Arne?

In any event, this has nothing to do with your politics. It has to do with YOU, and YOUR ACTIONS. And some pretty stupid ones, at that.

You were a guest on my site. You abused that status. You got out of line several times, and were told about it twice, publicly. The third time, you’re gone. Period. That’s pretty generous in light of both your history and how other bloggers would have dealt with you.

I have no problems with an honest and open debate. Indeed; I went out of my way to accomidate that. But that’s not what you came for. You decided to use your usual tactics that made the DU such an interesting place, and for that matter, it’s also what drove so many out of Usenet. Sorry, Arne, but I won’t have the constant insults in my site. My site will not become another usenet just to prevent you from telling your fellow idiots how much of a martyr to the cause you were… you’re going to do that, anyway…. you always did… regardless of the facts.

Bottom line is, You’re not worth the bother.
As such you no longer have posting rights on my blog’s comment section.

End of story.

PS: Seems I’m not the only one to have reached the same conclusion I did.
There’s lots more who agree.

Lots more.

Roundup

Jonathan Chait is less than convinced of Howard Dean’s qulifications as DNC chair. McQ atQandO seems to agree.

Personally, however, I disagree.

I wonder which would be more damaging to the Democrats, assuming each were possible…

Them mistakenly thinking he’s the best for the job, or that he actually IS the best for the job.

I think the latter to be the case… he is in fact the best man for the job, if by that it’s meant that he best represnts what the party is. In my view, he certainly represents the rabid unreasoning and “attack everything” animal that the Democrats have allowed themselves to become.  That’s damaging to the Democrats, but so be it.

The Bill Clinton years have apparently taught them nothing. Clinton won by lying to the American electorate, positioning himself as a centerist…. and then veering left once elected. (I tried to keep my tax cut pledge, I really did…) It’s the only way Democrats win anymore unless the person running for office is running in a place like Marin County, CA, or Boston MA. In the rest of America, Democrats who run like Democrats… In short, running from the Karl Marx political handbook, simply don’t get elected. The county by county election map shows this clearly… and this is a trend that’s been building since the second world war. Indeed, the only Democrat since FDR to win the White House on a majority of popular votes, was LBJ… by 51%. And it seems reasoable to assume at least part of the vote there was the result of a sympathy push because of JFK’s killing. Assuming that’s the case, the Democrats haven’t won a popular vote unaided by events for nearly 75 years.

The simple fact is Dean will do naught but push the Democrats further to the left, and in so doing will push the Democrats further out of power in every level of government.

And I wonder who among them has the wit to see it, that won’t soon be a Republican.

Yet, that’s what Howard Dean brings to the Democratic party… a brand politics that has never been successful for the Democrats in general elections.

A message to the love of my life…
Happy Birthday Donna

Nothing special this week; Just Superbowl Sunday, voting and life in general going on.