Strange
Day

The US pulls out of the ABM treaty, while Russia calls it a mistake.
Argentia faces a general strike.
Afganastan would implode if there was anything left of it.
Suicidal attackers assault the Indian parliment.
Isreal cut off contact with the Palestinians and Palestine declares Isreals action acts of war.
Maybe the al Queda aren’t such fools. If I knew of any place, I would be crawling into the nearest hole in the ground right now too.

Imagine the unimaginable: The president, in the White House, the vice president, at the National Observatory, and all Cabinet members, in their respective agency headquarters, are killed in a terrorist attack on downtown Washington. So are all members of Congress, except the few who happen to be out of town.

What happens to the Republic?

— Dana Milbank
You know, it really doesn’t make me feel better when they’re actually thinking about things like this.

In a letter to a consultant in Britain who runs a personal website that has not been especially nice to KPMG, the company said it had discovered a link on his site to www.kpmg.com, and that the website owner, Chris Raettig, should “please be aware such links require that a formal Agreement exist between our two parties, as mandated by our organization’s Web Link Policy.”

— wired.com
You know you’ve subordinated all independent thought to the organization when you can no longer see how ridiculous you’ve become.
From a technical standpoint, as the article states, if every link on the web had to be mutually agreed upon, there would be no web. (You figure it out… some 60 billion pages on the web with probably 3 links each, minimum.) And to imply that you have a right to say who can and cannot link to your site means you believe you have editorial control over a someone else’s intellectual property.
Can you believe companies pay millions of dollars to an organization that has so little grasp on the common sense workings of the World Wide Web.
Or maybe not.
There are supposedly 25 million regular direct internet users in the United States right now. That is about one tenth of the population of the country. Now figure that no more than one in ten of those users has a strong grasp of the history and workings of the internet (web included).
That’s about 1 percent of the people in this country who might find this story truly ridiculous. And every day as more people come online, the ‘power users’ are a shrinking proportion.
So when the overwhelming majority of people don’t know any better, and they’re simply told that they’ve done wrong, in a non-confrontational society as the US has become, …
Who’s left to tell KPMG to fuck off?

The man then volunteered that he had more weapons, directing officers to his parked truck opposite the Treasury Department on the far side of the White House complex. Officers found an SKS assault rifle in plain view on the front seat, Mackin said. Also in the truck, which had Idaho plates registered to the man, were a rifle with scope, a handgun, a Kevlar helmet and a bulletproof vest.

— AP
It’s always comforting to read about shit like this after I walked right by there at lunch time. And within half a block on my way to work this morning.
The sad thing is that the world is so fucked up right now, this story didn’t even make local news.
When I left work, I was almos feeling guilty about not going to the National Christmas Tree lighting.
On a good year, there is a crowd of a couple hundred people standing in the cold, waiting for 2 hours, jockeying for position to peek through the fences, trailers, bleachers, and crowds.
I’ve done that twice.
This year, the entire street was cordoned off all afternoon leading up to the event. No backpacks allowed. People being searched before approaching the field.
It just weren’t worth it.
Like so many other things in Federal City lately, everything is focused on the television audience. Camera operators are VIPs and politicians are reading scripts.
Does anybody remember anymore that you needn’t be a politician to be elected to office?

“Ashcroft said the use of the National Guard troops will be a temporary measure to assist Border Patrol personnel overtaxed by heightened security measures put in place after the terrorist attacks.

“It’s not a militarization of the border or a fortification of the border,” Ashcroft said.

For what the Justice Department described as an “initial phase,” 419 National Guard troops will be deployed in 12 states bordering Canada.”

Ummmm…..
bullshit.
I don’t remember ever hearing about a temporary government action.

Bush cyber-security adviser wants Internet users to get free security software
What did I just say?
This bodes ill.
Am I the only one that becomees suspicious when the government advocates forcing people to install certian pieces of software on their computer?
It’s not incredibly brilliant in execution anyway. Right now there is no reasonable way to force people to keep such things up to date. Hell, you won’t even get half the people to install the shit.