(Okay so maybe this is not quite so current as all that)

I just found this out a few minutes ago, and figured other people might be interested in knowing about it.

Apparently, this past September 5th, Candyman (formerly of FBR, in the days of the Commodore 64) passed away of heart failure. (...unlike his "moving to Mexico" this is for real.)

Candyman was a genuinely nice guy, and possibly one of the most prolific pirates of the 80's. He "retired" long ago, but he will still be missed.

September 5th, 2006: Candyman (FBR) died.

Hilarious!

...with one 'l' even!

Osama Team Hunger Force - CollegeHumor video

Here's a link to the Google Calendar I put up for the Phreaknic 10 presentation schedule.

For those who are into iCal, there is also:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/c70kpuqbtqvj904ki5hqmgot6g@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Note that I will be updating the schedule as I hear of any changes/additions.

Phreaknic 10 Presentation Schedule

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Crooks and Liars » Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?

Patrick McFarland, one of the outspoken critics of Rob Levin (lilo of Freenode/PDPC) and someone incredibly hell-bent on turning Freenode/OFTC into a high-school-esqe popularity contest, has posted what I would consider to be a load of crap on his blog about Rob Levin's passing.

"I was critical of his actions at times when he was alive,"

Translation: I made unsubstantiated accusations of tax fraud, embezzlement, and worse against Rob Levin on a regular basis.

"I just hope that since he’s gone now, Freenode can continue on without him there to lead anymore. I may have not agreed with his choices, but I don’t think there are any people out there that could have brought Freenode this far."

I also find this hard to believe, considering how often McFarland made it appear that he felt that quite possibly, lilo was the worst thing to ever happen to Freenode, and that he was also accusing Rob of demolishing projects and services through foot dragging and politics.

Note also that the reek of untruth of this post is tailed by the "No comments" flag, meaning McFarland doesn't really want anyone to call him out on this... even though one of the other things he's been critical of lilo about was one of censorship.

Now, I also felt that Spinhome was a little farcical (C'mon, a winnebago to keep an IRC operator mobile? That's overkill on the level of venture capitalism.) but I certainly wasn't getting this bent out of shape about it, since there wasn't a whole lot of donating towards this going on. Perhaps one day Freenode would have become important enough that such a thing would be warranted (which might well have been about the time they hit the $310K-mark on donations), but this sort of thing tends to be self-regulating (people don't donate to projects they feel are stupid) and attacking PDPC and Levin in the manner McFarland was engaging in was nothing but juvenile.

In closing, I find it very odd that even with the disinhibiting factor of the Internet, people still find it necessary to say things they don't believe for a moment as "last respects". McFarland should have just left well enough alone rather than make a cheap last-minute bid to try to pretend that he wasn't being a knobgoblin to a competing project.

Patrick McFarland's spotty memory

Not a joke.

Steve Irwin, a.k.a. "The Crocodile Hunter" is dead, killed by a stingray barb through the chest.

Some of the news outlets are calling this a "freak accident", but only people who've never seen the man's show would think that.

'Crocodile Hunter' dead! 4RLY!

Somewhat similar to the (almost unnoticed for years) renaming of a bridge in TN to be the "General E. Lee" bridge, vandals have completely replaced a billboard with a large, professional looking display reading "KING OF JEWS" and "KING OF BEERS".

Strange vandals deface billboard with an amusing message

Okay. I saw this mentioned on CNN last night, and thought it might have been bullshit, or at least a complex fraud.

Apparently, they're being pretty brazen about it working now... It still sounds a bit too good to be true, but if the bloody link will work you'll see a number of things that would indicate that they might actually have a wholly viable mechanism for getting cars to run on freaking water.

Wow...

New water-fuel technology appears to be viable...

Okay, so the Portland protests aren't entirely recent, but the point is this...

American rights were shit on and thrown out the window by the authorities of Portland, and nothing was done about it. They did literally everything you'd expect cold-war KGB or perhaps East German police (before the wall fell) to do about a riot, short of just running people over with tanks.

Time for Bush to fucking GO. He's irresponsible, he's a bad leader, and he's ruining the country. An empty chair would be better.

Fuck tha Po-lice

Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report - May 16, 2006

Civil Liberties and National Security

By George Friedman

USA Today published a story last week stating that U.S. telephone
companies (Qwest excepted) had been handing over to the National
Security Agency (NSA) logs of phone calls made by American
citizens. This has, as one might expect, generated a fair bit of
controversy -- with opinions ranging from "It's not only legal but
a great idea" to "This proves that Bush arranged 9/11 so he could
create a police state." A fine time is being had by all. Therefore,
it would seem appropriate to pause and consider the matter.

Let's begin with an obvious question: How in God's name did USA
Today find out about a program that had to have been among the most
closely held secrets in the intelligence community -- not only
because it would be embarrassing if discovered, but also because
the entire program could work only if no one knew it was under way?
No criticism of USA Today, but we would assume that the newspaper
wasn't running covert operations against the NSA. Therefore,
someone gave them the story, and whoever gave them the story had to
be cleared to know about it. That means that someone with a high
security clearance leaked an NSA secret.

Americans have become so numbed to leaks at this point that no one
really has discussed the implications of what we are seeing: The
intelligence community is hemorrhaging classified information. It's
possible that this leak came from one of the few congressmen or
senators or staffers on oversight committees who had been briefed
on this material -- but either way, we are seeing an extraordinary
breakdown among those with access to classified material.

The reason for this latest disclosure is obviously the nomination
of Gen. Michael Hayden to be the head of the CIA. Before his
appointment as deputy director of national intelligence, Hayden had
been the head of the NSA, where he oversaw the collection and
data-mining project involving private phone calls. Hayden's
nomination to the CIA has come under heavy criticism from Democrats
and Republicans, who argue that he is an inappropriate choice for
director. The release of the data-mining story to USA Today
obviously was intended as a means of shooting down his nomination
-- which it might. But what is important here is not the fate of
Hayden, but the fact that the Bush administration clearly has lost
all control of the intelligence community -- extended to include
congressional oversight processes. That is not a trivial point.

At the heart of the argument is not the current breakdown in
Washington, but the more significant question of why the NSA was
running such a collection program and whether the program
represented a serious threat to l... [ Read More (2.0k in body) ]

Civil Liberties and National Security