Robert Hurley

August 2009

( Monthly archive )

The habitual "googling" of one's own name

Wednesday, 19. August 2009, 22:46:24

googling, what bloggers do, Habitual googling of oneself, cartoon ...

7 comments

ZAP Newsletter

Wednesday, 19. August 2009, 22:45:08

Santa Rosa, Zapino, ZAP, zapworld.com ...

NOTE: I just updated one of the links in the message, this is actually about a year old.

I've been a very busy busy boy, getting up to speed with two versions of Drupal (5.7 & 6.2) at ZapWorld, and moving to new digs in Santa Rosa. I redid most of the front page at zapworld.com (among many other things), but I just finished the April (May?) newsletter, which allowed me to indulge my more (but not most) creative side. I did pretty much everything in a text editor (for those CSS purists, it should be noted that few, if any, email clients display divs correctly, so I had to do my layout with tables), but I also did the two prominant banners, for the header (pictured below, with a link to the full page) and the Zapino, an electric scooter modeled on the ever-stylish Vespa. For the header banner, I even used one of the photos I took last summer in Glen Ellen (as one or two of my dedicated reader will surely recall...).

4 comments

The Tragedy of Our 'Disappeared' Veterans

Saturday, 15. August 2009, 21:01:35

totalitarianism, blaming the victim, hypervigilance, evil ...

How the justice system has been manipulated to put astonishing numbers of vets with PTSD and other psychiatric injuries behind bars.
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted August 12, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/world/140828/the_tragedy_of_our_%27disappeared%27_veterans/

Wayne McMahon was busted on gun charges six months after he got out of the Marines.

He was jumped by a gang of kids in his hometown of Albany, N.Y. , and he went for the assault rifle he kept in the back of his SUV.

He's serving "three flat, with two years of post-release" at Groveland Prison in upstate New York.

Maybe it's tempting to write McMahon off as just a screwed-up person who made the kinds of mistakes that should have landed him in jail, but maybe that's because his injuries don't show on the outside.

His parents were teenagers when he was born, and they separated shortly after. He bounced around on the streets of Albany, and, like so many other young Americans with dreams of escaping dysfunctional families and lousy neighborhoods, he saw the military as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

He enlisted in the Marines right out of high school.

Volunteer Army MY ASS!!!

Treatment Center for Iraqi Veterans suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Microsoft to appeal Word patent ruling

Wednesday, 12. August 2009, 17:12:22

XML, patent infringement, Alternet, i4i ...

Microsoft rips off yet another company's intellectual property
from Agence France Presse

Microsoft said Wednesday it plans to appeal a ruling by a Texas judge that would ban the US software giant from selling its popular Word program in the United States.

US District Court judge Leonard Davis ruled on Tuesday that Word violates an XML patent held by a Canadian company, Toronto-based i4i, and ordered Microsoft to pay more than 290 million dollars in damages and interest.

He also issued an injunction, which takes effect in 60 days, that would bar Microsoft from selling Word products that include the patented technology.

A Microsoft spokesperson, Kevin Kutz, said the Redmond, Washington-based company planned to appeal.

"We are disappointed by the court’s ruling," Kutz said in a statement. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid.

"We will appeal the verdict."

Microsoft was accused by i4i of infringing on a 1998 XML patent in its Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs.

Word uses the XML language to open .XML, .DOCX, and .DOCM files.

No comments

Onward Christian Soldiers

Thursday, 6. August 2009, 21:51:52

murder, blackwater, Iraq War, jeremy scahill ...

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Implicated In Murder

Jeremy Scahill reports at The Nation that the founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, has been implicated in silencing whistleblowers at his company by killing them:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."