The Long Tail as Applied to Regional Jets

Regional Carriers are going to be Frakked.

Banned UN Speech

Human Rights at the UN.

Bjork Tix

I walked by the Apollo today and asked what prices were going to be.

The guy said:

Who?

Hexagon at Saturn's North Pole

Weirdness.

Whedon on Crack

Or something like that.

Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy

Dear Speakeasy Partners,

Today is an historic and exciting day for Speakeasy.

I am pleased to announce that Speakeasy has been acquired by Best Buy, an innovative and growing Fortune 100 company and top consumer electronics retailer in North America. This is a significant milestone for our company as our new relationship will help us realize our goals of becoming the No. 1 provider of voice and data solutions to small businesses. It is important to note that though Speakeasy will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy, we will continue to operate as a standalone, independent operating division with headquarters in Seattle.

If this turns out like the Geek Squad qcquisition, you can write off Speakeasy. Speakeasy has always been known for their technical competence. (Though the 6Mbps rut over the last 6 years has been worrisome - there's been no technology that could be deployed for higher speeds in that period?) On the other hand, I do wonder what the support of a larger organization might do for fighting the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers.

socat on OS X 10.4.9

As it turns out, you can get socat 1.6.0.0 working in OS X 10.4.x.

I used this:

./configure --disable-ext2 --disable-tun --disable-libwrap --disable-readline

Do add -lresolv to the LIBS line in the resultant Makefile. Otherwise you will get a _res_9_init linking error.

I ran make like this (the -lresolv gets around a _append_history linking error):

CFLAGS="-L${prefix}/lib -lreadline -lresolv" make

That seemed to work, at least on the powerpc side. I've had no reason to try it on the intel side yet.

Thanks to what's left of darwinports for getting me started.

And FYI, the proper way to do port forwarding of http from an internal server to an external server with socat is this:

socat -d -d -lmlocal2 \
TCP4-LISTEN:80,bind=internalip,su=nobody,fork,range=10.0.0.0/8,reuseaddr \
TCP4:externalip:80

Drop that in a startup script, and you don't have to mess with natd or ipfw, especially useful when you don't want your configurations overwritten by OS X Server's GUI management tools.

Coldstone Creamery Not so Straight from the Farm

I have as of recently been enamored of Coldstone Creamery's Sweet Cream Ice cream.

I looked up the ingredient list today on their web site.

Freshly made from all natural ingredients without corn syrup it is not:

SWEET CREAM

ICE CREAM CREAM, NONFAT MILK, MILK, SUGAR, CORN SYRUP, GUAR GUM, CELLULOSE GUM, CARRAGEENAN, MONO & DIGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 80, AND ANNATTO EXTRACT

Why Posner is a great judge, and why he will never be nominated for SCOTUS

"And a country that consumes but does not produce intellectual property may be better off refusing to enforce intellectual-property rights.And finally a poor country may not be able to afford the kind of legal infrastructure required to enforce complex property rights. This can create a chicken and egg problem, if the absence of such rights keeps a nation so poor that it cannot afford the necessary machinery of enforcement."

Just poison I tell you.

;-)

The AMA, Militaries, & Torture

The American Medical Association Code of Ethics already bans the involvement of doctors in Capital Punishment.

The AMA Code of Ethics also has a chapter on the involvement of doctors in Torture.

Apparently, doctors are currently involved in the torture of captives of US forces.

Here's a question for the intarwebs:

Are there AMA sanctions for violations of the AMA Code of ethics for doctors working under the Aegis of the US military?

If so, would involving yourself in situation where somebody was tortured be sanctionable?



EDIT: As Cy points out, membership in professional organizations for doctors is optional.



This stems from one of Andrew Sullivan's posts here.

Couldn't Handle the Truth

From here.

Sacked US attorney inspired blockbuster

Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent

March 26, 2007


ONE of eight US government prosecutors sacked for alleged poor performance in the latest White House scandal was the inspiration for the Tom Cruise character in the hugely successful Hollywood film, A Few Good Men.[emphasis mine]
David Iglesias, the basis for the character in the film played by Cruise, led a court martial defence of one of three men who, under orders, roughed up a fellow marine who wanted to get out of Guantanamo Bay.
The case became the stuff of Hollywood legend after another attorney working on it gave the facts to her brother, Aaron Sorkin, who used them as the inspiration for his play and, later, a screenplay.

A Few Good Men gave actor Jack Nicholson what has become one of the most famous lines in 20th-century film history: "You can't handle the truth."

Mr Sorkin went on to create award-winning shows including White House drama The West Wing. Mr Iglesias's career path also traced a stellar course, until he was sacked in December as attorney-general of New Mexico.

As a result, the 49-year-old lifelong Republican has hit the headlines again in a case that has rocked the White House.

He, along with seven other leading prosecutors from across the US and appointed by the President, were told to go as part of an orchestrated plan on the part of the White House.

Mr Iglesias was installed as New Mexico's lead prosecutor in 2001 and alleges he is the victim of a political witch-hunt, a White House-led purge of prosecutors who either went too hard in pursuing corruption investigations against Republicans or were too soft on Democrats.

While the attorneys-general are appointed and serve at the request of the president, they "have a long history of being insulated from politics" once in office, Mr Iglesias said. "I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the (White House's) attorney-general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure.

"I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political."

While irrefutable evidence of a political witch-hunt has yet to emerge - the Democrats in Congress are planning to use their subpoena power to compel sworn testimony of top White House officials - the shifting story from the Bush administration on why the firings took place has troubled both sides of politics.

The (Oval) Office