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Archives
spyware
I received a note from Marja-Leena this afternoon...
Something strange has been occurring when I open your blog - a document "hta.php" automatically downloads to my desktop. It seems harmless but very odd - thought you would want to know. I wonder if it's just my machine...?
It wasn't just her machine. I responded back...
It looks like spyware. I just got off the phone with my ISP and it appears that they got it in their system and it's being downloaded from sites they host that have cgi-scripts. He is backing up sites from the 29th which is before it appeared. Somehow it got on their system and is being propogated through those hosted with them. It appears to be all over the web. It started around 9 hours ago. It is not clear if it actually does anything.
May spyware creators rot in hell. Bastards!
Marja-Leena is on a Mac and they are not affected much by spyware but her husband is on a PC at work and they use Spybot-Search & Destroy. He says it works. I downloaded it and it removed a bunch of spyware. It's free, too.
the salut-s goes to pieces
I've been having way too much fun with the Salyut-S.
It's become my carry everywhere camera. I got my first roll back and it appears I may have a light leak. Ken made a suggestion to isolate the problem and he knows how to fix it if it is what he thinks it is. Or I may just need to load it right. Still getting the drill down. It only seemed to affect the first 4 frames. But what makes this camera is that it comes apart!
Not only does it have interchangeable lenses (from 30mm (18mm equiv.) to 300mm (190mm equiv)) but also interchangeable backs. This will let me shoot black & white and color and change backs mid roll. Also there are interchangeable finders. It comes with a waist level finder (which is great for many types of shots) but while the image is upright it's also flipped right to left. There are three prism finders that magnify a give an image that has the right on the right. Two of the prism finders have TTL meters. There is probably a meterless prism in my future.
The film back has a dark slide that blocks light from the film when the back is off with film in it. (The light leak may be with the dark slide.) A cartridge that holds the film comes out for loading.
This is the titanium shutter curtain. That is a 2 1/4 inch opening. There are two curtains and they form a slit as the move from right to left really fast. The slit size is different to give the different speeds.
You can see the mirror that reflects the image from the lens up to the ground glass on top of the camera.
When the shutter release is pressed the mirror flips up and the shutter curtains do their thing. The mirror stays up until you cock the shutter and advance the film. Here is a picture from the first role with a large detail.
I'm having way too much fun.
iraq
How Cheney Fooled Himself
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President Bush planted the seeds of the destruction of his Iraq policy before the war started. Salvaging the venture will require an unprecedented degree of candor and realism from a White House that was never willing to admit -- even to itself -- how large an undertaking it was asking the American people to buy into.font>
The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous struggle because they honestly didn't expect one.
How else to explain the fact that the president and his lieutenants consistently played down the costs of the endeavor, the number of troops required, the difficulties of overcoming tensions among the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds? Were they lying? The more logical explanation is that they didn't know what they were talking about.
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thanks to War and Piece
Withdrawal on the Agenda
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Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones (famed for insisting that the Congressional cafeteria re-label French fries as "freedom fries" on its menu), a man who represents North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District, home to the Marine's Camp LeJeune, voted enthusiastically for the Iraq War, but recently changed his mind. Last week, he became one of four congressional sponsors of a resolution calling for a timetable for withdrawal. "Do we want to be there 20 years, 30 years?" he said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "That's why this resolution is so important: We need to take a fresh look at where we are and where we're going."
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An honest conversation
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What I want people to do is be honest.
If you will not serve in Iraq, and no one you know will serve, stop expecting someone else to do what you will not.
Therefore, it is time to stop calling for more troops, or the US to make Iraq safe. We cannot do this and even Americans are refusing to join the fight. It is time to look at your actions and realize, that despite your ideals, you oppose continuing this war. In practical terms, you have decided that this war is not worth your life or anyone you know. And million of Americans have joined you in this decision.
So, with this fact evident, it is time to call for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. Not save it, not add more boots on the ground. You have already voted by your actions. It is time that you match it with your words.
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Another Year of Living Misery in Baghdad
Residents Face 'So Many Problems'
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In the streets of Baghdad, people wondered Thursday what else could possibly go wrong.
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thanks to Juan Cole
We shelter behind the myth that progress is being made
By Robert Fisk
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So we are going to support the myth. As the headless bodies are found along the Tigris, as the mortuaries fill up, as the American dead grow far beyond 1,700 - and, let us remember, the Iraqi dead go into the tens of thousands - Europe and the rest of the world still support the American project.
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War of the mosques is shattering Iraq's hopes
Peter Beaumont reports from Baghdad that the gunmen are finally succeeding in pushing the sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni towards the final abyss of all-out civil war
Hagel: "Iraq could be worse than Vietnam"
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Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses more than 200 Nebraska American Legion members in Grand Island on Saturday.
It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this:
The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today's chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are "pouring in" to Iraq.
Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren't helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush's handling of the conflict.
And Hagel's deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.
"What we don't want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam," Hagel told the legionnaires, "because the consequences would be catastrophic."
It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans.
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photography
Elizabeth Heyert
The Sleepers
Untitled (from The Sleepers) #4
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thanks to Conscientious
Elizabeth Heyert
The Travellers
Daphne Jones
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thanks to Conscientious
iran
The US war with Iran has already begun
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Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.
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thanks to Politics in the Zeros
circus art
This is an amazing collection of circus posters.
circusmuseum.nl
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Welkom bij circusmuseum.nl, dé beeldbank met posters, foto’s en prenten uit de verzameling van Jaap Best, de grootste circuscollectie van Nederland.
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thanks to The Cartoonist
Confronting Israeli Myth-Making
Tempest in Santa Fe
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Propagandists on behalf of Israel have held a corner on public discourse about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for the nearly six decades of Israel’s existence, but these purveyors of the Israeli line have become increasingly deceptive and malign -- and increasingly effective – with time. The propaganda machine serving Israel disseminates a steady stream of talking points and argumentation that today effectively controls all public discourse, so that in media arenas large and small throughout the country there are always grassroots propagandists available to put out a uniformly favorable twist on Israel’s actions and always to paint the Palestinians in black colors.
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photography
Larry Fink
Social Graces
Studio 54, New York City, May 1977
[more]
thanks to orbit1.com
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