Foundation

Camino almost got me tonight. I heard on Twitter that a NoScript substitute existed for Camino, and I’d heard long ago that it had a Greasemonkey substitute.

So, I tried it. Step one was getting my cookies, cookie preferences, and bookmarks out of Firefox. They all imported flawlessly into the Camino 2 beta. That was great.

Turns out between Camino’s own flash blocking, and the CamiNoScript javascript blocking, I was going to be fine JS-wise. That was great.

Sadly though, GeekMonkey is no GreaseMonkey substitute. Geekmonkey is a ‘bookmarklet’ that turns UserScripts into ‘bookmarklets.’ So for a script to run on a page, you must click. Click for every page you load, for every script you want run. That was unnacceptable.

So, back to Firefox…

Updated at the bottom.

We all already knew that if Carly Fiorina were to win the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer next year, that Boxer would use Fiorina’s record as CEO of Hewlett-Packard against us. Many people still curse Fiorina for how she led the firm, and many of those people live in parts of the state we’d like to win in order to win a statewide election.

So it’s not entirely surprising that Chuck DeVore is already attempting to use HP against Fiorina. As the San Jose Mercury-News reports, DeVore alleges that HP began circumventing US export restrictions under Fiorina’s leadership, sending technology to Iran illegally through a third party, the Redington Gulf company.

If it’s true it needs to come out now, during the primary, so that it doesn’t hurt us in the general. If it’s false it needs to be refuted now, during the primary, so that it’s old news in case Boxer and the California Democrats attempt to use it in the general.

Fiorina already has a reputation with fans (yes, fans) of HP. There are people who loved its computers, its printers, its calculators, or it other products. For the people who loved the computers, the Compaq merger had an emotional impact. The people who hate (yes, hate) Fiorina because of her time at HP may be pre-disposed to believe she committed criminal acts at the company, and if she wants to be our nominee, she should clear this up as soon as possible.

Update: I am informed by a DeVore-linked source that Chuck DeVore was not pushing this story to the press, but rather he was asked for a quote to be included in a story that was already being written.

Controlling my PS3 from the elliptical using my PSP is almost the best thing ever. Unfortunately I can’t play Makai Kingdom that way (or anything past the Playstation level of game, apparently), so it fails to achieve that level.

I can play my PS versions of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, though. Wait a minute, I must test an idea I just had.

…No, Mega Man Anniversary Collection isn’t compatible, despite having no need for the analog sticks. Ditto La Pucelle. But Final Fantasy Tactics would surely work. I may get desperate enough to play that again, ugh. Fortunately I downloaded Patapon 2 tonight, so between Patapon 2 and Pangya I should be safe for now.

This game came with my PSP, but it didn’t interest me. I tried it naturally since I paid for it, but I wasn’t hooked. Maybe if it included Lydia/Rydia from IV and/or Krile from V I would have been. But no, so no, I’ve given the UMD to my brother.

In 1952, during the Korean War, the United Steel Workers of America had gone out on strike. The union was demanding pay increases beyond what steel firms said they could afford to pay, unless they were to raise prices beyond what would be approved by the government’s Wage Stablization Board (set up for the war to attempt to keep costs in line despite inflationary government policies).

President Harry Truman, Democrat, unilaterally declared the steel firms to be at fault for the strikes, which were set to cripple Defense contractors’ ability to keep the war supplied. So, the President nationalized America’s steel manufacturing plants with the plan of dictating his own terms to the unions, appeasing them as part of his political base, while keeping afloat an early front of the Cold War.

The Supreme Court two months later shut the President down, denying the administration’s claim that he had broad implied or residual powers to do whatever he wanted as President of the United States. Had he relied on the Selective Service Act to take control, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because it had too many pesky controls to protect property rights. Had he relied on Taft-Hartley to stop the strikes, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because the unions were his allies.

So today, it is surely with the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube co. vs Sawyer in mind that the Congress debates giving President Barack Obama, Democrat, sweeping authority over Internet Service Providers, including the authority to nationalize whatever Internet resources he declares to be important.

S. 773, a bill by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, has a 55-page draft bill that would create new “emergency” powers for the President, a ‘cybersecurity’ Enabling Act of sorts, that would give the President the authority broad powers over any “non-governmental” computer networks, whether public or private, that are declared by the President to be “critical.”

On its own, this power is already dangerous, and even frightening to anyone in the industry. Whether large or small, we all who operate on the Internet invest in online capital. Large firms spend billions on the task, and now the Democrats want to nationalize it at the drop of a hat. This is threatened theft on a scale not usually seen outside banana Republics.

These powers extend beyond declared emergencies, however. Rockefeller’s bill would immediately grant the ability of the government to control hiring and firing of jobs related to these so-called critical networks, because the President could unilaterally declare that jobs related to those networks would be required to be filled by people certified to the task by the government. And much like with the car dealerships, the Obama administration is fully expected to use its power to favor political allies for these jobs by granting or denying certification depending on your level of donations to Obama for America or the Democratic National Committee.

Elections have consequences, and all those people who told themselves that Democrats would leave the Internet alone now have a lesson to learn regarding letting the scorpion of big government onto their backs. But it is not too late, and we all now can unite against the socialist threat now looming over the Internet.

The author is a contributing editor at RedState.com and a new media consultant available for hire. He can also be found on Twitter.

Pitchers’ wins aren’t a very useful statistic, so paying over $15 million per win is not advisable.

This is what happens when you bring people over from the Giants.

I couldn’t find a new game to play on the elliptical with the DS. Etrian Odyssey and SimCity require too much stylus precision at times and get annoying. Populous and Civilization I’ve played out. Of other games I have, Picross and Geometry Wars fail on stylus precision, and Pokemon Pearl fails on being played out. Etrian Odyssey fails because I haven’t finished the first yet.

I’m also not sure if I can always play Etrian Odyssey for an hour, much like several of the GBA and GB games I have like Paperboy, Tetris, Gradius Galaxies, Gauntlet, or Joust.

I can’t find anything at my local stores or on major online retailers that I want, either. So, today I bought a PSP and Pangya Fantasy Golf. That’ll keep me playing a while, and when that’s done I have a number of choices to buy such as there makes of the early Star Oceans, RPGs by Atlus or Nippon Ichi, and apparently the Persona games are coming. I know little of them but they sounded interesting. Disgaea is even an option for crying out loud.

At an hour a day I could play that on the elliptical for over 6 months.Those sounded interesting.

I’d never have bought a PSP for its own sake. But to keep exercising, it’s worth the money.

Or: History Repeats

Updated at the bottom.

Attention leftists: hypocrisy is not a failure to live up to one’s own ideals. Hypocrisy is a willful professing of a belief, that one that does not truly believe. An outspoken Christian who commits adultery is not a hypocrite. An outspoken atheist who prays is a hypocrite. In today’s extended lesson Google must either accept that it is undermining the Internet, or be a hypocrite.

Exhibit A: Google supports ‘net neutrality’, a movement which began as an argument against ISPs selectively filtering traffic, which is a legitimate fear in the face of cable and phone companies trying for a “triple play” of television, phone, and Internet service. The idea is that if a Comcast or an AT&T degrade or prohibit the use of other firms’ phone and video services, then you will be forced to use their own. Google, the firm, professes to believe in opposing this tactic.

Exhibit B: Google is set to argue against Apple’s blocking of Google Voice from iPhones to the FCC. This is the Net Neutrality prediction in action. Apple conspires with AT&T to block the use of a third party’s phone service over AT&T’s Internet connection. Google, again, supports this belief in neutrality.

Exhibit C: Google blocks Skype from Android-based phones. This is anti-Net Neutrality in action. Google conspires with providers to block the use of a third party’s phone service over the provider’s data connection.

On the other hand, it gets worse for Google. In its defense, Google claims that T-Mobile didn’t request the block. That would work, except that it could only mean Google is attempting to fight the market advantage of Skype by blocking that competitor and bundling Google Voice with Android. In its attempt to avoid the Net Neutrality hypocrisy and FCC attention for its actions (which “do not stand up to scrutiny,” which is what Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf said of all justifications for anti-Net Neutrality), Google confesses to doing what Microsoft was accused by the FTC of doing with its Internet Explorer and Windows releases against Netscape Navigator.

Steve Ballmer is laughing. So am I, only I’m laughing at all the people who pretend Google is anything friendly to ordinary Americans.

Update: Google has issued a rebuttal of the piece I linked to above, but they do not rebut my key point, which is that Google stands ready and willing to collaborate fully with anti-Net Netural policies of their business partners, even as they run to the State like good little fascists if their competitors try the same policies. They key quote is that “individual operators can request that certain applications be filtered if they violate their terms of service,” and in fact the T-Mobile terms of service are not net neutral, banning any uses not ‘explicitly permitted by your Data Plan,’ instead requiring you to use T-Mobile provided media options. Additionally, T-Mobile Germany has already banned Skype on the iPhone. So, of course T-Mobile USA is going to make the same ban, and according to Google’s own words, they will be complicit in that ban.

Two final notes: I think the reason it didn’t work on the Curve is that I missed the extra initialization commands. And this will save me more than $10/mo. It will also save me $10/day when I travel.

I don’t do a lot with the Internet connection on my development laptop, usually. I just check websites for compatibility with browsers. But I don’t want MS Windows (necessary for checking MSIE) on my network, so until now I’ve used a dial-up connection.

What changed? Tonight I decided to try again to see if I can use my Blackberry as a modem to get onto the wireless network. I tried once before, a while back, on my Curve, but it never worked. I tried again on the Bold because I got instructions from AT&T to tell me how to do it.

However, in case the page goes away, here’s what I did:

• Install the Blackberry Desktop Manager. Make sure it’s running.
• Right-click the Device Manager in the system tray and click Properties.
• Configure the COM port. Set a speed (presumably the max speed) and disable USB-to-Serial (which is needed to dial to a remote modem, rather than to the AT&T network).
• Open the Modem configuration in the Control Panel. Configure the Standard Modem corresponding to the Blackberry (Modem Diagnostics will show it to be a Blackberry if the Blackberry is plugged in and the Desktop Manager is running). Set its Extra Initialization Commands to AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap.cingular" which is a setting specific to AT&T and this phone, apparently.
• Open the Connect to a Network window. Click Set Up a connection. Create a Dial-up Connecton.
• Dial **99***1# with no username, no password.

To use it, ensure Desktop Manager is running, the Blackberry is plugged in, and just dial up. Works for me. I just have to avoid making big downloads on it, and I’m no longer out $9.95/mo for dial-up. Hey, it adds up.