“‘When I got my dual-processor G5, it was real noticeable that it was faster than my G4, to the point that the network has become the bottleneck,’ said Ngozi Pole, administrative and systems manager in Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) office,” Dan Carney reports for Federal Computer Week.
“The latest version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.3 Panther released last fall, has several features that are useful to Pole’s users. The new Fast User Switching feature gives different users access to different resources on the same computer quickly and easily. The feature has been particularly helpful in an office in which interns outnumber the available computers, Pole said. When offices were evacuated during the recent Ricin scare on Capitol Hill, Pole was able to reach his users’ files remotely with workgroup manager tools, letting him relay files to colleagues who were working from home. ‘I just went to the server and started e-mailing files to people,’ he said,” Carney reports.
“The Senate has also been attacked by computer worms and viruses recently, but those attacks have all targeted Microsoft Corp. Windows users, so Kennedy’s Apple-based office has been unaffected… ‘We’ve had tremendous interest from federal, state and local governments because of the security of a Unix foundation,’ said Ken Bereskin, director of Mac OS X product marketing. ‘Every aspect of the OS has been enhanced, from the drivers to the kernel.’ One feature of OS X 10.3 that could be particularly useful to federal customers is the FileVault 128-bit real-time encryption. Kennedy’s office has not yet begun encrypting its files, but a recent incident in which Republican staffers accessed Democrats’ files have prompted Pole to plan to do it soon. ‘I’m not saying it is going to happen again, but it is what people do,’ he said,” Carney reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Macintosh unaffected. Many eyes will be popping open in Gov’t IT circles (some for the very first time, some for the first time in years) thanks to this Federal Computer Week article. Hopefully, word will leak out to the non-gov’t corporate world as well.
Hey Jay, still embarrassed over the fact that you actually beleived that was a real quote from Rummy? No, you are like the rest of Bush’s flock – believe what you want to believe despite the proof to the contrary.
Sure, Kennedy should have put in his time for his accident. He should have been in the same cell that Laura Bush should have been in for her murder while DUI. And Dubya, had he not been born with a silver spoon up his nose, would have spent some time in the slammer for his DUI as well. But none of them did, right?
As for burying the head in the sand regarding the terrorists, have you read what former Bush Terrorism Czar Dick Clarke has said about the Bushites’ failure to respond to terrorism? Now there is the head in the sand – or in the ass!
PS – I love it when you fat little republicans result to calling me a tree hugging hippie or somesuch. It makes me laugh because I know I got you where you couln’t respond with any real stuff!!!!!!!
Thats right, Saddam was a standup guy, Terrorists are alright by me and our stand on replacing the Iraq regime has not been the same for the last 20 years and Its OK for Clinton to draft dodge but not for Bush to join the Guard. Whatever.
Jay Rice,
You prove you have no regard for the truth. Well, I made a mistake, I’ve suffered for it for years in humilation, guilt and remorse. But I challenge you to put up any evidence that you have lifted one finger for the betterment of humankind, and I’ll show you decades of public service on the part of my family that would put you and your whole family to shame.
We all make mistakes. Some of us just turn around and do something good with the time we have left. Others just sit on the sidelines and harrass people and feel smugly superior. They are the real losers.
Oh, and you ignored the criticsim that your script of an exchange between Don Rumsfeld and myself was a lie. Not only are you a liar, you’re a hypocrite.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
“The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a “just war.” The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country’s policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government’s repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.”
Why? Two words: Hubbert’s Peak
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7121.html
“Kenneth Deffeyes uses Hubbert’s methods to find that world oil production will peak in this decade–and there isn’t anything we can do to stop it. While long-term solutions exist in the form of conservation and alternative energy sources, they probably cannot–and almost certainly will not–be enacted in time to evade a short-term catastrophe.”
Time to switch to more energy-efficient computers.
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Nice drivel guys.
The Laura Bush story, not quite what Jimbo says, not surprisingly:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e1698.htm
Ted Kennedy exists to make most of the rest of us look sensible.
Just for the record, I despise most politicians, doesn’t matter what party they belong to. I’m a Kucinich fan myself. The Dems are just as controlled by big money, (oil, pharmaceutical), as the Repubs. Ask President Clinton and VP Al Gore about their dealings with Arco and Occidental Petroleum. And about President Clinton’s dealings with the Big Pharma companies. Remember what happened to Argentina? And the Clinton Administration DIDN’T lie in order to have a couple wars? I don’t remember them getting the OK from Congress OR the UN for their little “excursion” into Serbia. He lied to NATO and the country in order for him to send in the bombers. And wasn’t it Clinton that said about WMDs, “Somehow, someday he WILL use them against us?” So Clinton and the UN lied to the world about the WMDs.
and the bush administration just chose to ignore them everywhere but in iraq… and surprise, there weren’t any.
As a bemused bystander in the UK, it boils down to this. Afghanistan was the residence of the planners for 9/11. So what has the US done? Halfway through attempting to reconstruct the country, it fights a war with a neighbour, Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11. Brutal dictator, yes, but a REAL threat to the US and Europe? The refusal of the US to sign the Kyoto agreement is more of a threat to mankind.
Stopping to fight Iraq was a silly as when Hitler decided to invade Russia with the UK still undefeated. Not that I would dream of comparing Bush with Hitler.
Now, we know something about terrorism in the UK, primarily that sooner or later you have to negotiate, because military action alone doesn’t work, as Israel ought to have discovered by now.
That said, the problem we’ve all got is that Al Quaeda doesn’t have a particular negotiating stance, being a loose confederation of disparate groups, all with differing motives. That is why the UK broadly stands with the US, as there is nothing to negotiate, we can only fight back militarily. We would stand even more firmly with you however, if your leaders tried a little more sophisticated thinking sometimes….that’s you I’m pointing at Donald.
Joe, I don’t think I played this one out any differently than it was. Both Laura (then Welch) Bush and Ted Kennedy were driving their cars, broke a law (Ted was drunk, Laura ran a stop sign) and killed an innocent. Neither meant to do it, both were guilty, and both probably got off without even a point on their license.
I don’t think there are too many people who are under any illusion that Bill Clinton was any sort of saint, statesman or great leader – just another in a long line of mediocre Leaders of questionable moral fibre the U.S. has suffered.
On the subject of terrorisim, it’s useful for Americans to take a good honest look at your country’s history in relation to it’s actions in the rest of the world. People don’t take kindly to having corrupt, murderous regimes and blood-thirsty dictators thrust upon them and it’s little wonder that terrorists are banging at your front door, and the front doors of those who have actively or passively assisted or supported or profitted from these U.S. foreign policy adventures.
The only thing which is amazing is that it’s taken this long for someone to strike back.
Pol Pot – on the verge of defeat by the North Vietnamese, but rearmed by the U.S. going on to commit many more attrocious crimes against humanity for many years.
General Augusto Pinnochet, dictator, criminal, guilty of the deaths, disappearance and torture of tens of thousands of his people – installed by the U.S. (the other September 11) following the overthrow of the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED socialist Alende Government and enthusiastically supported by your government during the most violently repressive period in Chilean history.
General Surharto – dictator, murderer of up to 1 million of his fellow Indonesians – installed and enthusiastically supported by the U.S., and pandered to by the West.
If we turn our attention to the Middle East, the region was carved up early last century by the West (mostly the U.S. and U.K.), royal families created and put in charge or compliant corrupt regimes put in place and has more or less remained this way ever since. On the few occasions where the people have bucked these regimes it hasn’t taken the West long to re-install a new compliant, corrupt and brutal regime.
And coming to the people at or allegedly at the centre of terrorism – Osama and Saddam. The U.S. government did give Osama some obsurdly huge sum of money, in the order of billions of dollars – now that was money well spent! Saddam was also actively courted, armed and financed by the U.S. But then he became ‘inconvenient’…
The list of dictators and regimes installed, armed, financed, supported and/or protected by the U.S. is very long indeed. Most South and Central American countries, many in South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. On top of these we have the popular uprisings against some of these same bloody regimes which have been crushed with the assistance of the U.S.
The U.S. the perveyors of democracy? I don’t think so.
If you use terrorism as a foreign policy vehicle to achieve your political or economic ends then eventually it will come back to bite you. Wake up America (and the world)!
Here we go. Just remember, Rush Limbaugh is one of Macs greatest advocates…
And Rush also no longer supports Bush or the neo-conservative cabal bent on world dominion! I guess his he got the other half of his brain back after the drugs wore off!
I have no idea of your internal bickerings cause frankly all you US citizens look the same to me. And what I see is that it is high time that you overinflated super egos need a strong dose of humility.
Not waiting for a UN vote to go to war agains Iraq. What a turn your back on democracy manoeuver.
Going to war against any foreign power without the support of the UN. What a global insult.
Going to war, killing someone, posting their pictures through the media, then modifying their dead bodies and videotaping them and distributing them through the media. And you signed the Geneva convention. What a laugh.
Keep it up. The free world is waking up. And it won’t be like waking up a sleeping giant or a bear. It will be waking up an ecosystem.
Jimbo, you wrote: “He should have been in the same cell that Laura Bush should have been in for her murder while DUI”. I think you overstated her crime for your own ends, but that happens all the time.
Comparing Laura and Ted’s crimes further, without any idea if she fled the scene or not, (sort of doubt it), Ted’s real faux pax was as much the aftermath as the accident itself. Read here for the story: http://www.ytedk.com/
Ya gotta wonder if he could have saved her life, instead of his reputation.
Although I bet he has never voted my way, nor I his, Ted Kennedy has been a great public servant. He and the rest of that family have been cursed because, don’t you know, the Irish were never meant to be rich. Give them more money than it takes to buy two pints on a Friday and Katie, bar the door! The fun half of me is Irish btw, not that I would ever get anti defamation flak from an Irishman.
And, of course, at least GW recognised his demon and stopped drinking. Looking at Ted’s expanding visage, I am pretty sure that cocktail hour is still well marked upon the Kennedy clock.
Stuart wrote:
The only thing which is amazing is that it’s taken this long for someone to strike back.
Stuart, if you think that Islamic fundamentalists struck at us because America has supported dictatorships in the past then you are truly among the self-deluded. Islamic fundies hate us because we are a free nation of free people who, at least to them, appear to be a Judeo-Christian nation. They don’t like the fact that we are rich and they are poor. They don’t like that we buy Macs while they have to write their hatespeech with chalk on the sides of buildings. They don’t like that we protect Israel while they are trying to erase Jews from the face of the earth.
This is about Jihad and has NOTHING to do with Chile or Southeast Asia.
America has always been a beacon of freedom for the world and for, its many faults, Ted Kennedy among them, remains the “shining city on a hill”. As long as America is willing to stand up to tin-horn dictators like Hussain or Milosovic then there is still hope for this world. Left to its own devices, the UN and most of Europe (save the great nation of the UK) were just fine letting Saddam tear people limb from limb in his industrial plastic shredders as long as they had access to his oil.
-B
Beeblebrox:
The US gave intelligence to Saddam for years in the war against Iran. He gassed them, and Iran lost over a million people. The US help was just enough to keep the war going. They did not want a victor. Those million dead are on our hands. And remember the hostage crisis? We overthrew a democratically elected leader, installed a dictator with no popular support who used torture regularly (the Shah), and opened the way for the Ayatollahs.
You are uninformed, and a mere parrot of propoganda. Israel has no security concerns with regard to its existence. The NY times recently argued that they have upwards of 200 nuclear warheads, the direct result of spying and stealing tech. specs from the US.
Do opponents of US Mideast policy want to determine how life runs in the US? No. They want self-determination. We are over there, dealing death. They decided to return the favor.
I am a proud American, strongly attached to its founding texts by Paine and Rousseau. But when I look at for enemies against a sound republic, I don’t see Islamic fundamentalists, I see people like you, who use rhetoric not based on reason and historical fact, but a kind of religious, eschatological rhetoric. You are much more suited for Saddam’s Iraq than the kind of free, informed country I envision here.
Stuart, you have a great point. The US has supported some jerks, mostly with the thought that we were promoting our side of the cold war. I think that things are clearer now that the poor attempt at communism has folded. I think that this last Iraq war made up for one of our most egregious foreign policy blunders. Sorry for supporting Saddam, but how about some kudos for getting rid of the jerk at the cost of many lives and bucks?
What is most depressing to me is that the current Muslim extremism does not have an agenda other than the departure from the middle east of Jews and any other western influence. My personal theory is that Islamic fundamentalists know that they cannot compete with the west, be it consumerism, democracy, baseball, or any of our other “highlights”, and want us out of the picture so that they can foment their fundamentalist “revolutions”, so inaptly named since they are the ultimate in repressive conservatism. There has not been an offer by the iraqi resistance because there can be nothing less than total exodus (word used intentionally) to satisfy the terrorists. This is going to be a long pain in the ass struggle. A democratic (federalist, in fact) Iraq is a good thing, I think, although failure will always be nigh. Better to have attempted than not, I think, at any rate. Without Gulf 2 Hans Blix would still be chasing around Iraq looking for those weapons he now says he knew were not there, or, worse, Iraq would be off sanctions but still being starved to death by the bearded wierdo.
The UN? They have sponsored two wars, Korea and Iraq 1. It is not lost on Americans that we did the heavy lifting in those wars, and that the UN as a whole is a debating society more intent on a leveling of the playing field between the pissant nations of the world and ourselves. As the revelations of the corruption regarding the food for oil program come to light, the UN will become less relevant. It’s a shame, but so go many organisations with little point and no oversight.
Joe,
Do you know that at its height, that US troops comprised no more than 1/3 of the total force in Bosnia (fact from the US Military commander at the time)? And do you know how many German troops have been serving there as peacekeepers (they are trained as peacekeepers, the US soldiers aren’t)? For the first Gulf War, Japan contributed something like 180 billion dollars.
The structure of the UN was set up mainly as a security regulator with the US as its center. Why else would the UK and France have such leading roles? Yet even this US-designed body couldn’t go along with the war. And we lost so much by forcing it. Just compare this war with the first Iraq war and Bosnia.
Dear “Informed” citizen,
Your hate speech is duly noted.
Thanks,
-B
Even better point Informed. The prime minister who deposed the Shah for three days,
Muhammad Mosadeq, was actually a non-sectarian nationalist, worthy of praise. He was not elected however, other than by popular opinion perhaps, the shah appointed him. However, at the time, (1953), anti communism was rampant and if you were not with us you were against us. It would have been nice to view that situation without the pressure, real and imagined, from the Russian bear. Mosadeq seemed to be choosing the wrong side, and lost.
Obviously, I revere historical fact as you do, informed. I do try to process it without the blame America first and forever filter that you use, however.
I do think that you are right about the Muslim world’s take on US involvement. If they were not such a sad bunch of losers I think I would let them have the middle east and good riddance.
Dynamics in all countries are similar. Here, the country ignored obvious lies (like the purpose of Aluminium tubes in Bush’s State of the Union) and leaned rightward because of outward threats. The same is true of the Mideast. Iran is a perfect example. With periods of extended peace, the country starts to talk about civil liberties. This talk disappears when the US rattles its sabres. US foreign policy has effectively silenced moderate voices in the Mideast. And this is where the solution comes from, not from outside military forces. There is no end-game for the latter. You certainly don’t expect to “kill ’em All,” or do you?
You cannot actively create ghettos and then complain about crime. You cannot actively ghettoize entire populations and then be suprized about terrorism.
Great points Joe.
jimmyvonpussy, you are completely pathetic. Just keep your head in the sand you little worm. If GWB did everything you say he should you’d find a new reason to hate him. Face it you’re just jealous of the man. We are headed in the right direction. It’s going to be a long ugly trip though. These fundamentalist muslims need to be erased from the planet asap!
informed, the biggest difference between Gulf one and two is that in the latter the UN, France, and Russia had their nosed firmly against Saddam’s sphincter. They bet the wrong horse.
Interesting fact about troops in Bosnia, if you have a link I would like it. The Japanese contribution too if you have it, thats a lot of dough.
The thing about Bosnia, absent the troop figures you quoted, is that nothing happened until the US got committed. It seemed a perfect opportunity for Europe to take care of some business without Uncle Sam barging it, but noooooooo………..
“surprised”