Entries Tagged 'the shrub' ↓

Apparently, Dubya just can’t learn his lesson!

In a speech to the Israeli parliament today, the nation’s current commander and chief decided to take a swipe at diplomacy loving Barack Obama, who has previously stated he would like to foster dialoge between the US and countries like Iran, with this winning statement:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Mr. Bush, if you invoke Hitler or Nazi Germany for the sake of an argument, you lose. It’s cheap, it’s petty, it’s a straw man argument, and without Godwin, straw man arguments are automatic failure in debate. Any high school debate team member knows that. But, more over, we now have Godwin’s law, and you keep breaking it. Are you trying to tell me that you can’t think of anything else about Barack Obama (the fact that he wants to practically turn the country into a democratic socialist state leaps to mind) that you have to bring up Hitler when you are addressing Jewish people? Are you retarded?

Oh yes, I forgot. It’s the same person who wants to know “Is our children learning”. I’m sorry. I forgot.

Here’s a problem from 2007 that’s making a comeback: a lack of connectivity when you update 10.4.10 or later updates for MacBook.

This was back during my honeymoon period with Apple, when I implicitly trusted them and allowed them to automatically update my OS whenever they told me I should. I mean, it’s Apple. It just works, right? I’d had no problems with my MacBook in the seven or eight months since I bought it, and all other updates worked flawlessly. I couldn’t believe anything would ever go wrong with it.

Then, there was OS update 10.4.10

Afterwards, I could connect to any open network after the install (which was helpful, as the neighbors have an open, unguarded network) but not any with WPA encryption. Frustrated, but too proud to call the Apple Care support line I paid for, I reinstalled OS X version 6 and upgraded to version nine, the last update that worked.

That was in July of 2007.

Then, a few weeks ago, I bought Final Cut Express for a project I was working on, which necessitated an upgrade to 10.4.10 or later, and because of the problems I’d had previously, I installed the next update, 10.4.11. Surely Apple would have fixed the problem, right?

Nope. Final Cut worked, but once again, my uber-encrypted home network was rendered useless. The solutions seemed to be either take off encryption (and thus leave others in the household unable to do their confidential work at home — and possibly compromise my anonymity) or keep leeching off the neighbor’s network until a solution presented itself, as Apple’s website seemed to be ignoring the problem.

A quick google search revealed that more than one user had found themselves in similar situation, but the only solution seemed to be to either go backwards to 10.4.9 or go forwards to Leopard. Could it be that Apple was deliberately ignoring the problem so as to either force people to pay for the phone tech support or force them to upgrade to Leopard? One individual took his MacBook (duo core) back to the Genius Bar. A week later it was returned working, though the Geniuses could find nothing wrong with it, supposedly. Hmmm.

I was tempted, but still too proud to call or go into the freshly-opened store in my area. It’s not that I’m an elitist — only that I’m a recent convert to Mac, and I’m still operating on my experience from PC days: fix it yourself or get a hacker buddy to fix it for you (usually, you can bribe a college student with food to do this for you, by the way,) because Microsoft products are a piece of shit and tech support is laughable.

After (two) weeks of (not so) diligent searching, I finally stumbled upon a solution that worked. For the record, I did this while simultaneously installing WPA2 so either one solution works independent of the other or they work in combination. However, the solution listed below seems to be one which most will find useful.

1. Download Pacifist
2. Download Airport Extreme update 2007-002 Later updates will not work.
3. Download the 10.4.9 Combo Update
4. Go to /system/library/extensions and copy appleairport.kext and appleairport2.kext to a backup location just to be safe and then delete them from the extensions folder.I used a USB drive for the backup task.
5. Also in the extensions folder you’ll find IO80211Family.kext and copy it to backup folder and then delete it.
6. Open Pacifist
7. Open Package and choose the airport extreme update
8. In Pacifist you will now see all the files that are in the package. Find system and expand it’s tree by clicking on the triangle. then expand library and then extensions. You will now see the IO80211Family.kext file. Click once on it so it’s highlighted and then click “Install”.
9. When it’s done copying files expand coreservices and then menu extras. Highlight “Airport Menu” and click install.
10. When it’s done copying close the window in Pacifist for the airport update.
11. Open Package and choose the 10.4.9 combo
12. Again find the system folder and expand it and then expand the library and extensions folders.
13. In the extensions folder you’ll see a bunch of files. Look for appleairport.kext and highlight it. Click “Install”.
14. Repeat the previous step with appleairport2.kext
15. Reboot FTW

You should be back up and running in no time!

Edit #100,000: If this post has appeared on your RSS feed reader a million times in variations, it is because WordPress does not handle certain commands particularly well and I had to go through the directions, line by line, to find which lines WordPress found objectionable and re-write them several times to edit out the confusing phrases.

George W. Bush is not as stupid as he often looks, sounds, or seems to be. If he was, he wouldn’t be pushing Congress to pass a bill retroactively giving immunity to the telecommunication companies that illegally wiretapped US citizens for the president’s illegal KGB civilian spying program.

An initial act, allowing warrantless tapping of phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists, expired on 17 February but did not grant immunity.

Lawsuits have been filed against some of the firms which took part.

They are accused of violation of privacy.

He told the White House on Tuesday “abusive” lawsuits against telecoms firms would “aid our enemies” by teaching them how to duck surveillance.

He went on to say that when he said enemies, he meant the fake ones in his phony war on an abstract concept commonly referred to as the “War on Terror”. He clarified that he did not mean the country’s true enemy, which is to say, the Bush Administration.

(Image courtesy of BoingBoing.net)

We Americans like to think of ourselves as a progressive lot. We pat ourselves on the back for free speech, even though 20% of high school students do not believe it’s a big deal, and like to think of ourselves as the land of the free.

We who live in the so-called Blue States also like to believe ourselves superior to those hicks from the sticks in the Bible Belt, those inbred Red State types. They ignore all evidence, we say, and just run with their eagerly embraced ignorance.

Wrong on both counts, lads.

A controversy has been brewing on the Web since a “60 Minutes” segment failed to appear on a CBS affiliated TV station in Alabama last night. The report covered a bitter flashpoint between Democrats and the Bush administration: the case of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama who was jailed for corruption last June.

So hot was the anticipation of the segment in left-leaning circles that one political site published an article, “Bama TIVOs at the ready for ‘60 Minutes’.” But many Alabamans did not see initial broadcast of the report, which included new allegations that Karl Rove, President Bush’s former top adviser, waged a campaign against Mr. Siegelman.

Instead, just before the segment was to start, people in the northern part of the state who were tuned in to WHNT-TV, Channel 19 in Huntsville, found this on their screen instead:

We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a technical problem with CBS out of New York.

LINK: Media Blackout Update: Pakistan and Alabama?

Except, when reached for comment, CBS said there was no difficulty. It was a transmissions problem on Channel 19’s end, probably due to an editorial decision.

What?

“There is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.”

Of course, then Channel 19 back-peddled faster than the President trying to reverse a bicycle. It was the receiver in Alabama that caused the problem. It was absolutely, positively not an editorial decision.

But the assurance alone seemed unlikely to appease all of his viewers. According to Mr. Pylant, the problem was fixed quickly, resulting in only 12 minutes of down time. But that mostly covered the controversial segment, which lasted about 13 minutes. (”Strange coincidence,” one viewer called it.)

Afterward, the station took measures to counteract any appearance of censorship, while also presumably bringing in some nice ratings for its own local programming. The missed segment was broadcast on the local newscast later on Sunday evening, and posted on its Web site. (Hmm.)

I wonder how much else in Alabama and our neighboring Red States ends up down the Memory Hole? At least Pakistan, Iran, China, and other censorship-embracing countries are upfront about their tactical measures to keep bad press from the eyes and ears of the viewing public.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe election coverage in some areas isn’t dissimilar to the time Diamond Joe Quimby ran against Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons, complete with computer-added flames and devil horns over the Democratic candidate? Maybe news about such liberal concerns as the never-ending war in Iraq or extraordinary rendition is spun harder and faster than a certain President’s door on nickel-beer night (to steal a joke from SNL.) Perhaps they haven’t seen any news media but those of happy Iraqi children dancing on Saddam Hussein’s grave and refugees returning home since George Bush declared mission accomplished. Maybe all the news about Iraq not being tied to Al Qaeda and there being no WMDs in the country were not broadcast to the Bible Belt due to technical difficulties. Maybe extraordinary rendition is still a complement that Simon Cowell gives to American Dreamz Idol hopefuls and completely lacks any sinister connotations due to network problems.

Maybe the reason the Southern Democrats have disappeared is because the media has as well. Maybe they hate the liberal media so much because the liberal media too often is just a dark black screen of technical difficulties.

Maybe, in the South, the revolution will not be televised.