Everyone who's ever had a bad airline experience will enjoy this revenge video, United Breaks Guitars by the Sons of Maxwell.
Spotted via BoingBoing which has more background on the video. Apparently this is the first in a trilogy of videos that will help blacken the United Airlines brand.
And it's catchy too.
Generation Miami says Joe Garcia joins the Obama Administration. Subject to Senate confirmation, he'll head the Office of Minority Economic Impact for the Department of Energy.
Joe's a real smart guy, with energy experience, so I imagine it's a good fit.
Dan Froomkin to Huffington Post,
I’m delighted to announce that starting later this month, I’ll be taking on the duties of Washington Bureau Chief and Blogger for The Huffington Post.
This is a wonderful opportunity for me. It’s a marvelous platform — Arianna Huffington has built a large and thriving community of readers by adhering to the best principles of old and new media. And my new job gives me a chance to branch out a bit, while holding firm to my commitment to accountability journalism. Now I’ll have a chance to work as part of a great team, and do a bit more of my own reporting as well as commentary and media criticism..
I’ll still be writing frequently, but I’ll also be guiding the Huffington Post’s accomplished, enthusiastic and adventurous reporters; helping them continue covering Washington the way it should be covered. The extraordinary response to my departure from The Washington Post once again illustrated how much readers hunger for a new – or perhaps I should say old – method of political reporting: One that doesn’t rely on stenography or “splitting the difference,” but involves knowledgeable and trusted reporters calling things as they see them, speaking the truth — and letting the chips fall where they may. We’ll also be finding new and exciting ways to work with citizen journalists to access their wisdom and knowledge.
I look forward to working with all my new colleagues to hold the powerful accountable, expose corruption, explain how Washington really works — and write about politics and government not as if it were just a game, but recognizing that it matters profoundly to every one of us.
I’m eager to hear your reaction and advice, as always. E-mail me at froomkin@gmail.com.
Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has more about my move.
And one final note: I will continue serving in a part-time capacity as deputy editor of NiemanWatchdog.org.
Robert McNamara is dead. Speak not unkindly and all that, but I'm having a hard time seeing what's wrong with Bob Herbert's fire-breathing column.
I suppose McNamara deserves some credit for admitting what he did after the fact, but that's not much to set aside the fact that he knew early the war was lost, or not winnable, and kept silent.
But are McNamara's successors any less to blame? They seem to have learned nothing from his errors.
Over in the right margin I ask readers to tell me a little bit about who they are. I really enjoy reading the replies.
But unfortunately, in recent days someone has been abusing this for commercial purposes. I think it's being done by hand, the IP numbers vary, and the messages did give me pause as they all seemed plausible.
But enough already.
Today I deleted comments bearing the following monikers and timestamps:
acai diet 2009-07-05 17:13:42
Bangkok hotels Thailand 2009-07-05 17:08:22
Beta alanine 2009-07-05 17:04:46
Paypal Vcc 2009-07-01 18:19:37
Option trading 2009-07-01 18:16:58
Gold Chain 2009-07-01 18:15:03
loans consolidate 2009-06-26 17:41:22
small businesses 2009-06-26 12:22:53
Natural Stone 2009-06-12 02:24:12
If one of those was you, and you're a real person, please feel encouraged to resubmit it without a product name attached. Thank you.
The designers of your new 'smart' electricity meter are as dumb as a rock:
New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid […]. The so-called smart meters for the first time provide two-way communications between electricity users and the power plants that serve them. Prodded by billions of dollars from President Obama's economic stimulus package, utilities in Seattle, Houston, Miami, and elsewhere are racing to install them as part of a plan to make the power grid more efficient. Their counterparts throughout Europe are also spending heavily on the new technology. There's just one problem: The newfangled meters needed to make the smart grid work are built on buggy software that's easily hacked, said Mike Davis, a senior security consultant for IOActive. The vast majority of them use no encryption and ask for no authentication before carrying out sensitive functions such as running software updates and severing customers from the power grid.
(From The Register via !='s Absolute power shuts off absolutely (with emphasis added))
Anyone seen one of these yet? This part doesn't sound fun:
To prove his point, Davis and his IOActive colleagues designed a worm that self-propagates across a large number of one manufacturer's smart meter. Once infected, the device is under the control of the malware developers in much the way infected PCs are under the spell of bot herders. Attackers can then send instructions that cause its software to turn power on or off and reveal power usage or sensitive system configuration settings.
Jotwell Blenderlaw