More doublethink from DC

George Orwell coined the word, ‘doublethink’

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them

Fittingly, this news report is from those masters of doublethink, FoxNews

Reports surfaced saying that the United States was ready to grant Iraqi independence by June of 2004.

The plan to speed up the transfer of power and give Iraqis control over their own wealth while maintaining the presence of coalition forces was proposed by the Iraqi leadership, a report in the New York Times said, adding it was approved by Washington this week.

This action is aimed at defusing growing attacks against coalition forces.

a) If US forces stay in Iraq, Iraq won’t really be independent, will it?

b) If US forces stay in Iraq, insurgents will continue to attack them, won’t they?

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Not your mother’s Presidential candidates

The California Peace and Freedom Party is running Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier as candidates for President in the March 2004 primary.

From their newsletter:

Two men convicted of murder whose cases have become international political causes will be among the candidates on the ballot when Californians vote in the presidential primary next March, according to an official list released on Monday.

Vying for the small socialist Peace and Freedom Party’s presidential nomination are Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist serving two consecutive life terms for killing two FBI agents in 1975, and radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is serving a 1982 murder conviction for the slaying of a Philadelphia city police officer.   He is on death row and has fought a long battle to overturn his conviction.

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Greenquake in San Francisco

Poll: Matt Gonzalez leads Gavin Newsom in SF Mayor’s race

Supervisor Matt Gonzalez is the front-runner, according to an exclusive CBS 5 poll.

Matt Gonzalez is a Green, who confounded pundits first by getting elected to the SF Board of Supervisors, then by becoming president of that board.

And he now has a serious chance of becoming mayor of San Francisco.

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How Belkin routers spammed users

From NetSurfer Digest

VeriSign had this year’s Esteemed Award for Technical Marketing Evilness (EATME) all locked up with its attempt to redirect DNS queries to its own search server, but all of a sudden we have a real contest on our hands. Belkin, a manufacturer of networking equipment, has leaped into the fray. Some genius at that company decided that every once in a while, Belkin routers should redirect a random Web request from your browser to Belkin’s Web site for advertising purposes.

To turn this feature off, users had to go to Belkin’s Web site and ask the company to remotely switch off the behavior in the router, a process that does not work through a firewall. Can you say: 1) security hole; 2) broken automated Web requests; 3) spamming; 4) egregious waste of your time; 5) moral repugnance? Sure enough, consumers tore Belkin a new virtual orifice in scathing online feedback.

The company has quickly backpedaled, and plans to release a firmware fix to disable this feature by Nov. 17. The Register has the story, while Slashdot has the outrage and notes about technical repercussions of this kind of thing.

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