War Criminal Commutes Sentence of Convicted Perjurer at Behest of Traitor – A fitting summary of recent events. Glen Greenwald of Salon has a more coherent and intelligent article on the topic Lewis Libby owes his freedom to our corrupt political elite.

Last week I was flying back from Boston and I bumped into a fellow named Marcelo Tosatti. He stood out with his “Free as in Freedom” shirt as I suppose I did with my “Free Knowledge” shirt. We struck up a conversation and as it turned out Marcelo was flying to LA to talk to Marvell about problems they’re having at RedHat with the wireless drivers for the OLPC project. In case you’re not familiar with this it’s “One Laptop Per Child” or “$100 Laptop” project for developing countries. Very cool project. Anyway, I snapped some photos one of the units Marcelo had with him.

The intellectual property racket must end. Intellectual property laws were designed to promote innovation, not to allow monopolists to stifle it. We have an entire generation that has been taught that new ideas have to be “protectable” to be worthy of consideration. Whatever happened to being faster and better than the competition? Do these companies really need a seventeen year head-start? Does Microsoft really need a government-sanctioned sledge-hammer with which to intimidate smaller companies?

Do we, as a society, still need to grant monopolies to companies in order to promote innovation? I’ve never felt I needed a monopoly to be successful; I just needed to be faster than the other guy. I’m a pedal-to-the-metal kind of guy and I’m convinced that I can move forward faster with my own ideas than anyone else can move in trying to copy me.–Dave Dargo

Hell yeah! Excellent post.

With only a couple late nights we pushed out Hayes Beta 2 last night. Thanks Pete. Download now, Release notes. It has a new WEB INSTALLER w00h000!

First plastic bags, now bottled water; San Francisco is certainly setting an example. Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an order this week banning the use of City funds to purchase single-serving bottled water. –San Francisco Mayor Bans the Bottle (TreeHugger)

Errrg…plastic bags need to be banned! Bottles too. It’s difficult to avoid plastic while shopping. I try to remember to bring my reusable bags. I often forget. I never mean to get plastic bags, but it’s automatic with the baggers. They default to plastic! I was at Ikea a couple weeks ago. They’ve implemented a bag tax. This is wonderful. No one was leaving Ikea with bags. Go San Fran. I wish San Diego were as forward thinking. I’m not in favor of legislating common sense, but it’s very difficult for me to avoid plastic bags. Perhaps a state bag tax is in order. Ultimately we tax payers will pay for the pollution anyway.

Cross Post

This video is longer than the last, but I think you'll agree it’s worth the 20 minutes of your life. Live Data Services is one of the most exciting new features coming in the Hayes release. With Live Data Services DekiWiki's original goals are reaching fruition as a web framework for developing enterprise and social applications. Specifically one can register a webservice with DekiWiki, describe the new service in DekiWiki's services manager control panel, and thereby operate on external data as if it were local or extend DekiWiki with other applications and widgets. DekiWiki is now a social media aggregation platform, easily integrated with other applications and data stores, and very easy to extend with additional functionality.

This video is a screen capture; so, you’ll probably want to watch it in full-screen mode in order to be able to read the screen text clearly. To put the Viddler player into full-screen mode mouse over the player and you will see a command bar appear at the top of the player. Click the icon to the far right.

We’ll be providing a video-cast weekly. Please send us your requests for topics. We’ll happily reorder our current schedule of topics to suit requests. If you have questions about items we show in the video you can insert comments into sections of the video. If you have suggestions about the mechanics of our vids please email me directly.

Please consider voting for DekiWiki as best new project at Sourceforge.net. It will take you two clicks. I’m a little late in announcing this. Therefore there is only a very short time left to vote. Every vote counts and the winner is included in a press release and is given an award at OSCON.

There are two points I want to get across in this post. #1: the federal government spends far too much money on the military. #2: we're running up a huge deficit at an unprecedented rate primarily due to the unchecked militarism of the United States of America.

‘Death and Taxes’ is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President’s budget request for 2008. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.

The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. —Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go

Visit the above website and play with the control for zooming and panning the poster. You can zoom in by department and branch of government. Very cool. Now let's briefly evaluate what we're spending our current federal budget on using the TrueMajority.com's graphic.

The big red slice at the top that accounts for more than half our federal budget is our military spending. The 15% X is a proposed decrease in this spending being proposed by the Common Sense Budget Act (CSBA). The proposal of the Common Sense Budget Act proposes we cut military spending by 15% and apply this $69 Billion dollars to:

• Provide health insurance to 9 million American kids who lack it
• Rebuild or modernize our public schools over 12 years
• Retrain a quarter million workers
• Cut our reliance on foreign oil in half over 10 years
• Restore recent cuts in life-saving medical research
• Invest wisely in Homeland Security by inspecting cargo containers entering our ports
• Save 6 million children who die of hunger-related diseases in impoverished countries annually
• Begin to reduce the deficits

Common sense really. This is a sound investment in our nation's future. I'm not 100% on board with the details of the proposed spending categories, but cutting our military budget by 15% is a damn good idea.

It is important to note that the above numbers on military spending are not accurate. This does not account for the hundreds of billions of dollars we're over budget on largely due to Iraq and "defense" spending This is not represented on the 'Death and Taxes' poster or the CSBA pie chart. We’re borrowing exorbitant amounts from other countries. Most experts have our daily borrowing pegged somewhere around $1.9 billion a day (some experts estimate as low as $1.36 billion). Yes a day. You read this correctly, almost $2 billion a day is being borrowed by the United States from other countries. The United States achieves this borrowing by selling interest-bearing promissory notes called Treasury bonds to foreign investors. One of the primary "investors" is China. The enthusiasm of foreign countries to purchase American Treasuries has for decades financed a false prosperity in the United States. This concerns many economists because our borrowing is like a house of cards constructed partially from the economies of other countries. We can't possibly afford to pay back these interest bearing bonds. When this house of cards collapses the repercussions will be felt by the counties that are currently financing our wars with their investments. Also, remember we're spending $2 billion a week on the occupation of Iraq alone.

Do we really need this much money budgeted for military spending? Not even accounting for the hundreds of millions were over budget, should more than half our federal budget be allotted for military spending? Of course not. Some may think that because of the prominence of the United States this outrageous amount of money is a necessary cost to protect us from people who "hate freedom". Not so. In fact, let's examine a rough break down of budgeted military spending by nation. The lunacy of our budgeted spending should be evident. Bear in mind this simple chart does not account for the $700 Billion in borrowing, which is largely poured into military spending.

$463 billion budgeted to the Pentagon is so unaccountable that not only could the Dept. of Defense not pass an audit, but the books are in such bad shape that an audit cannot be performed. We simply have no idea, nor does the Pentagon, where money is spent. See Financial Mismanagement in the Department of Defense Report.

What's driving us to spend this ill conceived spending? The American Corporatacracy of course. This is the American corporate oligarchs and apparatus warned of by Eisenhower that has been fully realized. What can you do? Write your state and federal representatives. Support the Common Sense Budget Act. Support the Sunshine in Government Initiative. Support state and federal term limits. This isn't a Republican/Democrat issue. This is a corruption issue that cuts across parties lines. Support some real campaign finance reform. Finally, simply telling your friends about this and building awareness will help. Forward this blog post or some of the links contained herein.

Some sources not previously linked to:

• Will Thomas
• National Debt Clock
• Economic Policy Institute:Debt and the Dollar
• SensiblePriorities.org

Cross-post

The first of what will be an ongoing series of technical video-casts from the founders of MindTouch. This short video provides a quick overview of the new DekiWiki “Hayes” architecture and explains some high level details of DekiWiki’s unique and powerful design.

Download DekiWiki

I've just returned from The Casbah. The Casbah is only a few blocks from my home and is the <alleged> "happening" club in San Diego for indie rock music. It's been around for quite some time and boasts a long list of made bands that have graced the stage. Initially I was impressed with the club. It's intimate with a maximum capacity of 200+, has two bars, and has a long entry hallway that provides a partial view of landing airplanes at the San Diego airport.

The first band up this evening was Silverbird. They were OK. Folk-rock is how I would describe them, but I was playing billiards in the other room and I didn't give them a proper assessment.

Next up was Get Back Loretta. Kick ass would describe them accurately. So too does "best unknown band". They were young, fresh, enthusiastic and authentic. The lead singer and bassist was passionate and charismatic to an extent rarely seen. The drummer was a bad-ass. He kind of looks like a white Webster.

Last up was the main event. San Diego's sweetheart Dirty Sweet. This is when the evening took a turn for the worse. The small venue packed with prissy teenie-bopper preppy girls with ass-crowns, fancy-night-out-garb, and unfit shoes for a concert, who must have been drawn by the Dirty Sweet's general handsomeness. Now, full disclosure, I appreciate music and I believe showing appreciation for the band is important. I do not stand docilely by while a band rocks the house. It's important to respect the band by showing your enthusiasm for the music. For me this typically takes the form of quasi-head banging and exuberant bouncing. Bands are most often very appreciative of my enthusiasm because it's regularly infectious. Dirty Sweet did rock and I rocked with them for a short time. Nonetheless the docile cattle-like audience that consisted mostly of the aforementioned prissy and preppy looking young ladies and their hipster boyfriends were not fond of any general enthusiasm. Therefore I left early. It's difficult to enjoy a band when those around you don't understand that bands, especially hard driving rock bands, want to be shown your appreciation.

Dirty Sweet has a good sound. Very Southern Rock. Perhaps not the most original, but I'm sure the pretty young ladies they seem to intentionally court will carry them through to, at least, regional popularity if not beyond. Don't get me wrong, Dirty Sweet really did tear it up and I only caught part of their first set. I recognize the band was probably still just warming up. I think the band has talent even if the lead singer seems to wear eyeliner. I left early out of disgust for the band's audience who were appalled by any modicum of enthusiasm and The Casbah's staff who were equally ridiculous, which, I suspect, is an indication of just how un-happening the place actually is.  

In summary, The Casbah is not as nice a venue as I was led to believe. I liked the venue's intimacy, but I was very turned off by the general conservativeness of the place. It seems to be in identity crisis. On one hand it's positioned as the edgy hard rocking venue that Nirvana once played in the late eighties and on the other hand it had a largely preppy audience that freaked out when anyone got rhythmic with the music. In fact, a gaggle of attractive, prissy young ladies insisted that they didn't want any "hippy dancing" around them and heralded a bouncer at one point who mindlessly obeyed them to reign-in enthusiastic audience members. I'll give both the venue and band another chance, but my initial experience was not that positive However, Get Back Loretta is definitely worth catching. Sure, they're not as generally handsome as Dirty Sweet; so, you might not see as many prissy young ladies, but they were original and enthusiastic in a Modest Mouse sort of way.