Tag: Damn Lies

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The Truthiness of Inkjet Printers

If your inkjet printer says it’s out of ink, don’t believe it for a second (until the ink goes faint on the page). Most printers lie like a rug, claiming to be out of ink long before they actually are. Epsons are the honest-est, reporting “empty” when down to about 20%, while some Kodaks report empty when only 36% of the ink is gone. Not to mention the problem of multi-cartridge printers claiming to be out when only one color has run dry.

It’s the old “Give away the razor, sell ’em the blades” (Gillette in days of yore) thing, aka the “Give away the camera, sell ’em the film” thing (Polaroid in days of yore). Only razors and cameras didn’t lie about the need to replace consumables like printers do.

Which is one reason why we only use a b/w laser at home, and send out for color prints when needed. Inkjets only look cheap.

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Karl Rove and the DNS

Want to subpoena some gubmint email? Might be tough if the correspondents are using addresses @gwb43.com (think about that domain name for a second) rather than @whitehouse.gov.


whois gwb43.com

Registrant:
Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US

Domain Name: GWB43.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Republican National Committee dns@RNCHQ.ORG
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999

Record expires on 16-Jan-2008.
Record created on 16-Jan-2004.
Database last updated on 4-Apr-2007 11:54:31 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET

Who administers TRESPASSERS-W.NET? A little outfit called Coptix. And here’s Karl Rove with a Coptix brochure under his arm. Coptix claims the image has been Photoshopped, the brochure added artificially; Correntwire disagrees.

But let’s not get hung up on the photo. Whether Rove is involved in this or not, the law requires that public business be conducted on a public server. But Karl Rove does about 95% of his email through the RNC-controlled account — which is listed in DNS with a false phone number (illegal). Bypassing government-provided DNS servers gives the RNC the ability to bypass public oversight, to make a quick phone call and change email forwarding options in DNS, or to have email records destroyed, away from taxpayer’s prying eyes. Feeling warm-n-fuzzy yet?

More info.

Thanks Hamrah

Music: Akron/Family :: Franny / You’re Human
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News Flash: Biorhythms Are Bogus

Back in the 70s, you could hardly walk into a strip mall or pizza joint without encountering a “biorhythm machine.” The theory is that we all have these cyclical waves running through our lives for physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being. The waves start at birth, and, running on slightly different frequencies, go through periods of both synchronous harmony and chaotic intersection. As a 10-year-old, I was obsessed with these things, and would drop a quarter every time I saw one, walking home with a freshly minted sheet of green/white striped printer paper sporting a dot-matrix layout of my life cycles for the next few months.

Biorhythm Lately feeling like I’d reached an all-time low – exhausted, sick, stressed, imbalanced, under-excercised, just out of sorts in every way. Then it hit me – my biorhythms must be off! Haven’t seen one of those machines around for years, but knew there had to be a software version out there somewhere. Struck gold with the Bedrock BioRhythms Dashboard widget. Tapped in my birthday and was treated to – horrors! – stark evidence that biorhythms are total bull. Something is wrong – this can’t be my chart! My waveforms are peaking right now, should be top of my game. But reality is the opposite. How can I never have realized this as a child? How could I have been so naive? How could my parents have allowed me to go on wasting my money like that?

Guess this explains why you never see the machines around anymore.

Man, what a rip.

Music: Squarepusher :: Tundra
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Our New Dryer and The Patriot Act

Our clothers dryer crapped out last week, and the washer’s not doing so well either. Repairs expensive, time to replace them both. Home Depot offering a honkin’ pile of rebates, and has the unit Consumer Reports likes. Once there, learned that if we open a Home Depot credit card, we could get an additional 10% off. No penalties, what’s not to like?

Read recently that financial institutions cannot legally require you to provide a social security number, so decided to see what would happen if I entered all zeroes in that field. The application was spit back in seconds. Explained my position to the employee, who rang up credit central at HD. The guy I talked to wasted no time in invoking … wait for it … The Patriot Act in defense of the requirement. He didn’t have specifics, but claimed that the act required them to store this information, and that a separate taxpayer ID would not suffice.

I was incredulous. Either Home Depot is hiding behind the war on terror for capitalistic reasons, or the Patriotic Act is more frightening than I thought. I suspected the latter, but realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere in this round, so, with a four-year-old growing quickly impatient, forked over my SS# and took the discount. Tonight did a bit of research and found this at askquestions.org:

If you’d just like to open a bank account or engage in another banking transaction, can a bank force you to provide your social security number? How about fingerprinting you? Are either of these strictly required by law? Not exactly – although if you do not wish to provide your social security number you will have to obtain an alternate taxpayer identification number.

So if their reading of the act is correct, Home Depot was not within their rights to require this information. A little late now, but am curious just how hard a person would have to fight to get Home Depot credit approval without a valid social.

Music: Nino Rota :: L’Harem