Presto’s Ramblings

The UK Register passes along a report from the Miami Herald that voting machines in Florida are changing votes from Democrat to Republican. From the Register article:

Florida voters using electronic ballot machines are having persistent problems choosing Democrats in early elections, the Miami Herald reports.
The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter [...]

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For those of you anarchists thinking about reasons to convert to Linux, here’s another one for you. While poking around the repositories* that come with Ubuntu, I discovered that there’s a package called ‘anarchism’ that installs a local copy of the Anarchist FAQ on your computer. I understand that it is also in the Debian [...]

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Our local brilliant government officials here in Seattle have given us another brilliant slogan to magically boost tourism: Metronatural. They spent $200,000 on this? That is almost as bad as the $442,000 that the Washington state government spend on that incredible work of genius, the Say WA! campaign.Seattle was the Emerald City, now it’s going [...]

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Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley on the death of Haebus Corpus. The Bill that President Bush signed yesterday essentially shredded any freedoms we have left. We have for all intents and purposes, created a dictatorship.
For saying that, I’ll probably get sent to Gitmo too. I’ll probably have plenty of company.
Update: This video [...]

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Does anybody know the story behind this clip? I know it was filmed during her 90-day brief return from exile, but I know nothing else. She looks stiff and uncomfortable. I wonder if appearing in the newsreel was some sort of requirement for getting a return visa to the US. She was an accomplished public [...]

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I’ve been trying to find out more information on the arrests of the three anarchists at the Seattle World Can’t Wait demonstration. I posted a Slog article about this a few days ago. The problem is, I wasn’t there, and I don’t know anyone who was. There has been a lot of contradictory claims about [...]

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Courtesy of Make. This is a real working computer created by an enterprising tinkerer. The mouse is even make to look like a telegraph key! There’s a lot more pictures at the original Japanese page. Here’s an automatically translated version of the page. As is usual with automatic translation, it’s [...]

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Since a lot of people seem to be interested in the Korea situation, here’s an update:
From AFP, via Yahoo! News: South Korean soldiers have fired warning shots at North Korean soldiers crossing into the DMZ.
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean troops fired dozens of warning shots at North Korean soldiers who crossed the heavily defended border, [...]

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I’m testing a new build of an add-on for Mozilla Firefox called Performancing Firefox. It’s an add-on that helps me post without using the Beta Blogger web interface. This is only a test. Check out the real content below.

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The NY Times has a classic example of “temporary” subsides that never end:
PUEBLO, Colo. — Hoping for an empty seat beside you on your next flight? No problem — just schedule a trip to someplace like Kingman, Ariz.; Brookings, S.D.; or Pueblo.
They are among more than 100 locales around the country that receive federally subsidized [...]

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