Rush could be indicted for behavoir regarding Ohio primary?

Well, if you listen to Rush, you might have heard him recommending his Ohio (and Pennsylvania and other states with looming primaries) conservative listeners to vote for Hillary in the Democratic primaries.  Apparently, the intention is to keep the Democrats fighting between the Barrack and Hillary camps long enough to make uniting the party difficult, thereby giving McCain the upper-hand in November.  Rush is also telling his listeners that he could be indicted for doing this.  That’s true, but it’s unlikely.  Don’t believe me? Well, see what the Ohio Attorney General has to say about Rush’s claims:

“We have no intention of prosecuting Rush Limbaugh because lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime,” said Leo Jennings, a spokesman for Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann.

Lucky for Rush stupidity isn’t a crime, I guess.  On the other hand, he’d be off the air if it were.  But then, most of us would be indicted, too, at some point in our lives.

[tags]Rush, Stupidity, Being stupid isn’t a crime, Election, Primaries[/tags]

Satellite kill debriefing

Some of you may remember the falling satellite that some of our excellent members of the US military were able to shoot down recently. There is plenty of news coverage about the event, both pre-shooting and after the successful shot. There is video, such as this ABC clip from the raw footage captured during the shooting:

Beyond all that, there is a very interesting report on the event from the Stanford Group, apparently prepared by retired General David E. Baker. This has some of the best information I’ve seen on the shooting, and covers what happened and who was pleased or displeased by our doing this. I received this from a friend, so can’t speak to where he got it, but wanted to share it because it’s an interesting and brief read.

Hitting a bullet with a bullet: Last Wednesday a federal notice was released warning all ships and
planes to avoid a restricted zone just west of Hawaii for 2½ hours beginning at 7:30 Pacific time. Soon
after, USS Lake Erie’s commander, Capt. Randy Hendrickson received orders from the U.S. Secretary of
Defense to “release the weapon”. Tactical officer Lt. Cmdr. Drew Bates pushed a button and a crippled
U.S. spy satellite known, as USA 193 was history.

You can grab the full PDF version of the report from me, which I’ll keep up as long as my bandwidth allows.

[tags]Satellite, Military muscle, Satellite shootdown, Stanford Group[/tags]

Disappointing game launches

The all time 5 worst game launches? Honestly, that’s a list that has to be tough to narrow down to just 5.  Still, 1Up has managed to highlight the worst offenders.  One managed to recover quite nicely and become one of the highest rated games of all time, but the delivery and verification process at release was insanely bad.

2. Steam/Half-Life 2

Yes, yes, we all love Steam now. It’s the model of digital distribution and community management in PC gaming right now, utterly shaming Microsoft’s embarrassingly inept Games for Windows Live initiative. But back in the day, we were even harsher on Valve than we now are on Microsoft — because the official launch of Steam on November 16, 2004, which coincided with the launch of Half-Life 2, was an utter nightmare.

Wall-of-text warning on the original article, though.  Seems the web-layout folks might want to educate the writers on the importance of more paragraphs and other visual breaks.

[tags]1Up, Half-Life, Worst game launches, Gaming[/tags]

Photoshop disasters

I’m always amazed at how much a bunch of small changes can really change an image. I mean, yes I know that it’s not that hard to change the images, and yes I know that I should expect big changes from a bunch of small changes. But the results still impress me.

However, on the other side of the photochopping craze we find the chops that just didn’t quite go as intended. The site Photoshop Disasters highlights these erroneous photochop jobs. For example, clips from a very funny pair of pics put up there where the DVD case claims to reveal the real star in question:

miley1_clip.jpg miley2_clip.jpg

So real, except for values of not-real where we felt it appropriate to change things a teeny tiny bit.   Or something.

And apologies to Photoship Disasters for cutting out the watermark – I didn’t want to give away the full story just from the pics, so I clipped them down to the part that hopefully will push my visitors to click away via the site link.

[tags]Photoshop, Photochop, Photoshop disasters[/tags]

Techies: MBA for big money

Hey, good news if you are thinking about heading back to school for further degree studies.  It seems that techies who get business degrees are better able to overcome the communication gap between managers and worker-grunts.  The end result?  An MBA nearly doubles IT Pros’ salaries.

For years, IT professionals looking to increase their job security, expand their career horizons and potentially climb a couple pay grades have been told to take business courses or get an MBA, but the evidence to support these assertions has been little more than anecdotal.

Now, however, a study published in the March issue of “Management Science” from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business finds that an IT professional with an MBA degree earns 46 percent more than one with only a bachelor’s degree, and 37 percent more than an IT professional with any other type of master’s degree.

Of course, that nearly doubles salaries thing doesn’t sound quite right when you read that the IT professional with MBA earns 46 percent more, does it?  So according to this study, the MBA nearly doubles IT Pros’ salaries, when 46% means 100%.  Still – a near 50% earnings benefit sounds pretty solid justification for the higher degree.

[tags]IT, Salaries, MBA, When +50% equals double?!?[/tags]

Australian robbery Phailure!

Here’s what happens when you assume that having a gun in a gun-free state is all you need to successfully rob a bar.  It’s a Phail so bad, we had to spell it with 5 letters.

[liveleak b0b_1204280299]

Note for future robbers – when there are 50+ motorcycles in the parking lot, you might want to check adjoining rooms to see if tonight is the monthly meeting night for the local biker gang.

[tags]Phail, Failure, Gun control, Biker gang, Robbery, Australia[/tags]