Welcome to my musings on whatever topic catches my eye, plus stories, recipes, handyman tips, welding, photography, and what have you. Oh, and analog/digital hardware design, and software. Please comment on the blog post so everyone who visits can see your comments.
Commentary on most any topic.
Guillermo Contreras
Express-News
The FedEx packages shipped to San Antonio contained typical souvenirs
from Iraq: jewelry, kites and T-shirts.
They also held at least $150,000 in cash, all undeclared, according to
court documents unsealed this week.
The sender, David Ricardo Ramirez, illegally took the money from the
billions of dollars that American taxpayers have poured into Iraq
since the U.S. invasion in 2003, the records show.
Story
Last year I wrote a blog entry describing my ideal notebook computer, and how a computer from 18 years ago came very close to that ideal, and how none of the notebooks of today make the grade. The post is here and you might read it first before continuing:
https://shuttersparks.net/my-ideal-notebook-computer
Well guess what? Asus must have been reading my blog. They have introduced a machine that is very close to exactly what I had described. The only point they missed on is the power consumption / battery life. If they had gone with a lower power processor and a transflective display that works with ambient light, with a backlight that can be turned off, they would have boosted battery life to the 8 hours that I consider the minimum useful run time for such a machine. What good is a notebook that only runs for 2 or 3 hours? A workday or school day lasts 8 hours. The snazzy color display is cool but I’d much rather have the 8 hour run time.
I have not yet determined whether their new machine will run on an external 12 volt power source. If it does or can easily be made to, I’ll buy one anyway and run it with an external battery pack.
It has come to light that KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare and Social Security taxes by setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands. KBR is the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year was a subsidiary of Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton. The plot of greed and corruption gets thicker and thicker with this administration doesn’t it? I wonder if the feds will bother to prosecute KBR or maybe the right officials and judges can be bought off to just just sweep it under the rug, along with everything else.
You can read more about it here in this Boston Globe article:
What would you think if I told you that Congress passed a law, the law came to the President to be signed, he signed it but added a “signing statement” that reverses the intent of the law? Is that the action of a president or a dictator? If a president treats a bill on his desk as a blank sheet of paper on which he can write any law he pleases, then what do we have Congress for?
Is the above a hypothetical situation? No, I’m afraid it’s not. This very scenario took place a couple of months ago on Dec 20, 2007. Lawmakers were shocked but what can they do?
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