Friday, September 30, 2005

Pssssst! Kanye!!


I love this PhotoChop.
I remember when I used to write notes like these.

By the way, here's the original picture where President Bush is asking Condi Rice if he can go pee pee. Or maybe it was poo poo?



Reuters - Wed Sep 14, 4:39 PM ET

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Friday, September 09, 2005

Cisco Mobile Network on Wheels & Converged Technology Showcase


SilcWIT


Wednesday night, I got the wonderful opportunity to check out Cisco's Network on Wheels van and Techology Showcase, set up on their San Jose campus. It was part of the SilcWIT Technology Showcase & Product Demonstration event put on by Silicon Valley Women in Technology group. The evening started off with the chance to check out the booths of technology businesses associated with the Women's Technology Cluster.

There was a range of products from keyboards and mice designed for children, KidzMouse, to a charitable organization, GivingGlobal. I chatted with the folks at three of the booths. Clairvoyante has a very cool product. They are able to get super sharp images, Liquid Crystal Displays, for device LCD panels. It's like seeing 8 megapixel digital pictures on a space smaller than my Motorola Razr screen. Of couse my phone looked primative, pixelated and bulky next to the wafer thin demo screen. I can't wait until it's readily available. ClipShack and LucidLink were the other booths I stopped to check out.

The Cisco Systems Moblie Showcase, also know as the Cisco Network On Wheels (now) is a 25-foot mobile self contained vans are loaded with the latest Cisco networking technologies designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Inside of Cisco NOW Van

Inside of Cisco Network on Wheels (NOW) Van


Outside of Cisco NOW Van

Outside of Cisco Network on Wheels (NOW) Van


The van was full of end to end network equipment and peripherals, like IP phones, PDAs and servers. As long you can dial into the company VPN, you are hooked into everything you can get in the office. Including getting your desk phone calls on your laptop. The van's a great idea, worth copying by other companies since it can get places those tractor trailers that park in front of places like Fry's can't get to. Plus it's less intimdating.

The evening ended with a tour of Cisco's Converged City, a showcase of voice, data and video solutions designed especially for small-to-medium sized businesses. Part of a building on Cisco's campus was set up as a series of rooms with different Cisco technology implementations. It was a like a physical use case where your whole body accomplishes tasks rather than only your brain.
Cisco Logo
Just pick an industry, think of a task that needs to be done then you could go to that room and get a look oat how you could set it you using Cisco. For example, one area showed how a retail store clerk could check inventory or look up information about an item from a PDA they carry around. Even ring up a credit card purchase without having to go back to the cash registers. Of course Cisco had bleeding edge stuff in the showcase, so I was happiy.

Monday, September 05, 2005

United States of Shame - Hurricane Katrina 2005

This article from the New York Times was so right on, I had to share the whole thing. The two quotes that make me shake my head the most:

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
and
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

Personally I'm impressed by the Bush "Nobody Expected the Levees to Fail" administration's dedication for taking time off. In the technology field, yu have to force people to take their vacations half the time. I can't be too mad at Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Ferragamo does have some cute shoes.


Ferragamo Sandals



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New York Times Logo



Dowd Picture




September 3, 2005

United States of Shame

By MAUREEN DOWD

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com


Friday, September 02, 2005

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin - Moratorium on Politicians Congratulating Each Other

I was blown away by what I heard when I clicked on an innocent looking CNN feed on the Real Guide homepage:

Mayor fed up with slow response
In an interview with WWL Radio's Garland Robinette, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin expresses frustration and anger at the federal government. (August 2)

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and they come down to this city, and stand with us, with their military trucks and troops that we can't even count. Don't tell me there are 40,000 people coming here, they're not here! It's too goddamn late!
Get off your asses and let's do something

And I'm telling you right now, they're showing all these reports of looting, people doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that. But people are desperate. They're trying to find food and water. The majority of them.
You have some knuckleheads out there, taking advantage of the lawlessness, this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small [minority] of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

When I heard The Garland Robinette Show interview with Mayor Ray Nagin, it was very moving and rare to hear a politician talk so sincerely and with such passion. His radio interview highlighted how, much real compassion and empathy is missing from most reports on the people stuck in New Orleans. He talked like he was OF the people instead of doing something FOR the people lke most politicians. I feel like Mr. Nagin was playing New Orleans Mayor Russian roulette. He happens to be the guy in the mayor seat when everything went down. Just making the best of living with the legacy of decisions made long ago. Even before he was born.

Most news reporters distance themselves from the people, emotionally. But I have to hand it to Shepard Smith [New York Times Article that mentions the incident] from Fox News. He wouldn't let Bill O'Reilly do his regular belittlement and dismissal of people who don't toe the line of the point he's trying to make. (O'Reilly was making the point that all people were impacted by Hurricane Katrina equally without regard to race or class.) Smith recklessly told stories about how some tourists were marched to the front of the line to get on the next busses in front of locals who'd been waiting up to 5 days in the Superdome. I'm sure these are the same tourists who ordered and paid for busses that got commandeered by the military. Of course, the media and people in the Superdome wouldn't know that.

Regardless of the reprecussions of the interview, know that at least one person out there in cyberspace stands behind Mayor Ray Nagin. Even if he did commit political suicide, it was for a worthy cause.
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A Couple of Random Comments

Great Quote from a local radio DJ

It's nice that the President can interrupt his vacation to see how we livin'.

Baton Rouge Police Scanner

Hurricane Katrina Help Hub

Hurricane Katrina "I'm OK" Registry

Representative Elijah Cummings (D - Maryland) attemping to make Bush and his crew feel shame about the response Hurricane Katrina aftermath.


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