One of life's little ironies

I have two perfectly legitimately-obtained copies of Windows XP SP2 installed on the two house computers. Neither of them will allow themselves to be activated, preventing them from having security patches installed, requiring me to make what I'm sure is going to be an excruciating telephone experience sometime tomorrow.

Doing a quick Google for the solution returns several dozen ways to circumvent the activation procedure, but I figured if I've actually spent money for the stupid thing, I should go ahead and do everything by the book.

But yeah, this is not encouragement to do so in the future. Being good is more trouble than it's worth.

The O'RLY? Factor

David Letterman. Bill O'Reilly. I less-than-three Letterman.

Letterman normally tries to make the guest look as good and entertaining as possible. But he greeted FNC’s Bill O’Reilly with disdain. When O’Reilly urged an end to tagging Bush as a “liar,” scolded Cindy Sheehan for calling the insurgents “freedom fighters” and urged people to be “very careful with what we say" in disparaging others, Letterman took him to task: "Well, and you should be very careful with what you say also." Letterman demanded: "How can you possibly take exception with the motivation and the position of someone like Cindy Sheehan?" And he tried to discredit O’Reilly’s contention: “Have you lost family members in armed conflict?" When O'Reilly conceded that "no, I have not," Letterman castigated him: "Well, then you can hardly speak for her, can you?"

(no subject)

"No, he strictly told us they was alive," Casto said. "Three hours later he come back and said they wasn't."

Went to sleep last night a few minutes after the third overtime of the I Don't Care About Either Team But It's Football So I'll Watch It Anyway Bowl. At that point word was coming that twelve of the thirteen trapped miners were still alive. This morning, I see a reference on gloomchen's journal that, indeed, the numbers were reversed: one barely surviving, twelve dead, and there were three hours when the world believed the opposite. I had trouble sleeping, myself, something seemed a little too Disney about the "ending" after so many days....

The nation's newspapers either became clarion calls of false hope or messengers of an unwelcome tragedy this morning. Editor & Publisher calls it "one of the most disturbing and disgraceful media performances of this type in recent years," and, well, that's saying something.

Me? I'll settle for taking my meds and getting through the day. That will simply be enough for me.

Bob Loblaw's law blog lobs law bomb

And the blogspam continues: CNN on the "Arrested Development" meta-fest on Monday night.

With Fox's November announcement, "Arrested" has been rumored for a possible move to cable -- and even that development was satirized in an exchange between Jeffrey Tambor's George Bluth Sr. and Bateman's Michael.

"I don't think the Home Builders Organization is going to support us," George says.

"Yeah, the HBO is not going to want us," replies Michael. "What are we going to do?"

"I think it's show time," George then says.

Me is lurve

( Cut for meme-age )

Oh Holy Christ, this has got to stop

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

Okay, are there any laws the executive branch feels deigned to actually follow anymore? Or are laws just for lesser people now?

There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal. -- Euripides