Microsoft Practically Admits Vista Sucks

I've recently bought a new laptop, and have been battling Windows Vista for a week to get it to run some of my clients' apps. I had considered paying an extra hundred dollars to retrograde my system to XP. But I figured that the future is coming, so I might as well get a handle on it. Then tonight I saw a commercial: Did I hear this right? Microsoft is practically admitting the Vista nightmare is drawing to a close. The last clause is, "...more happy is coming". When my free upgrade to Windows 7 comes, I hope it solves some of my problems. But I doubt it.

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Great Britain admits the obvious: Alan Turing was treated appallingly

Gordon Brown stepped up and plainly said what should have been said long ago. Alan Turing was a hero, yet he was treated terribly by the British government. Here's an excerpt from The Guardian:

Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay. Describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better," Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

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Subcontracting War, part II

Erich's comment on my post about the increasing use of contractors as warfighters reminded me of a couple of issues that I had forgotten to raise. First, the use of these contractors also makes is easier possible for the Executive Branch to fight unpopular wars. CNN released a poll yesterday showing that the oppostion to the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time high, and even über-conservative George Will has said it's now "Time to get out of Afghanistan." Imagine how much more forcefully the nation would be calling for withdrawal from Afghanistan if the draft had to be re-instated in order to continue to attempt to impose our will on Afghanistan. Jeremy Scahill reports that According to new statistics released by the Pentagon, with Barack Obama as commander in chief, there has been a 23% increase in the number of “Private Security Contractors” working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan, which “correlates to the build up of forces” in the country.... Overall, contractors (armed and unarmed) now make up approximately 50% of the “total force in Centcom AOR [Area of Responsibility].” This means there are a whopping 242,657 contractors working on these two US wars.

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