Omniquity

Just wanted to put this fix on the record. Trying to reconfigure a D-Link DAP-1360 access point as a repeater. Couldn’t even get to the configuration screens with a cable connected directly to my computer. Searched the tech BBSes and finally found this recommendation for configuring my computer:

Bingo!

(There’s another recommendation to set the computer’s IP address to 192.168.0.99, which I didn’t try.)

Now, tell me why D-Link itself doesn’t document this somewhere? And why do they make this so freaking difficult? Inexcusable.

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The US House of Representatives provides dispositive evidence that money is pervasively corrupting in American politics. [Click NYT link below for the story.]

Of course pizza is a vegetable. Otherwise it would have been regulated more harshly in school lunch programs.

“It’s an important victory,” said Corey Henry, spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI). ”Our concern is that the standards would force companies in many respects to change their products in a way that would make them unpalatable to students.”

How does that guy sleep at night, or look at himself in the mirror in the morning when he gets up? More importantly, how do the “representatives” who voted for this piece of garbage legislation sleep at night? Oh yeah, their nests are feathered with cash from the AFFI. A nice wad of bills is always conducive to a good night’s rest.

By this logic, I am expecting the purveyors of bloody marys to have their beverage classified as a vegetable for school lunch purposes. Tomato juice, celery, and a little spice, right? Send the kids back to class with a buzz and they’ll be much easier to control. Of course, if the teacher partakes as well it will be a very pleasant afternoon for everyone.

What seems to have been lost in American politics is the notion that our elected representatives represent us, the people, not the corporations who lobby with cash and gifts. Corporations are not in any sense representative, and to interpose them as an intermediary between the people and their elected officials is a perversion of the whole philosophy of representative government. We have to find a way to severely curtail the influence of corporations and their corrupting money from our government.

(Source: The New York Times)

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It is almost inconceivable to me that our government even considers proposals like this.

The Justice Department has gotten the message from journalists, interest groups and government watchdogs and has decided to withdraw its proposal to allow federal agencies to lie to people seeking sensitive documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

The US government somehow acts as if it is separate and distinct from the American people. (It is far from being the only government that thinks this way.) It’s time to get back to “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.

By the way, any “law and order” Republican administration would be far worse.

(Source: MSN)

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Congratulations to the bonehead dictators … er, leaders … of BART. Fearful of a protest over a shooting death by one of their cops of a homeless man in July, they cut mobile phone service in several of their underground stations a few days ago.

Isn’t that a favorite tactic of the despots in the Middle East? I could have sworn BART is in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. BART, apparently, believes neither in freedom nor bravery.

Sadly, yet another American institution has demonstrated its willingness to behave like the very regimes we denounce every day. Another flattening of the moral high ground on which we used to stand. Now that America does it, we have little standing to tell others they shouldn’t.

Perhaps there are legitimate instances when communications links can be disrupted in peacetime, but this does not strike me as one of them.

I’ll be curious to see what the FCC has to say about it. Given the rather toothless administration in the White House, probably not much. <sigh> When will someone in a position of leadership actually lead when it comes to our civil liberties and the principles on which our country was founded?

(Source: sfgate.com)

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