so kimo is a dual-boot system

So I have this older tower machine - kimo, a 2.3Ghz intel somethingorother - that dual-boots into Ubunto Studio for audio work and Windows XP for... well, mostly for Excel, but also because it's a file server (and, rarely, a print server) in that mode.

I left it running XP when I turned off its monitor for the night last night so I could get at Excel files from my Macbook. But when I went to print some mailing labels from Excel this morning, I turned it on and saw the Ubuntu Studio login screen, because....

...the Windows Genuine Advantage update from Microsoft last night rebooted my Windows XP box into Linux.

anticipatoryETA: Welcome, User Friendly readers!

Obama administration adopts Bush language; political blackmail

The Obama administration, like NPR, has suddenly stopped using the word "torture" to describe US torture, using instead the term the Bush administration, the Nazi SS, and the US backers of torture have long preferred, "enhanced interrogation techniques." It's all part of the nauseating "looking forward" meme, I suppose. The problem, of course, is that by "looking forward" here, you legitimise - you extend and become part of - that oh so problematic past you'd all like to forget.

Well, except for the "new executive powers" part. That part will be remembered just fine.

Oh, and suddenly, Rep. Jane Harman, a top Democratic supporter of the Bush and Obama administrations' warrantless wiretapping programmes, gets all huffy when she's wiretapped - particularly given that what she was caught saying was legally questionable at best. Even better, Attorney General Gonzalez intervened to prevent further investigation and prosecution against her as long as she kept up being a big pro-wiretapping activist in Congress. Blackmail opportunity for political purposes much? But hey, who the fuck needs laws, right? Ironically, they had a warrant for the wiretap in question. Now imagine how much more political abuse you'll get without 'em.

Not to mention that a few dozen "detainees" in American torture facilities overseas simply... disappeared. That's on top of the >100 acknowledged as violently killed, largely due to the torture programme.

And now Mr. Obama's administration is calling torture "enhanced interrogation," as the political media and the pro-torture right always has, and saying, as Mr. Bush did, that "we don't torture," even as new post-inauguration allegations of American torture are leaking out, and on the even of the election, warrantless mass wiretap powers were increased and retroactively legalised.

This is what happens when you reward an "opposition" party that does not actually oppose: you institutionalise everything.