Jeffrey Parson

I have just a couple of things to say about the arrest of Jeffrey Parson, the author/modifier of the "MSBlast" worm that exploited a hole in Windows and took over a whole lot of computers a couple of weeks ago:

1. He's been charged with "intentionally damaging thousands of computers owned by Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., other businesses and individuals." So Microsoft itself got hit? Then let's not hear any more crap about how all this is the fault of lazy users who don't patch their systems. The fact is, lots of people don't patch their systems, for lots of reasons. The real solution is for Miscrosoft to produce more secure software in the first place.
2. Does he look the part or what? I mean, it's almost too perfect. I'm not sure if he's actually guilty or if someone in the prosecutor's office just called central casting.

The End of Cool

At a certain point, the dissemination of a "cool" thing kills it — the edgy becomes the bland, the fringe becomes the establishment. Now, I'm not sure that blogging was ever really that cool, but I can now tell you for certain that it's not now:

A Wife’s Observations

There is too much misinformation floating around out there about my husband. When I read newspaper profiles about him, I hardly recognize the person I've been married to for the past 20 years. So here is the Gray Davis I know.

Like most guys, my husband loves sports. It is probably because he played every sport he could when he was growing up. He still plays golf and we try to play together whenever possible. He is actually pretty good, averaging about a 15 handicap - not bad for someone who only gets to play about 6 times a year (I should add he played golf for two years on the Stanford Golf Team and had a much lower handicap.). He watches a lot more ESPN than CNN, FOX or MSNBC.

Blogs work best when they are open, honest, and personal — they don't work at all when they sound like they were written by your press shop. I'm not sure what the Davis campaign is trying to do here, but I imagine someone at a senior staff meeting said, "Dean's got a blog, so maybe we should get one, too". Right idea, but definitely the wrong execution. Try again.

Shut Up, Dick

Dick Harpootlian just can't keep his mouth shut. I had hoped that I had heard the last of that self-aggrandizing blowhard when he stepped down as SC Democratic Party chair in May. But given a chance to take a dig at a fellow Democrat and the national Democratic Party about the 2004 Senate race, I guess he just couldn't resist:

"Keep your noses out of our business," Harpootlian was quoted as saying to DSCC in an interview with Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. He told The Greenville News: "These are the guys who brought us the disaster of '02."

…

Harpootlian said he isn't against Tenenbaum, but "for Bob Coble based on my belief that he would be better, more electable and has a broader range of experience.

"My experience with the DSCC has been that it's a very Washington-insider inbred group. They're more motivated by who can raise the most money, not by electability, and they ought to stay out of it."

Now, primaries are all about picking sides; Harpootlian has as much right to do that as anyone else. But no interest is served (besides the narrow one of seeing one's name in the paper) by going hard negative on the "other side" this early in the race over an insignificant process issue.

Harpootlian is clearly lying when he says he "isn't against Tenenbaum" — the substance and tenor of his remarks make that clear. Tagging her as an unelectable, inexperienced candidate beholden to out-of-state special interests is an attack on her qualifications and her character, nothing less. But he's not doing Mayor Coble any favors either. Coble is a relative unknown outside of Columbia, and now his first introduction to many voters statewide is as a negative campaigner with no positive agenda. Not helpful.

Harpootlian has thought for years that the national Democratic Party has been out to screw him and the state. According to Dick, most all the political problems Democrats have had in SC in recent years are because of mistakes made by the "Washington insiders", not by him. If he wants to avoid responsibility for the failures that took place on his watch, fine; he's not in charge anymore, and I really don't care. But someone should tell Mr. Harpootlian that it's time to grow up and move on.

Top Brits

The BBC is running a story on a recent survey where BBC World viewers were asked to name the greatest Briton of all time. I'm not sure which bothers me most: the fact that I didn't have a clue who Isambard Kingdom Brunel was (he placed second in the British ex-pat subsample), or that Princess Diana placed third overall, ahead of both Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare.

Moore Stupidity

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has finally addressed the issue of the federal court order to remove the statue of the Ten Commandments he put up in the state's judicial building. As expected, he demonstrated a keen understanding of the rule of law and the separation of church and state:

"The question is not whether I will remove the monument," Moore added. "It is not a question of whether I will disobey or obey a court order. The real question is whether or not I will deny the God that created us."

The real question, I think, is how a person like Moore ever became chief justice in the first place.