…Then the Terrorists Have Won

If doing anything differently now is the equivalent of giving in to Osama, then we're in deep trouble:

It's sad the state we've gotten to where, apparently, even firing incompetent executive branch appointees amounts to a win for the terrorists. Back in '04 we were still enough of a superpower that only turning out a president amounted to a win for the terrorists. That suggests that the terrorists truly have us over a barrel. We are so intimidated by them that we have to hold on to a failed defense secretary presumably forever. Or until there are no more Muslims with a beef with us. Whichever comes first. It's cool that we're standing so tall.

Lest you imagine that it hasn't gotten this stupid yet, let me point you over here.

Open Letter to the Times

I sent the following note to the New York Times today:

I am a New York Times subscriber, and I want to register a complaint with your new video page.

Using my OS/browser combination of choice (Linux/Firefox), I'm unable to access this page. Instead, I'm redirected to a page that tells me I don't have a "supported Browser/Operating System/Media Player configuration." However, I am able to access the video page — which appears to be fully functional — if I change my browser's user-agent string to make it appear that I'm using the Windows version. Thus, the statement on your error page is incorrect: I don't need a "supported" operating system, I just need to lie about what OS I do have.

Which is something I shouldn't have to do. If you don't want to officially support my platform, that's fine with me, and feel free to tell me that. By all means, put whatever qualifiers on the help page you want. Put a disclaimer right on the video landing page, even. But please don't preclude me by default from accessing content that I'm technically capable of accessing.