Two Blog Entries in One: *** Donkeytale Shut Down; Free Movie - The Naked Kiss ***

I feel sorry for Donkeytale. He appears finished as a blogger. He appears to be hanging on by a thread. He's got nowhere to go now for an audience. He is at a crossroad.





versus



Check this out courtesy of CryingWolfe Who Was Ron’s Secret Source?

From: Michael Stack
To: Ron Brynaert
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:14 PM
Subject: Peace?
Peace, till tomorrow???

From: Ron Brynaert
To: Michael Stack
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Peace?

I’m not at war with you, Mike.

I like you a lot, consider you a friend, and am willing to be a witness in your hearing. And you are defending a sock in an unreasonable manner. You act like it’s your girlfriend or mom and you get all bent out of shape just because I’m asking questions. That’s what I do.

If I knew of one way this person helped you then maybe I could see the loyalty. But I think this person just injects confusion….and you refuse to accept the fact that her comments make your blog look wacky and she has done a lot to keep you away from me like Dustin and Socrates and LC.

Do all your friends like each other? I’m not sure why you get so uptight about this person which sounded to me like they were liberal and acted really weird… But I liked her and didn’t have a falling out with her. She has just been playing games with me…which you refuse to see.

And I need to see this person’s tweets.
Also, I don’t understand about Breitbart.

why you don’t see how he played you by ducking all your questions and asking you for favors instead…why should you do him a favor when he didn’t do shit for you….i don’t understand why you refuse to see the obvious.

Do you think Pollack and Nagy and Frey and Stranahan hoaxed Breitbart? No way. For one thing, remember the Sherrod deposition by O’Keefe showed that Breitbart had lied about ACORN videos. He met with O’keefe months before and plotted it out….which Breitbart lied about for two years and mandy and patterico and stranahan defended him on.Breitbart wasn’t your friend when he was alive and he ain’t your friend wherever he is now…he only talked to you after ducking you so that he could charm you. Which he clearly did.

Sean Tompkins and Doug both wanted to speak to me to convince me that they were legit….and they talk like real people. Michelle does not. Her reasons for avoiding me make no sense at all.

If I’m wrong then she’s in the clear like Sean and Doug…but if I’m right it breaks open the story..in the same way that you listened to me about Patterico and Liberty Chick. Anyway, I’m still completely in your corner. I just want to talk to Doug and see if he will agree with me.

From: Michael Stack
To: Ron Brynaert
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:31 PM
Subject: Re: Peace?

you got it…tomorrow we shall resume.

From: Ron Brynaert
To: Michael Stack
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: Peace?

cool
wow my sercret source is calling me all kinds of names…. i think im gonna be going public about him tonight……
aaron better get popcorn

From: Michael Stack
To: Ron Brynaert
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Peace?

tip me off when its gonna start

From: Ron Brynaert
To: Michael Stack
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: Peace?

im giving him another 24 hours
he’s not gonna give me shit

i think im gonna pretend to calm down tomorrow and see if i can regain his confidence…his hamartia is hubris…it’s why he doesn’t hire lawyers….he got rid of the lawyers that got his first two trials hung because he was mad they wouldn’t listen to him more he gave me a sob story about going to hospital today, too

he wont respond to my specific complaint..he lied about 9 guards pulling Aaron off…says it’s quibbling.….it’s possible that he’s just being menaced by aaron , socrates, liberty chic, breitbart, patterico and neal is working with them

but i very much doubt it… anyway…

your story is much better…let’s not mix up the plots…i was shocked you published that…..i’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish by blogging it………you should be talking to your lawyer, police and fbi in my opinon..but it’s too late now

Shame On You, Jane Hamsher

Update: Yikes, a few years back Jane pulled a Ladd Ehlinger. I'm not sure why Hamsher felt this was a good photo-shop to add to a Huffington Post entry. Her apology/retraction was also quite lame. She seemed to only be upset that she had stepped in some doodoo. There was no contrition. Or maybe I missed that post.

About That Graphic…

She's definitely another destiny stealer. True internet talent is being suppressed.


Hamsher approved racism

Once a limousine liberal, always one. Hmmph! Dumbass hack.

[end of mailed-in update] ***



Jane Hamsher, the owner of firedoglake.com, is despicable. She's been raking it in as a fake lefty. It turns out she's actually a right wing tool. Remember when her friend Markos Moulitsas called the CIA a liberal institution with its heart in the right place? Did you know Brad Friedman used to adore Pat Buchanan or that Jane worked for BP Oil?

Media Types: Don’t Call Someone Who Works for Republicans a Disaffected Progressive



OMG! Perhaps Jane Hamsher is the historic supertroll. Her CommonSense Media did contract work for BP Oil, for crying out loud.

No one would have ever heard of her if she and a friend hadn't purchased Tarentino's Natural Born Killers. In 1997, she wrote an "Inside Hollywood" type trash book related to her experiences producing that flick. Isn't America wonderful? A no-talented hack such as Jane Hamsher was able to buy fame and fortune for pennies on the dollar. Then she proceeded to throw Oliver Stone and Tarentino under the bus.

link

Stone is painted as a hard-partying womanizer who pits his underlings against each other and plays mind games. Take this description of how he worked his charms on NBK's second screenwriter, Dave Veloz. ''It only took two weeks for Oliver Stone to reduce Dave Veloz from a stable, reliable churchgoing Mormon,'' Hamsher writes, ''to a borderline psychotic Pepsi-swilling mess, rolling around the floor in his boxer shorts and wondering if he'd ever be able to do anything right again for the rest of his life.''

Tarantino gets off less easily. Hamsher charges that he betrayed her and Murphy by going behind their backs to keep them from making Natural Born Killers. She also calls Tarantino a ''one-trick pony,'' a wildly overrated director. ''Anything he said brought down the house,'' Hamsher describes Tarantino's appearance at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs: ''He could've said 'shoehorn' and the agents I was sitting amidst would've crippled themselves laughing. I could only imagine what kind of effect this would have on a guy like Quentin, a geek from the Valley who'd never had much attention for doing much of anything.''

Listen to yourself, Jane! You basically called one of the modern Hollywood greats a hack. No one would even know who you are unless you had taken advantage of Tarantino before he hit it big.

Here's the basic plot line for The Jane Hamsher Story. I'm submitting this to ABC's Movie of the Week. Hopefully they still do those. Unlike Jane, I rely on talent and skill. I don't have the moolah to buy up some nice story, make millions off of it for "producing" it, then defecate over the original writer for a follow up bestseller.

*** attained film degree
*** without creative talent bought rights to the fine story written by then unknown Quentin Tarantino. Later writes tell all book not worthy of wrapping fish.
*** became a leading, fake left blogger!
*** made $$$ off of Republicans, a polluting oil company, and even the DNC while her dumbass donating herd never knew a thing.

There's not much on Jane's IMDB biography. I did find this delightful comment thread.

Jane is a catty shrew by Mindywuzrobbed

Her venomous attacks against Caroline Kennedy for no apparent reason have caused her to lose all of her credibility as a serious liberal blogger. Thank you very much Jane, for enforcing the negative stereotypes about women!!!

Re: Jane is a catty shrew by m_riley

Yeah, she's a jackass.

Re: Jane is a catty shrew by rtucker7

While I agree with her basic politics, I also completely agree with the original poster. She is an awful, hateful person. No wonder she's had cancer like seven times, she is filled with bile. DFQ2: That was inappropriate.

Re: Jane is a catty shrew by tylerbeach2002

I've heard horrible things about her by people that worked with her. She's apparently not a great human being which is an understatement.

If that didn't satisfy your Jane thirst, check out Jane Hamsher Unplugged (And Unhinged): Dare To Criticize Hamsher’s Appalling Labor Record, And This Is What You’ll Get.

New video: Your next car, imagined

It blows my mind, but some people still see connectivity in the car as the enemy. They think that, the more connected the car, the more distracting and dangerous it will be. But you know what? Responding to their concerns is easy. I simply ask them what if.

For instance, what if connectivity helped you drive with greater situational awareness? What if it helped you sidestep traffic jams and axle-busting pot holes? What if it helped you detect a stop sign hidden behind a tree? And what if it helped you become more connected to the people important to you, as well as to the road and the cars around you?

When we talk connectivity at QNX, that’s the kind of connectivity we envision. It isn’t just about Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or LTE — that’s only the plumbing. Rather, it’s about keeping you in tune and in sync with your car, your environment, your business, your friends. Your life.



This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

Jane Hamsher & FireDogLake Recipients of Prestigious Stalin Award™

This is what the fake, leftist totalitarians would like you to believe was the reason for my banishment from FDL. I basically linked to this tweet on a donkeytale diary.



Which resulted in this:



Jane certainly wasn't upset with myself days earlier as shown with this lovely repartee shared on Thanksgiving.





I'll tell you why I was truly banned. It was because of my expose on pond scum blogger Brad Friedman's one degree of separation from internet predator and prolific hoax producer Neal Rauhauser. One of the main writers at FDL is some asshat named TBogg. He is a garden variety supertroll. He once deleted a whole Troll Wars installment simply because donkeytale had the nerve to wonder what it will take to cross the great divide?

Tbogg is tied in with Kos Kops, period. There is a dirtbag named Karoli who recently pimped the insanity which is Neal Rauhauser. A quick socratisation shows that TBogg and Karoli are tighter than a mosquito's arse.



That's only the tip of the iceberg.

Scumbag political operatives and/or dumbass, fake lefties continue to dominate so-called lefty blogs.

Meanwhile, Fatterico continues to pimp the idea that Ron Brynaert was behind the SWATs.

Both sides truly suck. Both are full of hypocrites and dirty, rotten scoundrels.

TBogg can keep censoring like the coward he is. As for Jane Hamsher, I can't believe she is that dense to not be able to vet out a scumbag like TBogg and his associates.

el fin

Meet the folks behind the QNX concept car (and other cool stuff)

An example of the concept
team's work

Imagine if you went to a Rolling Stones concert and the entire band played behind a curtain. That would be totally weird, right? Well, we realized that much the same scenario was playing out with the QNX concept team. Their work, including the QNX concept car, has appeared in A-list venues like CES and Mobile World Congress, yet the team itself has remained largely behind the curtain. And that’s too bad, since the team members embody the qualities I like best about QNX. Innovation, for example.

So, in the spirit of setting things right, we decided to pull back that curtain and make some introductions. And where better to start than with Mark Rigley, the team’s director.

If I were to describe Mark in one word, I’d choose chutzpah. Or gumption. Or moxie. He is the antithesis of wait-and-see. To spot him in a room, just look for the guy who says, “Let’s do it!” when everyone else is still stuck in “maybe,” “might work,” or “I need to get back to you on that.” And when you think about it, that attitude fits the bill perfectly. Because when your job is to take something like a Porsche 911 (an example of automotive perfection, if ever there was one) and make it even cooler, you’d better have a measure of confidence in yourself — and in your team.

Indeed, if anything shines out from this interview, it is the awe and respect that Mark holds for his team members. (Okay, I’ll admit it. Something else shines brightly: Mark’s enthusiasm for the next QNX technology concept car. Did I mention the team is working on one?)



This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

Sadistic, Deranged Internet Predator Neal Rauhauser's New Hoax

Lovely and talented Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette.com apparently got the scoop. No one does snark better than her.

I won't go into details of what the hoax was since that is readily available. I will say it has all the stink of the election fraud hoaxes Brad Friedman has been pumping out since late 2004.

BradBlog has been the public face and co-founder of Brett Kimberlin's Velvet Revolution. Anything put out by VR is thus owned by Brad and not simply by the man who lied over and over again at my hearing in November 2011. Rauhauser has been an associate of Kimberlin's for quite some time. It was bad enough he smeared me as probably being the infamous "Dan Wolfe" of Weinergate. He and Brett hoaxed it up that I was a dangerous criminal. I have a clean record, assholes. I've never been convicted of any crimes.





Neal Rauhauser co-opted Anonymous. One Twitter account many believe is Neal is @AnonyOps. As I pen the roughdraft for this mailed-in entry, that username has 187,940 followers. It has on many occasions backed Rauhauser's agenda. Many months ago it was having cordial chit chat with Ali Akbar pimping that I was using crazy sock puppets at Neal's Breitbart Unmasked smear rag. In recent days @AnonyOps has pimped Neal's "Rove Orca-Romney the fix was in Anonymous prevented it" bullshite.

What was his motive for such a retarded undertaking?

Basically, it was meant to help rebuild Velvet Revolution's image as being part and parcel of Anonymous and OWS. Another reason behind it was to rehabilitate Velvet Revolution's forever tarnished image of being an authentic, election fraud whistleblower.



Two words: Epic fail! As anyone can now read, Neal himself is backing away from the idiocy he produced.

None of what I received in September mentioned ORCA at all, so I am waiting for The Protectors to produce something concrete there. The first I ever heard the name was when I saw the Anon Rove Letter.

The Rove freakout after the poll closure? Called in advance. The timing, the very same minute as the Ohio 2004 system crash? I assume that was adding insult to injury.

So why is ORCA mentioned? It’s either real, and something will be forthcoming, or it was thrown in at the last minute because it was notable. Who ever did these things is a card shark. If Rove & Co. deny they had any trouble, this will inflame their paranoid, conspiratorial followers who are already spinning wild conspiracy theories. If they agree, the investigation finds what it finds, and that gets ugly really fast...

Translation: It would take too much effort to bring this one up a notch like done with my Weinergate hoax. Not only that, respected blogger Rebecca Schoenkopf has already mocked the f&$% out of this. My friends and sock puppets at Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, and elsewhere are no longer believable. In my own deranged mind, I thought this one would work. Too bad Ron, socrates, and donkeytale make me look like the loser I am. Darn, I wish I could time travel and have never attached my predator name to this hoax. Yeah, this one was too retarded to ever pass muster. What was I thinking? I can't even use the lulz defense. I will simply attempt to make it seem I got hoodwinked.

Meanwhile, Brett Kimberlin and Brad Friedman have been busy pimping this one over at their Velvet Revolution website. Here are the two money quotes:

[in reference to the "Michael Connell threatened by Karl Rove" hoax] Karl Rove has a history of rigging elections going back several decades, including in 2004 when he orchestrated a man-in-the-middle attack to change the votes from Ohio....

Based on our experience and the supporting evidence, we take the letter from “The Protectors” at face value. Karl Rove had the means, motive, experience and opportunity to do whatever it took to win the election for his clients. If he, in fact, intended to use improper and illegal means to digitally manipulate the election, and white hat cyber sleuths who stopped it discovered that, then that is a good thing. We hope that those cyber sleuths will provide that evidence to the FBI, post it publicly or send it to us to do so.

I refuse to link to internet predator Rauhauser's website. I will say that recently he has been plugging the Connell hoax. Brynaert meanwhile has been posting that all I have ever done is call Brad Friedman a con artist without proving it. Ron says that while making the claim that he is the true talent who has critiqued Friedman in fifty ways and whatnot. We will be waiting until Hell freezes over for Brynaert's proof he has done any work at all exposing VR's multiple hoaxing. It makes no sense why Ron continues to downgrade and smear my accomplishments while propping himself up as having done the work I did. I am very curious why Ron thinks he can post such lies when there is a ton of evidence on DFQ2 proving otherwise.

The Rauhauser Hoax in a Nutshell as Pertaining to Myself

There was a hack and subsequent uploading by Anonymous close to a few years back of internal documents of Aaron Barr and his HBGary people. That's when Neal's Team Breitbart nonsense was transformed into the Kookpocalyse hoax.

To paraphrase, one thing Barr wrote was, "Let's look into this Brett Kimberlin person. We could do a lot with that."

Rauhauser's cheesy hoax claimed that myself, Mandy Nagy, and Patrick Frey et al were the descendants of Barr's "Team Themis." Rauhauser and Kimberlin have wanted folks to believe they are a big opposition against Breitbart people, HBGary and are part and parcel of Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street. However, VR has tried but ultimately failed to portray itself as the protector of election integrity. That is because of myself and a few others. Brynaert has had nothing to do with that. Brynaert's contribution was to smear myself as a supertroll who used sock puppetry in order to menace Brett Kimberlin. While I do not believe Ron has worked for BK, I used to think there was the possibility based on many good reasons already discussed. Now I believe Ron simply f&$%ed up by going after me due to human error. Yesterday he couldn't even get Michael Connell's name correct. He called him McConnell or Colonel McNugget. I don't remember. Wow.

This new hoax has basically claimed that Anonymous prevented Karl Rove from stealing the election from Obama. The hoax letter was directed to the "good people of the Velvet Revolution."

One of my big schticks pertained to exposing the "Michael Connell threatened by Karl Rove" hoax for the fiction it was. Connell died in an unfortunate, small airplane crash attributed to inclement weather. He was GW's IT guy. That wasn't all I blogged on that upset Bwett. Another thing I did was ensure exposure of his double secret exoneration lie. Not only that, I also blogged on many other related nuggets which can be read here and at my other blog in the Astroturfing section.

For having done so, I was included in the Weinergate scam and subsequent incarnations of the let's call it the "Team Breitbart Sucks" project. Of course Breitbart people suck. Nonetheless, sometimes both sides suck. For simply being an honest blogger with academic credentials, I was cybersmeared and terrorised. Since Ron Brynaert did little more than smear me, I say to him, "Thanks for nothing. Shame. On. You."

Brad Friedman: A Stupid Con Artist

Let's check out the following to wrap up this mailed-in entry. From the comment section of this BradBlog thread:



For crying out loud, the first link is a cross-post of the garbage written by Velvet Revolution. Brad Friedman is part and parcel of Velvet Revolution. Creepy asshole.




fin

What Truly Matters

misunderstood socialite or fruitcake?

Jill Kelley is the woman at the center of the Petraeus scandal. I have come very late to this party. An anonymous source has filled me in and the following is based on that information.

This is the latest. There is word of phony charities, a set of evil twins, shirtless FBI agents, generals, and CIA involvement. Oh my, this is getting very juicy!

One would have to do a lot of research in order to give it blog justice. This is so convoluted, it's ridiculous. One could spend hours and hours reading on it and still be wondering wtf.

The original title for this mailed in entry was This Is Either Very Good Or Idiotic. I am betting big money on the latter.

Here's what we've got so far. Of the Lebanese twins, Kelley is apparently delusional and thinks she's a diplomat. My source also says she's in thick with Republicans. Unfortunately, Soc-donk Autopilot II is undergoing maintenance, so we will not be able to offer much political insight on that.

Basically, Miss Kelley had been hosting tons of parties for the Republicans in Tampa during the convention. This source has informed DFQ2 that in addition to bourbon and sweet tea, on offer were frosty, refreshing sasparillas. But we digress.

Jill's twin has been in big with the Democrats. She's been buddies with John Kerry and some others. Apparently she has even been taking huge loans from a Democratic campaign fund. My source says this can be neither confirmed nor denied since only one source was read with that mentioned. I can neither confirm nor deny that either since because I'm donkeytale, I am part and parcel of the DLC. You can't expect me to throw my own people under the bus.

This has to be the biggest twin story in the news since Arthur Fonzarelli dated the Polaskey twins.



We've even got the FBI doing illegal hacking jobs into US citizens' emails. According to Glenn Greenwald, what truly matters in this scandal is how out of control the spy factory is. Donkeytale, however, might counter that Glenn Greenwald is a Cato Institute graduate and as much a tool of the state apparatus as anyone.

Are the twins creepy nuts who have had the military, FBI, and CIA eating out of their hands? Do the American people have what it takes to ask what truly matters? I'm not so sure.

I've seen this over and over with the new "big story." The media and public eat it up. OJ. The missing chick in Aruba. The Nanny. Who's gonna win on Dancing with the Stars. I have yet to see many big time stories catch traction which should. Like stopping illegal wars. Like let's drastically cut the military-industrial complex and put that money into developing a bright, utopian future. On how we have become a police state. On how there is so much inequality. You know, things that truly matter to leftier than thous such as myself.

Is Jill Kelley nuts? Does she run some high powered hooker outfit? Is she a spy? It's endless. And of course it will all boil down to what Nancy Grace and Anderson Cooper think. That's how these marbles roll.

Of course there is an entertainment value to all of this. Kelley called 911 all day long. During one of her calls she told the dispatcher she needed diplomatic protection. RIOTOUS!

My favourite radio DJ Charles was talking about the scandal. I agree with his schtick. This is all about sex combined with fruitcake. It's really no one's business. Just as none of us needed to know about Clinton and Lewinsky.

This isn't a spy novel or a security risk. This is about sex, period. Or is it?

Should civilians be allowed to give lavish parties for the highest ranking military officials? Could that be a potential security risk?

Ok, let's move on to some more potential food for thought.

Those blokes were way too happy to be doing favours for that woman. A judge in the custody battle between the twin sister and her husband thought Jill Kelley was mentally unbalanced.

Apparently she conned Petraeus and Allen into writing letters of recommendation so her sister could get custody of her kid back. Wtf? Can you imagine the look on that judge's face when he opened those letters? Probably WTF! I think it was a huge lapse in judgment for them to be writing those letters.

Yes, I don't believe they are spies. They are too stupid for that.

However, if the highest ranking military people can be corrupted by two evil twins, they could be taken in by spies very easily. Not that I care. Just saying.

What in the hell did these women have on those men to make them do the things they did?

Jill Kelley and her oncologist husband set up a non-profit charity that was supposed to grant dying cancer patients a last wish. They had an anonymous person seed it with $150,000. Then they spent it all on entertainment and not one cent went to help any cancer patient? Who knows how much money was funnelled through that fund.

Hollywood couldn't even make up this crap! It's a comedy of errors. Not to mention that these twins are completely broke and I think one of them is 3.6 million dollars in debt and seeking bankruptcy.

I've also heard that Tampa is quite the "swinging" sex community. An FBI agent Jill talked to sent her a shirtless photo of himself? It's hilarious. Though I still think there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense.

Poor Paula Broadwell is looking like a saint in comparison. She's the one who had the affair with Petraeus. Yet, she was going to Harvard and working on a PhD.

My opinion is that she sent the anonymous emails to Jill Kelley to protect Peaches. Then the true nutjob started pestering an FBI friend to find out where they came from. Little did she know that her whirlwind, military social life would soon be cut short.

Jillybean thought she was really powerful. I would bet $50 not one of her high-ranking friends is returning her calls today. In fact, I would bet that there are a whole bunch of hard drives being replaced in Washington.

Taking a long, hard look at the ozone hole

For more than 20 years, a Harvard research team has been taking QNX technology to stratospheric heights

The NASA ER-2 high-altitude
aircraft

Hey, do you remember when everyone was in a knot over the ozone hole? You know, the one over Antarctica? The one the size of Antarctica? Based on all the press it has received lately (read: not much), it is yesterday's problem. I, for one, haven’t worried about it — or even thought about it — for a good 10 years.

But here’s the thing. The ozone hole didn’t go away. And it’s not going away soon. Yes, evidence suggests that the hole will heal, but the process promises to take decades — by 2050, if we’re lucky. (Strictly speaking, the hole heals every Austral Spring, but only temporarily; it always returns the next Austral Winter. And it isn’t exactly a hole, since the ozone doesn’t disappear completely from the upper stratosphere. It does disappear from the lower stratosphere, however.)

Did I mention only one hole? Sorry to mislead you. There are, in fact, substantial ozone losses over the Arctic as well, with the loss during the winter of 2011 achieving ozone hole status.

Ozone depletion is serious stuff. It may contribute to an enormous list of problems, from crop failures to eye cataracts to skin cancer. So it’s important to do the hard science and measure its progress, along with any factors that can affect it. Otherwise, how do you argue for a cogent policy on controlling substances and industrial practices to prevent ozone depletion? And do you know whether the policies and practices you put in place are doing any good?

Problem is, measuring and analyzing ozone depletion is a long-term project that takes patience and commitment. Fortunately, the Anderson Research Group from Harvard University seems to have those qualities in spades.

Making the upgrade
The group has been operating continuously since 1979. (For context, that was the year that Philips demonstrated the first Compact Disc. Remember those?) For the first few years, the group used a balloon to carry their instruments high into the atmosphere, but with the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in the mid-80s, they graduated to a NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft, which flies as high as 21 kilometers. (If the ER-2, depicted above, looks to you like a modded U-2, you’re right.)

The team’s first QNX-based instrument,
which measured OH in the lower
stratosphere, was deployed in an ER-2.

Lots of things have changed since 1979, but for the past two decades, one thing hasn’t: the group’s use of QNX technology. It all started in 1990, when the group decided to replace their homegrown OS kernel with the QNX RTOS v2. They then upgraded to the QNX RTOS v4 in 1992, which is also when they deployed their first QNX-based system, an instrument that measured OH (hydroxyl radical) in the lower stratosphere. More recently, they migrated to the latest generation of the QNX technology, the QNX Neutrino RTOS, aka v6.

Alphanumeric soup
To measure phenomena in the stratosphere, the team created a data acquisition architecture that takes advantage of core QNX strengths, including multitasking, message passing, realtime performance, and transparent distributed networking. Flexibility is a key characteristic of this architecture, since it must support a variety of instruments that measure an alphanumeric soup of airborne radicals and reactive intermediates. These include BrO, ClO, ClONO2, ClOOCl, NO2, OH, HO2, O3, CH4, N2O, CO, and CO2, as well as water vapor, water isotopes, and total water. (Why measure water? Because its presence in the stratosphere can contribute to ozone depletion. And because the increased frequency of heavy storms, such as Hurricane Sandy, may inject more water into the stratosphere.)

Here is the full configuration of the data acquisition architecture, which includes control and acquisition programs running on a flight computer as well as display and interactive commands running on a ground support computer:



According to Norton Allen, a software engineer for the Anderson group, “From the start, we needed an OS platform that would scale with our growing requirements, and that would satisfy our demands for high reliability — sending a plane into the lower stratosphere is a costly proposition, so there’s no room for software failures. At the same time, we needed a standards-based platform that would let us write portable applications. The QNX OS has been able to deliver on all counts."

Global scale
I’ve barely touched on the many research activities of the Anderson Research Group. To quote their website, the group “addresses global scale issues at the intersection of climate and energy using a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches drawn from the disciplines of chemistry, physics and applied mathematics.” So if you’ve got a minute, visit the site. Who knows, you may learn something — I did.

Does Jane Hamsher Even Know I Exist?

So I was on Firedoglake.com stalking donkeytale's mailed-in entries. I worked my way up to his most recent dairy, Why I’m Voting and for Whom.

This historic troll has been apparently working for years as a Democratic operative on Netroot milieu blahgs. From attacking Ralph Nader to sweetie Jill Stein, his primary goal has been to herd fake lefties into voting for the DLC nominee.

This year he claims to be voting for Gary Johnson. I don't have a clue about him or Jill. I may be a rugged, blogger version of Rudolph Valentino, to be honest I am as cynical as it comes to elections. I simply do not believe that my vote counts. Others may retort, "Well Mister, if everyone takes that position, then it's your own fault when looosers like GW Bush are elected."

Uhm, no. There is simply no such socratised butterfly effect. So stifle it, Edith.

But I digress.

To my chagrin and shock/awe, FDL owner Jane Hamsher made the first post.

I have to say donkeytale, that nobody has been a bigger advocate for Obama here than you.

This is a surprise.

Wtf? Not only did she add to donk's entry, she implied she follows his schtick very closely.

I should've been nicer to donkeytale. For Janey is the type of gal I would marry no questions asked. Unless she's already married. I don't believe in bigamy.

ooh la la

Arguably Ms. Hamsher is most well-known for having produced Natural Born Killers starring Woody from Cheers.

I am not deeply in love with her based on that. As a leftier than thou, it is her progressive leanings which I have found most appealing. If I had to pick one blogger to do sushi with after honey pie Larisa "I Vouch for Brett Kimberlin" Alexandrovna, it would be Jane Hamsher. I believe Alexandrovna is actually already married, and come to think of it, I hate her guts.

Oh the irony of it all. For the last several years donkeytale has been relying on my top of the internet zeitgeist status to stay afloat as he plummeted into irrelevance. But now the tables have turned. I never saw this comeback in the works for him. And now I am the one who is down to 12 page views a day from the eyes of my dwindling audience.

Donkeytale, please forgive me. I was wong.

If it works out with Jane, I'd like you to be my best man. If you can't make it to the wedding, there is always Ron Brynaert.

Since I can't sing, I'll let this dude do the serenading on my behalf.

New webinar: PLCs made easy

PLC reference platform
from Freescale, QNX,
ISaGRAF, and KPA

Okay, I'll admit it, creating anything of value is never that easy. The details always get in the way. But every once in a while, a tool comes by that can make your job easier. Not to mention faster.

That's the idea behind the new Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) reference platform from Freescale, QNX Software Systems, ISaGRAF, and KPA. By pre-integrating EtherCAT software, PLC firmware, and a realtime OS on a dual-core processor, the platform allows design engineers to spend less less time on underlying plumbing — which means they can get to the application stage sooner. And who can argue with sooner?

If you'd like to know more about this new platform, check out the upcoming webinar hosted by Chris Ault, a product manager at QNX, and John Ralston, a system architect at Freescale. Here are the coordinates:

PLC Made Easy: A Day in the Life of Developing a Pre-Integrated EtherCAT Programmable Logic Controller

Tuesday, December 4; 11:00 am to 12:00 noon EDT

Registration: Open Systems Media

My connected car word cloud is (still) getting around

Has it been 3 years already? I can't believe it. In any case, this story begins in 2009, when I generated a word cloud to promote the LTE Connected Car, a concept vehicle created by Alcatel-Lucent, QNX Software Systems, Atlantic Records, Toyota Motor Sales, and the ng Connect alliance.

Here's what the word cloud looked like:


Click to magnify.

I created the word cloud just for fun, but thought the result was pretty cool — and it seems I wasn't alone. Someone from BMW, for instance, used the word cloud in a conference presentation back in 2010.

Fast forward to last week, when I discovered that Google has a reverse image lookup function. (Yes, I know, I'm probably one of the last people on the planet to make this discovery.) And so, once again for fun, I decided to see if any images I've published have made their way onto other websites. I thought that the word cloud would be a good candidate, and I was right.

For instance, the word cloud has appeared on these sites (text blurred to respect copyright):

Computer World Brazil:


Social Media Council Europe:


inTELEMATICS today:


UIEvolution blog:


WinfWiki wiki:


There are a few other sites, but frankly, I don't understand what some of them are about. Still, it's cool to know I've created something that fills a need, however miniscule. Mind you, it would be even cooler if everyone who used the image acknowledged where they got it. Just saying.

And speaking of presidents...
This is a near-total non-sequitur, but in honor of the upcoming U.S. election, here are word clouds for every presidential inaugural address, starting with George Washington's address in 1789. (And no, the cloud doesn't contain the words "cherry," "tree," or "lie".)

QNX versus Linux: Which is best for IEC 62304 medical devices?

A few weeks ago, I invited you to a webinar on this very topic. If you missed the webinar, no worries: the archived version is now available for download. And speaking of downloads, you can now read the accompanying whitepaper, written by my inimitable colleague Chris Hobbs.

If you're wondering whether the paper is for you, here's the official summary:

This paper is for anyone who must select an OS for a safety-critical medical system. It provides information to help with estimates of the real cost of choosing a Linux or QNX OS. It lists requirements identified by standards such as IEC 62304, ISO 14971 and IEC 61508, and offers comparative estimates of the effort required to meet these requirements. These estimates are for initial certification and pre-approval, subsequent re-certifications following OS upgrades, and ongoing costs.

While you're at it, check out these other whitepapers for medical-device developers:

• Clear SOUP and COTS Software for Medical Device Development
• Persistent Publish/Subscribe Messaging in Medical Devices
• Choosing an RTOS for Remote-care Medical Devices

Come to think of it, there's no reason to stop with these, when you can peruse the entire library of medical whitepapers on the QNX website.