More posts on Contribution Fraud for Obama Campaign

A lot of things have been happening in regards to the ILLEGAL contributions that can be made on Senator Obama’s campaign’s website.

Powerline has a great summary of the different posts and updates

I wonder what other illegal things will happen in hte Obama presidency if it is starting with illegal contributions.  This should be investigated and action should be taken.  All of the illegal contributions should be refunded byt he campaign and the Obama camp should apologize to the public for taking illegal contritubutions.

Dell Mini 9 and Kubuntu Intrepid: A review

When the Dell Mini 9 was first announced I knew this was the next machine I wanted for my personal use.  I have a work laptop, a Dell Latitude D830 with 4 Gigs of RAM that I must keep in a working state.  I use VM a ton on it to test the different builds of Intrepid and work on other projects for work.  However this machine must work day in and day out and I must be able to use various programs such as One Note, Outllook, Visio, MS SQL Studio Manager that requires me to run Windows.  I’ve tried running Linux natively but more times then not have found it silly to fire up a VM just to be able to work.

So  I ordered my Dell Mini 9 to give me a second machine to play around with and to hack around on.  And let me just say I love it.

I got it last week (due to being gone to a conference when it arrived and noticed right away I didn’t have all 16 gigs that I ordered in my SSD card.  So I did some exploring and found a couple of blogs about the mini not being formatted correctly.  And so I started looking for a solution to that….

I downloaded the beta release for Kubuntu 8.10 and booted up via a Live USB drive.  The only concern in the LIveCD was the application launcher does not scale very well. In fact there are several applications that do not scale down to the 1000 x 600 resolution the mini 9 has.  Having desktop effects out of the box is pretty awesome.

One problem I do have is that suspend/hibernate does not work if I just close the lid, I hafve to use the power manager applet in order to suspend/hibernate.  Everything else works.  any ideas on how to get that setup would be greatly appreciated

The other question, is there a better kernel for the Atom processor then the standard Kubuntu/Ubuntu kernel?  Should I download a different package or something?

The one thing I do miss is that in the Dell load of the Mini, the Windows key set applications to full screen, how do I do that in Kubuntu?

Anyways great job Dell Dudes!!!! I get all these crazy looks when I pull it out in the airport or take it to lunch with me.  And I get to show them it runs Linux.  Another win

Jonathan

Manage Fusion Day 3

Late on this post, it is more a wrap up of Manage Fusion then just a daily blog of the conference.

The Good?

Spent a lot of time meeting with customers, both old customers and hopefully potential customers. The last time I was at Manage Fusion I spent a majority of the time attending sessions and did not come into much contact with customers.  This time it was different and I enjoyed myself more.

If I met you at manage Fusion and you gave me a card, you probably heard back from me via email already.  Thanks for the opportunity to talk.

Also I spent some time talking with the head of Server Management Suite in regards to Unix/Linux support and where things are heading.  It was a very good and interesting talk.  Hopefully I can do more Linux/Altiris engagements in the future

We did a lot of great things this trip that didn’t happen last conference.  The Marketing team did a great job with the comic and lots of people seemed to enjoy it.

The Bad?

Spent way too much time at the bar spending time talking with customers.  Should have gone to bed earlier each night, maybe would have had more energy for Day 3 of sessions and talking with customers

The Ugly?

Seaworld… The “big party” was at Seaworld this year and it was a joke compared to Islands of Adventure in previous years.  I felt like I was being herded around and didn’t have as much freedom to do things.  I guess I was expecting more of Seaworld then the two rides and the band playing.  Please don’t make us go back to Seaworld

Contribution Fraud? I demand an investigation

But won’t get one….

Over on Powerline there is an interesting posted titled “Who is John Galt?” that deserves more investigation

Apparently a small businessman looked into some of the “contributions” on the Obama website to see what is going on with the reported contribution fraud.  (We’ve read elsewhere, maybe even here, that John Doe and Jane Doe are giving a lot of money ot the campagn.”)

One Incident of this contribution fraud is cited in the article:

Now comes the story of Mary T. Biskup, of Manchester, Missouri. Biskup got a call recently from the Obama campaign, which was trying to figure out why she donated $174,800 to the campaign — well over the contribution limit of $2,300.

The answer she gave them was simple. “That’s an error.”

 

So this businessman visited the Obama website and donated money.

I’ve read recent reports of the Obama campaign receiving donations from dubious names and foreign locales and it got me wondering: How is this possible?
I run a small Internet business and when I process credit cards I’m required to make sure the name on the card exactly matches the name of the customer making the purchase. Also, the purchaser’s address must match that of the cardholders. If these don’t match, then the payment isn’t approved. Period. So how is it possible that the Obama campaign could receive donations from fictional people and places? Well, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:
Name: John Galt
Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane
City: Galts Gulch
State: CO
Zip: 99999
Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-didgit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and… “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”

 

But wait I bet this same problem occurs on the McCain website:

Our reader was not yet done. He tried the experiment on the McCain site: “I tried the exact same thing at the McCain site and it didn’t allow the transaction.” He then repeated the experiment at the Obama site:

I went back to the Obama site and made three additional donations using the names Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers, all with different addresses. All the transactions went through using the same credit card. I saved screenshots of the transactions.

Our reader reports, incidentally, that he was using his MasterCard for the contributions. We submit this report in the spirit of inquiry and would especially appreciate hearing from readers who can illuminate how credit card procedures might (or might not) allow this to happen.

Will anyone look into this?  I doubt it.  Should someone?  Of course

Manage Fusion Day 2

After another very busy very late night up nice and early to manage the booth and sign comic books.  (Still have quite the stack in my laptop bag)

It always seems the food on the first day is the best and it goes downhill from there.  Breakfast was crunchy waffles and overcooked ham.  Not anything exciting….

Keynote this morning was good, a bit boring but good.  More and more discussion of the Open Collabrative Framework and how Symantec is building that around NS7 core.

Biggest discussion/announcement was in regards to service desk and it going into beta after the holidays and shipping 2nd Quarter of 2009.  This is going to be huge as the current helpdesk product is loosing ground compared to other  products.  This very exciting news.

Spent the rest of the morning with customers and other meetings, hoping to get to some sessions this afternoon.

Jonathan

Manage Fusion Day 1

Semi-live blogging Manage Fusion here in Orlando at the JW Marriott Resort which is a very very beautiful location.

Day 1 has very busy, been working the ITS booth and in meetings all day long.  First time I’ve opened up my laptop to semi-get caught up.

No major announcements so far that I can tell.  We all knew that NS7 and the Suites have been delayed and are coming out in the first quarter of 2009.  Keynote seemed lower key then normal for some reason, but maybe it was because I was half asleep.

Sat through a Unix/Linux lab which was disappointing due to it being the same lab I have sat through lab last year.

Spent some time with Symantec Education which was interesting on how things are changing for ITS in regards to selling and delivering Education.

The comic book (ITS Fantastic) is a HUGE hit.  If anyone is reading this that is at Manage Fusion stop by the ITS booth and get my signature, I’m the trainer.  I’ve signed so many comic books already, can’t keep count.

Spending the rest of the day on NS7 stuff, Patch Management, Sever Management Suite, etc.  Maybe more posts later.

 

Jonathan

When will Senator Obama produce his birth certificate

For a long time there has been a lot of discussion in regards to what exactly Senator Obama’s birth certificate shows.  When will the Senator produce this certificate? 

It seems that he is now being sued by another Democrat to do just so.  Interesting story and video here

Voter Fraud and the Obama Campaign

There have been numerous posts in regards to the Voter Fraud that ACORN is doing for the Obama campaign.  It is going to be an awful victory if it is won through illegal registration of voters. 

Voting is one of the most sacred rights of a US Citizen.  Voting should happen legally and correctly.  However the Obama Campaign is not following this.

A couple of quotes from a recent PowerLine article

The main voter fraud organization is ACORN, with which Obama has a long relationship. Currently, at least seven states are investigating evidence of voter fraud perpetrated by ACORN. The latest is Missouri:

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.”I don’t even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy,” Davis said. “We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don’t exist, people who have driver’s license numbers that won’t verify or Social Security numbers that won’t verify. Some have no address at all.”

And also this one

Then there’s Connecticut:

One of the phony registrations was for a 7-year-old girl in the Marina Village housing complex, whose age was listed as 27 on the voter card.

Another registration came from a man who later said he couldn’t have completed the voter card purported to be his because he was in jail on the date of the document.

Joseph J. Borges, the city’s Republican registrar of voters, filed the complaint with state officials after months of local complaints on the tactics that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was regularly filing applications that were ruled ineligible.

People already do not trust government and elected officials.  Why would illegal voters cause us to trust the winner of the election any more. 

Also it is about time Senator McCain hits back on this

Echoing Kubuntu the Blue-headed Stepchild

I would like to echo pretty much everything said by my friend JontheEchidna.

It is unfortunate that Kubuntu is still such a 2nd class citizen.  Especially when a fix isn’t even tested in the largest derivative that Ubuntu does and is supported.

I wonder if this will ever change?  i doubt it.

Coming to UDS Mountain View

Got the official word yesterday that I will be coming to UDS Mountain View to help work on Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope.

So what do I think needs improvement in 9.04?  Thanks for asking here’s my list:

1.  Continue Improvement on documentation, especially on the Kubuntu side of things.  For 8.10 I know I didn’t spend as much time working on the docs as I  should have.  Hopefully we can get things done better in 9.04

2.  Enterprise deployment and management tools, along with documentation.  I know the server team has done some work on ageaus and I also know there was a lot of work done on ebox as well.  I think one thing that needs to done is more work on how to deploy, manage, update for large enterprises Ubuntu.

3.  Training:  I will be meeting with the training team as well to help work with the training program.

 

Looking forward to UDS Mountain View and meeting old friends in person again.

Jonathan