It’s about time!

Karl Rove, Adviser to President Bush, to Resign

Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s two national campaigns and his most prominent adviser through 6-1/2 tumultuous years in the White House, announced today that he will resign at the end of the month…

The only bad thing about this news is that now Bush will be more reliant on Cheney to do most of his critical thinking.

Over the past several weeks, I have encountered a strange pop-up ad that hijacks Firefox and will not relinquish control unless Firefox is forcibly shut down. Has anyone seen this before? (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

It’s the same ad every time. I’m wondering if this represents a Firefox vulnerability or something more sinister, like malware on my PC.

Update:
Well, it turns out to be malware after all. It seems that ErrorSafe is a reasonably well known piece of scareware. Symantec has generously published instructions on how to remove it. Seems like a pretty tedious process, though. I’m now wondering if it wouldn’t be a better idea to simply back up all of the data my wife and I need and then completely reinstall Windows—or better yet, go back to being a no-Windows household again.

Around this time last year, we bought a new Windows PC, which naturally means that we bought an anti-virus/security package to go along with it; in this case, we decided to go with McAfee. The software itself works well enough, so there is really no reason to complain about it, except for when it periodically requires you to “check in” to make sure that your software is still current. The problem is that, upon logging in, you get presented with a screen that looks exactly like this:

Just this morning, McAfee notified me that our coverage has now expired, so I will have to either log into the Web site and pay for an extension, or buy a new version of the product from my local software vendor. After logging in and being greeted by the cheerful but mostly blank screen above, I’m considering buying new software—but probably not McAfee’s. They just don’t seem to want my business enough to go that extra mile and actually, you know, offer me something to buy.

I’ve been noticing a lot of news articles about the controversy involved in making mandatory a recently approved vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease linked with cervical cancer. The proposals in favor of mandatory vaccination seem to revolve around the idea of vaccinating pre-adolescent girls. Critics, as I understand it, are claiming that vaccination against this disease may lead to an increase in promiscuity.

As the father of a nearly-pre-adolescent girl, I find it hard to accept the notion that we should keep around a disease that we have the power to prevent—especially one that could cause cancer!—simply so that it can serve as a deterrent against sexual activity. In fact, I find the whole idea fairly repugnant.

I just finished reading Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. The copy I have is now available if anyone reading this blog entry would be interested in reading it. (Offer limited to people living in Japan, or to people I know living in other countries.)

Senator Obama may or may not have what it takes to become the next President of the United States, but reading this book gives you the impression that he’s spent a lot more time thinking about what that job entails than the current occupant of that office. I wish him well in his campaign and expect to see good things from him regardless of the outcome of the 2008 election.