Microsoft sucks. They really do suck.

Redmond's Finest no longer supports Windows Media Player on the Mac. OK, no problem. You simply trash the "Windows Media Player" app from the Apps folder, and download Flip4Mac, this new bit of software that plays Windows Media files in Quicktime format.

Great. So easy.

Now, I'm a pretty keep-my-computer-clean kind of guy. OK, anal retentive. But I clear out my Trash. So, today, I go to clear out the files in there and -- OOOPS. My trash won't empty.

Why?

"The operation cannot be completed because the item 'htm' is in use."

OK, look around everywhere...and, nope. A file "htm" is definitely not in use.

Open my Trash back up, and everything's still there.

OK, get under the covers a bit. Go into a Terminal window, and try using rm to delete the files. A little trouble finding where the files are (.Trash), but, OK, found them.

Nope.

Try again. Maybe I typed wrong.

Nope.

Go into the Console, see lots of errors in my Trash folder, tons of files that are locked and cannot be deleted.

...needless to say, 10 minutes ago is where I've left probably 80% of Mac users behind.

Go into the Terminal, change to my .Trash folder, and try again, using the various switches in the rm command, the rmdir command.

Nope.

At this point, my Unix command line knowledge is close to the edge, so I start googling.

Found this -- to remove all the files, you must use the "sudo" command.

Yep, that does it. All the files are gone. Finally.

Now, WHO THE FUCK is going to be able to do all that? HOW in the world does Micro$oft come out with a product that CANNOT BE DELETED? At least not by normal human beings. And because of this problem, none of the other files in the Trash could at all be deleted!

I put this on YOU Bill Gates. YOU are the cause of this!

Ugh, I cannot stand them.

They really, really, really do suck.

Here's the problem:

(ix) Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

The benchmark should be amended to read:

...who are not turning around and killing Americans.

For those without Times Select, some relevant clips:

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

...

Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, jumped into his Humvee to join his fellow soldiers, racing through abandoned Iraqi Army and police checkpoints to the battle site.

He and his squad maneuvered their Humvees through alleyways and side streets, firing back at an estimated 60 insurgents during a gun battle that raged for two and a half hours. A rocket-propelled grenade glanced off Sergeant O’Flarity’s Humvee, failing to penetrate.

When the battle was over, Delta Company learned that among the enemy dead were at least two Iraqi Army soldiers that American forces had helped train and arm.

How about a benchmark for that?

And it's not surprising this happens. We've known it would, for a long time:

Six in 10 Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, up from fewer than half in an earlier PIPA poll in January.

No benchmark for that either, is there?

What we should call this report, is exactly what it is:

Fixing the facts to fit the policy.

Josh Marshall pointed this out earlier, but didn't really get at the significance of that last paragraph:

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

This report is not much different from all the intel on WMD. The policy: We're Winning! So let's add "satisfactory" qualifiers to everything, to help make the case.

I wish someone other than me would point this out. Like maybe, the New York Times?

Unfortunately, the headline on their website right now reads:

"Report On Iraq Sees Progress"

All the news that's fit to print, I guess.

So I just heard on NPR's Talk Of The Nation a wonderfully entertaining segment about the science and sociology behind the five second rule, with the writer of a WaPo article on this subject.

Personally, I'm a big fan of this. Most anything goes. I follow many of the guidelines described in the interview: if it's expensive, or a cookie, I eat it. And it's true, Pop-Tarts can simply never get dirty.

But who knew there were social factors at play behind all this?

The purpose of the five-second rule is not to protect you from bacteria but from ridicule. It's shorthand for, "I know what I'm doing is gross, but citing this rule will allow me to eat this brownie and you to pretend there is justification for me eating this brownie." When invoked for someone else, it's an act of kindness: Go ahead. Eat it. I won't judge you.

..."It's basically a way to make socially acceptable something we all kind of know is wrong," says Liz, a 30-something Washingtonian who also deems eating fuzzy M&M's out of pockets "totally okay."

And not to leave out the biologists:

Consider the results of another recent study, conducted at Connecticut College. Unlike Dawson's study, which measured how quickly bacteria could slather itself on food, the Connecticut research measured the likelihood of the slathering. Two biology majors spent a week dropping Skittles and apple slices in their cafeteria and concluded that it took an average of 30 to 60 seconds for bacteria to form on the food.

So there you have it. Scientific proof, the 5 second rule works. I never doubted it for a second.

But I had to cringe at the last person interviewed in the article. Someone who worked at a movie theater, and ate Mike & Ikes off the floor.

To quote the WaPo: EEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

How about you?

What's the most disgusting thing you've eaten using the 5 second rule?

Did ya hear the Prez and the Press, yucking it up this morning in the new press room?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I did think you were going to ask me a question, yes. (Laughter.)

Q I am. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, maybe some other time.

Q Oh, but do you think you open --

THE PRESIDENT: See what I'm saying? (Laughter.)

Gee, I'm so surprised these journalists got everything about WMD wrong.

With friends like that, who needs a First Amendment?

Contrary to the common notion that AIDS funding in Africa is the bright spot in Bush's otherwise spectacularly-failed Presidency, it turns out that the emphasis on, you guessed it -- abstinence, has some potentially deadly consequences:

...a full two-thirds of the money for the prevention of the sexual spread of HIV goes to abstinence. What's left is targeted to groups considered high-risk. HIV-activists have spent the last two decades trying to show that condoms aren't just for prostitutes and the promiscuous; Bush has undone much of their work.

...PEPFAR funding has refashioned Uganda's anti-HIV campaign to fit the distorted notions of American conservatives (and their allies among Uganda's evangelical revivalists, who include First Lady Janet Museveni). "The policy is making people fearful to talk comprehensively about HIV, because they think if they do, they will miss funding," says Canon Gideon, an HIV-positive Anglican minister from Uganda who has been a leader in the clerical response to the epidemic. "Although they know the right things to say, they don't say them, because they fear that if you talk about condoms and other safe practices, you might not get access to this money."

Today, Uganda's infection rate is once again rising.

The issue of abstinence, this debate, is well-known to those of us here.

But in Africa, where the disease is much more pervasive, it seems that all measures should be taken to prevent the spread of HIV. Not just the ones some people find ideologically more pleasing.

Says Times:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them...inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Don't believe it for a second. This is the guy who's resolute, remember? Peek down to the bottom of the article -- 3 weeks until the Congressional summer recess.

3 weeks to tread H2O, and Prez is going to cave in on everything he's stood for over the last few years?

Really?