Gizmodo: george bush

"Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq": 22 Million Lost Bush White House Emails Recovered

Joel Johnson — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:40:49 EST

According to the AP, soon-to-be-heroic technicians have uncovered 22 million email messages from the George W. Bush administration—far more than the Bush White House said they'd lost in the first place.

That's a lot of emails—but not as much data as you might first think. Berkeley estimated in 2003 the average email size to be around 18,500 bytes. That's about 379 gigabytes of lost email, give or take a few Powerpoints attachments with slides missing in the "Find a reason to invade Iraq" section.

Mother Jones had details of the recovery process:

Restoration of missing emails promises to be the trickiest part of the settlement agreement. The White House first ran into archiving problems in 2003, but didn't begin to address the problem until October 2005. Only in the final days of the Bush administration did the White House begin working with contractors-including software giant Microsoft-to find missing messages.

Don't expect to see these for a while. The National Archives have to sift through the emails before they'll be released to the public. But expect a thousand Freedom of Information Act requests to let fly towards Washington in the meantime. [Telegram/AP]

The White House Website: Today Vs. When Bush Took Office

matt buchanan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:20:00 EST

Today has been loaded with little metaphors. Dick Cheney leaving in a wheelchair, for instance, but another amazing one is comparing the White House website today with what it looked like when Bush took office.

Comparing the two makes it perfectly clear just how much has changed since 2001, and what we hope will come tomorrow: Flash, blogs, bigger monitors and broadband internet.

Oh wait. Well, you know, some such optimism about our first-ever connected president, technology and the future, yadda yadda. [White House, Wayback Machine via PatrickMcConnel via 10000Words via Editorialiste]

George W. Bush Urinal Pees Tribute to the Last 8 Years

Sean Fallon — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:30:00 EDT

No matter who you are pulling for in this election, the popularity polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans are ready to see Bush pack up his things and get the hell out of the White House. While there is tons of anti-Bush paraphernalia out there, few things capture our disdain as well as "George W. Flush"—a design by famed urinal sculptor Clark Sorensen.

Unfortunately, this urinal is one of a kind, but it will be on display at his one-man show entitled "Down The Drain - The Legacy of George W. Bush." at Ruby's Clay Studio and Gallery in San Francisco. The show runs from January 17 to February 16, 2009. Hopefully, visitors will be allowed to relieve themselves in it. Let's be honest—it would be satisfying on multiple levels. [Clark Sorensen via InventorSpot]

Senate High-Fives Phone Companies for Spying on Americans

John Herrman — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:30:00 EDT

In a historic vote this afternoon, the Senate voted to amend the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) to expand the government's surveillance capabilities and provide retroactive immunity for phone companies who participated in the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping program. The margin of victory was wide, with 69 old people voting for and only 28 old people voting against the measure. The good news is that to register your concern about the bill all you have to do is pick up your phone and start talking. [NYT]

Colbert says Zune Ownership Proof You're Crazy

Benny Goldman — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:50:00 EDT

On last night's Colbert Report, Stephen gave advice to George Bush on how to go "completely nutball" so Sen. McCain can distance himself from the extremely unpopular president on the campaign trail. Not only did he tell Bush to wear a tinfoil jockstrap, he said the prez should buy a Zune. Really? Sure it's market share is 4%, but what about the new software? [Colbert Report]

Sugar-Powered Batteries: Hello to iPod and Frosties, Goodbye to Osama?

www.gizmodo.com — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:23:00 EDT

After long nights in the lab, probably fuelled by gallons of coke, researchers at Missouri's University of Saint Louis have come up with a sugar-powered fuel cell. The battery, that runs on anything from soft drinks to tree sap, has the potential to run up to four times as long on a single charge than conventional lithium ion batteries, as demonstrated by one of the boffins, who used a battery the size of a postage stamp to run a calculator.

If subsequent testing looks good, then we could be seeing commercialization within five years. But what really amazes me about this story is that the research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. I'm looking forward to hearing about how meringues will be used in the War on Terror, feeding up Al-Qaeda terrorists with sweet treats until they are too fat to fire an RPG. – Ad Dugdale