Friday, April 08, 2005

Moonbats on Parade



Click here for AmazonThe irreplaceable LGF points us to ZombieTime's photo coverage of the Eyes Wide Open Anti-War Display, which occurred in San Francisco on March 25. The accompanying picture, which purported to illustrate the number of "Iraqi civilian" deaths is indicative of the lot:

So -- am I hard-hearted? What's wrong with mourning the "civilians"? As I looked at the placards honoring the Iraqis, it occurred to me that the vast majority were adult men. Hmmmm -- why would this be the case? Perhaps because most of them were combatants? While there undoubtedly have been innocent victims of the war (and yes, each of those deaths is a tragedy), not every single Iraqi who died was a "civilian," as the AFSC would want us to believe...

...I'd estimate 75% at least -- of the casualties were (in order, from the start of the war) soldiers in Saddam Hussein's army, Republican Guard troops, Ba'athist "insurgents," Sunni militia members, foreign jihadis, and all manner of thugs, fanatics and killers.

In other words, the enemy. Terrorists. The American military has gone to extremes to minimize civilian casualties, and the vast majority of the time if someone was killed by U.S. forces, that person was killed while actively engaged in the battle to kill Americans.


And be sure to scroll down to the last photo, where you'll find a clue as to the true agenda of the Left Bank Moonbats.

ZombieTime: Eyes Wide Open Anti-War Display
 

Thursday, April 07, 2005

The AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning Photos



Click here for AmazonThe Cassandra Page posted a very popular blog entry entitled, "The Top 10 categories of MSM/DNC bias" on April 2nd. With excellent linkage to real (and, often, nearly unbelievable) incidents, it quickly became one of the most popular blog entries in the last few weeks. Well, it's now up to 20 categories... and counting. Read the whole thing.

I bring the Cassandra post up because of the recent Pulitzer Prize awards. Twenty news photos from the AP received awards.

Riding Sun (hat tip: LGF) and the Jawa Report have examined all of the photos... and what they found was more disturbing than the concept of "Governor Gary Coleman".

I looked at the twenty photographs and broke them into groups on the basis of content. Here are my results:

*U.S. troops injured, dead, or mourning: 3 (2, 3, 11)
* Iraqi civillians harmed by the war: 7 (4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 18)
* Insurgents looking determined or deadly: 3 (6, 15, 20)
* US troops looking overwhelmed or uncertain: 3 (7, 12, 14)
* US troops controlling Iraqi prisoners: 2 (16, 17)
* Iraqis celebrating attacks on US forces: 2 (1, 19)

Equally telling is what the photos don’t show:

* US forces looking heroic: 0
* US forces helping Iraqi civillians: 0
* Iraqis expressing support for US forces: 0
* Iraqis expressing opposition to insurgents: 0


After analysis, Jawa states, " two... photos clearly show that the AP has ties to terrorists and insurgents fighting the U.S." The accompanying photo is a case-in-point. The AP just happened to be there when insurgents dragged some civilian innocents out of a vehicle and capped them in the middle of a busy road.

The AP - collaborating with the enemy? Who'da thunk it?

Riding Sun: Analyzing the AP's Pulitzer-prize-winning Photos
 

Bruce Schneier on the Publicity surrounding Quantum Cryptography



Click here for AmazonIn an era where endpoint security (i.e., what is running on my workstation?) is the Achilles' Heel of network security, the PR around quantum cryptography is, uhm, somewhat disturbing.

Bruce Schneier said it best:

Security is only as strong as its weakest link and cryptography is the best link we have... I break a lot of things for a living, but I almost never break the crypto.


Forbes: Building a hacker-proof network
 

Bench Press



Click here for AmazonFunny comment on Pete's blog regarding bench-press accidents (along with a link to a pretty scary drop of an 800-pound bench):

If you find me crushed to death by the weights, put a few more plates on before you get help.


Exactly. And take a few pictures. At least the farewell comments of the mourners would be, "damn, I didn't know he could bench 500!".

Pete also referenced my own frightening experience of benching while failing to use a spotter. That won't happen again.
 

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

The Wharton School on the Future of Blogging



Click here for AmazonI haven't read something quite as disappointing as the Wharton School's analysis of the "Future of Blogging" in some time.

The article's omissions -- whether through sheer inexperience with the blogosphere or willful neglect -- are almost shameful. The following are some excerpts that caught my eye - my comments are in bold.

"This is not a fad. It's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals." --Dan Hunter, Wharton legal studies professor

True, but I'd hardly term articles by Powerline's three high-powered attorneys, 'amateur content'. In most cases, bloggers like Hugh Hewitt and Powerline offer superior investigative, organizational, and writing skills -- along with advanced knowledge of the legal system. Contrast that sort of experience with, say, that of an AP stringer... and while there's a mismatch between amateur and professional - it's not the one that Wharton intended to highlight.

...In the future, Fader says, a technology may be created to rate credible bloggers. The system, which would operate like eBay's buyer and seller ratings, could create a blogger pecking order based on readers' opinions...

Uhmmm, well, there already are blogosphere rankings like TTLB's Blogosphere Ecosystem. And Technorati has been tracking blog popularity through link relationships for quite some time. Either system can be used to rate credibility.

...investigative journalism will still be the hallmark of the media. "First-hand reporting will be the distinction between blogging and journalism," Hunter adds.

You must be joking. Investigative journalism like Rathergate and the Eason Jordan affair? Or first-hand reporting from the frontlines of Democracy in Iraq or the tsunami-devastated towns of Banda Aceh and Phuket?

Bloggers do firsthand and investigative journalism better than the MSM - because bloggers are everywhere... and their credibility is at stake with every story, due to the inherently self-correcting nature of the blogosphere.


While corporations can chalk up blogging as a marketing expense, the story is a little different for individuals. Can blogging pay the bills? If you are lucky, you can pay the hosting fees, but that's about it, say Wharton experts.

Uhmm, better get some new experts. The major blogs are making serious coin. Drudge is reported to have made millions in advertising revenue from his site. Using the blogosphere's leading ad network, Blogads, I've calculated some ballpark revenues for the following sites:

$6000/week - Daily Kos
$4000/week - Instapundit
$4000/week - Eschaton
$3750/week - Little Green Footballs
$3000/week - Talking Points Memo
$1800/week - Hugh Hewitt
$1600/week - Wonkette

Of course, this doesn't count their ad revenue from GoogleAds, associates' revenue from Amazon, and other ad networks. So, even in my brief survey, there is some ca-ching occurring on the major blog sites.


The article was passably interesting, but certainly did not appear to have a good handle on the evolution of the blogosphere. In fact, if I said, "Haloscan" to the unnamed authors, I'm betting I'd get a "huh?" in return.

A disappointing effort, especially given the Wharton's School's excellent track record.

News.com: Wharton on the Future of Blogging
 

The Future of Pay-per-Click



Excel-web sharingIn a story that hasn't seen wide publicity, Google and Yahoo News have been sued by an online gift shop for allegedly overcharging on "pay-per-click" (PPC) advertising.

Lane's Gifts and Collectibles says in a Miller County lawsuit that the Internet companies charged it for advertising traffic not generated by bona fide customers... Lane's alleges a conspiracy in which the companies worked with one another to create an online environment that harms advertisers.

The companies, it says, "have grown the Internet PPC (pay per click) advertising market while failing to disclose that they have routinely and systematically overcharged and-or overcollected for PPC advertising revenue from their customers."


In the past, Google and Yahoo have both disclosed the risk of fraudulent click-throughs. After all, who can guarantee that someone clicking on your ad isn't your competitor (trying to drive your costs up) or a bot of some kind?

Here's another real risk I haven't seen publicized: distributed zombie attacks on the PPC model and specific customers.

If the crooks controlling zombie networks so decided, they could easily blow up the PPC market by randomly clicking on advertisements -- thousands a minute. It would be extremely difficult for the ad networks to detect and then shield advertisers from the effects of random, distributed source IP addresses.

Or the zombie networks could target a specific advertiser by driving up their specific CPC costs.

Either way, the CPC business could get ugly quick.
 

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Software Development Best Practices: Minimizing Nesting



Click here for AmazonI'm going to spend a little time blogging about my personal software development best practices. These posts will come in no particular order, but will outline the rules I like to follow when developing software. Reliability, maintainability and simplicity are my personal mantras for development.

Minimizing Nesting



Unncessary nesting is, if not evil, pretty darn annoying. Whenever possible, developers should strive to minimize nesting. Why? Let's say I have the following code:

//
void CEventHandler::OnNew(const CString& strFileName) {
  //
  CString      strName = CleanFilename(strFileName);
  CString      strLog;
  //
  do {

    //  File-type valid? If not, quit.
    //
    if (!IsFileTypeValid(strName)) {
      break;
    }


    //  Mark file as added.
    //
    m_pPage->m_mapFileClassification.SetAt(strName, (LPVOID) XMP_FILE_ADD);
    m_pPage->ScheduleRefresh();

    //  Event handling.
    //
    strLog.Format("Added: '%s%s'", m_pPage->m_strPath, strName);
    if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwEvents & CFolderSettings::FileCreated) != 0) {
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionLog) != 0) {
        Log(strLog);
      }
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionRoute) != 0) {
        m_pPage->ScheduleRoute();
      }
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionEmail) != 0) {
        m_pPage->ScheduleEmail();
      }
    }

  //
  } while (0);
}


Note that I could have made the IsFileType a nested IF clause: if the file type is valid, then do all the rest of the stuff. But I didn't. Because (and this really happened), I later realized that it was in the wrong place. The file-type validity check needed to occur after the scheduled (display) refresh embodied by ScheduleRefresh. So I simply moved those lines of code:

//
void CEventHandler::OnNew(const CString& strFileName) {
  //
  CString      strName = CleanFilename(strFileName);
  CString      strLog;
  //
  do {

    //  Mark file as added.
    //
    m_pPage->m_mapFileClassification.SetAt(strName, (LPVOID) XMP_FILE_ADD);
    m_pPage->ScheduleRefresh();

    //  File-type valid? If not, quit.
    //
    if (!IsFileTypeValid(strName)) {
      break;
    }


    //  Event handling.
    //
    strLog.Format("Added: '%s%s'", m_pPage->m_strPath, strName);
    if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwEvents & CFolderSettings::FileCreated) != 0) {
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionLog) != 0) {
        Log(strLog);
      }
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionRoute) != 0) {
        m_pPage->ScheduleRoute();
      }
      if ((m_pPage->m_folderSettings.m_dwActions & CFolderSettings::ActionEmail) != 0) {
        m_pPage->ScheduleEmail();
      }
    }

  //
  } while (0);
}


Now, if I'd originally nested the IF, I'd have to move a bunch more code around... shifting a lot of indentation... and, in general, opening the door to possible errors.

Minimizing nesting greatly aids readability and, thus, maintainability. Whenever possible, bail out of logic (break, throw an exception, whatever floats your boat) when you can cleanly exit a method or function. Don't nest when you don't have to.
 

Monday, April 04, 2005

A Mission for the Cybersecurity Foks at DHS?



Click here for AmazonIf the cyber-security folks at the Department of Homeland Security are looking for something important to work on, I have an idea:

How about handling identity management for the citizenry?

Because, as Bruce Schneier says, the social-security number -- a relatively short and easily guessed identifier -- shouldn't be the keystone to a person's identity.

And after the various identity-theft debacles at ChoicePoint, Harvard, Lexis, et. al., DHS could fill the void by providing a conceptually simple system for managing personal identity.

Here's the gist of the idea: DHS would create and maintain a web-site that would be used to manage and verify identity. Call it id.dhs.gov or something.

To create an individual account, a user would pick a 'handle' and a PIN, password, or pass-phrase. Upon account creation, an individual could verify their identity using the same sort of "shared secret" approach that the IRS employs when you e-File.

From the individual citizen's standpoint, the id.dhs.gov site exists to generate unique identifiers that not only designate individual identity, but are also tied to a specific merchant.

For example, say I fill out a credit application with Infiniti to finance a vehicle. Beforehand, I visit the id.dhs.gov site, login, lookup the merchant ("Infiniti Financial Services/IFS") and generate my unique identifier for IFS, which just appears to be a random bunch of alphanumeric characters. This ID is unique for me and is only useful to IFS, since it's tied to the IFS merchant account.

Thus, when IFS goes to look me up and perform a credit-check with Equifax, they would use DHS as a go-between.

DHS would provide web services to merchants to allow, say, Infiniti to go to EquiFax and ask for information on the ID I've given them. The DHS web service would broker the conversation between IFS and Equifax, translating my IFS ID to an equivalent Equifax ID that corresponds to my identity.

So instead or storing SSNs, Equifax, IFS and the other vendors now store DHS IDs. A DHS ID for an individual is different for each merchant.

Thus, if my IFS ID gets disclosed to some unauthorized third-party, I don't care. What can they do with it? Without the help of a DHS merchant, not a whole heck of a lot.

Yes, it requires some DHS integration with the IRS. But if the idea is to enventually rid the world of SSNs, then a DHS-based identity management web site -- and attendant web services -- may make a heck of a lot of sense.
 

Pretty is as Pretty does



Click here for AmazonI saw an interesting blurb in Software Development Magazine in which developer John Elrick espouses the benefits of comment-free code. His sidebar article, a response to Christopher Seiwald's "Pillars of Pretty Code" posits that comment blocks are "crutches"; especially when compared to short, cryptic variable names that could be longer and more explanatory.

He provides sample code to illustrate his point.

Status uNlinkRec(Record **listHead, Record *const recordToRemove) {
  Record *currentRecord, *previousRecord = NULL;
  previousRecord = *listHead;
  for (currentRecord = *listHead; currentRecord; currentRecord = currentRecord->next) {
    if (currentRecord == recordToRemove) {
      previousRecord->next = currentRecord->next;
      currentRecord->next = NULL;
      return OK;
    }
    previousRecord = currentRecord;
  }
  return ERR;
}


I don't have a problem with developers omitting comment blocks (occasionally). First off, I would agree with John that effusive variable names should be required... especially in any language (C, C++, Java) that doesn't incur any performance penalty for long names (another reason fast typing makes a difference! Slow typists are usually loathe to use long variable names... :-).

But there is no question that, under most circumstances, comment blocks help! Few code snippets exist in sanitized, easily digestible modules like the one John used, above. Consider the following production code:

  //  Does first JPG chart exist and is up-to-date? If not,
  //    write a new one.
  //
  bXLS = FALSE;
  if (fileFind.FindFile(strFile)) {
    fileFind.FindNextFile();
    fileFind.GetLastWriteTime(timeXLS);
    bXLS = TRUE;
  }
  bHTM = FALSE;
  strFileOut = strFilePrefix + "1.jpg";
  if (fileFind.FindFile(strFileOut)) {
    fileFind.FindNextFile();
    fileFind.GetLastWriteTime(timeHTM);
    bHTM = TRUE;
  }
  //
  if (bFreshUpdate) {
    bGenerateCharts = TRUE;
  } else if (!(bXLS && bHTM && timeHTM >= timeXLS)) {
    bGenerateCharts = TRUE;
  }


Without the comment block, it would require some analysis on the part of the reader to figure out what was going on: in this case, the system is trying to determine whether a JPEG chart exists and is up-to-date (if not, a new one must be generated).

Variables that are long and descriptive are always preferred over short, cryptic names. But comment blocks should also be used whenever there's any doubt of the intent of the code.
 

Sunday, April 03, 2005

The Amazon/Blogger Toolbar



Click here for AmazonThere's one thing that's been bugging me about being an Amazon "Associate". It would be nice to have a little browser-add-in -- a toolbar -- that would make it easy to blog about specific products.

Say I want to mention a DVD or a book. The toolbar would automagically detect the mention and create the correctly HTML, hyperlink and image tags included. By right-clicking on my blogger text box, I could paste the HTML into my blog post. And it would include my Associates URL encoding so I get credit for any click-throughs.

The folks at Meatme have a simple (5K) Amazon toolbar:



but it's not quite what I need as a blogger. One of these days maybe I'll get around to creating one.
 

Friday, April 01, 2005

Sandy Berger's Plea



Click here for AmazonLorie Byrd of PoliPundit reprised a post that she originally wrote just before the '04 Democratic National Convention, regarding Sandy Berger and his self-admitted theft and destruction of classified documents. Anticipating that the media would casually ignore the Berger story, given the impending convention, she wrote:

If the former National Security Advisor has such disregard for the integrity of documents and the rules and laws pertaining to their treatment, what can be said for his regard for the security of the nation and the safety those rules applying to classified documents protects? And what can be said about that former NSA’s boss who regards the entire matter as a joke? I think we can rightly conclude that for many in that administration, that is exactly what national security was – a joke.


Powerline's Hindrocket adds:

It is undisputed that Berger illegally stuffed original documents relating to America's response to the threat of Islamic terrorism into his coat, pants and briefcase. Berger then destroyed a number of these top-secret documents, so that they will never see the light of day. The idea that this was "an honest mistake," as Berger now claims, is ridiculous. Obviously, he was trying to destroy documents that showed the negligence of the Clinton administration--of which he was a key member--in dealing with the threat of terrorism. Key documents relating to our government's inadequate reaction to the threat of Islamic terrorism prior to Sept. 11 are now gone forever, successfully purged from the historical record by one of Bill Clinton's most loyal servants. This plea bargain appears, on its face, to be a disgrace.


Disgrace, indeed. And, it appears the Clinton administration, once again, got away with it.

Click here for AmazonHaving carefully read Buzz Patterson's Dereliction of Duty, an unimpeachable (no pun intended) eyewitness account of the Clinton administration's egregious disregard of national security, the entire Berger affair simply piles more offal on a stinking dungheap of failures. Certainly the administrations of Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 had their security gaffes: the cut-and-run tactics of the Beirut barracks bombing, for instance.

But the Clinton administration's history of obfuscation, evasion of decision-making responsibilities, dismantling of military and intelligence capabilities, and so forth -- ad nauseum -- forces us to contemplate an ominous future in the event that Hillary were to win the '08 election.

PoliPundit's Lori Byrd: Berger Flashback
 

Those Annoying Newspaper Logins



Click here for AmazonThose who use the Google News site on a regular basis confront this scourge on a regular basis:

Useless newspaper registrations

Yes, they're more annoying than the guy down the hall who does that sh*tty Yoda impression and thinks it's funny.

As if we need another user-name and password combination to remember. Especially a credential-set that delivers us nothing. Not security -- we don't care about the site, we just want to read the article. Not privacy -- again, we just want the content.

Thankfully, the folks at BugMeNot saw the opportunity to provide similarly disgusted users with newspaper-site credentials. Just enter the URL you want to visit and *voila* - a user-name and password, already pre-registered, will appear.

The sooner the newspaper sites come up with effective, non-intrusive ways to profile their audience, the better. But, given the fact that this is the mainstream media we're talking about, I'm not hopeful that they'll get it anytime soon.

BugMeNot: Ridding the world of annoying, useless passwords
 

The JavaScript behind Google Maps



Click here for AmazonIf you're interested in examining the JavaScript used by GoogleMaps, the LibGmail folks -- who broke down the GMail interface have provided an excellent cross-reference. In addition, they've de-obfuscated Google's code to make it easier to read.

Be warned: it some serious Ajaznix: Google Maps Classes and Functions References
 

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Writing a Get Well Letter to the Pope



Click here for AmazonIf you've ever wanted to write a "get well" letter to the Pope, now is probably a good time. The proper greeting in a letter is "Most Holy Father" and the mailing address is:

His Holiness, the Pope
Vatican City
Rome, Italy


The Pope's courageous stand against Communism is especially worthy of mention in light of Ronald Reagan's passing. In fact, his pitched battle against the Soviet leadership earned him a bullet from an assassin.

On October 16, 1978, at age 58, he succeeded Pope John Paul I, fulfilling a prophecy made to him decades earlier by Padre Pio that he would become Pope. The monk also had a darker prediction to make: that Wojtyla's reign would be short and end in blood.

On May 13, 1981, that prediction nearly came true. Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish Muslim, shot and came very close to killing the Pope in St. Peter's Square. Documents released this year indicate that the Soviet hierarchy ordered the assassination in response to the Pope's tireless battles against Communism.

According to the documents, the KGB and the East German State Police -- the dreaded Stasi -- contracted with Bulgarian operatives in Rome to perform the assassination. The Bulgarians, in turn, subcontracted with radical Turkish groups that ended up unleashing Agca.*

On December 27, 1983, John Paul went to Agca's prison and met the man who had attempted to kill him. The men spoke in private and the nature of their conversation has never been revealed.

In more than 100 trips abroad, the Pope has attracted enormous crowds and traveled a greater distance than all other Popes combined. Possessed of great physical courage and stamina, his efforts at peacemaking and bridge-building between religions have been truly remarkable.

BrainBank: Spoken and Written Forms of Address

*In 1987, author AJ Quinnell wrote a fictional account of the Pope's assassination entitled In the Name of the Father. In light of the recently released documents, it is well worth reading.
 

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Our Top Story: Hitler Still Dead



Click here for AmazonThe indispensible Best of the Web points us to this startling headline:

Harvard Study: Hitler Held Grudges, Craved Attention


Now that's what I call a hot news flash.

In any event, the article describes a detailed psychological profile of Hitler commissioned by the OSS in 1943. The article reports:

The rare 1943 document was among the papers discovered in Cornell University Law School's collection from the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

The psychological profile of the Nazi dictator is now available on the law library's Web site.

The report said that if Germany were to lose the war, Hitler might kill himself. Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in late April 1945.


The interesting thing is that I recall reading this report years ago. It was in book form, probably published in the late 1940's or early 1950's and was titled, I think, "The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report".

There are some interesting tidbits in the report. While there is a prediction that Hitler would commit suicide, the recommendation for postwar treatment of Hitler is fascinating. The primary goal of the treatment was to prevent a living Hitler from becoming a cause celebre or some sort of martyred symbol of persecution:

...1. (a) Bring the Nazi leaders to trial; condemn the chief culprits [to] death, but proclaim Hitler mentally unbalanced.
1. (b) Commit Hitler to an insane asylum (such as St. Elizabeth's, Washington, D.C.) and house him in a comfortable dwelling specially built for his occupancy. Let the world know he is being well treated.
1. (c) ...Unknown to him, have sound-films taken of his behavior. This will show his fits and tirades... of everyone in the world, including the German people.
1. (d) Exhibit regularly to the public... selected segments of these sound-reels, so that it can be seen how unbalanced he is, how mediocre his performance on the customary tests...


Update: the book is still for sale, and I just found it on Amazon. I would have to read the Harvard study in more depth, but at first glance, it would appear these two have markedly similar content.

The study is available on the Cornell Law School web site.
 

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The UN wants to run the Internet



Click here for AmazonHere's something so sick it's almost laughable: the UN wants to run the Internet. Oh, they won't come out and just say exactly that, but a recent interview with the ITU's Houlin Zhao made it crystal clear what the UN is after.

Quick refresher: ITU stands for the International Telecommunication Union and it's an agency of the UN. Here's Mr. Zhao:

Today the management by ICANN (is something that) people consider to be management by the United States, by one government. People definitely want to see some changes. I think everyone would agree that a better arrangement is something that we're looking for.


Bzzzzzt!! Wrong answer! Now I know the UN has had a stellar year, what with:

  • The Oil-for-Food Scandal that ripped off, oh, about $10 billion for Saddam and his buddies (and we all know who they were). Not to mention some untoward payments to UN head Kofi Annan's son Kojo

  • The Sex Scandal in which women and children in the Congo were reportedly raped by UN "Peacekeepers"

  • Oh, wait, I forgot about the other sex scandal in which different UN "Peacekeepers" were linked to separate sex crimes in East Timor as well as prostitution in Cambodia and Kosovo

  • And that's just the recent stuff that's come to light despite the UN's incessant stonewalling.

    From the head down, the UN appears to be rotten with corruption and, as an added bonus, populated with predatory animals possessing no more conscience than John Wayne Gacy.

    News.com's Declan McCullagh, who is usually a steller observer of the technology scene, didn't ask Mr. Zhao the key question:

    What in the name of Kojo Annan would possess anyone with a lick of sense to give the UN the keys to the Internet?


    Brief history lesson: the US invented the frigging Internet. It was funded by US taxpayers through DARPA and matured as an artifact of the US military. Don't like it? Invent your own damn Internet.

    Sure, the UN are just the folks I want running the Internet. Hey Kofi: here's a dollar - go buy yourself a big tall glass of shut-up juice. Or, better yet, resign.

    From News.com: Interview with Houlin Zhao and from ISOC: Brief History of the Internet

    Update 10/2/05: Wizbang Blog
     

    Farmer Burns



    Click here for AmazonFarmer Burns was a legendary wrestler who made his name during the turn of the century. His record was a reported 6000+ victories against only seven losses. He won the world wrestling title on several occasions including a victory over the much-feared "Strangler" Lewis.

    The reason I bring up Burns? Combat conditioning guru Matt Furey has resurrected the Burns' legend in the context of bodyweight conditioning. As a longtime lifter with more injuries than I care to recount, I've become fascinated with using bodyweight exercises as an alternative to resistance training solely with iron.

    Ever heard of Hindu pushups? Hindu squats? Divebomber pushups? Wall-walking? Reverse press-ups? Bearcrawls? Furey covers all of these in his (relatively expensive) courses. But there are also a variety of free resources on the web to learn the basics.

    Among other things, Furey sells Burns' original conditioning and wrestling course. But it's also available free, online, courtesy of the folks at SandowPlus. When it was introduced in the early 20th century, the course cost the equivalent of several hundreds of dollars (at least). And it was quite popular, due to its useful illustrations (groundbreaking for their time) and practical advice.

    SandowPlus: Farmer Burns
     

    Simple AJAX



    Click here for AmazonIf you're wondering how Google pulled off their impressive Gmail user-interface, or why their mapping site is so freaking cool, then look no further than "AJAX".

    AJAX stands for "Asynchronous JAvascript + XML", the latter of which is used to transport messages between client and server without having to refresh the entire web page.

    In February, XML.com's Drew McLellan wrote an excellent overview of Ajax called "Very Dynamic Web Interfaces". His article, probably more than any other, introduced the tenets of Ajax to a wide audience.

    Better still, the folks at ModernMethod have introduced SAJAX, one of the best compact libraries I've seen for simplifying an AJAX implementation. If you write in PHP, Perl, Python, or Ruby, SAJAX is a great jumpstart on your first dynamic web app.

    Check it out: SAJAX.
     

    Google and Urchin



    Click here for AmazonThe folks at Google have decided to buy Urchin, the web analytics firm. Urchin provides both hosted and shrink-wrapped solutions for analyzing web site traffic. Urchin has some monster customers including (according to their site), P&G, NBC, SBC, EDS, and lots of other three-letter acronyms.

    What's it mean?

    If you operate a commercial web site, Google intends to provide you with all of the infrastructure you need to be successful. Google's AdWords campaign managment application drives traffic to your site. Urchin will help you analyze that traffic to improve ROI. Google's AdSense helps you generate revenue from that traffic, aside from any other revenue you may be earning from your core business.

    What's next?

    My guess is that Google will be entering the hosting business in a big way. Google's Blogger is already a free, lightweight hosting solution. Expect more heavyweight (fee-based) hosting solutions using Google's outrageously scalable infrastructure, coming soon to a web site near you.
     

    Monday, March 28, 2005

    You put the balm on?



    Click here for AmazonI think you may have heard about the woman who was eating chili at Wendy's and bit into something hard. She spit it out... and it turned out to be a human finger. The stories imply that vomiting quickly ensued, followed by a projectile apology by Wendy's.

    Of course, a lawsuit is more certain than William Hung getting shut out of a Grammy nomination.

    I can so envision a Seinfeld episode with Jackie Chiles ("you put the balm on?") representing Elaine.

    And a patriotic Kramer attempting to wrangle a business deal out of the debacle by harping on the protein benefits of human digits... and appealing to New Yorkers' patriotism by calling them "freedom fingers".