Monday, November 28, 2005

Great (free) Windows Apps


Here's a great overview of some top-tier Windows apps, most of which are free and anything but the resource hogs to which we've become accustomed. This list is good. Real good. It's like getting free popcorn and sodas at the movies.

Just in Time for Xmas


It's perfect for kids of all ages: the Playmobil Security Checkpoint! Air Marshals optional. Batteries sold separately. (Hat tip: Below the Beltway).

PGP for VoIP


It had to happen sometime: the mysterious 'they' are working on PGP encryption for voice-over-IP (VoIP). Skype -- possibly VoIP's competitor -- has always had integrated encryption. It's time some solid crypto made its way into VoIP. Don't vonage without it.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Theme day: a sour taste for the Democratic Party


It must be "theme day" here at the world headquarters of Doug Ross @ Journal, because we've found a recurring theme in several missives penned by prominent pundits:


The Pew Political Center's research is digested by Maggie Gallagher; some odd statistics come to the fore (commentary courtesy of EIB):

68% of Pro-Government Conservatives say they 'often can't make ends meet.' Yet 76% of them agree that 'most people can get ahead with hard work,' compared to 14% of Disadvantaged Democrats," who don't believe that. Does that not sum it up? Fourteen percent of disadvantaged Democrats -- only 14% of them -- believe that you can get ahead with hard work. That means what? That 86% of disadvantaged Democrats think work is worthless, that hard work is pointless.



The Washington Post, obviously not a mouthpiece for the right, reports bi-partisan polling finds that Democratic criticism of the war is hurting morale (smart-aleck remarks beginning with the word 'duh' omitted):

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale.



The American Spectator features Ben Stein's latest, which hopes for a day when the Democrats' Neville Chamberlain brigade will be in the distinct minority. It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult — especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.



Her fifteen minutes may be up.

Best Linux Desktop for Small Business?


The reviewers at ZDNet UK evaluated a range of Linux distros, looking for ease of deployment and management for desktops within a small business. The candidates: Redhat Desktop 4, Mandriva Linux 2006, Novell Linux Desktop 9, SUSE Linux 10, and... the winner, Ubuntu Linux 5.10. Bundled with the increasingly capable OpenOffice, Evolution (Exchange-compatible client), and GAIM (Instant messaging), Ubuntu is completely free.

Over at O'ReillyNet, Andy Oran calls attention to "another desperate attempt to discredit Masschusetts' OpenDocument adoption." OpenDocument is an open-standard file format (for office documents) that promises to bring better interoperability to the world of electronic docs.

And, in a related, server-side development, PHP 5.10 has just been released. The net-net? A litany of performance, date/time computation, and security improvements.

Patently Absurd


TotallyAbsurd has a great collection of outrageous patents. Check out the description and rationale for knee skates. Or the actuary's best friend, the Life Expectancy Watch.

Fun with Javascript and the Canvas tag


The Mozilla/Firefox, Safari and Opera browsers support a new tag called Canvas, which can be used to draw bitmaps. Abraham Joffe showcases a first-person shooting game implemented using the Canvas tag. It's enlightening that, even with its limited capabilities, the Canvas tag can provide this kind of capability.

No pain, no gain


The educators at DieselCrew explain the art of deadlifting in an easy-to-follow guide (hat tip: Bernie).

Saturday, November 26, 2005

What eBay shoulda been called


This old article indicates that eBay stands for "Echo Bay, California". And echobay.com would have been the name of the auction site... had it been available.

No news is good news when it comes to the economy


The stock market hit a half-decade high on Friday, despite a litany of hurricanes earlier in the year and a massive terrorist attack in 2001. Tigerhawk notes:

...the tradition at the New York Times of linking short term swings in the financial markets -- at least when they are negative -- to the policies of the Bush administration. On April 16, 2005, for example, the Times ran a front page story with the headline "Stocks plunge to lowest point since election," suggesting that it was the election that had something to do with the "plunge." We eagerly await the front page story with this headline: "Stocks soar to highest point since before September 11, 2001". We're fairly sure, however, that we won't see it in the Times.

It's all about the children (in Iran)


You've got to see these children's cartoons from Iran to believe 'em.

Al Qaeda and Iraq: what the Clinton administration said


Historical revisionism aside, Powerline links to Victor Davis Hanson's latest, which spells out the Clinton administration's viewpoint on Al Qaeda and Iraqi cooperation. Note: odds are, you won't see this in the the New York Times or CNN.

Victor Davis Hanson reviews some of the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. He also cites the Clinton Justice Department's 1998 indictment against bin Laden, which stated:

al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

The evidence pointed in the same direction in 2002, when Clinton-appointee George Tenet told the Senate:

We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade.

...If bin Laden could accept American assistance when he fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, it's difficult to see why he couldn't cooperate with Iraq in attacking U.S. interests... But the evidence doesn't matter to the administration's left-wing critics to whom the "no connection" theme is an article of faith.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Network Neutrality: Why it's a Big Deal


End of the Line : The Rise and Fall of AT&TImagine if the power company got to decide which devices would work with the plugs in your house. For example, say you could no longer recharge your iPod because Apple refused to pay the power company a "compatibility tariff". In other words, consider a world in which the power company literally decides which device and appliance manufacturers survive. Silly, right?

Maybe not. The nation's telecommunications laws are being rewritten and some telcos -- who generally control the "last mile" of Internet infrastructure -- want to dictate which Internet sites get preferential treatment and which go to the back of the bus.

Here's one scenario: the telcos upsell a "super high-quality" video streaming capability to Blockbuster for delivery of their content. Because Blockbuster ponied up, they get their packets delivered with QoS (quality-of-service) while Netflix suffices with "best effort" packet delivery. In other words, in addition to the "last mile" charges the telcos already hit consumers with, they could upsell preferential packet treatment to service operators.

Battle Lines are Drawn


On one side of the battle are technology companies, who argue that letting network operators favor certain types of services, while interfering with others, opens the door to all sorts of unsavory possibilities.

Remember: bandwidth is a limited resource. Every prioritized packet pushes aside another, "less important" packet. In addition to streaming video and audio, the telcos could theoretically have approved search engines (that return results faster), web-mail services, mapping systems, and the like. Thus, if you're a service operator of any kind, it's conceivable that -- in order to have acceptable performance -- you may have to pay the telco for the privilege.

"Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity," Vinton G. Cerf, a founding father of the Internet...


What's most worrisome is that -- while the nation's telecommunications laws are being revamped -- language prohibiting preferential treatment of network traffic has been removed.

On Nov. 2, another draft of the [telecommunication law changes] bill came out, with language specifically addressing the Internet video services that are proliferating as connection speeds increase and the phone companies get into the digital television business. In this draft, the prohibition on blocking or impeding content was gone.

The Potential for Abuse


The new FCC chairman is said to favor the concept of network neutrality, but not establishing its tenets as law. According to the Washington Post, that opens the system to all sorts of potential abuse:

...What if Internet service providers decide to provide lots of bandwidth to customers who buy their other services, such as cellular or voice-over-Internet telephony -- but less if the customer uses rival providers of those services?


I'm thinking of even worse possibilities: imagine Google, Yahoo and MSN run dirt-slow because they won't pay the "performance tariff"? And only, say, the telco's search-engine works acceptably.

Over time, one unsettling telco strategy might be: pick a vertical offering (say, video) and continually raise tariffs for acceptable performance... while building a competitive offering that simply performs better. In other words, the telcos -- and not the merits of the service providers -- would control who wins and who loses.

Maybe I'm just paranoid and these malevolent scenarios are all bunkum. The bottom line is that content providers deserve a level playing field when it comes to IP traffic.

If the telcos want a piece of the video, or search-engine, or web-mail business, they should invest in it and compete on a level playing field. Otherwise, they should do what they do best: slinging bits without regard to who owns them.

A better strategy for the telcos: put the consumer in charge


If the telcos put control of prioritization in the hands of consumers -- with a tiered pricing structure -- they can't lose. Consider a base Internet package that costs $29 a month with no QoS. If I want IPTV with QoS for superior quality, I pay a surcharge. And if I want higher quality voice-over-IP, I pay another surcharge.

In other words, the telcos need to put the consumer in control. A foreign concept for the telcos, to be sure, but one that -- for a change -- might be a winning one.

Washington Post: Renewed Warning of Bandwidth Hoarding

Update: In its battle with the telcos, Google may be lining up with Time Warner for VoIP. ZDnet has the scoop.

How to write unmaintainable code


Looking for job security in the burgeoning world of Information Technology? Worried that someone else will take over your application and improve it dramatically, making you look like a loser?

Well, stop worrying and order the How to Write Unmaintainable Code guide by Roedy Green... today! Just follow the detailed instructions in this easy-to-use guide and virtually guarantee yourself a lifetime of software maintenance opportunities!

Act now and we'll throw in this free Code Obfuscator that renders software virtually unreadable! Hurry, operators (and constructors) are standing by:

Buy a copy of a baby naming book and you'll never be at a loss for variable names. Fred is a wonderful name, and easy to type. If you're looking for easy-to-type variable names, try adsf or aoeu if you type with a DSK keyboard.

If you must use descriptive variable and function names, misspell them. By misspelling in some function and variable names, and spelling it correctly in others (such as SetPintleOpening SetPintalClosing) we effectively negate the use of grep or IDE search techniques. It works amazingly well. Add an international flavor by spelling tory or tori in different theatres/theaters.

Use acronyms to keep the code terse. Real men never define acronyms; they understand them genetically

Randomly capitalize the first letter of a syllable in the middle of a word. For example ComputeRasterHistoGram()


How To Write Unmaintainable Code

Secret Cheat Code in the new Lexus IS


From the sound of things, there may be an "easter egg" in the new Lexus IS. The IS electronic-traction-control system (called VDIM) can not be disabled using any sort of obvious switch. However:

1. (VDIM ON) As stated above, I set the parking brake and started the car. Pumped the brakes twice, set and reset the parking brake twice. I pumped the brakes twice more and the TRAC-OFF light came on the dash.

2. (VDIM OFF) From a stop, I turned right. I started slow but went to full throttle before I was fully into the turn. The RPMs went way up when it shifted to second and I felt I could hear the rear wheels losing traction, but it was not a "squeel".

3. (VDIM OFF) I found an emtpy parking lot. Stopped the car and turned the wheel all the way left. Went right to full throttle. The back end slid out and I did doughnuts. The wheels didnt "squeel", but the RPMs where up and the rear-end had 0 traction.


Autospies: Secret Cheat Code in the new Lexus IS

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Mediacrats: Proudly Undermining America Since 1968!


There are times when you read the first few lines of an op-ed column and you just know it's gonna be good . That applies to Richard Cohen's latest, which begins with a kiss and a promise of things to come:

"[T]he unhinged right wing has now invented the myth that Democratic members of Congress have called President Bush 'a liar' about Iraq. An extensive computer search by myself and a Post researcher can come up with no such accusation. That's prudent. After all, it's not clear if Bush lied about Iraq or was merely the 'useful idiot' of those who did. . .


That's the spirit! Terming the President an idiot during war-time certainly strikes me as supportive of the commander-in-chief and, by extension, the troops. But the central thesis of Cohen's rambling jaunt -- that no Democratic leaders called the President Bush a 'liar' -- is fascinating.

Let's use a brand-spanking new tool called "Google", which I've heard can help us research the assertions of off-the-deep-end mediacrats like Mapes, Cohen, Teepen, Pitts, and company.

Here's Ted Kennedy: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

Here's Harry Reid (D-NV): "We all know the Vice President's office was the nerve center of an operation designed to sell the war and discredit those who challenged it... The manipulation of intelligence to sell the war in Iraq... the Vice President is behind that."

Here's Dick Durbin (D-IL): "I seconded the motion Sen. Harry Reid made last week. Republicans in Congress have refused, despite repeated promises, to investigate the Bush administration's misuse of pre-war intelligence, so Senate Democrats are standing up and demanding the truth."

Here's Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): "The American people still want to know - now more than ever - why the United States went to war, whether they were misled, and whether our intelligence was misused."

And here's Bob Edgar (D-PA, ret) claiming he has proof Bush lied (great proof, too!).

And, as an added bonus, here's Ted Kennedy: "The Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America should never have fought."

Richard Cohen -- typical of the mediacrats, whose institutions are fading faster than my holiday tan -- is as intellectually bankrupt as they come. Not only has the entire Democratic leadership pounced on the "Bush lied" meme, they've done so proudly. That Cohen is too bull-headed or biased to see it is typical... but not surprising.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Party of Retreat


Unfit for CommandThe unequalled John O'Neill takes his stand against the surrender crew. Slake your thirst at the chalice of wisdom and read the whole thing.

The Democratic Party (notwithstanding its cynical expressions of concern for the same troops it periodically seeks to label as engaged in widespread crime) is regarded with intense distrust by many active duty and retired military personnel.They have been Kerried once too often. It was once the majority party that stopped the Nazis, Fascists, and North Koreans and that in words of a far different Kennedy summoned us “to fight any battle” for freedom.

Sadly, the party of Henry Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt has become the party of retreat — from the Iranian Hostage Crisis to the retreat from Mogadishu; to opposition to the 1991 Gulf War; to the failure to avenge the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole bombing or the murder of our own troops and embassy personnel around the world. Indeed, this past Thursday night, the nation watched the bizarre spectacle of a Democratic Party speaking in favor of immediate withdrawal but too afraid to even cast a vote recording for posterity these convictions. And the drift from American values to the party of Mr. Kerry and Michael Moore has been matched by its shrinking base.


In fact, it got so warm in the Capitol Building that people were standing behind Democrats just to catch the breeze from all the backpedaling.

Paul at Powerline adds:

...most elected Democrats fall into one of two categories -- those who don't wish to wage an agressive war against Islamofascist terrorists but vote for war anyway, and those who don't wish to wage such a war and who vote their conscience. The patriotism of the second group should not be questioned. But what are we to make of those who voted for a war they didn't believe in for the purpose of promoting their political career, and then, when the going gets tough, refuse to take responsibility for their vote?


What, indeed?

NY Sun, John O'Neill Op-Ed: Summer Soldiers

Monday, November 21, 2005

That Crazy, Whacky Mainstream Media (Part 480)


South Park Conservatives : The Revolt Against Liberal Media BiasLast week, when Michael Moore released an exclusive statement backing terrorism complaining about George W. Bush, he turned to -- who else? -- CNN:

[CNN's Anderson] Cooper hyped how “just moments ago Michael Moore released this statement exclusively to CNN.” With the text on screen, Cooper relayed the comment from the far-left filmmaker: “'Unfortunately, the President doesn't understand that it is mainstream middle America who has turned against him and his immoral war..." [ed: as evidenced by Bush's election victory just last year.]


Free Bonus Flashback! Just as a reminder whose side Moore is on, here's a blast from the not-so-distant past:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.

-- Michael Moore, April 14, 2004


Yes, I remember our patriots -- the Founding Fathers -- packing wagons with kegs of gunpowder, rolling them next to a church, and blowing the innocent worshippers to bits. Oh, and the beheadings! Every youngster's Revolutionary War textbook describes George Washington lopping off the head of an unfortunate Tory. After all, Zarqawi is only following the original G Dub's playbook, doncha know.

*Sigh* You would think the Mediacrats -- or at least their shareholders -- would have gotten the message by now:

CABLE NEWS RACE - WED NITE NOV 16 2005 - VIEWERS

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,851,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES 2,073,000
FNC GRETA 1,849,000
FNC SHEP 1,538,000
FNC BRIT 1,456,000
CNN KING 947,000
CNN COOPER 732,000
CNN ZAHN 698,000
CNN DOBBS 658,000
CNNHN GRACE 600,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 517,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 471,000
MNSBC RITA 469,000
MSNBC TUCKER 208,000
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH 336,000


Hmmm. I'm not real good at number-countin' and such, but it appears to me the #2 show on Fox, by itself, is beating every show on MSNBC put together. And the #1 show on Fox is very nearly beating all of CNN put together. I guess it's still a little too complex for the rocket-scientists running the networks to figure out, though.

With apologies to Norman Cousins, it seems to me the motto of the mainstream media is: if two wrongs don't make a right, try three or four.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Dove to Hawk to Dove


On 9/10/2001, most Democrats were doves. But by September 12 of that year, with the collapse of the twin towers, most had transformed themselves into hawks. A purple hailstorm of rage pulsed the landscape from coast to coast.

After the fall of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein was recognized as the predominant threat to regional stability. His "candystore for terrorists" and decades-long cat-and-mouse with weapons inspectors sealed his fate.

After a lightning-strike military operation, sons Uday and Qusay were dead and their father -- the modern amalgam of Hitler and Pol Pot -- was in prison. By 2005, despite an influx of terror drones slipped in from Syria and Iran and a cacaphony of IEDs, anyone could read the writing on the wall. Iraq was on the path to Democracy.

And the entire region was on its way to one of history's most dramatic transformations. Gusts of Democracy swept through Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Further political pressure mounted on the outliers still affiliated with the world's deadliest terror groups.

The Democratic party could read the tea leaves. Taking full political advantage, they joined in a chorus of their favorite devotional hymns, "We Were Mesmerized into War" and "We need an Exit Strategy." Let's not ask how W (maligned for years by the Left as laughably ignorant) hynotized the liberal elite. Instead, let's ask how gullible the Left thinks we -- the American public -- are. It would seem the answer is: laughably so.

And for our wishy-washy legislators on both sides of the aisle, Mark Steyn has a pretty good idea:

What does Rockefeller believe, really? I know what Bush believes: He thought Saddam should go in 2002 and today he's glad he's gone, as am I. I know what, say, Michael Moore believes: He wanted to leave Saddam in power in 2002, and today he thinks the "insurgents" are the Iraqi version of America's Minutemen.

But what do Rockefeller and Reid and Kerry believe deep down? That voting for the war seemed the politically expedient thing to do in 2002 but that they've since done the math and figured that pandering to the moveon.org crowd is where the big bucks are? If Bush is the new Hitler, these small hollow men are the equivalent of those grubby little Nazis whose whining defense was, "I was only obeying orders. I didn't really mean all that strutting tough-guy stuff." And, before they huff, "How dare you question my patriotism?", well, yes, I am questioning your patriotism -- because you're failing to meet the challenge of the times. Thanks to you, Iraq is a quagmire -- not in the Sunni Triangle, where U.S. armed forces are confident and effective, but on the home front, where soft-spined national legislators have turned the war into one almighty Linguini Triangle.


And on Powerline, Vietnam veteran Charles Kindt eviscerates the surrender mentality so prevalent in today's political discourse.

It's galling, is it not, when someone like Murtha, who, as did I, served in Vietnam when the Democrats did, IN FACT, make us cut and run, can now espouse the identical spineless, pant-wetting, humiliating, hollow and death-dealing tactic as then? What did Murtha say about the abandonment of the South Vietnamese?

No doubt, if we did as they loudly advocate, and Iraq returned to what they now see as "the good old days," they would be the first to scream "Bush Lost The War!" Seems to me that they were among the first, and the most strident, to criticize George H.W. Bush for not pressing the advantage during the first Gulf War, and remove Sadaam.

Simply because Murtha, or any others of us, served in the military, does not make any of us somehow prescient or wonderfully wise about all things military. However, even the most brain-dead leftist should be able to read a one paragraph historical account of what actually happens when you "cut and run," and come away with a vague sense of the consequences.

Then again, integrity, honesty and character are not items that can be used to describe today's left.


The party of FDR, Truman, and JFK has disappeared from the face of the Earth, perhaps never to be seen again. The current Democratic leadership, willing to transmogrify itself from Dove to Hawk and back to Dove again, are inexorably bound to a course of political expediency, no matter the cost to the United States.

Then again, when your grassroots support is minimal compared to the succor offered by George Soros and posse, it's really no surprise at all. There are about 23 million reasons why the party is addicted to Soros. But who knows where the financier's true loyalties lie? Unfortunately, that's a question that also must be asked of the Democratic leadership, who are now beholden to the treasures of a rogue currency trader and his ilk.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

An Enchanting Toad of a Man


Death at ChappaquiddickTed Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Clearly this Democrat "leadership" is willing to turn our national-security interests into political fodder by accusing the President of the United States of lying us into a war. Problem is, the President had no political motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom -- only a legitimate desire to fulfill the highest obligation of his office: that of defending our liberty against all threats.

Ted, Dick and Harry, on the other hand, have plenty of political motivation for their perfidy -- and they've placed America's uniformed Patriots in the crossfire.


Ted Kennedy is an enchanting toad of a man, who -- had he not existed -- could scarcely be imagined.

Mark Alexander: Call them what they are
Hat tip: Helen Hayes and S.N. Behrman