Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Void left at WaPo befits Richard Cohen's Legacy


The sardonic Mediacratic punchline known as Richard Cohen cracked wise again this week with a new comedic gem: "Void left at ground zero befits Bush legacy". I'll save you the effort of reading Cohen's latest humorous excretion; here's a thorough and complete synopsis in only four bullet points:

1) Osama still loose.
2) Rummy* bad.
3) Bush legacy: Osama still loose.
4) Bush bad.

*An official requirement of the job for any Far Left Op-Ed columnist is to continually refer to SecDef Rumsfeld as "Rummy"

Cohen's comedic genius is evident precisely by what he doesn't say. Imagine an op-ed piece about a Presidential Legacy and Osama Bin Laden without mentioning Bill Clinton! The first WTC attack... the total of eight Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. under Clinton's watch... the AQ recruiting poster represented by Mogadishu... the vicious rise of extremist terror... leaving the aggregate mess for President Bush represented by the worst attacks in U.S. history... and it's all Bush's legacy!

And talk about Bush's legacy: knocking terrorist cells for a loop... taking the war directly to the crossroads of terrorism... preventing a repeat attack (against all odds)... destroying the Clinton-era AQ Kahn nuclear parts network... bringing Libya back from the brink without a shot fired... setting the stage for a real long-term solution to the Middle East's malignant problems by promoting democracy... in other words, the possibility of a Reagan-esque legacy for George W. Bush (and, yes, Cohen was completely wrong about Reagan as well).

So Cohen's droppings regarding the Bush legacy omit the two key related concepts: that of Clinton's treatment of terrorism as a trifling law-enforcement problem; and Bush's aggressive pursuit of a war on terror and Democracy-building on a historical scale (and an approach, mind you, where no plausible alternatives other than shrieking, "Retreat! And bury our heads in the sand and hope terrorism goes away!" have been proposed by the Democratic party).

And that's precisely what Cohen pulls off... it's comedy gold, Richard, gold!

How else to interpret Cohen's meanderings other than as comedy? For if it's not satire, one could only interpret these droppings as the bitter echoes of a Democratic Party press release. And I'm just not jaded enough to interpret it that way.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

"Addled Al" (Gore) goes 'round the bend


In last week's Journal, Al Gore publicly humiliated himself with an op-ed entitled, "For People and Planet." In it, Gore demonstrates that he is sufficiently disconnected from the real world that the title of the article could easily have been "Al Gore - Unplugged". The undercurrent of the tome threatens businesses in a fairly direct way:

"License to operate" can no longer be taken for granted by business as challenges such as climate change, HIV/AIDS, water scarcity and poverty have reached a point where civil society is demanding a response from business and government.


Just how a consulting firm, the local GNC franchise, and a one-man plumbing shop can impact climate change and HIV/AIDS is left unsaid. No matter, Gore wants (yes, you guessed it) all businesses, large and small, to pay additional taxes for the privilege of operating:

The "polluter pays" principle is just one example of how companies can be held accountable for the full costs of doing business.


The implication is clear. Gore (and co-author Blood) want government to assign damage payments to businesses -- essentially, the environmental equivalent of "reparations" -- for the harm they've inflicted on the environment. Never mind existing regulations, the EPA, and governmental conservation efforts -- even more taxes are needed!

As if we needed any more proof that Gore has gone 'round the bend, he goes well beyond simple taxes: it's all about capital "re-allocation":

More mechanisms to incorporate environmental and social externalities will be needed to enable capital markets to achieve their intended purpose--to consistently allocate capital to its highest and best use for the good of the people and the planet.


Al - why not simply call it what it is -- an addled, enviro-centric Communism -- and be done with it?

Gore -- as a figure of influence -- is now less relevant than a '72 Pinto at the Los Angeles Car Show.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Free tool that reports what's on your disk


Ever wondered where all that disk space goes? JDiskReport is a free utility that scans and analyzes your hard-drive and tells you -- by file type -- how your space has been utilized. MP3 files, movies, binaries, you name it. It's... all... there.

Visit the JDiskReport page.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Book Review: Jack Black's You Can't Win

Fascinating, rough-and-tumble glimpse into the underworld, circa 1900

Book Review: Jack Black's You Can't WinFirst published in 1926, the autobiography of infamous criminal Jack Black quickly became a bestseller. Black's tale is fascinating. In turns, it describes a transformation from choir-boy, to bill-collector, hobo, burglar, hold-up man, safe-cracker, prisoner, "hop" (heroin) addict, fugitive, parolee and -- finally -- reformed citizen. In fact, the tragic irony of the tale is that Black's entire criminal career began through a police mistake: rounding him up in a brothel crackdown though he was simply collecting on a milk bill.

With a spartan yet captivating voice, Black describes the turn-of-the-century Old West. Bat Masterson, Salt Chunk Mary, Foot-and-a-half George, and other memorable characters make appearances as Black travels through hobo settlements, small towns, mining camps, and bustling cities like Vancouver, Frisco, Seattle, and L.A. All the while, Black uses his creative mind and adroit skills at thievery to pull off a wide range of capers.

The book's undercurrent is a criminal code of ethics that is every bit as honorable as that of a law-abiding citizen. While the law routinely meted out brutal punishments, including 30 lashes in a Canadian prison and a horrific three-day bout with a straitjacket -- all ostensibly for corrective purposes -- Black's point is that it served the exact opposite purpose. It hardened his resolve and created within him a furious urge for revenge against all of society.

Though the majority of the book is autobiographical, much of it is designed as a cautionary tale for youth who might otherwise be attracted to a life of crime. In addition, Black serves up advice for society as a whole: namely, that ratcheting up punishments for first-time offenders causes more problems than it solves. Black offers suggestions that society treat disadvantaged children with more care and urges job creation as alternatives to criminality among youth.

Interestingly, the book's afterword hints that many of Black's escapades were omitted or glossed over. He was sentenced to 25 years for shooting a man (not described in the book) and he seemed to be the drug kingpin during his later years in prison. Nonetheless, Black's tale is a captivating glimpse into a side of the American West that is seldom seen.

Vista Delays - Best of the Mini-Microsoft Comments


The comments just keep on coming over at Mini-Microsoft, which featured a post entitled, "Vista 2007 - Fire the Leadership Now!". A blistering series of responses -- many from current or former MSFT employees -- pin the blame on Vista's continuing delays to Ballmer, middle management, the coders, outsourcing, the Dalai Lama, and everything in between.

To spare you -- my dear and valued reader -- from having to wade through hundreds of comments, I've highlighted several of the most interesting remarks below.

...by exercising their absolute power, Ballmer and Gates have created a company culture in their own image. One that is renowned for its delusionary arrogance: its self-serving adoration and its reactive petulance. They treat their partners with absolute disdain: encouraging them to invest on their platform to in the attempt to create successful markets, where substantial success will be crushed by a Microsoft imitation that is both cross subsidized from monopoly revenues and often pushed on customers via the OS distribution channel... Comment


I wonder what Eric Sink thinks about that?

Regarding the planned Vista availability for corporations by 12/06 (while consumers must wait 'til '07), another commenter posits:

You guys are missing the point. This is all about software assurance, the MS plan where enterprises buy our s**t in advance.

A boatload of SA plans expire 12/31/2006. Many of these accounts purchased SA under duress, BUT were promised that LH would come out in their 3 yr window.

IF we do not deliver them bits before the end of this year and fulfill our wink-wink SA commitments made by the field, we are toast. They will sue the crap out of us and they WILL win, and we WILL be making a HUGE adjustment to our earnings.

This IS THE ONLY explaination. There is NO OTHER reason for delivering to enterprises early... Comment


Sounds a little odd, because if you sign an SA agreement, it's etched in stone. If MSFT delivers before the SA expires, you're good. If not, you're out in the cold. It's a contract. But what do I know? I'm not a lawyer...

Here's a person who recommends a new strategy to delivering an OS:

It's very simple... the quickest way to get something out the door is to build a proprietary windows desktop ON TOP OF a BSD/GNU underbelly... with your own custom win32 compatibility libraries to run existing wincode on... come on guys... you know it makes sense... Comment


In other words, build subsequent versions of Windows on top of a Posix (UNIX or Linux) core. Indeed. That's something I've advocated for years (e.g., Visual Studio for Linux).

And here's another theory as to why Vista keeps slipping:

...As to why Vista's a trainwreck? I think it's API and Feature-itis. The alphabet soup of hardware requirements + reluctance to ditch things (why is PS/2 still on mobos, really?) + the mess of RPC/MAPI/COM/OLE/OLEDB/VB/VB.NET/.NET 1.0/.NET 1.1/DTC/COM+/WPF/WPF-E/Windows Forms/etc. 86 different technologies to do the Exact. Same. Thing., all of which become their own unique source of bugs and security holes, making matrices completely impossible to test adequately (and add to that the insistence that the Magical Automation Fairy, immense gates that stop code checkins and burden people with process, and outsourcing to India and Beijing will solve all our testing problems)... Comment


Here's someone affiliated with BestBuy who thinks the Vista delay is a good thing. And not for the reason you might expect.

...With the beastly requirements Vista has, what percentage of people who buy a computer today is seriously even going to be capable of running Vista without heavy upgrades?

I work as a service agent at Best Buy's Geek Squad. Now and then a customer asks me if the computer they're buying will support the next generation operating system. Because of Vista's huge requirements, I've been telling them "probably not without massive upgrades."

The system requirements I'm hearing for Vista are ridiculous. 2+ GIGABYTES OF MEMORY in order to have a gaming experience on par with 512mb on XP. HIGH END 3D ACCELERATOR required in order to have all the nifty new look and feel that Vista has, so you can count out the majority of laptops that only come equipped with those pitiful on-board i845, i915, and S3 chipsets, or name brand PCs built without AGP or PCIe slots.

Thus, I'm glad that Vista's release date misses the Back-to-School and Christmas rushes. I'm glad that less people will be buying the boxed versions hoping to install it on their older computers.

It means less customers will leave my precinct p***ed off because I had to tell them that the copy of Vista they bought (and are unable to return) won't work on anything less than a top-end PC bought in winter 2005, or a top end laptop bought in summer 2006... Comment


For a "Windows veteran but no longer an employee", it all seems like back to the future:

...In the mid-90's was a 3 year project called "Cairo" led by Jim that had around 150-200 head count. It was managed similar to Vista: pie in the sky technology with little focus on reality. After 3 years it was cancelled because it was dysfunctional - it couldn't move forward, couldn't focus on shipping. After that spectacular flop Jim was promoted to senior VP immediately afterwards. No accountability, and I think no understanding from above of the problem. I've been watching the Vista saga unfold, being reminded along the way of Cairo. Pie in the sky technology, inability to focus, and when it fails, no accountability. Sounds very familiar, just this time it's on a scale over 10x larger and much more important to the company... Comment


There you have it. And you thought everything was sweetness and light within the hallowed halls of Redmond.

Feingold's Embarrassing Censure Hearing


The oh-so-concerned-with-national-security Democrats are holding censure hearings over the President's act of wiretapping international calls between terrorist cells.

And, yes, the mediacrats continue to call these wiretaps "domestic". Let's see. The taps can only be called domestic if an airplane flying from Tokyo to San Franscisco is considered a "domestic flight".

Anyhow, Russ Feingold, John Dean, and a bunch of other hard-left barking moonbats -- that's the term they prefer, I believe -- are humiliating themselves in a forlorn attempt to censure the President.

Leave it to associate director of the Center for National Security Law, Robert Turner, to set 'em straight.

In wartime, the idea that the president should sit back and say, well I have the power to do this, it could save American lives, but I don't want to offend certain members of Congress so I'm not going to allow the National Security Agency to listen when bin Laden calls some US person who might well be a Saudi national who's totally committed to bin Laden's cause who lives in this country, he qualifies as an American under FISA. We know, we've got considerable evidence that FISA contributed to 9/11. We know Colleen Rowley, the FBI agent who was made TIME's Person of the Year in 2002 because she was angry the FBI would not get her a FISA warrant. The FBI could not give her a FISA warrant because Moussaoui was not an agent of Al-Qaeda. Moussaoui was a lone wolf. A lot of harm has been done by what Congress did in the wake of Vietnam. The president is trying not to seize new power but to take us back where this country was from 1789 to about 1975.


Can I get an indeed™?

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Eric Sink's Ultimate Dog-Fooding Story


Eric Sink has a story that may be the best "dog-fooding" tale ever. For those unfamiliar with the term: it refers to the act of using your own product ("eating your own dog-food"). For a software company that makes email software, for instance, it would mean utilizing your own software to run all of your company's email. Microsoft, as an aside, is famous for dog-fooding its products.

The primary machine tool in any well-equipped woodshop is a table saw. Basically, it's a polished cast iron table with a slot through which protrudes a circular saw blade, ten inches in diameter. Wood is cut by sliding it across the table into the spinning blade.

A table saw is an extremely dangerous tool. My saw can cut a 2-inch thick piece of hard maple with no effort at all. Frankly, it's a tool which should only be used by someone who is a little bit afraid of it. It should be obvious what would happen if a finger ever came in contact with the spinning blade. Over 3,000 people each year lose a finger in an accident with a table saw.

A guy named Stephen Gass has come up with an amazing solution to this problem. He is a woodworker, but he also has a PhD in physics. His technology is called Sawstop. It consists of two basic inventions:

* He has a sensor which can detect the difference in capacitance between a finger and a piece of wood.
* He has a way to stop a spinning table saw blade within 1/100 of a second, less than a quarter turn of rotation.

The videos of this product are amazing. Slide a piece of wood into the spinning blade, and it cuts the board just like it should. Slide a hot dog into the spinning blade, and it stops instantly, leaving the frankfurter with nothing more than a nick.

Here's the spooky part: Stephen Gass tested his product on his own finger!

Democrats hold a national security workshop


Erudite pearls of wisdom from EIB. The Democrats will hold a workshop on National Security to figure out -- apparently -- what their position should be. I'll be honest -- that's just taunting-the-tiger-with-raw-meat scary.

The Democrats -- 36 of them, 36 Democratic candidates -- are scheduled to gather in Washington Monday for workshops on national security and military issues... [they] say they are going to catch Osama bin Laden, the same Osama bin Laden that Bill Clinton let slip through our fingers two or three times. They're going to increase the number of spies. They're going to double the number of troops and Special Forces, and they're going to be "tough and smart," says their Senate leader, Dingy Harry.

Nancy Pelosi over in the House said we're going to be "strong and smart." She left out tough. So they say they're going to get Osama. Well, how they going to do this? It might serve us well to examine their track record, because they don't want to do any spying on terrorists who are phoning into America or phoning out of America. They have no desire to find out what terrorists are up to. They want to impeach and censure the president. Oh, by the way, the big censure hearing today. They had more witnesses than they had senators, and at the end of it, it was just Specter and Feingold. Feingold finally got fed up and walked out of his own hearing...

...Can you believe this? National security. It's like having a meeting behind closed doors to figure out what they believe... Forget what they come out of their workshop and say. Forget what their battle plan is. Never forget what the last three years have been like.


EIB: Democrats hold national security workshop

Fundrace 2004 Neighbor Search


Interested in seeing your neighbors' contributions to the 2004 Presidential campaign? Fundrace Neighbor Search will do the trick... though I must admit that it's a tad voyeuristic.

Methinks Customscoop Needs a Security Assessment


I was checking this blog's referer logs yesterday and came across an interesting listing. It was one I hadn't seen before.

Definition: a referer log describes how visitors reached your site. When a user clicks on a link -- say, a Google search result or just a conventional link on a page -- the original address information is often, but not always, recorded at the destination site. This information is termed "referer" data and it designed to let a publisher analyze how visitors located the website.

Here's what I saw in my referer log (sensitive data redacted):

http://enterprise.customscoop.com/index.cfm?username=******&password=******&Is***

In other words, CustomScoop uses a simple HTTP GET request during its authentication step. This allows a referer log (like mine) to unintentionally capture CustomScoop credentials: user-name, password, and other sensitive arguments.

What this tells me is that CustomScoop probably (a) doesn't have a security-savvy technical professional on staff; and (b) hasn't had a serious, independent security assessment performed.

I contacted CustomScoop earlier with an abridged version of this post. And I sent along some recommendations for triage (i.e., use an HTTP POST for operations where credentials are submitted... not exactly rocket-science here, folks) as well as the obligatory, "for the love of... have a real security firm perform an assessment!"

Hopefully they get the message. They don't make it easy to contact them.

Referer Logs Can be Fun


This reminds me of some situations where I've used referer logs to freak out the less technically sophisticated among us.

My brother, for example, is a prominent attorney and truly brilliant in every respect. But I really blew his mind the other day when I came across a particular referer entry on my blog. The refering site was Google and the user was searching specifically for my brother. The searcher happened to find a worthwhile hit on my blog and visited. The information left in my log-file indicated the search term and user's IP address. Of course, I deduced the location and company performing the search (it was some law firm in California). So I wrote my brother the following note:

[Company name redacted] Know anyone there? I noticed they were Googling you... don't ask me how I know these things :-)

His response?

How do you know these things? I actually got an e-mail from someone at [Company name redacted] earlier today. Amazing.

Actually, not so amazing - once you know how to leverage a referer log.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

An Open Letter to Representatives Barton and Upton


I read today's article on network neutrality from Internet News, entitled "'Clear And Present Danger' For Telecom Reform Bill", with some trepidation. From all appearances, the GOP aims to side with the telcos and allow net neutrality to lapse, or at least go dormant. As I've made clear before, the risks associated with this approach are significant.

Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas, Contact) chairs the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, while Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI, Contact) chairs the Internet Subcommittee. Together, they are helping craft a bill that would de-regulate neutrality. I called the office of Rep. Barton (202-225-2002) -- reaching a staffer -- who relayed my message. I got voicemail for Rep. Upton (202-225-3761) and left him a message in his mailbox. I would urge you to do the same.

I also wrote Barton a message on his site, which is reproduced here:

Congressman, as a staunch GOP supporter, op-ed writer, blogger, and fundraiser, I want to express my extreme disappointment in your apparent willingness to side with the telcos in the matter of network neutrality.

At risk is America's leadership role as the premier source of Internet innovation. Google, eBay, Amazon and others create value, evident through their market capitalization values. Erecting tollbooths on the Internet does the opposite - it subtracts value. And the telcos -- through their spokespersons and the hardware they plan to purchase -- clearly intend to create artificial tollbooths on the Internet to "maximize value".

How would a startup (a Digg, Vonage, Skype) compete with large companies who are able to pay prioritization tarriffs? What will prevent a telco from entering any market and blocking competitive traffic? The risks of ending network neutrality are simply too high.

The wording of prospective neutrality legislation can be clear and direct: blocking, monitoring, filtering, or impeding packets based upon type, source, or destination should be strictly forbidden.

America's national security and economic well-being hang in the balance. I -- and many other members of the GOP -- urge you to reconsider your position on network neutrality.

Best Regards,

Doug Ross


Update: Russell Shaw is following the money trail on Network Neutrality. Comcast (#1), AT&T (#4), and MCI (#6) were among last year's top ten corporate contributors to Rep. Joe Barton for a grand total of $46,000. Shaw closes by saying, "Not suggesting anything untoward here, but it might appear these companies - who never met a fee idea they didn't like, feel like they have a friend in Joe."

Book Review: Joseph Finder's Paranoia

It's the literary equivalent of crack

Paranoia (Paperback) by Joseph Finder I had a pressing appointment yesterday but was running late. The reason? This d**n book. After a several hour read, I hit the last chapter and literally couldn't stop. The mind-bending conclusion -- akin to the closing scene in The Usual Suspects -- literally threw me for a loop.

Adam Cassidy is a low-level corporate drone at Wyatt Telecommunications. Unmotivated and glib, he arranges a massive retirement party for a friend on the loading-dock... all paid for through an unauthorized expense account. The prank is instantly detected by Corporate Security because the party ended up costing over $20K. Cassidy is threatened not only with termination, but also several decades behind bars.

But there's an out offered to him by, of all people, CEO Nick Wyatt. The founder of the telecom company is a ruthless corporate predator. His arch-rival, Trion, is hiring a product manager. And Wyatt desperately needs a mole inside Trion to get the goods on Trion's top secret Project AURORA. That project is rumored to be "transformational", meaning it will mark a new generation in the wireless industry. Wyatt can't afford to be left behind by a new BlackBerry or iPod, so Cassidy is an unwilling pawn in a deadly serious game of corporate espionage.

Given a suitable cover role and prepped with gobs of high-level product information, Cassidy is hired for the job at Trion. At the behest of Wyatt and his security goons, Cassidy instantly begins his intelligence-gathering operations. And he has been prepped well for his day job: his remarks in planning meetings are both controversial and prescient. He soon catches the eye of Trion founder Jock Goddard, a Silicon Valley legend. Within weeks, he's been tapped as Goddard's personal assistant, a role that puts him in close touch with the entire management hierarchy.

Wyatt is ecstatic at the development... and is now demanding more and better intel around AURORA. Compounding Cassidy's stress level, his father is dying of emphysema and he's begun a heavy-duty (and non-HR-approved) relationship with a gorgeous Trion marketing manager. Try as he might to keep it all together, Cassidy's double lives are beginning to spin out of control.

From the opening graphs to the mind-roasting conclusion, I had a very difficult time peeling myself away... even for a pressing engagement. I've heard the book is to be made into a movie. That's outstanding news - and it will mean fewer missed appointments for Finder's readership. Because a movie may be a better idea for some folks than the literary equivalent of crack.

Barton Shills for the Telcos on Network Neutrality


Texas Republican Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, did his best to stay on the telcos' good side. "Before we get too far down the road, I want to let the market kind of sort itself out, and I'm not convinced that we really have a problem with Net neutrality."

Definition: Network neutrality is the concept that broadband providers should not be able to arbitrarily filter, degrade, or block delivery of packets. The telcos want the ability, say, to charge Google or Yahoo for prioritized delivery of packets. Conversely, content providers want the current state: no blocking, filtering or degrading of packet delivery.


Yes, Joe, we do have a problem. All you need to do is spend five minutes examining the hardware that Cisco and other networking vendors are hawking to the carriers. This equipment is designed to analyze, filter, meter, and/or otherwise meddle with third-party network traffic to financially benefit the carriers.

BellWest Network Neutrality
Another fantastic "deal" from BellWest

In essence, the carriers are itching to erect tollbooths on the Internet. The problem, though, is simple to understand. How can an emerging company -- with little capitalization but great ideas -- ever compete with the big boys? How will the next Skype or Vonage or Digg or Google emerge when the game is now rigged in favor of the behemoths... those content providers who can afford to pay the new tarriffs?

The advertisement at right -- a hypothetical telco ad from the future -- implies what might be in the cards for consumers if network neutrality is killed off. In other words, artificial restrictions (network tollbooths) will likely limit consumer choice.

What the telcos want is bad for everyone... even themselves. They're just too short-sighted to see it. They envision short-term revenue gains, but in reality, they're helping to kill innovation on the Internet: the kind of innovation that keeps America at the top of the Internet pyramid.

Bolting tollgates onto the routers that make up Internet plumbing is not a value-add... it's a value-subtract.

Legislation has to be very simple and explicit - it need only state that IP traffic may not be blocked, delayed, filtered, or impeded based upon protocol, source or destination address, or any other packet-level data item.

Otherwise, the very future of American Internet innovation may hang in the balance.

Interested in helping to preserve a free Internet? Get involved by signing a petition that business and Congressional leaders will see. And get the message out.

A security challenge for MSFT management


Interesting security challenge for Microsoft management -- spotted in the comments section of the MSFT management shakeup blog post at Mini-Microsoft:

Jim Alchin, Brian Valentine, Partners in Windows, please show the world that you trust Vista's security...put your social security number, personal bank account numbers, and personal credit card numbers a on a Vista machine configured by Dell with a [publicly] accessible and un-firewalled IP address and announce that IP address to the world.

Anyone with brains doesn't trust you anymore. Show us. The world isn't drinking your kool-aid.


Vista security challenge

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Angry Microsoft employees call for Ballmer to Go


There seems to be a fair amount of employee angst over at Microsoft regarding the incessant product delays. One MSFT employee, compaining about Vista, asks, "People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where's the freakin' accountability?" Another says, "Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again what do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs."

A series of blog posts and comments seemed to unleash a fair amount of organizational remorse: several employees are demanding that Ballmer should be first on the "to be fired" list...

PR Pro: Microsoft employees call for Ballmer to go

Hussein, Bin Laden & WMDs

Shhhh... no one tell the mainstream media

Suited up for chemical weapons attackThe HARMONY database continues to reveal its secrets. It consists of millions of pages of data from CDs and computers liberated from the Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS) after the fall of Baghdad.

Pity the mainstream media can't be bothered reporting the truth: that Hussein's government and Al-Qaeda were actively cooperating before, during and after 9/11. Why won't the MSM report this news? That's nearly as vexing a question as whether Michael Moore has three chins or four.

[The] documents – though only 2% or so are translated and available – substantiate without doubt the following allegations: Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, the Baathist regime and al Qaeda had extensive, wide reaching ties. Saddam was, at a minimum, a supporter of the 9/11 attacks if not a sponsor of them. Saddam’s intelligence services trained more than 8,000 al Qaeda terrorists, primarily from Somalia and Sudan, at camps such as Salman Pak and Ansar al-Islam within Iraq. And Saddam helped finance al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.

Further, the documents substantiate a broad, on-going program Iraq had to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, Saddam had instructed his minions to begin preparing to re-energize the program after UN sanctions were lifted, a hope he had reinforced by French, Russian, and German diplomats...

...Saddam had several civilian aircraft – one Boeing 747 and a “group” of 727s - stripped of passenger equipment and converted into cargo planes. The aircraft flew 56 sorties between Iraq and Syria, delivering drums of the chemical weapon Sarin along with other chemical and biological weapons... In addition to the air sorties an uncounted amount of WMD were transported to Syria by commercial trucks – familiar 18-wheelers – and other civilian vehicles, including ambulances...

...Up to 20 tons of these chemical agents were intended for use by al Qaeda terrorists in attacking three targets in Amman, Jordan in 2004 – the Jordanian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Service buildings, and the American Embassy. These were to be simultaneous truck bomb attacks that were thwarted by good counter-intelligence work. The trucks were large 15-ton capacity powerful vehicles that could power through barriers and obstacles to crash into the buildings. At that time the homicide drivers would detonate the ammonium nitrate load triggered by plastic explosives – probably C-4. Resting atop the explosive load were Saddam’s chemicals, sufficient to kill upwards to 100,000 people in downtown Amman...

Monday, March 27, 2006

Latest Happenings in the PHP World


The inimitable John Lim comments on a 2005 article, written by Amazon engineer Steve Yegge, that asks "Is weak typing strong enough?"? Steve's assertion is that scripting languages are useful until the moment multi-threading or high-performance enters the picture. At that point, he lobbies for compiled languages that provide ultimate control (e.g., C++). In other words, each has its place. John reinforces the message:

The key is not to argue about abandoning one for the other, but use the strengths of both. For core code where speed and threading is critical, use strongly typed compiled code. At the periphery, for user interface and rapidly changing business rules, use a dynamically typed language.


John also points us to an excellent pro-PHP rant from Harry Fuecks:

[For] PHP as an Apache module the two big things are it works and it’s scalable. More to the point no one really has an execution model to compare with it, except perhaps Microsoft with ASP 3.0, which they’ve since abandoned. Before you fly off the handle, think about this one... [it] is the interpreter returning to a fresh state after every request (no globals hanging around or otherwise). PHP really is shared nothing. You want scaling? Try [Wikipedia]...


Is anyone seriously questioning PHP's scalability these days? What, with SourceForge, the US Army website, and Yahoo's entire infrastructure? John sums it up with a great anecdote, which I'll paraphrase. If you know what you're doing, you can build the vast majority of your enterprise application -- no matter how large -- in PHP. Flickr's architecture is a great place to start.

The Yahoo! UI Library


The folks at Yahoo have released their free (and BSD-licensed) user interface library. It's a set of Javascript utilities that help web developers build applications. For example, need a slick little pop-up calendar? The YUI calendar control is a sweet little control with plenty of options and a nice, tight interface. Other controls include a slider and a tree-control.

Utilities include animation helpers -- position, size, transparency of window elements can be controlled -- as well as an AJAX connection manager, DOM utilities, drag-and-drop tools, and event handlers.

The Yahoo! UI Library

Words of Wisdom...


From VP Dick Cheney. Question for the Democratic leadership: Ouchie... you gonna put some ice on that?

...every voter in America needs to know how the leaders of the Democratic Party view the War on Terror. This is the crowd that objects to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, boasted publicly of his efforts to kill the Patriot Act. Their nominee for President in the last election viewed terrorism as mainly a law enforcement issue, and recently said that American troops are, 'terrorizing' Iraqis. The chairman of the Democratic Party is Howard Dean, who said the capture of Saddam Hussein did not make America safer. And leading Democrats have demanded a sudden withdrawal from the battle against terrorists in Iraq - the very kind of retreat that Osama bin Laden has been predicting. And with that sorry record, the leaders of the Democratic Party have decided to run on the theme of competence. If they're competent to fight this war, then I ought to be singing on American Idol.


From SecDef Donald Rumsfeld: a concept foreign to both President Bill Clinton and erstwhile nominee Hillary.

I've read that polls may be down and are down in some instances. They do tend to go up and down depending on circumstances. And if every time a poll went down, somebody changed their policy or changed their position or tossed in the towel, we wouldn't have a country today. There have been plenty of times polls have down in our history when people have persevered and been resolute and prevailed ultimately. And that's what will happen in this instance.


Hat tip: Right Wing News (a brand, spanking-new addition to my political blogroll).

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Book Review: Prayers for the Assassin

A terrifying -- and all too real -- glimpse into the future Five Stars

Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the AssassinThree nuclear explosions in Washington, New York, and Mecca provide the historical backdrop for Ferrigno's exceptional detective story: a world turned on its head. Evidence that these devastating attacks were orchestrated by "Zionist agents" changes the course of history.

In America, the combination of post-attack sympathy for Islam and several Hollywood celebrity conversions cause massive upheavals. With the federal government in shambles, the blue states form an Islamic Republic (capitol: Seattle) while the red states form their own Christian Republic (capitol: Atlanta). After decades of bloodshed between the two, by 2040 an uneasy truce reigns.

In the Islamic Republic, three political elements battle for control: the State Security forces under the control of moderate politico Redbeard; the fundamentalist Black Robes, led by firebrand cleric Ibn Azziz; and a shadow organization led by a billionaire recluse known only as "the Old One". When Redbeard's neice Sarah -- an accomplished author -- begins to investigate the terrorist attacks, her new book's proposed title ("The Zionist Betrayal?") sets off alarms throughout the Islamic Republic. And the Old One is especially determined to find and terminate this troublesome female.

Unnerved at his fraying plans, the Old One unleashes his ultimate weapon against her: a psycophathic Fedayeen assassin named Darwin. Sarah, though, is a dogged detective and she has an especially experienced and capable bodyguard. Rakkim Epps, an orphan also raised in Redbeard's household and who later served as a "Shadow Warrior" (special ops) in the elite Fedayeen, is reunited with Sarah at Redbeard's request. Together, Rakkim and Sarah circumnavigate the Western states trying to stay a step ahead of Darwin while tracking down the real instigator of the 2015 nuclear attacks.

The detective story on its own is excellent, but it is Ferrigno's rich level of detail that must be read to be appreciated. In the background, he describes an America transformed into an Islamic Republic, with new social mores, "Ask the Imam" radio talk-show dialogue, and even midday prayers at the Superbowl. This tapestry, combined with an excellent action-adventure plot, makes for a fascinating (and somewhat terrifying) story.