Category: Uncategorized

I made the dubiously wise decision of selling my current computer to my dad, after not being able to fix his old one. My intention was to fallback to my Linux box, but I discovered to my horror that my hard drive is not supported by my backup pc, so I won’t have access to my data until I get a new computer put together. I tried to check my email via the web, and discovered that I had 120 emails from the last day, 99% of which were spam – and the mail interface didn’t make it easy to sort it out. So, I won’t be checking or replying to much mail until I build a new pc. I’m thinking of following the guide at SharkyExtreme as a model, though the Athlon 64 looks pretty temping. Any suggestions?
This will be my fourth computer, and the third I’ve built myself, though I’ve done so many upgrades to all of them, (it’ll be my 6th motherboard) that like Theseus’s ship, it’s hard to say where one computer ends and another begins.
Update: I ordered all the components today, and should be online on the new pc by next weekend 🙂

I’ve been using a PHP backlinking script from Laze.Net for a while now to show the referrers to my site. Unfortunately, the script hasn’t been updated to reflect changes in Yahoo’s new search string. So, I updated the string parsing code to correctly show the search terms. You can find the code below.
Continue reading Backlink

‘We know that Mr. Bush has committed himself to the mafia … to assassinate me,” the Cuban president said, using the term commonly employed here to describe anti-Castro Cuban Americans.
Castro’s comments came at the end of a 5 ½ hour speech that began Thursday night and continued into early Friday at the closing of a conference bringing together activists across the region who oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
”I can die a natural death or I can die a planned death,” Castro said. “It really doesn’t matter to me how I die, but I will surely die fighting.”

Continue reading Castro accuses Bush of plotting to kill him

Here’s one cause you won’t ever see the pinkos take up: Lebanon: The Real
‘Occupied Territory’

Chinese dissidents say that despite the government’s best efforts to stop them, they are successfully using the internet to spread their messages ever more widely through the world’s most populous country.
But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.

Any idea which corporations are involved?
Btw, I wrote an essay on Chinese censorship for a POLS class when I was an undergrad. Here is the conclusion:

Whether immediate efforts to prevent coordination among dissidents are successful, China’s attempts at censorship are bound to fail in the long run. Because the Internet’s value as a commercial and research tool are bound to grow, and are closely intertwined with alternative uses, the costs of preventing access to any particular material is bound to become prohibitively expensive, especially with the rapid and exponential growth of Internet users in China. Meanwhile, the best strategy democratic nations can follow is to make China’s censorship policy as costly as possible by sponsoring the development of circumvention technologies.

(Edit: “democratic nations” refers to private initiative by citizens of free countries – not another government program.)

Hot anime chicks molded in plastic! Call me weird, but these models rock!

I’ve often wondered how socialists can possibly explain away the actual track record of socialist regimes in countries like the USSR, Cuba, and China. Now I know: they were actually capitalist countries all along!
Continue reading Commie Economics

MINA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The cleric who delivered the sermon Friday at the annual hajj pilgrimage had a simple request: God grant victory to Muslims fighting around the world.

The prayer by Sheik Saleh al-Taleb to 500,000 people in Mecca’s Grand Mosque and nearby streets came as the hajj neared its climax.

“Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen (holy warriors) everywhere,” al-Taleb said. “Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists.”

Get this: according to the leftists, even one civilian death was unacceptable when our troops went after Saddam. However, when it comes to the “anti-occupation resistance,” innocent deaths are perfectly fine, says a prominent leftist pundit:

Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq’s anti-occupation resistance?
“Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.”

(I am just going to ignore the fact that he’s rooting for the collapse of any chance for democracy and American soldier’s and Iraqi civilians deaths — to leftists, destroying Bush’s popularity is paramount.)
(From RightWingNews)

With a proposed annual budget of $756 billion, the Department of Deficit Obliteration will study ways to eliminate the gap between federal revenues and expenditures without any real cuts in spending that might cause discomfort for potential voters.