For What It’s Worth

I am moving this blog to a new server, and making a few other changes at the same time.

The blog is moving here — yes, that’s right, I have gone .com. Going there,лаптопкомпютри втора употребаWir haben Vertrauen dieser Seite in der Thema gratis online Texas deutsche internet casinos Spiel wird Sie zu einem neuen Blickwinkel auf den Begriff des gratis online Texas holdem Spiel, die h?ufig missverstanden. you’ll see that all of the content from here has already been moved into place.  I am leaving here just a few entries — 10 or so — that are both recent and, I think, interesting.
Going straight to the new blog, though, is boring.

Very boring.

Can I make a recommendation?

Try this RSS feed. If you’re using the new version of Internet Explorer — version 7, which came out just a couple of weeks ago — it knows how to handle that. And if you’re using Internet Explorer, really, can I also recommend that you switch to Firefox? It is very good at handling RSS feeds, and I think it’s a better and safer web browser. There’s also a “light” version?????? of Firefox 2, which unzips instead of installs — you can easily try it out without worrying about having to potentially install it and then uninstall it (though I think you’ll keep it, really).

I’ve also had people ask me about how I find all these weird, strange things on the internet. While I can’t share that secret with you, you can at least benefit from my good hunting. There’s a second RSS feed now, just for all of the strange and odds things I run across on theedfa internet. That RSS feed is here — try adding it to IE or Firefox and then sit back and be entertained. Call it my effort to try and entice others to try out RSS feeds — good ones pay off in big dividends.

And if you’ll give me some time, the rest of the website will come online here. Right now, there’s just some text up. I’ll try and make it a bit prettier this weekend or in the coming week. Bear with me.

I’ve been reading over the transcript of the speech by President Bush. Things aren’t going so well for my blood pressure.

Part of my problem with the US policy in Iraq, and for that matter, the Global War on Terror, is that I think I get it. I think I actually have a decent understanding of what is going on, of what is involved. When people like President Bush speak or write, I want to go hear what they have to say because I want to either hear affirmation that yes, I really do get it, or to find some evidence of how my views are wrong and in what direction I need to go to rethink my views. To many times, though, I come away convinced that they just don’t get it. And trust me, that’s not a good view to have of the leadership of your country or military.

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With all the talk recently of re-shaping the war in Iraq, there’s been renewed talk of the importance of Baghdad (and here) as key to the success of the country and as key to success in winning the war in Iraq.

But is Baghdad really that important to the future of Iraq?

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is, well, longer. However, it boils down to a few key concepts.

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What do we stand for these days? What are those things that we, as a nation and as a society, hold so dear that we are willing to fight to the last man? I think we’ve reached a crisis point in our national identity; our inability to identify and articulate these things is only fueling the chaos in the world.
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Thank Ubuntu, I am free at last.

This might seem like an odd proclamation, but it’s true — with an Ubuntu Live CD and an add-on, I am now free to use my iPod however, whenever, and wherever I choose.  What a novel concept — to be able to use something you own, under the conditions of your choosing!

When I headed out the door on this long business trip, I did one last synch of my iPod to the iTunes on our Mac, and I grabbed a few back up discs of our music.  On this trip, I have a laptop to use — not mine, and one that is very locked down by the sysadmin folks.  No iTunes for me.

That was fine — at first.  I found a way to load my profile onto a friend’s computer, and did an update that way.  Nice, but really, it’s an imposition on the friend, being as I have to use his machine to do this.

The one good thing to come out of it was solving one of the stumbling blocks I had — I was able to reformat my iPod for Windows, to FAT32.

Today, fed up enough to try it again, I done back into the Ubuntu CD I carry with me always (it is the saving grace for when a computer dies but you need to go in and salvage all of the files, work, and data on the hard drive) to try and freshen up the music on my iPod.  Some tinkering, some time in Google, and I had gtkpod loaded and the iPod-a-updatin’.

With the Ubuntu CD, an external HD of music, and someone — anyone’s — computer to boot from, I can do just about anything with my iPod now.  As geeky as this sounds, I am so unbelieveable happy to have reached this point.  Long business trips?  Vacations back to Iraq?  No problem.  I am set.  Computers — who knew that they were still useful?

Al Qaeda has, as a long term objective, the destruction of America and the removal of the Crusaders and Jews from the Arab world.  This is a pre-cursor to the re-establishment of the Caliphate, an Islamic state for the Middle East if not the world, that would adhere to the core tenants of the Islamic faith from the time of Mohammad.  There are things, though, that America and Americans should be looking for, key indicators of the threat to the United States.

Al Qaeda would like to see the United States destroyed.  Short of that, Al Qaeda wants to force the United States to withdraw from the Middle East, back to within its own borders.  At the core of Al Qaeda’s effort is a fundamental insurgency concept — wage war everywhere, all the time.

In the days of the Cold War, the United States was concerned only with addressing the security and issues of half the world — through the stand-off, the Soviets held control off the other half of the world.  But with the demise of the Soviets, the United States has, with mixed or poor results, tried to pick up the slack and provide this same level of concern for the security and issues of all the world.  The United States wants to be the superpower for the whole world — providing protection and security everywhere, all the time.

With that, Al Qaeda is seeking to over-extend the United States, to tax the United States to the point where it breaks and falls apart.  It conducts attacks in Afghanistan, but hides in Pakistan.  It supports Muslim insurgents in the Philippines, but runs training camps in Africa.  In many ways, Al Qaeda is seeking to draw the United States into a game of Whack-A-Mole — popping up all over the world, with varying forms and different threats.  Doing so forces the United States to commit more forces, more assets, more intelligence tools, to more places.

And all of that costs money.  And it uses personnel, and soldiers.  And it uses limited resources, like UAV’s, and satellites, and whatever super secret James Bond-types of people the United States has. The more places Al Qaeda emerges, the more the tax is on the United States, as a government, as a military, as a nation.

There are things that can happen within the United States that would play right into the efforts Al Qaeda.  Things that can happen, and things that people can do, that will play into Al Qaeda’s narrative for the destruction of the United States and the removal of the Crusaders and Jews from the Arab lands.

One is the political movement to withdraw American forces and any American presence from the Middle East.  At the simplest level, calling for the withdrawal of American forces would take the United States one step closer to meeting the Al Qaeda goal. However, Al Qaeda is at least, if not more, concerned with the presence of American businesses and culture in the Middle East — everything from Michael Jackson CD’s to McDonald’s.  Bechtel would need to withdrawal, as would Haliburton, and Voice of America, and the American Embassies.

I think we are starting to see this already, with many starting to say that the cost of the war in Iraq, in American lives and in Iraqi lives, is too great.  Should this idea impact the elections next month, or in two years, we could see a strategic shift in Al Qaeda’s favor.  Yes — that’s right — a vote for candidates that advocate with withdrawal of forces from the battlefields, is a vote in favor of Al Qaeda.

Additionally, if voter dissatisfaction with the federal government continues to grow, that may well also favor Al Qaeda.  Whether it is the corruption scandals (like whole bundles of cash in a Congressman’s freezer), the sex scandals (straight, gay, child molesting or just wrong), the dirty money needed to get elected these days, or the general sense that elected officials serve special interests and not their actual constituents, this dissatisfaction could well lead to a growing sense of withdrawal from the federal system.  It might also lead to a rise in either regionalism, or in states rights — much as was the case with the South made their move to withdraw from the United States.  And that internal fractioning would threaten the future of the United States, and would likely force a return of isolationism.  Which would be just fine with Al Qaeda.

I am also concerned with events that will require greater commitments of personnel and resources here within the United States.  Acts that raise the security posture, that world-famous TSA threat level and the like.  New measures, new procedures, new agencies and organizations needed within the American borders. With the United States already being spread thin via the Whack-A-Mole game, these types of domestic requirements only further tax the United States for limited funds, resources, and personnel.

As I mentioned the possible growing sentiment that the price of American military operations overseas could be viewed as too costly in human life, there appears, from time to time, indicators that some states are interested in seeing their National Guard forces freed from their requirements for participating in the Global War on Terror, so that they can indeed remain available for the operational requirements of their home states.  Should domestic requirements increase — an upswing in domestic terrorism, of serious incidents, of natural disasters on the scale of Katrina — states calling for a return on their National Guard forces would be advantageous to Al Qaeda, for two reasons.  One, it would have the United States continue to prosecute its military operation against Al Qaeda with fewer available resources.  Secondly, it would play into the Al Qaeda narrative of ushering along an American withdrawal to within the American boundaries.

Lastly, an outright insurgency in America would likely greatly accelerate Al Qaeda’s achievement of their goals.  Whether it is attacks on military or government targets, on financial institutions or the backbone of the internet, any era of chaos within the American boundaries would being about the turmoil needed to shake off any conviction the United States might have about waging a long war with Al Qaeda.  It is hard to go off to fight in a foreign country against a hard to define enemy like Al Qaeda, when your own nuclear plants are being attacked, or your own stock markets are in jeopardy.

As such, Al Qaeda can be expected to seek to draw out the United States to commit forces and resources everywhere, while also looking to spark or fan the fires of disturbances and trouble at home in Middle America.  Both efforts support the over-arching objective of seeing the United States presence withdrawn from the Middle East in preparation for the re-establishment of the caliphate.

We are approaching the problem with North Korea all wrong. Don’t worry — this isn’t new. We’ve been incorrectly approaching North Korea for a long, long time.

The leadership in North Korea wants, more than anything, to ensure the survival of the regime. The key to understanding North Korea is, I think, remembering that they are all alone in this world these days — the demise of the Soviet Union has left them all alone. Gone is their sugar daddy, their sponsor. They have no one else.

With survival of their regime on their mind, they do a lot of things that seem pretty wacky to the West. They develop all kinds of crazy weapons, for sale to other, smaller countries around the world — artillery, rockets, missiles. They seek to reverse engineer just about anything they can get from the West, in order to counterfeit it and sell it. They duplicate out money. They do lots of things to get money, all these things to keep their heads above water.

North Korea sees the United States as the way out. Ironically, with the demise of the Soviet Union, they are looking to the United States for security and a commitment to the survival of their regime. Why the US? They don’t get along with China, must less trust them. Japan? They have bad blood going back a spell, to include the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. North Korea and Russia really don’t get along, for reasons as diverse as history and differences in views in this post-Soviet world. And South Korea? The North looks forward to reunification — just not if it means the destruction of the North Korean regime

With that in mind, that the North Korean leadership is first and foremost focused on survival, it should be pretty easy to see how so much of what the US and others do puts us at odds with the North Korean leadership. We impose sanctions. We push for sanctions. We attack their economy — the world embargo, ten years ago, is said to have caused the starvation of millions in North Korea, without having any significant impact on the regime itself or their actions. More and more, we all work to cut them off from the world, in every way possible — which only serves to back them more and more into the corner.

Our efforts, the ever growing collective efforts to isolate North Korea and to change their actions through isolation, puts North Korea leadership and the survival of North Korea more and more in jeopardy. After North Korea’s test of their new nuclear weapon, Japan immediately cut off all economic ties. The US is now pushing for six way talks — in which North Korea sees no good, given they are looking not for regional security or a regional solution, but a direct answer from the US.

So, what is the right answer? Straight, bilateral talks between the US and North Korea. The US needs to come forward with a comprehensive plan for the economic, political and physical security of North Korea, with the right strings attached. IAEA inspectors of the North Korean nuclear program. Complete end to the North Korean nuclear weapons program. And a road map for reunion of the peninsula.

Stop pushing. Start pulling.

The time has come for us to stop calling this the Global War on Terrorism. Really, this has become The Long War. To understand this warfare, this struggle, it is important to understand both the Islamic struggle against the West, as well as the Shi’a / Sunni struggle. Both of these can be understood within the framework of today’s war in Iraq.

Al Qaeda is concerned with two enemies – the Near Enemy, and the Far Enemy. The Near Enemies are those Muslims who have strayed from the true tenents of the faith. Al Qaeda, under the tutelage of the Salafists, says that true Islam is the Islam from the time of the Prophet Mohammed, without updating, without new rules, without consideration for modern society. The Near Enemy is, therefore, any secular Muslim country; any Muslim who is Shi’a; and any Sunni who does not live their live in accordance with the teachings of the faith. The Far Enemy is every other non-believer. At the top of this list are the Jews and the Americans.

Iraq is a battleground for the battle against the Far Enemy. For Al Qaeda and others, Iraq is a battleground on which to battle both the nonbelievers, in the form of the America and coalition forces, and the non-believers in the form of the secular government that has emerged post-Saddam. As such, were the United States to pack up and go home, the fight against the Far Enemy in Iraq would continue on, in an effort to assist the Iraqi people in establishing an Islamic regime. That fight, to create a proper Muslim country, would continue until either success was achieved, or until Iraq is no longer hospitable battleground.

Iraq is compounded by a battle with the Near Enemy. The Shi’a and the Sunni are at odds over the future of the country. These are the Iraqi Shi’a and Sunni, at odds not only over religious differences, but also over the politics, economics and security of Iraq, the future of the country. In this regards, their conflict is as much over the differences between two ethnic groups as it is over religious differences.

Resolving the conflict between the Shi’a and the Sunni of Iraq, the fight with the Near Enemy, will not be enough to bring peace to the country, when compounded with the fight against the Far Enemy. If the Shi’a and Sunni ever work out their differences, finding a way to co-exist, Al Qaeda, Salafists, and other reformers would seek to continue the fight in Iraq, against the Far Enemies of the United States and Coalition forces, and against the Near Enemy of the Iraqi government. It is one battlefield with two distinct fights, the resolution of which are deeply entwined.

Peace for Iraq will come only with the emergence of a government in Baghdad that is able to offer real security for the citizens of Iraq. The Iraqi people will need to create an environment where Iraq is no longer a battlefield, no longer conducive for waging war against either Near Enemies or Far Enemies. When Iraq has that, when Iraq is secure within its own borders, all fighting will be problematic, and the conflict will have to move elsewhere. The Iraqis will need to either establish a stable and strong representative government, or an authoritative or totalitarian regime, for this to happen.

The Long War, then, is only part of the fighting going on in the world today. The United States and others, in the Global War on Terrorism, are fighting off the attacks of Al Qaeda and the Salafists, with both sides thinking that it is this conflict that will define the future of the world. Yet this struggle cannot be seen outside the framework of the other ongoing struggle, that of Muslim against Muslim. It is only when these two conflicts are mitigated that the Long War will end.

I was going to call this “‘Not paid for’ does not mean it’s stolen” but there’s more to it than that.

I’ll be honest. I like computers. They are my friend. They are a pretty darn-tootin’ powerful tool.

Deep down, though, a part of me is worried where America is going on this copyright crusade, and what this will do to ruin my views of computers as tools.

Today, I can go and buy pieces and parts, and assemble a computer. I can choose the pieces, I can choose the parts, I can assemble it as I wish. And as soon as I do, I immediately run into the corporate lawyers — I’ll need an operating system. Microsoft and others have suggested that computer manufacturers — which are, actually, computer assemblers who retail what they assemble — should be forced to sell computers that are loaded with an operating system, in order to use laws to help businesses — software businesses — fight software piracy.

This logic assumes that there’s no such thing as a free meal, that operating systems can only be paid for. Which, BTW, happens to be both stupid and false.

Let’s assume for a moment, though, that I don’t stick it to the man and use one of the bajillions of versions of Linux or other non-commercial / free / GNU/GPL / Creative Commons operating systems, but actually load some variant of Windows. I am main stream America, the bourgeois.

Today, we are at the tipping point for digital rights management for the everyday man. Microsoft’s new iPod rival, the Zune, ships with software that will forcibly add restrictions to music you have — to include music that isn’t copyrighted. Yes, they are going to forcibly treat non-copyrighted music — stuff licensed, for example, under Creative Commons, or stuff that you write and record yourself — as if it is copyrighted, and will restrict what you do with it. Microsoft is saying, in essence, that there is no such thing as non-copyrighted music.

“I made a song. I own it. How come, when I wirelessly send it to a girl I want to impress, the song has 3 days/3 plays?” Good question. There currently isn’t a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding. And besides, she’ll come see you three days later. . . (link)

How wrong is that? You can read the details in simple language, here.

There’s a similar thing going on right now with Amazon’s new video online retail download rental service. Besides the obvious stupidity in how they set up Unbox (like a one-click “feature” that cannot be turned off), there’s language in their users agreement that just plain scares the crap out of me — the software for Unbox will not only inventory and report on the content of your computer (you know, so that Amazon can help you) but it will also be checking up on the digital rights management of your computer. You can read the details, here.

I read these two things — the changes with Zune, and this Unbox crap — on the same day. What I fear is this: When will the day come when the force of digital rights management surpasses my ability to use a computer as a tool? OK, that’s a bit misleading — that’ll never actually happen to me, because I’d walk away from that type of a computer and go running straight to Linux and that old 5.25″ floppy drive I keep in the attic. But still, I worry — when will it get so bad that the photos you load onto your computer, photos that you took with your digital camera, get so consumed by DRM and forcibly applied copyright crap that you can’t even send them to family and friends or do anything other than look at them on your own screen?

And DVD’s are the worst. Make a DVD of home movies with just about any program on a Windows machine, and that DVD is as uncopyable as if it came from MGM. Why? To protect the copyright holder — even if it’s you that holds the rights to the content of the DVD, and even if it’s you that is trying to copy it — and that’s irregardless of whether you protect the contect you created with a copyright or licensing under Creative Commons or something else. The lawyers would have you go back and made a new DVD in lieu of copying the DVD, all for the greater good of the world and to protect the failed business model of the movie and music industry (and probably the software industry, too).

Now, is it all purely evil? No. Of all things, Microsoft has issued a plug-in for Office, to add in licensing information for Creative Commons. A good thing, as I see it — my sister could create check sheets for her work or studies, and slap on the CC licensing so that others can use them under her terms without having the Kinko Nazis yell at anyone trying to photocopy them. This, though, is the exception, not the standard — the very uncommon.
But that’s still what I fear - the day when the media lawyers succeed in making computers unusable, turning them from being useful tools into something akin to a TV set with rabbit ears. That day is going to suck, and I think we’re at the turning point now.

I was looking for another way to phrase it, but really, there isn’t one. The Jedi are just plain stupid.

Why do they get wet when it rains? If I had the force under wraps like they do, I’d be whooshing those drops away every damn time.

And then there’s this. When the first Star Wars movie opens, we’ve got all kinds of Jedi running around, and no Sith. No manifestation of The Dark Side. All good, no bad. In fact, there hasn’t been Sith “for a millennia,” Yoda says. He paints a picture of the Republic where the Jedis have the upper hand, and have for a long time.

So, with that, I really don’t understand this: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to suffering. This is the path to the Dark Side.” What the hell is he talking about? With no Sith, there hasn’t been a “Dark Side” for any path to lead to. Jedi — they defy logic on a daily basis — he might as well have said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to suffering. This is the path to becoming a Vampire.”.

And with that comes the whole thing with “the Prophecy.” Samuel Jackson, aka Windu (yes, I had to look that up), talked about how there will come one who will restore the balance to the force. Balance, when they live in a little Jedi fantasy land that has no Sith in it. Lots-o-Jedi, and no Sith — yet somehow they think that the Force is out of balance, in favor of all that Dark Side stuff. The Jedi are stupid — all good, no bad, but they think that the prophecy will somehow help out the Jedi. It took me all of about 3 seconds to realize that the force was out of balance and that the little kid was going to tip the scales some against the Jedi. Back into, oh, I don’t know, balance.

And Obi-Wan. He going into the ol’ HAL 9000, looking for the planet Camino. (And he refers to it as being south of this other planet — south. Hello? South of what?) And gosh, it’s not there. The rest of the planets are still circulating around where he thinks it should be, but it’s not showing up in the mainframe system. It takes some 8 year old trainee’s to point out to him that the obvious explanation is that the automated system has been altered, and reference to the planet removed.

Yoda’s response, to the idea that someone (and it has to have been a Jedi) has hacked the HAL9000? Look into it? Launch an investigation? Call SYSAdmin?

Nope. “Meditate on this, I will.”

What a freakin’ idiot.

Oh, and since we’re geeking out to Star Wars stuff, let’s talk about the little green dude. When he dies of natural causes, Yoda is something like 900 years old. That’s at or near the end of Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker’s life. In those late years, he’s an old, fragile little dude, slow to move, feeble. If we assume that Darth Vader was, say, 60 when he died, we can guess that Yoda was 850+ when this whole Star Wars saga started. And back then, Yoda was young, spry, nimble, more than willing to toss aside the cane when a good fight breaks out. What’s up with that? In the last 7% of his life, Yoda completely falls apart — from bouncing around in massive light saber fights, to fumbling around with a cane. That I should hold up so well.

And in the first movie, Anakin is all of about 8, while Queen Hottie-Momma looks to be in her 20’s, at least (old enough to be elected queen). In movie II, we’re told that it’s been ten years. So, Anakin is, what, 18? Maybe 20? She still looks like a sophomore in college — quite the MILF, for being in her late thirties. “I’ve been dying a little bit every day, since you came back into my life” — she’s not in her late 30’s and saying crap like that, that’s for sure, unless all Queens of Naboobies are stupid, too.