I am so done with it all.

People who publicly bash my projects as evil or malicious, while privately asking me for the source code. (and I don't mean Jikto)

People who write entire articles dismissing my contributions as irrelevant, but at the same time are so frighten by them that they purchase Google ad words on my name to ride on my success.

People who publicly question my integrity from moral high ground, and then offer me a beer like nothing has happened.

Instead of feeling hurt or angry, I just feel plain sad. Because once you’ve been sued for doing the right thing, once you’ve been tarred and feathered for being smart, you really don’t care about impressing much of anyone. But for some reason folks sure feel the need to feel more impressive than you.

I’m a curious hacker. That’s what I do. The fact that someone wants to pay me to be curious is just a happy coincidence for me. Lawsuits and mud-raking and “drama” and two-faced “friends” and the many other things I’ve seen so far, and all the things I’m sure to see in the future really don’t factor into it for me. They aren’t going to change what I like to do, what I’m damn good at, and what I’ll continue to do. They are, if anything, unfortunate, sad roadblocks.

I stand by my achievements, whether they are appreciated or not.
I stand by who I am.
I stopped caring how people accept me a long ago.

Drama

This rocks. some Australian guys build a Trojan Horse full of people dressed like Greek solders, and then try to get it past security into various places in Sydney. The only place that denies them access is the Turkish Consulate.

YouTube - Trojan Horse Test

I have consumed a massive amount of Red Bull in the last 2 weeks in a run up to finishing the manuscript for my Ajax Security book. We are talking on average 2-3 a day, with an occasional day of 4. Once there was a day of 5. Just once, and *never* again. At some point you can't really call them "days" anymore. A day is simply a convenient unit of 24 hours that may or may not start at 12:00am.

There is an elusive euphoria stage of Red Bull consumption where you are unbelievably productive and yet task that seemly take hours take only about 27 minutes or so. That was the odd thing. It always seemed 27 minutes later. I like to call this stage "Fry-Time" in reference to that Futurama episode where Fry drinks 100 cups of coffee and time slows to a crawl. Fry-Time occurs only in a narrow band on the line between total exhaustion and caffeine-induced heart attack and is a difficult stage to reach. I've hit Fry-Time maybe 3-4 times ever. 2 of those times have happened in the last 2 weeks.

Then, there is the "attention deficient disordering" stage. This stage occurs beyond Fry-Time and before the caffeine-induced heart attack phase. In this phase, you want to be productive. You are aware of all the work you need to accomplish as well as its importance. You feel motivated and excited about all your projects. In fact, it feels like you are in the Fry-Time stage. But you aren't. You are ADDing. Because as soon as you try to do something. You can't. Halfway through your brain jumps to thinking about another task and you stall. Its like OS scheduler that has so many jobs to do it spends all it time context switching instead of actually making any progress on any of them. This is an extremely frustrating phase because you know what's happening. And the very act of noticing that you are being scattered brained brings to mind all the tasks you still need to do which makes you think about how cool some of them are and suddenly you aren't doing any more work on whatever it was you were working on. You've context switched to another job.

The only thing to do in the ADD stage is wait it out and try to be productive later. The only problem is when you are in the ADD phase you have had so much Red Bull you can't sleep! So you are wide awake, too hyped to do anything, knowing you have shit to do, and losing time that you could be sleeping.

This is exactly what happened to me around 4:00am this morning. On an upside, I got through about 60 pages of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Elonka's cousin sure can write!

Taming the Bull

"Wasn't it in the best interest of our country to give women the right to vote?" Furtado asked the senator.

"Not necessarily so," O'Connor said.

Although she does vote, O'Connor said in two subsequent interviews with The Kansas City Star that if men had been protecting the best interests of women, then women would not be forced to cast ballots and serve in the state legislature. Instead, they could stay home, raise families and tend to domestic duties, she said.

Asked if she supports the 19th Amendment, the Republican lawmaker responded: "I'm an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women (today) we wouldn't have to vote.

"I'm sorry women have not been taken more care of," she said. "We have gotten the short end of the stick."

... Damn.

I'm not sure which is worse that she believes that sh*t or that she got elected spouting that sort of repressive nonsense. It looks from this side of the Atlantic like another example of Christian
fundamentalists and the United States of Bigotry. And you lot should unilaterally run the planet? Does she also think that you should get
back to the real spirit of the Jeffersonian constitution and only white male slave owners should have power.

Female Kansas Senator: Women shouldn't have to vote

Its so true.

Strongbad: Japanese Cartoons!

] The clerics generally agree that the constitution must
] ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a
] basic understanding of Shariah as laid out in the Koran.
] Women should not be treated as the equals of men in
] matters of marriage, divorce and family inheritance, they
] say. Nor should men be prevented from having multiple
] wives, they add.
]
] One tenet of Shariah mandates that in dividing family
] property, male children get twice as much as female
] children.
]
] "We don't want to see equality between men and women
] because according to Islamic law, men should have double
] of women," said Muhammad Kuraidy, a spokesman for
] Ayatollah Yacoubi. "This is written in the Koran and
] according to God."

Ahh yes, Democracy, so long as it doesn't violate Islamic law. You think Bush's "mandate from the people" has caused some aggressive policy proposals? This 3 page NYTs article discusses what the leading (and very conservative) Shiite Ayatollahs plan to do with their "mandate," and it has very little to do with freedom or equality. It haseverything to do with as Islamic of a state is possible. Try this on for size:

The leading Shiite clerics say they have no intention of taking executive office and following the Iranian model of wilayat al-faqih, or direct governance by religious scholars. But the clerics also say the Shiite politicians ultimately answer to them, and that the top religious leaders, collectively known as the marjaiya, will shape the constitution through the politicians.

Dance my puppets Dance!

Leading Shiite Clerics Pushing Islamic Constitution in Iraq

] The information coming in from the Mars rovers is
] exciting for NASA, but it's ending some of the action for
] bookies in Britain.
]
] The bookmaking firm Ladbrokes announced it's stopped
] taking bets on the question of whether there was ever
] life on Mars.
]
] NASA scientists said yesterday that the rover Opportunity
] found strong evidence to suggest at least part of the Red
] Planet once had a wet enough environment to sustain life.
]
] A Ladbrokes spokesman says the latest odds in favor of
] past life on Mars were 16-1. Back in the '70s, when the
] first bets were placed, the odds were 1,000-1.
]
] He says he expects that scientists will find evidence of
] past life on Mars within the coming years.

Bookies Stop Taking Bets on Life on Mars

] - The world's demand for the last many years, including in
] early 2003, was for Iraq to comply with U.N. demands to
] disarm.

I believe Israel is still holding land the UN told it to give up more than 25 years ago. I'm not saying Israel is wrong, I'm just saying this is a bullshit reason and you know it is.

] - Iraq was clearly not complying with those demands.

Ditto

] - Something had to be done, and most countries didn't have
] the balls to do it.

Most countries respect the diplomatic process, and understand, unlike Mister Bush, that you can't have what you want right now

] - We did.

Violating 230 years of Policy, and severly, if not mortally hurting NATO in the process.

Taking power into your own hands, while effective, hurts you in the long run.

] - The war was justified.

Really? Because minus the immediate threat of WMD I see no reason for a preemptive invading of another country. I have discussed this in my memestream before. All reasons given are things we either do ourselves, or ignore when our allies do because it suits us best.

] - And the world is a better place without Saddam.

The fact that you, or even the entire human population feels "the world is a better place" because something occured is never proof that what occured was fair or just or right to do.

RE: Blair Defends War Decision