"[It's] just like having drugs," said Al-Shalchi of his dependence on e-mail and Web access.

Despite not even getting access to the internet until 2000, their geeks are just as addicted to a "net fix" as we are. Interesting article on the current state of connectivity in Iraq and the seemingly ludicrous idea that they could wage a cyber-war against us.

Unleashing the dogs of cyber-war on Iraq!

] It's not that I'm bitter. Oh alright then, I am. When I
] was doing a weekly round-up of interesting web links in
] 1996 (still the top search result for the phrase "GLR
] jokes", if you'd like to check), I found myself using
] something very similar to what experts now call the
] weblog format. And was I hailed as the pioneer of a brave
] new form of distributed grassroots journalism? No, I was
] not.
]
] I was regarded - quite rightly, as it turned out - as
] some sort of nut who re-used the same HTML to update his
] home page every now and again. Don't get me wrong: I'm a
] huge fan of fanzines, home pages, and the whole
] do-it-yourself attitude. But because publishing one of
] these usually requires some element of effort, sometimes
] that's reflected in their contents.
]
] On the other hand, it's getting so easy to update a
] weblog that some users seem to type in their thoughts
] willy-nilly, posting unimaginable banalities, like a
] nation of Alan Partridges trying to fill an internet's
] worth of dead air: CDs they're listening to,
] scintillating accounts of their day at work, URLs of
] sites they feel they should acknowledge, despite having
] nothing new to say about them. It is like one of those
] terrible Christmas family newsletters for every single
] day of the year.

I love the conclusion of this article. It's so true:
"People used to worry about the government compiling a database of everything they knew about you and everything you did. But who'd have thought we'd be so keen to keep updating our own entries?"

Guardian Unlimited | Online | A blogger is a stalker's dream

] The present administration's embrace of the religious
] right also leads, by a bizarre route, to the further
] strengthening of the Israel lobby. Unbelievably,
] born-again doctrine insists that Israel must be blindly
] supported, not because it is the only semi-democracy in
] that crescent, but because it is due to host the second
] coming. Armageddon is scheduled to take place near the
] hill of Megiddo (where, in recent months; an Israeli bus
] was suicide-bombed by another kind of believer). The
] Rapture, the Tribulation, the Binding of the Antichrist:
] it isn't altogether clear how much of this rubbish Bush
] swallows (though Reagan swallowed it whole). VS Naipaul
] has described the religious impulse as the inability "to
] contemplate man as man", responsible to himself and
] uncosseted by a higher power. We may consider this a
] weakness; Bush, dangerously, considers it a strength.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Martin Amis: The palace of the end

From Dagmar:
] Hey while I'm sitting here staring at it, here's something
] I think is pretty useful. It's a late descendant from all
] those non-executeable stack patches for gcc so you can
] build somewhat hardened binaries if you're not chronically
] addicted to rpms. This one seems to be the most reasonable
] to work with that I've seen as well. It doesn't require
] you to keep older copies of your compiler around, since you
] tell it to build protected binaries with a new -f argument
] (usually passed through CFLAGS).

Thoughts on RPM..

If you consider youself a serious admin, on any system that uses RPMs, and you can't work with SRPMs to the extent of being able to drop in patches and whatnot.. You are missing a key skillset. RPM foo is uber useful.

I keep the SRPMs handy for all the key software I'm using, so I can drop in quick patches, do quick rebuilds that are ready to push out to multiple machines, and make custom versions of stuff with ease.. I do like being able to lean on the vendor for quick updates, but I also like the ability to tweak/extend what they give me, and be able to carry along those changes. RPM is actually pretty good for this.. Its easy to drop in patches, rebuild, and push out new packages fast. My own personal rule is that if it sits on a port that any hostile networks (internet) can get at, I'm prepared to drop in patches and rebuild it at will..

There is a link on this to a page with patches and instructions for how to apply this to the RH62 RPMS. Its a simple process. You can adapt it to 7 or 8.. You can script it. Make it something you can kickstart. Etc. I've done similar.

That being said.. This is cool. I like this. I'm going to check it out.

I'm also glad to see Dagmar posting stuff.. :)

GCC extension for protecting applications from stack-smashing attacks

] "It seems that the only English a lot of people there
] know are the words, 'We hate Bush.' "

Several times recently, my thoughts have drifted to this car ride Tom and I got from the airport outside Kuala Lumpur to the hotel we were staying at in the city. It was from this guy who was clearly not an actual limo or taxi driver, just someone good at pretending to be one who had a car. He liked car racing. Alot. Formula one. Talked about it the whole time.. Real pumped up about a big race a few weeks off. It really showed in his driving, which increased in intensity as he went on about it. 100% fun ride, aside from his taste in music. Britney Spears type stuff and bad pop dance. At one point when he was going through his CDs, while banking around turns at high speed, we stopped him from putting in Backstreet Boys.. He seems to think that all americans loved the stuff, we corrected him.. (Or was it Britney Spears? I can't remember exactly.. Something that _really_ sucked.)

At one point he asked what we though of Bush. I clearly remember that the inital reaction was a long groan in unison. He continued with asking what we though of the election.. Another long groan.. I pretty sure I said something roughly along the lines of "I think Bush sucks." Upon review, I'm really happy that was my reaction.

Between saying I thought Bush sucks and the correction about all americans loving the Backstreet Boys, I feel at that particular molment, something important happened as far as international relations via travel goes.. Something good for the local economy too, because we got ripped off bad.. It was an expensive ride.

I'm sure if I was the target of a "We hate Bush" yelp, my response would likey be to gesture to myself and say "I hate Bush".. I think that would get across just about any language barrier. At least it would ensure I wouldn't be beaten. I wouldn't be lying..

Similar to the approach that works best with the psyco bum.. When you get one of the yelps that signals impending problems, such as "Are you fucking with me?!" coming with no provocation.. You simply act equally crazy and go "No!! I'm fucking with myself!" Works every time..

Thats the overseas travel info that you aren't going to get thru any offical channels.. "If you get accosted, just remember, you hate Bush.."

USATODAY.com - Ugly sentiments sting American tourists

] Legal reference for the "Guy Arrested in Mall with Peace
] T-Shirt".. looks like the US Supreme Court is on his side.
] Basic summary is they rule that shopping centers are public
] forums and that people have a right to petition people
] politically within them. Wow, whoda thunk it.

And a quick check at some of the major link tracking sites confirms this story is all over the place.

Leads to a number of funny jokes, doesn't it?

"Look Sir, you don't understand.. We are the peace officers.. We keep the peace here. Not you. Us. Peace. Us. Get it? Take off your shirt or we are taking you downtown.."

Or maybe..

"This is not a peace mall.. No peace in this mall. No peace. You hear me? .... I don't want to hear your hippy crap.. No chance. No peace.. No shirt. ... That's it! Your going to the station."

Hrm.. I'm sure the talk show folks will have a blast with this.

Pruneyard Shopping Center vs Robins

] Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little
] dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse
] while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table,
] watching the security monitors of my brain with his
] peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT
] SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he
] pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my
] body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was
] dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism
] went from "restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR
] YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart went
] from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even
] faster.

Funny.

The Horror of Blimps

you have to enter some (fake) demographic information to get this article..
quoted:
===

Enraged Computer Owner Shoots Up Machine

The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 5, 2003; 3:53 PM

George Doughty hung his latest hunting trophy on the wall of his Sportsman's Bar and Restaurant. Then he went to jail.

The problem was the trophy was Doughty's laptop computer.

He shot it four times, as customers watched, after it crashed once too often.

He was jailed on suspicion of felony menacing, reckless endangerment and the prohibited use of weapons.

"It's sort of funny, because everybody always threatens their computers," said police Lt. Rick Bashor, seconds before his own police computer froze at police headquarters.

In police reports, Doughty said that he realized afterward that he shouldn't have shot his computer but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do.

Enraged Computer Owner Shoots Up Machine (washingtonpost.com)

leed25d wrote:
] Wed Mar 5 14:14:31 PST 2003
]
] I would like to point out that an article about the
] Radebaugh exhibit was just published on slashdot.

Its not the first time that a link has gotten well placed within MemeStreams several days before getting picked up by a major weblog. Its happened many times. I was just talking to Decius about this the other day. Glad you all noticed it too. :)

All evidence that the thing we have going on is working. We are still really early in on it though. There are about 20 of us who are frequent posters. We mostly know each other. In many ways, we have one tight-knit group of people, and a bunch of folks starting to file in around the fringes.. The system allows for a mugh higher degree of group seperation then we have right now, even at its present state. I feel I can describe just about everything right now as "young and immature". I mean that in a totally good way too. We have many good things on the way.

We have a massive backlog of features and bug fixes for the site.. Lots of stuff on the back end needs to get worked out before we can give the parts of the site everyone sees and uses the focus they require. Most of the work being done right now by me is on backend stuff that noone really sees..

Its nearly impossible for me to give any kinda accurate estimate about what new stuff is going to hit when. Life is crazy these days. Things have been getting done faster now then any time in the past, but what gets done when is dependent on how today's quest for survival is going. And like any development project, some things go faster then you expect, and you hit things that hold you up. Hence, don't expect a timeline, just expect things to happen. At least for the near future.

As Decius has told me in email and on the phone several times now, I need to be more vocal about whats going on around here. Do things like post when I make a site update and saying whats changed. Basic stuff like that.. Well folks, the truth of the matter is, most of the time after I take the site out of maintaince mode, I'm ususally thinking about one thing and one thing only.. The pillow. I find it shortly thereafter, and the next day I decide that it wasn't that important. Yeah, I know thats lame. I'll be more chatty. I promise.

As said earlier, most of what I'm working on now is backend related. Once I'm finished up with that house cleaning, the code that generates user bios and blogs is going to get my love. Its the oldest code in the system, and it is filled with the scars of changed approaches. It just needs to be hacked up, taking into account a bunch of new capabilities we will have shortly. Things like pictures in bios are going to happen in that process. The focus of much of the work is on scalability and making it easier to add new features and tweak UI.

Also.. Logging, and by extension statistics available, are going to get... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

RE: The Impending Death of /. is Predicted

] Last week, Google unveiled a new method of distributing
] its paid listings, placing them on web pages, as opposed
] to the traditional means of inserting them into search
] results. The new product, Google Content-Targeted
] Advertising, will likely accelerate the already rapid
] growth of contextual advertising. It also sees Google
] offering its second non-search product within a month,
] following on the company's acquisition of blog-firm Pyra
] Labs.
]
] Contextual advertising isn't new, yet in preparing to
] write this article, I also failed to find any good
] definitions for it. Do a Google search for "contextual
] advertising," and you might come away feeling that it may
] be unethical and has something to do with "scumware."
] Doesn't sound very attractive, does it?

"We just do search" Uh huh..

Google Throws Hat Into The Contextual Advertising Ring