Misanthropyst

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"I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket."

- Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)

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© 2002, 2003, 2004 It's mine, damn you, all mine...

The Linux server hosting this blog has been up 1 day. The record is 60 days.

Blather

Mon 23 Aug 2004

UK Guardian: Sandy keeps tons of frozen blueberries in the freezer and I put them in my Myoplex Lite protein supplement smoothies almost daily:

"Eating blueberries might help protect people against clogged arteries, researchers suggested yesterday.

The fruits contain a compound that works similarly to a drug used to reduce levels of harmful cholesterol, according to tests on rat liver cells..."

...great news...

Tech Junque - I just reconfigured my network topology [a mixed Windows and Linux, copper and WiFi, laptops, workstations and webserver set-up] so that I can run a network sniffer and IDS on all the packet traffic. And I just fdisked the main HDD of my main Windows workstation so that I can set it up for a dual-boot configuration. Debian Linux on one partition, Windows XP on the other. This should only take forever.

...on the other hand, I got to clean up about six pounds of dust, cobwebs and crud. And I finally managed to cable-tie all those power cords, cat 5 cabling and other wiring. Plastic cable-ties - the zenith of technical civilization..

siqi's house: More effective law enforcement? Chinese cop shoots a kidnapper:

...two in the melon, the guy's like Batman...

Free Iran: This is what world wide sharia would mean for you and your family:

"On Sunday August 15, 2004, a 16 year old girl by the name of Atefe Rajabi, daughter of Ghassem Rajabi, was executed in the town of Neka, located in the province of Mazandaran, for “engaging in acts incompatible with chastity”. The execution was carried out by the order of Neka’s “judicial administrator” and was approved by both the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic and the chief of the nation’s “judiciary branch.”

Although according to her birth certificate she was only 16 years old, the local court falsely claimed that she was 22...

...The young girl was buried the same day after her execution but during that same night her corpse was disinterred by unknown individuals and robbed. The theft remains unexplained and the Rajabi family has filed a complaint..."

...cultural relativism at its finest...

BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis highlights some truth to power ranting about old geezers like me:

"...Jeeez. Boomers.

Vietnam was over before I was =born=. And boomers =still= think they're the center of America. Well, I've gotta say, not for much longer.

Most people my age don't even know what the whole Vietnam thing was about, and why it's considered a "bad" war compared to those "good" wars. What's the diff between Korea and Vietnam, I'd like to know, other than in Vietnam we let the commies win?

You know what this reminds me of? "The South Will Rise Again" nuts. Think of the bitterness of the old confederate vets that festered for years... and the South remained a backwater until it gave up that confederate outlook and decided to join the 20th century and become a magnet for business. Are boomers going to be eating their livers in retirement because of Vietnam? Sounds like it to me.

Looking at my mortality tables [I'm an actuarial-type], I note that boomer deaths are really going to pick up over the next couple decades. I'm hoping that will finally get people to shut up about Vietnam. I notice that generation Xers [my generation] don't go on about this crap - unlike the children of the confederates, we're not carrying this forth to future generations. So I guess the boomers should wallow in this while they're still alive, because their children sure won't..."

...do not go quietly into the night...

Slashdot: The fault here lies in our politician's cowardice in dealing with the issue of profiling forthrightly. We might start by renaming it statistically accurate sampling:

"After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"

An anonymous reader writes "CNN reported that Kennedy wasn't alone in being listed in the airport watch list as reported in a Slashdot article. Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman, has been stopped many times because his name appeared on an airline watch list as told to Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security. He contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in an effort to get his name off the list, but failed. Instead, he received a letter from the TSA indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency even though he might still be subject to extra security checks..."

...this is not a security issue, not a transportation issue, and not a common sense issue. This goes to the core of our civil service's ineffectiveness...

Sun 22 Aug 2004

Yahoo News: Heh. Headhunters For Kerry.

"A member of the Koruba tribe from the state of Amazonas carries a poster with the name of US presidential candidate John Kerry in a park in Brasilia, Brazil, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2004."

...OK then...

Yahoo News: Those zany, nuanced and sophisticated French intellectual scamps are up to their usual weekend hijinks:

"Arsonists destroyed a Jewish community center in eastern Paris in a pre-dawn attack Sunday and left behind anti-Semitic graffiti, police said.

No one was hurt as flames tore through the center located on the first floor of a six-story building. The center, which served as a meeting place and cafeteria for the elderly and disadvantaged, was gutted, rescue officials said..."

...bon soir!...

I've been on this radical diet/exercise program for about three months now [down 30 pounds at this point], and one of the meals I've sorely missed was pasta. I once ate pasta about four times a week! I haven't had any in a month and last night we splurged - Sandy made some portobello tortellini with garlic marinara. In addition to experiencing a pasta-gasm, I also enjoyed a bottle of cheap red wine.

...for penance this morning I rode my bicycle 25 miles in the hills around Falls Lake in North Raleigh. Took me 96 minutes, and man, I was attacking those hills...

NY Times: The X-Box Generation gets game, Army style:

"...Despite what you see in action movies and other video games, cars do not provide good cover from bullets. The snipers cut loose, and my troops crumpled to the ground. It was surprisingly distressing. In barely three minutes, I had led every single one of my soldiers to his death.

I play video games regularly and, modesty aside, usually do quite well. Though this was my first attempt at Full Spectrum Warrior, the reason that I played poorly was not that I was inexperienced but that the game was not designed solely for entertainment. Full Spectrum Warrior was created by the Institute for Creative Technologies, with help from the Army, to teach soldiers realistic strategies for surviving what the armed forces call ''military operations in urban terrain.'' As a result, the game is unforgivingly precise. The soldiers you command are programmed to respond the way a real soldier would. There are no magic weapons to bail you out. All you have going for you is the real world. ''This is what you'll really see when you're out there,'' said Maj. Brent Cummings..."

...simulations can be remarkably effective training aids in areas like flying and surgery. I'd like to hear the comments of experienced NCOs as to the skills transfer to real combat...

Raleigh N&O;: Better Living Through Chemistry - none of these ladies look like women:

"LaTasha Colander, a Garner resident and former University of North Carolina track athlete, made it to the Olympic 100-meter final Saturday but was slow out of the blocks and last at the finish line in a race won by Yuliya Nesterenko of Belarus.

Nesterenko, a newcomer in a suddenly wide-open 100, won the gold medal with a time of 10.93 seconds. Lauryn Williams, the 20-year-old NCAA champion for Miami, captured silver with a personal best of 10.96..."

...their exhalations could probably be classified as environmental hazards...

CNN: It's not sellable on the open market, so this was a theft-on-order by a private collector who wanted to grace his holdings:

"Armed men stormed into an art museum Sunday, threatened staff at gunpoint and stole Edvard Munch's famous paintings "The Scream" and "Madonna" before the eyes of stunned museum-goers.

The thieves yanked the paintings off the walls of Oslo's Munch museum and loaded them into a waiting car outside, said a witness, French radio producer Francois Castang..."

...brazen...

Sat 21 Aug 2004

IMDB: We just DVD'd Before Sunrise, which was simply delightful. And here is the follow up prize - the movie was made 9 years ago, and the sequel has just been released. Before Sunset is now showing, with the same actors, a follow up story line, and everything hopelessly complicated by the actual passage of time:

"Before Sunrise is a passionate and intelligent romance between a young American [Jesse] and a French student [Celine]. A chance encounter on the train incites intrigue, and Jesse provocatively suggests that Celine postpones her return to France and embarks instead on a spontaneous expedition to Vienna. In the course of their 14-hour relationship, the two share in their love for the unrehearsed and their appreciation for the unexpected as they explore in a powerful meeting of hearts and minds. Dawn breaks. Sad in silence, they make their way to the station. As they bid each other farewell, Jesse is seized by another impulse - another encounter?"

...how clever...

MyWayNews: Good on you, lads, go for the gold:

"Emad Mohammed's 12-yard bicycle kick in the 64th minute gave Iraq a 1-0 victory over Australia in the quarterfinals Saturday, putting the invaded, war-torn country in position to compete for only its second Olympic medal in the nation's history.

Iraq will play either Paraguay or South Korea in the semifinals in Thessaloniki on Tuesday. Even a loss in the semis would put the Iraqis in the bronze medal game, where they could become the first athletes from their country to win a medal since Abdul Wahid Aziz's weightlifting bronze in Rome in 1960.

Two more victories would mean a gold medal and a promised $25,000 reward for each player from the recently reinstated Iraqi Olympic Committee. The committee had conceded it may need sponsors to come through with the cash, considering there are 18 players on the roster..."

...oh, I believe they'll come up with the case...

Scripting News: The ever-fatuous Dave Winer is pulling for the US to lose the beginning of the War Against Islamofascism, currently taking place in Iraq. It gets in the way of attention being paid to Dave. But even he doesn't usually reach this level of childishness:

"...The Imam Ali shrine at Najaf is one of the most meaningful places in Islam. We don't have anything remotely like it in the US, because our culture is so young. This place is like Yankee Stadium to a Yankees fan, or Disneyland to a Disney fanatic...

...How would you feel if there was an Islamic army driving down every main street in every town in America? I wouldn't like it, and I bet you wouldn't either..."

...they are driving down Main Street in America, dummy. Stop looking in the mirror and glance at where the World Trade Center used to be...

CNET News: I missed this when it was first reported - hackers using Google to identify servers maintaining default [and exploitable] settings:

"...Google's ability to record Internet sites' content can be used to pinpoint those with weak security, Johnny Long, a security researcher and computer scientist for Computer Sciences, told attendees at the Black Hat Security Briefings here. Though the technique is not new, well-crafted searches turned up so many sites with vulnerabilities that even jaded researchers laughed during the session...

...By searching for default server page titles, for example, an attacker can find easily exploitable servers. Applications left in default modes can also be found by searching for error pages generated by the software. And searching for specific file names can pinpoint vulnerable servers connected to the Internet...

...A simple search for the log-in page of Microsoft's Web server software, the Internet Information Server, turned up 11,300 sites on the Internet that exposed the page to the public. Gathering log-in information for poorly configured databases is also easy, he said..."

...dangerous world out there, and many systems administrators haven't a clue as to what they are doing. This is the major flaw behind Microsoft's server products - they make it easy enough to fool the average joe into thinking he knows what he's doing. "But it showed me a green smiley face icon, it must be safe."...

Slashdot: sudo is a Unix concept where you allow unprivileged users the opportunity to conduct certain acts that would normally be limited to the computer's superuser. It's been around for decades. The Hegemon just patented it, again highlighting the technical genius of those working at the US Patent Office:

"...US Patent 6,775,781, filed by Microsoft, is a patent on the concept of 'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process'."..."

...surely this is an urban myth. For a government employee to do this would require only stupidity, as common as hydrogen in any random corner of the universe. But for Microsoft to have done this, they would actually have to be intentionally evil, wouldn't they?...

Raleigh N&O;: All lawyers suck. They say they don't, but they do.^® - You just gotta admire the stones on this one:

"Handcuffed, his legs in shackles, the Rev. Melvin Bynum shuffled into a Richmond County courtroom Friday, charged with strangling his wife and stuffing her body into the trunk of her silver convertible...

..."He's looking forward to the opportunity to exonerate himself," said Robert Reives, Bynum's attorney in Sanford. "He's still distraught over the loss of his wife and adjusting to being a single parent."..."

...chutzpah...

Fri 20 Aug 2004

Referrer Logs - Window To The Soul Of The Internet.^® - We're rocking tonight here at the Misanthropyst:

"24.208.196.129 - - [20/Aug/2004:18:15:15 -0400]

24.208.196.129 is registered to dhcp024-208-196-129.indy.rr.com"

...a somewhat obscure interest group...

Referrer Logs - Window To The Soul Of The Internet.^® - A bubbling psychosis of fundamentalist confusion:

"172.129.166.241 - - [20/Aug/2004:19:01:19 -0400]

172.129.166.241 is registered to AC81A6F1.ipt.aol.com"

...of course it's AOL...