If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

The newer Apple laptops, the MacBooks, have a built-in sudden motion sensor that will tell them if they've fallen off a table, for example. This allows them to park their hard drives before they hit the ground, which avoids some types of hard-drive damage.

But I'm not sure Apple was counting on people having so much fun with these things.

Exhibit A: The MacSabre

Using your Mac’s sudden motion sensor, this software turns your computer into a Jedi weapon almost worthy of taking on the real thing by making authentic lightsaber sound effects. It senses speed for the lightsaber movement sounds and acceleration for different levels of striking sounds.

Exhibit B: iAlertU

iAlertU is a car alarm system for your MacBook computer. iAlertU uses the built in motion sensor device to detect movement of your MacBook and triggers an audible and visual alarm. The alarm can also be triggered by keyboard and mouse/trackpad movement.

Exhibit C: Smackbook Pro

Turns out, the laptop has a built-in motion sensor. Nominally, it's there to protect the internal hard drive. The basic idea is this: If the accelerometer suddenly notices that the gravitational pull of earth is no longer present, the most likely explanation is that the laptop, sensor and all, is currently accelerating at 9.81 m/s² towards said earth. In that case, it will (wisely) try to turn the hard drive off in preparation for impact. It can, however, also be used in situations not involving lobbing the laptop across the room, fun though that may be.

Cool cool cool. Unfortunately, my Powerbook is old, unadorned with such wonderful gadgets.

Madonna is running out of ideas, methinks.

click to view

The uses for iPods just keeps on growing:

With the Nike+ footwear connected to iPod nano through the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, information on time, distance, calories burned and pace is stored on iPod and displayed on the screen; real-time audible feedback also is provided through headphones.

Hmmm. Unfortunately, I get the feeling Creative's will be getting a patent on this technology sometime around 2015.

Man, check out the site for this. If I was an excercisin' man, I'd actually like to try that out. Of course, paying $400 for a pair of shoes, not to mention $300 for an iPod Nano actually costs more than getting liposuction, so I'll wait.

If you're as vehemently anti-Socialist, read: libertarian, as I am, you've probably written Europe off. Europe is a socialist playground, unfortunately. Germany, France, England, and a few other countries are officially stuck in the tar, and have sadly already started their sad, slow, hopeless slide into the pits of 8th grade history class. It's all over but the archaeology at this point. But life goes on, and there will be a resurrection. If Europe is to live on, it must decide what defines Europe.

If you ask a European, he'll tell you that what defines a European nation is the 'nation' itself, which means, in the modern context, the race that inhabits it. Germans are Germans owing to either their pale skin, or, in the case of the rassige Germans, their family's documentable lineage. The French are exactly the same. There's a defined border between racially indigenous Europeans, and the dreaded Einwanderer, or immigrants. I could probably pass as a German, despite my bushy red sideburns. I understand the social requirements. I understand them at least enough to know how much they chafe at individualism, and I avoid breaking said requirements in exasperating ways. Once I get rid of my outrageous American accent, my pale skin and decorum would suitably qualify me as a German.

You see, Socialism dooms the Europeans. Socialism is itself an obvious lie. I'll give you an example. It's often said that Europeans are tightwads, but that's not exactly the truth. To understand them, you have to look no further than their tipping system. When drink in a German bar, for example, the tip is built into the price of the drinks. And it's not a stingy tip, either: It's 18%. This means, obviously, that no matter how good the service is, you're tipping them very well for a job not yet done. The joke is, it's an unspoken rule that you ignore the built-in tip, and give the waiter a little bit extra as trinkgeld, or 'drinking money'. I usually rebel at this point. I give at least 10% tip to whomever serves me, because I understand that the establishment keeps the 18% for itself. Now, never mind the fact that the average waiter in Germany gets paid a fortune in comparison to a waiter in the U.S. (basically, they actually get a real paycheck, and health insurance), and they can only hardly be fired, owing to the whole worker's paradise thing. Imagine being a waiter where it didn't matter how good you did your job, you'd still make rent and you couldn't be fired! How hard would you actually work? And for what purpose?

That is Socialism. I spent an evening talking with The Snowfrog, an ex-East German. We talked about an astounding array of subjects, as we usually do when we've had enough to drink. The Socialist politicians in Germany prey upon the good intentions of Germans. They practice extravagant charity with money that doesn't belong to them, and humility through the debasement of hard-working people that have no choice in the matter. All the arguments in European politics revolve around the getting of money, as all politics do, without the common courtesy of speaking directly with those to whom the money belongs!

European politics consists of morality brokers, who promise to use your money for moral purposes that you could only dream of being good enough for fulfilling yourself. They will force you, under threat of imprisonment, to be charitable and loving of your fellow man.

And your fellow man will be ungrateful, and will spit upon you, given the opportunity. At least when you leave a good tip, someone should say 'thank you'.

I really have nothing to add.

Visualize a future with hippie-smacking, club-wielding juveniles. What happened next makes Kent State look like a love-in.

Reading Brian's account of his hosting woes, I couldn't help feeling good about my recent decision to dump Hosting Matters. I went to them for hosting back in 2002, when I'd seen how many of the bigger players were using them. I figured if they could handle the traffic generated by blogs like LGF and Instapundit, there shouldn't be much problem with a pissant little operation like You Bitch.

At first, everything seemed great. I had SSH access, though not root, and the machine was pretty quick. I could dick around with my .htaccess files all I wanted, and was generally pretty happy with the whole thing. So, I ordered a reseller account, and began getting friends and customers to do their hosting through me, at Hosting Matters.

And then, I stopped getting emails. I only realized it at first because I hadn't gotten spam in a day or two. Spam is sort of like a distributed, SMTP-only version of Nagio; it reminds you every now and then that you've got an email server running somewhere. So, I tried sending myself emails, and received neither errors nor emails; they just vanished into the bit bucket with nary a peep. I opened a trouble ticket, and received a reply a few hours later that my account was over its quota. As it turned out, all new email addresses were created with a 10MB maximum size. So, shrugging, I upped my quota in the control panel and went on with my life.

In the meantime, of course, all my customers were having the same problem, they just didn't know it. Unless you realize you're missing something, you'll never know that your mailbox is full. And if you're running IMAP, that 10MB is gone with the first batch of cat pictures your mom sends you. Any further emails that get sent your way will just be unceremoniously re-routed to /dev/null. Hosting Matters will summarily delete your data, plain and simple.

Administrators should do everythiing they can to ensure that one thing never happens: Data loss. That's really what 90% of administration boils down to. Data loss or, relatedly, data compromise through security or connectivity issues, is the definition of failure for admins, but at Hosting Matters, it's company policy.

Mail cannot be delivered when quotas have been reached. Quotas be can be removed by setting the quota value to 0.

Of course, that's only half the story. Maybe mail can't be delivered, but it most certainly can be bounced. It's what SMTP error codes were invented for. So, I ditched them and got myself a (quasi-) dedicated server where I'm the admin. And I brought all my customers and buddies with me.

Despite the fact that they have very capable support people, and good prices, I would never recommend Hosting Matters to anyone. And it's simply because they deleted my data for no reason, and without even having the courtesy to tell me they were doing it. Because really, not deleting my shit isn't too much to ask for in a hosting company.

Now, I've said before that this or that video is the awesomest video ever. I may have even believed it at the time. But this, without doubt, is the awesomest video ever.

I can't imagine how many times I'd sit through Bowling for Columbine if Charlton Heston had done that. I get stiff nipples just thinking about it. Hard as little rocks.

via Screw Loose Change

Apple's updated iWeb, their web publishing, blogging, and podcasting tool. It actually has comments in the blog part now. Before, it was absolutely worthless, but, in typically Apple fashion, they've waited until the comments were done right before doing them at all.

First off, you create a blog post like this one. Then, you enable comments in iWeb's inspector, rather confusingly under the 'RSS' tab.

And voila! Users will get an Add Comment thingamabob on the blog entry, complete with captcha. You can even allow users to upload attachments with their comments, but I've never really missed that feature before, so I think I'll ignore it. Although it could be very cool for things like asking for grainy cell-phone pictures of your readers' tits. For example.

Nice looking, that. Oddly, user comments aren't scanned for spam, as far as I can tell; and, unlike with most other blog systems, you won't be notified per email. What you will get is a dock notification in iWeb in the vein of Mail's notification.

At which point, you can go into iWeb and read comments or delete spam. Somebody really needs to make a Growl plugin to take care of this, though, as most people don't have iWeb open 24/7.

All in all, a great update for iWeb. It still not probably not suitable for a power blogger, since it lacks features like, oh, seeing your hits and stuff, but it's not bad for just throwing something out there.

The new MacBooks are here:

Downsides: I HATE GLOSSY LAPTOP SCREENS!!!1. Really. They reflect your fingers when you're typing, and it's annoying as hell. And if you happen to be playing Doom 3, you'll scare a dot in your panties when you reach to adjust the screen, since it looks like a big hairy flesh-covered spider is jumping right at your face. If you've got hairy fingers like I do, at least.

Everything else? Goal! Intel Duo Core, widescreen format, choice of black or white; it's all good. Notably, the black one will cost you $200 more than the white one. I'm not sure why, but they're probably figuring it'll be the new hotness. I'd be just as happy with a white one, personally.

Apple continues to push the iSight into every Mac user's hands. Ubiquitous, integrated video conferencing will be one of the Mac's big selling points, and it works (insanely easily) today.

Can't wait to get my hands on one of these. Actually, since I'm poor as a church mouse, I guess it's just another reason to hate my slacker nature.

Creative has sued Apple in a shameless money-grab. Creative's Zen sucks choad, and they know it. Now, they're suing to halt sales of the iPod and the Nano in the United States.

The lawsuit accuses Apple's iPod navigation scheme of violating one of their patents. It was filed in August of last year. I may not be the sharpest tool in the drawer, but I've had an iPod for a lot longer than that. I wasn't aware you could patent somebody else's stuff and then take it away from them. I wonder if it's got anything to do with Creative's rather lackluster performance last year? The whole thing stinks of the typically Asian lack of honor in matters of intellectual property.

Creative was one of the first companies to build a portable MP3 player, with their Rio. They were also one of the most innovative companies in the PC world with regard to sound hardware. In the mid-to-late 90s, the sound card was generally a separate piece of hardware, and very rarely built into the motherboard. As amazing as it seems know, most PCs didn't have sound at all. Back then, your choice of sound card was actually a lifestyle choice. Companies like Creative, Turtle Beach, and Gravis were all clamoring for your greenbacks. I loved my Gravis Ultrasound, but the best sound card I ever owned was the Sound Blaster PNP32. It had brilliant sound output, and made absolutely flawless recordings. For a consumer-level card, it was top-drawer. It was the last Creative product I've bought. And I'll probably not be investing in a company's products that has to resort to lawsuits to generate revenue. That's usually a pretty good sign that it's not going to be around much longer.

I hope that Apple gets pissed off here. I hope they create irresistble, cheap products to compete with each and every Creative SKU. Sim Wong Hoo can only sit and fume while his sub-par company collapses around him.

"We haven't been able to find the head."
I looked at the floor around the table, barely thinking. "You look in the cabinets?"
The uniform nodded. "Cabinets. Fireplace. We even looked in the toilet tanks. It ain't here."
Christ, another head freak. If there's anything I can't stand it's the trophy-hunters. A cannibal is a walk in the park next to these guys.
I walked out the front door and lit a cigarette. The Chief got out of his car and started across the manicured lawn.
"What's the story, Jake?"
"Upscale neighborhood, pricy dame–"
"Another head freak?"
"Yep."