Misc. Ramblings

Shocked! Shocked, I say! Who could have known that teaching only sexual abstinence, that is not giving teenagers any information whatsoever on birth control (other than failure rates), can lead to more sexual activity by these very same teenagers. No, they aren't saying there is a cause and effect relationship, only that rates of intercourse go up immediately after this educational effort (see the Texas study here). As with all studies, replication is required to confirm the results but it seems like common sense to me.

I've said this before and I'll say this again, this is a public health related subject. Schools should teach how not to get sexually transmitted diseases. How not to spread such diseases and how to detect if they have such diseases and where to go to get medical treatment.

From a religious point of view, parents and their churches are free to teach only abstinence but religious points of view like this should not eliminate public health education classes, which is what is happening in Red States like Texas.

My guess is, rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases may increase in such states and this is something that can and should be studied. If it (abstinence only education) works, great! But if it doesn't, then from a practical and pragmatic point of view, we should try adding something that does.

Aloha!

I'm at home again today because of the flu that will not die.

In the mean time, I know many of you have a need to build a rotary dial cellphone. So, here it is.

I realize that the local TV news business is a very competitive one but I wonder why they do some of the things they do. For example, this concentration on going "live" to report a story. One local TV station (KHNL) sets up their camera just outside their front door and then trumpets the fact that they are live on Nimitz Highway. Said highway runs past their front door so I guess they aren't lying about the location but it's not exactly the truth either.

Then they will cut away from that shot and go "live" from "Kalihi". While the station is in the Kalihi area, where they are actually broadcasting live from is just outside their back door. From there they sometimes cut back to their "Weather Center." Said weather center is a chair inside their studio.

Even when some of these stations go live at a location other than their studios it doesn't make any sense. I saw one live shot (KITV) done after 22:00 at the state Capitol. The only thing is the Capitol was closed, the lights were out, and nobody was there. Except the reporter. The station could just as easily have done this story in the studio with a picture of the Capitol building in the background. But, for whatever reason, they were "live."

All I can say is, "So what?" What does going live to a location have to do with a story that is not occurring at the time the station goes live? Do stations get rated by the FCC on how often they go live? Do stations get higher advertising revenues by the number of live stories they do? Does going live prove anything?

All I can say is there seems to be a inverse relationship between the number of times a station goes live and how well and how in depth that station does the news. Perhaps, this is not a coincidence.

Aloha!

And then there's the high speed photos of bullets going through crayons, light bulbs, soda cans, etc. See more here.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

Speaking of which. Ahhh the pleasures of modding your hearse with two machine guns and a flame thrower. What could go wrong? See more here. YMMV. Use at your own risk. Don't do this at home.

First, some background information. Installing an upgrade version of just about any application requires that you have a previous version already installed. In the case of MS Office 2000, when installed from a CD, you can point the install program to your floppy drive to check for that earlier version. In my case, I have a copy of MS Office 4.3 on diskettes. So when the Office 2000 install does the check of my c:\ drive and doesn't find anything it asks where to look. Usually, I then insert the floppy disk in drive a:\ and point the install at that. Thus satisfied, the install trundles on its way.

But there is a problem if you try this procedure while running under Xandros Business Desktop version 2.5 and the included CrossOver Office. The problem is Xandros/CrossOver will only show your fake c:\ drive, as opposed to a mount of your actual c:\ or a:\ drives when dual booting with Windows. Hence, you can't point the Office 2000 install at your floppy drive or anywhere else for that matter.

My quick and dirty work-around was to copy the contents of the floppy disk to the root of the fake c:\ drive. I copied the files to the root of the fake c:\ drive because the install (or CrossOver, I don't know which) would not allow pointing to any of the sub-directories, real or otherwise. Note that the fake c:\ drive is found in $HOME/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/ (or, I think, in /opt/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/ if you are installing as the root user. Since I didn't install as root I don't know for sure). Note that the Xandros file manager must be set to display hidden files and folders to see the .cxoffice folder.

The solution I have may not be the most elegant so if you have a better way, let me know. Otherwise, this is more information than I've found on the rather skimpy data found on the Xandros site, CrossOver Office site, and their respective forums.

Speaking of skimpy information, if anyone knows of a Xandros article that gives step-by-step procedures on removing Xandros and restoring your hard drive partition to what it was before installing I would like to know where it is. All I can find is information about deleting the partitions and restoring the Master Boot Record but nothing about changing the partition size without loosing the data already there (when dual booting with a pre-existing Windows installation).

On a related note, Xandros, like other current Linux distributions, can not write to an NTFS formatted partition. Hence, while Xandros can read from your Windows partitions, it can not write to them (even if the partition is mounted as read/write). While I don't know for sure, I would assume this is how things work (or don't work as the case may be) when you try to write to a Windows server or PC with shares formatted as NTFS. If this is true, then using Linux as a Windows client may not be a wise move unless you never need to copy to or edit files on such a Windows NTFS partition.

With that, I think I've paid forward for the year and can get back to my regularly scheduled programming. [g]

The American Conservative web site has an article entitled "Hunger for Dictatorship" (read it here) that declares there is a far right extremism permeating the US that dwarfs anything seen during the Cold War. The article quotes Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell as saying this new extremism "celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state." The article goes on to say the most recent parallel era that this type of extremism occurred was in fascist Germany.

While many people would expect such talk from Michael Moore, that it's instead coming from noted conservatives should add impact to the already stunning message: The US may be on a track that can only lead to its doom. Although, the author optimistically seems to be saying there is still time to change course, the groundwork for fascism is already laid and I would say it is just a matter of when, not if, the Brown Shirts will rise again. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Sorry for the late posting. I had it ready to go but was sidetracked by some other things I had to do first.

Thank you to Jon Barrett who pointed out that yes, you can write to a server with a volume formated as NTFS from a Linux client. I should have checked first before guessing that it might not be possible. Especially since I could actually login into one of our NT servers and find out.

Logging in to a one of our NT servers is remarkably similar to that in Windows. In Xandros Desktop Business Edition version 2.5, click on the File Manager icon --> Tools --> Mount Network Share.

Type in the address (we use something like \\xx.xxx.xxx.xxx\fo) and, once past the username and password, I was able to read and write files to the NTFS partition mounted there. Now if only I could do that with my own hard drive. Sigh.

Thanks again Jon!

So what do you do when you have not one, not two, but four iPod Shuffles? You create the iPod Array of course.

Aloha!

Alert 1! Alert 1! Action Message Follows

There is a web-based spoof vulnerability that works on Opera 7.54u2 and Firefox 1.0, but not IE 6/SP2. The proof of concept comes from Shmoocon (advisory here and proof web page here). The vulnerability allows anyone to spoof *any* domain, including those with SSL certificates (you know, those with https:// addresses). While viewing the certificate would show the actual, rather than spoofed site, how many people actually view the certificates to check the URL?

The spoof also fools Spoofstick so using that utility will not help you. On SSL sites, too bad it doesn't read the certificate and display the site URL.

There are three workarounds (that I know of). Look at the underlying HTML to see the actual URL. Never click on links (either on web pages or emails). Instead, type the URL yourself into your browser. Or lastly, a poster in the Firefox support forum says to do the following if you are using Firefox:

The workaround for Firefox seems to be an edit to your compreg.dat.

For windows
c:\Documents and Settings\$USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.random\compreg.dat

For UNIX
~/.mozilla/firefox/default.random/compreg.dat

Removing the line that references IDN makes the problem go away. Using Find, there was a single reference for the UNIX host and 2 for the Win32 host [I found only one in mine -ed]. Removing the lines and restarting the browser makes the attack fail regardless of the about:config/userprefs.js value.

Here's an example entry.

{4byteshex-2byteshex-2byteshex-2byteshex-6byteshex},@mozilla.org/network/idn-service;1,,nsIDNService,rel:libnecko.so

Cheers,
-BeesT

Quote:
It works. After making a backup of compreg.dat i placed

#

to remark out the line BeesTea See Profile mentioned. Exploit fails

Quote:
Confirmed on Linux, also.

I can confirm that implementing the above (and clearing your cache and then shutting down and restarting Firefox) will keep the browser from going to the spoofed URL but all you get is an error message saying the paypal.com site cannot be found. I guess that's better than nothing but it's hardly informative unless you remember this is telling you a site may be spoofed.

UPDATE: You also need to type in "about:config" in Firefox and find the reference to IDN (use the filter to find the instance of idn). Once found, change the default from "true" to false" (just double click on the line to bring up the choice).

Over at the Opera Forum on this problem, Opera is essentially saying it's not their problem to fix and even if they did, the solution would keep people from using, for example, Greek or Russian sites (sounds good to me - ed.).

I dunno what I'm going to do about Opera. I understand their point-of-view. But. If companies have learned nothing from Microsoft's stumbling examples, then learn this: IT'S THE SECURITY, STUPID.

According to the Chinese calendar on the wall today is the first day of the new year, 4702 - the year of the rooster.

There is an update for yesterday's instructions on the Firefox work around. I did not know that you also need to change the Firefox configuration by typing, in the window where you usually type in the URL for a site, the following:

about:config

This should bring up the configuration file and display line after line of configuration strings. Use the filter to find the lone instance of "idn." Once found, double-click on that line and change the default from true to false.

NB: Doing this may make it impossible to access certain sites. If you need to access such a site, you may want to use another method of avoiding the vulnerability.

It's going to be a really busy day today so I gotta go.

Aloha

The "Jeff Gannon" fake reporter story seems to be winding down. You can read one version of the events here. He has apparently resigned from "Talon News" over the controversy of who he really is. As an aside, it is interesting how many of the most virulent Republicans seem to turn out to have ties to pornography (in this case, gay porn).

There is a local angle to this story in that a local news site of dubious distinction has been re-publishing Gordon's writings for some time. Gordon has apparently even mentioned the site in an interview with PBS TV. I've talked before about this "news" site so I won't belabor the point but one does have to remember the old dictum: consider the source. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Kudos to Ian Lind for the links.

Aloha!

It's going to be one of those days today. I have hundreds of pages of reports to read and much research to do so I gotta go. Sorry for the short shrift.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

So the Grammy music awards were handed out yesterday and for the first time, there was one for Hawaiian music. The newly created Category 69, which comes under Field 14 - Folk, included five nominated Hawaiian music albums: "Some Call It Aloha Don't Tell" by the Brothers Cazimero, "Amy & Willie Live" by Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom & Willie K, "Cool Elevation" by Ho'okena, "Ke'alaokamaile" by Keali'i Reichel, and "Slack Key Guitar, Volume 2," an instrumental compilation.

I really appreciate the coverage both the Los Angeles (front page) and New York Times gave to the category. But Hawaiian music is such a diverse category that having but one award to give was bound to cause some bit of controversy.

The first controversy is defining Best Hawaiian music album as being 51 percent Hawaiian. I guess that means that if you sing anything on the album, 51 percent of it must be in Hawaiian. For some, this was too little. These purist wanted 100 percent Hawaiian language and nothing else. Others, thought that any percentage was too high because Hawaiian music can be sung in English and be just as rich, they say, in meaning as 100 percent Hawaiian.

The second controversy is combining instrumental and vocal music into one category. Four of the five nominees were vocal, or mostly vocal. The lone instrumental was a compilation of several solo musicians playing what is known as ki ho'alu (slack-key tuned guitar).

The third controversy, and perhaps the biggest in the short-term, is Grammy members from across the nation being eligible to vote for the best Hawaiian album. Open voting for all members tends to skew things towards the middle of the road. That is, if you aren't familiar with a type of music, but you have to vote on one as being the best, people tend to choose the one that is the most familiar to them or, at least, least foreign to them.

I can imagine a voter in Massachusetts hearing, for the first time, a Hawaiian chant by Keali'i Reichel and wondering what the heck is going on and why does he sound the way he does (his voice would not be considered very musical by western standards). This is indeed unfortunate as Mr. Reichel is considered by many Hawaiian people to be a living treasure. An embodiment of hundreds of years of Hawaiian chant. Perhaps his soul doesn't translate very well across the miles.

My personal favorite, Ho'okena is a good example of contemporary Hawaiian music. By contemporary I mean the use of western music theory in the creation of new music as well as modernization of old Hawaiian chants.

The Brothers Cazimero were in the forefront of what is now called the Hawaiian renaissance. This period, centering on the 1970s, found Hawaiians gaining an appreciation of the many great accomplishments of their ancestors. This resulted in a renewed interest in canoe building and racing, hula dance, Hawaiian language (the idea of Hawaiian language only schools got their start during this period), and Hawaiian music.

But, in fact, none of the four albums with any Hawaiian words won. Instead, the instrumental compilation won the first Grammy for Hawaiian music. This is not to take anything away from the great solo musicians who played on this quiet and reflective album but what is Hawaiian music without the power of the Hawaiian language?

I can only hope that having a Hawaiian album category Grammy will open the world to the best of Hawaiian music, both the instrumental as well as language and that, in the future, there will be two Hawaiian music categories.

Aloha!

It has long been my belief that Microsoft has seen its best days and is now on a long, slow slide downwards. Note I said long, slow slide. While anything is possible, I think the probable course is a slowly decaying orbit much like a once high flying satellite - not a sudden collapse.

In an ABC News commentary, Michael S. Malone seems to agree. Using what he calls his smell test, Malone says he detects the tell tale smell of decay coming from Redmond.

The author says he sees two characteristics that lead him to his conclusion. First, mind share seems to be united in fear and loathing of Microsoft (so what else is old? - ed). And second, major delays in core products, i.e., Longhorn being, so far, two years late and missing core features (see earlier comment - ed) are occurring with regularity.

While no one can accurately predict the future all the time, I think his perceptions are correct.

Groklaw has an article that says Microsoft's Bill Gates is threatening to pull 800 jobs from Denmark if the Danes don't get religion and support software patents.

According to the article, Gates, speaking to the Danes like a master would to a dog, warned Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Economic and Business Minister Bendt Bendtsen and Science Minister Helge Sander that they must not block the disputed European Union directive on patenting software. Otherwise, Gates indicated, he would close an MS owned, but Danish based company called Navision.

It is so refreshing to see how elected Premier Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates speaks to his European inferiors peers. But, I guess, money talks so expect that Mr. Gates will eventually get what he wants.

Yesterday I talked about the stink that is coming from Redmond. A stink coming from the internal rot and decay that is Microsoft. But I've long been a pragmatist when it comes to software. That is, all other things being equal, I choose the tool that works best for me. And for many years, most of those tools were on Windows. But the day is rapidly approaching wherein those tools, or ones better than them, will be available on other systems.

The wise are now experimenting with these tools so that they will be ready when that new dawning arrives. Are you ready?

Aloha!

Speaking of jokes, here's GQ magazines top 100 jokes of all time. Since this is a family friendly site I can't repeat my favorite but this one will do:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!" "Like what?" "Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" "Christian." "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" "Baptist" "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" "Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?" "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off. (Emo Philips)

Aloha!

I see that MS has officially confirmed what has been known for sometime, there will be a new version of Internet Explorer. Ho hum. It doesn't matter to me because I don't use it except to access the Windows Update site. Otherwise, Firefox or Opera works just fine for me. While I think it's nice for the people still stuck on IE to get an update, all I can say is thanks, but no thanks.

Kudos to little Maui based Letarte Swimwear for making the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition (and here). While I can't see too many women spending $150 USD for a very tiny bikini (not to mention having a wardrobe malfunction), I guess they must be doing OK.

To software companies everywhere:

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

From Jamie Zawinski. See the full text here. WARNING: there is some strong language in his remarks.

Aloha!

To President Bush and members of Congress:

you have sold the First Amendment, your birthright and that of your children. The Founders turn in their graves. You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought under the Stars and Stripes.

From retired Texas judge Steve Russell. Read the full text here. WARNING: there is much strong language in his remarks. Thanks to Doc Searls for the link.

Every once in awhile Microsoft sends me user surveys. I received one yesterday. I guess I should clarify that MS contracts with various outside vendors that do surveys for MS. But I really have to wonder about a company that creates a survey web page that can only be answered by using Internet Explore (as is the case in the one I got).

More and more people are using browsers other than IE (see stats here, here, or here) so if you want to have the maximum probability of getting good results to a survey you need to code the survey pages so that it is browser independent. This is not hard to do given all you have to do is write it to a generally accepted W3C standard (e.g.,HTML 4.01, in effect and stable since 1999). Do that, and just about any browser should be able to do the job.

Write it to use "features" specific to IE, or uses security holes like javascript, and you lose a growing percentage of users. While I can understand a company using the latest whiz bang feature of MS and not caring about non-IE users or security, it seems to me they are essentially cutting off their nose to spite their face. In other words, the only entity being hurt by using IE specific features is the survey taker and so, what competitive advantage is that?

I see that former presidential candidate Howard Dean has become the head of the US Democratic Party. His election to the post seems to imply he will not run for the presidency the next time around.

Why? Because none of his possible competitors would have allowed him to hold the party chair if he said he would run. Hence, I assume either he isn't going to run or he will, but in doing so will have to cut all ties to the party when he does and perhaps run as an independent.

Which path he chooses isn't as important to me as how he, and all Democrats, will deal with the Fear Problem(r).

There are as many reasons as voters to explain why President Bush got re-elected. But I think the most important was the Republican employment of fear as a motivator. It may be somewhat cynical to say we vote against someone because we fear them more than we vote for another. But it sure looks like that's how many people are voting.

For example, one of the early uses of fear was in the late 1980s William "Willie" Horton ad. In one of many brilliantly cynical moves, the Republicans referred to Mr Horton as Willie, rather than by his full given name. Why? Because the name William R. Horton sounded like a white bank manager from Kennebunkport, Maine while Willie Horton gave the impression of a low-life from Mississippi. Indeed, Mr. Horton calls himself William and all court records and news reports referred to him as William. That is, until the Republican ad ran.

In addition, another later ad ("Revolving Door"), intoned that Dukakis "vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers he vetoed the death penalty. His revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape, and many are still at large. Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts. America can't afford that risk." Notice the fear code words: mandatory sentences, drug dealers, death penalty, murderers, crime, kidnapping, rape, and finally - "America can't afford that risk."

Another example. The Republicans wanted to paint President Clinton as being "pro-gay" so, by inferral, they could say he was "anti-family." The perfect opportunity arose in the case of gays in the military. In a superb move by the Republicans, they created a Catch-22 situation by charging, on one hand, gays in the military would be subject to blackmail because of their sexual orientation so they shouldn't be allowed in. On the other hand, the Republicans were against letting gays openly state they were so. That is, if gay soldiers wanted to free themselves from being blackmailed by openly stating they were gay, they would be booted out of the armed services, or not allowed in to begin with. Into this mix, the Republicans stirred in a whispering campaign about straight soldiers having to fear they would be gang raped by roving gangs of gay sailors. As an aside, calls to get rid of gays in the military have recently fallen silent, perhaps because there are severe manpower shortages due to President Bush's foreign adventures. But I digress.

From there, it was a natural progression to focus on fear of gay marriage. Again, if you are for gay marriage, or even civil unions, you are somehow against straight families. In 1996, Republican candidate for President Alan Keys, one of the most virulent anti-gays around, said "If we accept the homosexual agenda, which seeks recognition for homosexual marriages, we will be destroying the integrity of the marriage-based family." Running again in 2000, he went further saying granting of civil unions means "you've legitimized pedophilia." By inferral, Keys seems to be saying, somehow, allowing gays to marry will lead to homosexuals preying on young boys. And, you know, this twisted logic worked. People in 11 states recently voted to ban marriage of gay couples. All told, 39 of the 50 states now ban gay marriage. Why? Because they fear homosexuals somehow will make their own marriages less secure? Because they fear married gays will kidnap young boys and force them into gay slave servitude. I dunno, but I guess so. How else do you explain it other than through the use of irrational fear?

And so we come to the most far reaching example. Fear of external threats. Before there was terrorism, there was the Republican push to create a missile "umbrella" because we feared we would be attacked. By whom I'm not sure since the umbrella would be for the continental US and the only country with nukes that could reach the US would be Russia. On the other hand, Hawai'i and Alaska can be reached from North Korea. But, of course, there's no "umbrella" for either of these two states. But, again, I digress.

Republicans have used the fear of external threats for decades. The most famous was during the 1950s and the "Red Menace" (see also Senator Joseph McCarthy) scare. People were scared into digging holes in the back yard to create fallout shelters. Lists of communist sympathizers were created (or at least pieces of paper purported to be lists were waved about, along with a lot of arm waving). Everyone was suspect, including your neighbor, your priest, your teacher, or anyone because they could be...a communist.

Bring that forward to today and everyone, including your neighbor, your priest, or your teacher could be...a terrorist. People are building "safe" rooms into their houses to protect against bio-chem attacks (get out the duct tape and plastic sheeting Aunt Minnie, the terrorists are coming!). Congress and the President have shredded the Constitution because, they say, it is necessary and prudent during war to protect us against the terrorists. Never mind this is a war without end, or definition, or even criteria as to what victory would look like. What's important is that you are at risk! There is danger everywhere! The Constitution is but a mere impediment to what needs to be done! Grave times require grave men who are not afraid to take charge!

Under these conditions, the new Chair of the Democratic Committee finds himself. What will he do? I don't know, but what happens over the next couple of years will be critical to the survival of the US as a free, democratic republic.

Monday is the President's Day US national holiday. Hence, there won't be a post.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

OpenOffice 2.0, Beta Candidate 1.9m79, went out on the wire on Wednesday. Note well that this is not even a beta release but rather a beta "candidate". But if you want to live on the bleeding edge, you can get it here. Personally, I think I'll wait until the gold code, sometime in April or May, comes out. I anxiously await its release because if it can replace MS Word and WordPerfect, the last barrier to Linux will have fallen. And a glorious day that will be. When, not if, it comes.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. - Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

The great, the one, the only, the father of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson took his life over the weekend. His path was never one that would end quietly, in a rocking chair. So, I guess it is a fitting end to a life lived on the edge.

So long and mahalo.

PS: See his last ESPN column here and the wikipedia bio here.

Aloha!

For you dinosaurs who love your screen savers (you know who you are), Jamie Zawinski has released XScreenSaver version 4.20 here. It includes classics like flying toasters and the Matrix. Needless to say, it runs only on Xserver systems.

Aloha!

Google is getting slammed for a new "feature" it is planning to add to their popular tool bar. The feature, called AutoLink, would alter web pages by inserting its own links onto the page (read an eWeek article here for more details).

I don't know about you, but this just creeps me out. Perhaps it shouldn't since it isn't that much farther down that road than if you use their search engine and the advertising on the right panel changes based on what you are searching on.

But, in fact, when Microsoft tried something similar with their so called smart tags, the resulting cries of outrage were heard around the world. As for me, I don't see how this feature is different from adware/spyware that hijacks your browser and inserts its own links onto Google web page searches (other than you are accepting it, knowingly or not).

It was bad enough when Google's Gmail scanned your emails and inserted their own links based on the contents of the, you know, the private email sent to you. But now they want to insert stuff into any web page?. Where does this stop? If you Google your hard drive, would they insert links to pages similar to files it found? Is this a good thing? I dunno. You decide.

As for me, I don't use their tool bar so it doesn't matter to me. But if you use it, does it matter to you?

Speaking of cute, getting your morning coffee from Starbucks (a coffee company, for those who have been living in the Sudan for the last 10 years - Ed.) is sometimes made easier by using a gift card. You know, those little plastic debit card things that people give to each other as gifts when they can't think of anything else to give and don't want to give cash.

Well, it seems Starbucks has designed a special one for sale only in Hawai'i (see image below and story from the Honolulu Advertiser here). Apparently, some enterprising people are auctioning them on E-bay and making a pretty good living at it.

While I am certainly no expert in collecting gift cards, this one does look pretty nice. Maybe I'll go and get one the next time I'm in the area (how can you miss running into a Starbucks, they're everywhere - Ed.).

Aloha!

You know, one of these days someone is going to go a step too far with making Flash-based drives just a little too cute. Until then, check out the Mauna Tiki Data drive. It will never be confused with cute.

I've got a meeting to go to first thing this morning so I gotta go.

In the mean time, what with the Oscars coming up this weekend, all you wanna be sci-fi film makers may want to check out this how-to rotoscope site.

It gives you the step by step process to create a light saber-type effect for all you Star Wars fans.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

The English language online version of the Spiegel has an interesting article entitled "Could George Bush Be Right?"

The article's main thesis is that Europe, or at least Germany, tends to look to the past while the United States tends to look to creating new futures. An example given was President Reagan's vision of a united Germany when he "stood before the Brandenburg Gate -- and the Berlin Wall -- and demanded that Gorbachev 'tear down this Wall'". The immediate political reaction was that ol' Ronnie was off his rocker. But President Reagan turned out to have seen the future more accurately than the local politicians. At least, according to the article.

The article then makes the leap to the present and says perhaps President Bush's vision of a pan-Arab shift to a democratic-like style of governing could be an accurate prediction of the near future. While this is a very large gap to bridge, what if the author is correct? Imagine the possibilities.

However, while one can hope that if democracy can take root in the former USSR and Eastern Germany, perhaps it can take hold in Arab countries, we must remember the differing dynamics.

Many Arab countries enfold themselves in the robes of their religion. Much more so than western countries and, I believe, much more so than the USSR and Eastern Germany did (unless you define communism as a religion).

In history, religion has played both the role of conservator as well as revolutionary. Which role will it play in the Middle East? I don't know, but for now, it seems to be more conservative and rearward looking than the contrary.

Aloha!