Whenever I come across a cool web comic I haven't read before I like to read it from the beginning. Well, my latest find: Sluggy Freelance is going to take a while to read from the beginning because its been around since 97!
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
That's a little snippet from Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address given Jan. 17, 1961, three days before JFK took office.
Thanks to Joel Wendt for the link and as he said: "It is a very special look at the USA by a President who was/is much deeper than he was frequently given credit for."
"Sniper kills dozens around Wash. DC. Kid shoots neighbors and then anyone standing on the street as he drives away. Man kills college instructors and then himself. Newspapers and TV news love stories about murder and death because we watch and are fascinated (therefore enabling them to sell advertising). The world is a dangerous place - we could get shot, run over or might buy something we don't need after watching a story about a murderer. Is there something about this that doesn't seem to make sense?
The problem with News is that while a story may be fascinating (especially to our naturally morbid curiosity), News is seldom the truth. The problem has to do with the way certain facts of life are abstracted from their context, as if outside that context their true meaning will survive. [Read More at Hermit's Weblog]
Jam Master Jay, the D.J. who provided beats and scratches to the rap group Run-DMC's groundbreaking records, was shot and killed last night at a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, the authorities said. [Read More at New York Times]
R.I.P. Jason Mizell, This is a huge loss for the hip hop community.
"George Ziemann, an independent musician, made an album with his band and like many small operators, he then produced copies of the the album on CD-R and attempted to sell them on the Web. He listed copies on his own Web page, on MP3.COM, on garageband.com, and on eBay. All was going well... until eBay abruptly began to de-list the auctions.
Ziemann and his band were the authors, engineers, producers, and publishers of the album, and could prove that they owned the copyright and all other rights to it. Yet, eBay's "droids" unilaterally removed all of his auctions merely because the item descriptions stated that the recordings were on CD-R media. (This disclosure is important, because some players will not play CD-Rs.) At the same time -- ironically -- the system left many auctions involving illegitimate copies of copyrighted works undisturbed. Despite his repeated attempts to contact eBay and inform them that his products were legal, Ziemann was unable to prevent them from removing his album each time he listed it for sale.
Ziemann speculates, in his detailed account of the incident, that the RIAA has put pressure upon eBay to block sales of all CD-Rs -- not only to exclude illegal copies but to prevent independent musicians from self-publishing. But regardless of whether this is true or not, it's clear that his travails while attempting to publish legitimate products are a case of security gone awry." [ExtremeTech]
I'm going to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and so I put up a new blog just for that. I'll post my daily writing and other NaNoWriMo related things.
My blogging here might suffer as I need to write about 1,667 words a day to make 50,000 by the end of the month but I'll probably cross post a few things from that blog to this one just so it doesn't seem like I've dissapeared.
Curious Yellow: The First Coordinated Worm Design:
This paper proposes the first design for a worm which utilizes efficient communication between worm instances for an optimal infection strategy.
O'Reilly Network has a nice article on Building Online Communities. Recently I've been seriously thinking about building an online community based around online comics.
That reminds me, I need to finish reading Design for Community: the art of connecting real people in virtual places. I can't really comment on how good it is yet as I only read the first few pages and then totally forgot about it for months until I was writing this here entry and remembered I had it :)
So, Aaron Swartz did something so cool that I couldn't resist copying it. He set up a page where you can input text and his computer will speak it.
Here is where you can make my Mac talk to me. As the title implies, only use it to wake me up if you want to suffer the consiquences :)
[update] I added a "Speak to Me" entry on my sidebar on the front of this blog so people can quickly talk to me. [/update]
Natural Born Hackers has an article titled Microsoft Wants To Own The Internet. Its a bit old (July 15th) but its still a good introduction to TCPA / Palladium and DRM and how evil they really are.
NetNewsWire Lite is a very beautiful and full featured news aggregator for OS X. It uses a three-paned interface like Outlook Express.
If I start using my Mac more often it may take AmphetaDesk's place as my RSS reader of choice.
I'm posting t his from the great Kung-Log.
Kung-Log is a Mac OSX utility for posting to and editing entries in a Movable Type weblog.
Kuro5hin has an story with lots of links to articles about the increase in autism.
I talked to my sister a few minutes ago, she teaches special education and is a very knowledgable in these things and she said that most autism is highly preventable but parents arn't willing to do something as simple as changing their childs diet because they think that couldn't possible help.
HarryF on the SitePoint forums has compiled a fantastic list of Advanced PHP Resources, with links to sites covering object orientation, general application design, n-tier layering and using PHP with XML.
I'm going to have to read this one carefully, I've learned how to write 'hello world' in tons of programming languages but I haven't delved deep enough into any of them to be really good and I think I want to do that with PHP.
Slashdot: Libraries are 31337:
Many people may hold the image of a librarian as a shushing school marm who does little more than stamp and shelve books because that's all they've seen librarians do. Well think again - that's about as inaccurate as believing that Alan Greenspan is nothing more than a glorified bank teller. The job titles may change but the mission of the profession remains the same: organize information and help people find it.
I don't know how to show my respect for librarians other than to just thank every one of them for helping so many ungreatful people hehe.
Awww how cute, someones using my blog to help them write a book report.
The next thing we know they'll be using us to help them make a nuclear bomb. (yea I know that doesn't make any sense but I'm putting it in to see how long it takes for me to start seeing referer hits for that)
Joel Wendt has posted part two of Hacking Politics:
The main psychological element then is habit. Things are done because they were done that way in the past. It is easy to just do the habitual. Those who benefit from the way things are can hardly be expected to want to change them.
So, if we are going to hack politics, then we have to deal with habit. Habit is like the Windows OS, kludge upon kludge that only runs because we are used to it. Now we need the open source ethic in politics, where everything gets done in a transparent way - visible to everyone.
Kind of reminds me of Rick Klau's story about Five Apes in a Cage.
Joni Mitchell 'Ashamed' to Be in Music Business:
"I just think it's a cesspool," the 58-year-old folk-rock icon said in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
"I hope it all goes down the crapper. I would never take another deal in the record business, which means I may not record again, or I have to figure out a way to sell over the Net or do something else. But I'll be damned if I'll line their pockets."
Posted by adam at 03:46 PM
My father who is running for president, has posted Hacking Politics, Part One.
If you can't wait for part two to learn more check out "The Plan":
"Some months ago my son (age 18) wanted to know how to take over the world. So I gave it some thought.
One of the things that I eventually concluded was that while I could not take over the world, we could. Think about it.
Some of those who read this may have had the following experience. We are sitting in the bathtub, with it about half full. We move our torso back and forth a bit, causing the water to move. We find that if we get in sync with the wave travelling through the water, we can get the wave to become bigger and bigger just by adding small amounts of energy just at that moment the wave passes us by. Just a little effort at the right instance can cause a very powerful action.
Is such a situation possible in the realm of politics and social life?
Yes."
Scott is 13 years old again. Well, not really he just found out that text-mode adventure games (or interactive fiction) are still alive and kicking.
I've been playing Worlds Apart lately, its an amazing piece of science fiction, as good as reading a novel if not more fun because you are part of the story.
Here's a recent slashdot discussion on interactive fiction. And here's a list of the best interactive fiction.
It seems that the new TrackBack auto-discovery feature downloads each URL you link to and parses it to figure out how to send a trackback ping. The problem is if you link to a large file like an mp3 it downloads that and then if your CGI provider puts limits on your CGI's memory usage you'll run out of memory and get a 500 internal server error. Best solution I've found so far is to turn off the Trackback auto-discovery feature.
Heres an mp3 (yea yea i know i'm going to hell for sharing it but it kicks soooo much butt)
Hit MORE for the lyrics that make this track rock
"OoooOOooOOoooooOooOO
*sound of needle scratching across record*
Please do not be alarmed, remain calm. Do not attempt to leave the dancefloor. The DJ booth is conducting a troubleshoot test of the entire system. Somehow, while the party was in progress, an unidentified frequency has been existing in the system for some time. And while many of you have been made too brainwashed to comprehend, this frequency is, and has become a threat to our soceity as we know it.
This frequency has been used by a secret society in conjunction with Lucifer to lure and prey on innocent partygoers. With hypnotism, syncroprism, tricknology, lies, scandal, and pornography. While the party is still in progress we will keep you updated on our current status.
We repeat, this is only a test, this is only a test. This station in conjunction with other airwave announcements will conduct this exact test without prejudice, under the juricepurdence of the soul, the mind, the body, the positive, the negitive, the ground, the proton, the neutron, the electron, the ying, the yang, the young, the sun, the moon, the star.
This is only a test.
This station in conjunction with other airwave announcements will conduct this exact test without prejudice, under the juricepurdence of the soul, the mind, the body, the positive, the negitive, the ground, the proton, the neutron, the electron, the ying, the yang, the young, the sun, the moon, the star, the man, the woman, the child, the plaitiff, the defendant, the judgement, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the past, the present, the future."
I've been trying to post something since yesterday, but movabletype has been running out of memory :(
I asked hosting provider if I could get a little more mem usage allowed but no reply from them yet.
[update] Ok, so this entry seems to go up but my other one won't, going to try moving my extended text to the main body and see if that changes anything [/update]
(note: this was posted to the 604 email list (goa trance discussion group) months ago and I can't find the original post or who the author was)
"it's been a long time, since you felt it. but now it's returned...
it vibrates. it thunders. it rumbles. it lures.
and you, you are standing on the side of the dance floor, a cigarette in one, a beer in the other hand, talking to somebody - as much as it is even possible to talk standing next to the speakers - and you feel the desire to drop the beer and the cigarette and let your conversation partner, as nice as they might be, just stand there to - d a n c e."
"it lures. is pulls you where there steel floor is, made from steel as to not be danced to pieces by all the feet moving rhytmically yet chaotically, following a secret yet thunderingly loud order. you want to disappear between them. dive into the brimming mass of steaming, sweating, jerking bodies. to become a part of it, of the all encompassing music. you want your heartbeat to become beat and the beat heartbeat. and then you do it: you let go of world, mania and senses and follow the beckoning call, hesitantly putting your first foot on the dance floor, finding a crack between the dancers that are dancing like indians around a campfire that doesn't exist.
you carefully swing your hips, begin to let the music seep into your pores. slow and hesitant you are, a little bit uptight, doesn't that look stupid? but something is reaching for you, and immediately you become wilder, faster, your movements more wide and complicated. an old and familiar but half forgotten euphoria begins to flow through your veins. happiness, anger, what is that? it drowns your mind, you stop to think. that all these people are here watching you concerns you less and less. the thing that was reaching for you before now has you tightly in its grip. you dont care about anything now, no, no forced let-them-think-what-they-want carelessness, but the absence of all will and want, all thought processes. there's only you and the beat. no, only the beat.
because you are not more than a manifestation, an incarnation of the music. you are the tool, that the rhythm uses to become visible, touchable. is that your sweat, that's dripping out of your pores now?
the time has come, this is what all this was leading to: are aren't dancing, but you are being danced. from something, that's bigger than you, and totally alien, and totally familiar. your eyes are closed, there is no world around you now. of course there are other people, other bodies, sweat sources, executing organs of the same spirit, that is ruling you now right here. but you don't care, you are alone, completely alone with the music. it's a type of being alone that has nothing to do with loneliness thought, because something is with you, something is in you, something is you.
at some point you wake up. you open your eyes, and the world is still there. and everything shifts back to its old place: there is you, and there is the others, and there again in the music, just noise blaring from speakers. you are relieved and disappointed at once. the smoke scratches in your throat, and you are out of breath. now you feel the sweat sticking on you, the wet streaks of hair in your neck. your friends are giving your looks of wonder, envy, concern, scorn, joy.
you sink heavy against the wall, smile tiredly, with the last twinkle in your eyes.
hell what did i just go off, you sigh."
Heres two very weird search results that have ended up pointing to me:
keys to wearing thongs Canadians don't know how to wear thongs?
iran girl gif gallery I'm half way down the page on this one but I consider that a good thing hehe
My father, Joel A. Wendt (bio) is running for president! (campaign website) Watch his weblog for updates
I'm going to start writing about music a little more so as I'm searching for blogs that deal with music I thought I'd share them with you.
John Book: Opinions & Shit's Journal: John Book is an interesting guy. He hosts the DJ Shadow samples page I talked about a while back. He also does a cool MP3 of the Week thing where he digs up stuff off old 45s and puts an mp3 up.
....So I was going to list more of the music blogs I found on google but then I realized I don't know much about them so giving you the link to the google search is just as good.
If anyone knows of any other blogs that deal with music creation/listening/issues than could you be so kind as to email me.
Hi Loyal Reader! (Oh, you don't manually download and read my rss.xml file 10 times a day? You just never cleaned up your aggregator?)
Well either way, you're reading this, and thats what counts. I've been awol from blogging for quite a few months, mostly because it was taking way too much time (like 5 hours a day)
Well, Scott convinced me to stop wasting time on IRC and come back to blogging for a while.
I definatly won't be doing as much as I used to. I'm also going to try to stick to specific issues rather than just every random link thats cool, though I'm not sure what those issues are yet... :)
Ok, I'm gonna see if I can upgrade MT without breaking anything, talk to ya'll lata!