Anyone else play Urban Dead?

I'm ceejayoz there too.

This looks legit...

Wonder how the photgrapher managed that one?

Heh.

Little sister goes off to college in a couple weeks, so I was asked to config her a laptop.

Now, before I switched to my Mac mini, I'd had two Dells, and I was quite happy with them. Cheap, did the job, etc.

Now, sure, the site says you can get a laptop for $800. Okay.

You then go through three pages of options, with all sorts of spammy "hey want AOL?" "hey want a colored anal plug?" etc. type prompts. Three huge, long pages of configuations.

Not only that, but the $800 price is for irresponsibly poor config options. 128mb RAM for Windows XP? No thanks, mofos.

By the time I'd config-ed it for her, it was $1600 - and no tax or shipping yet. Yeah. Nope, she'll use Dad's spare instead.

Buying an Apple laptop?

Memory
Hard drive
Extra display
Extra keyboard/mouse
Applecare

Done! And for approximately the price they quote you on the store pages, not twice as much.

Anyone else playing with Ruby on Rails?

I just installed it and have a little web app up in five minutes. Stunning.

I'm thinking this is soon to be "bye bye, PHP"...

Yup. I broke down and ordered a Mac Mini.

My wireless keyboard/mouse and iWork have already been sent, my Mini'll be a week or so.

\o/

So, all those people saying Michael Schiavo's trying to off his wife for the money?

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050311/D88OTRNO0.html

A man fighting to have a feeding tube removed from his brain-damaged wife on Friday rejected a California businessman's offer to pay him $1 million to give up his right to decide her medical treatment.

Other such offers, including one for $10 million, had already been made and rejected by Michael Schiavo, said his attorney, George Felos.

So, he's already rejected at least $11 million. I'd say that's proof he's standing up for what he knows she wanted, and not in it for the cash.

A lot of people owe this guy an apology. Bets on whether he gets one?

amusing daily show clip on finding bin laden...

ceejayoz.com's back, just fyi.

So, folks... what do you think Brent Metzler would think of this?

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense.

For example, he quotes: "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul, or for corruption done in the land - it is as if he had slain all mankind entirely. And, whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." He uses the passage to bolster his argument against bombing Western targets in Yemen - attacks he says defy the Koran. And, he says, the Koran says under no circumstances should women and children be killed.

If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs. ...

Some freed militants were so transformed that they led the army to hidden weapons caches and offered the Yemeni security services advice on tackling Islamic militancy. A spectacular success came in 2002 when Abu Ali al Harithi, Al Qaeda's top commander in Yemen, was assassinated by a US air-strike following a tip-off from one of Hitar's reformed militants.

http://mediamatters.org/election/

All the networks' calls, and the time they called 'em.

bmetzler and others (on Slashdot and elsewhere) like to link to examples of vandalism / violence towards Bush supporters and headquarters, and claim that it doesn't happen on both sides (or, better yet, that it's condoned and supported by the Democrats).

Well, here's a nice list of counter examples.

Vandals hit a Fair Oaks Democratic Party campaign office late Tuesday or early Wednesday, spraying racist and political graffiti on the exterior.

Campaign workers came to work Wednesday morning to discover their Sunrise Boulevard office defaced with spraypainted swastikas, the word "Bush," and a variety of other slogans. There was also a small caliber bullet hole in the office door window.

- http://www.kxtv10.com/storyfull1.asp?id=8396

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How awesome is this?

I think Slashdot's logo should be the founders fellating a penguin. Their paranoia of all things not actively praising Linux and open-source related topics becomes a bit deeper and a bit more twisted every day. Their slogan, "news for nerds," used to be accurate, but over the past couple of years it's degenerated into "news for authoritarian line-toeing zombies." Which is ironic, considering that's what they accuse anyone who has ever seen a Microsoft product of being. - here

Back from Australia - photos are here (or a list of all the subgalleries here1

More info later.