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I just had a realization. This isn't terribly flushed out, so I don't mind comments to the contrary. Please be sure to justify them, though. I'm jotting it down here so I don't forget about it, and because it falls nicely under slashdot paranoia.

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Back when the Iraq war started, I was dismayed at how utterly political the event was made. By political, in this context, I mean that the war itself was/is used as a playing piece in the Democrat vs. Republican power struggle game. I thought to myself "this is absurd, these are peoples lives that are being played with".

I'm particularly dismayed by the Democrats. They profit most from having a second Vietnam, so that's how this war is being portrayed. It's easy to say that Sadam had no WMDs (let's forget about all the chemical weapons we found, that were barely reported). The more casualties we have, the better. The more savage and reckless our troops, the better. The more the war is mismanaged, the better. The more innocent people die, the better. The more we push for a Vietnam style withdraw (read defeat), the better. Is it any wonder that these are the things that keep winding up in the news? We tend to hear only about the major US victories, and all the defeats (major and minor).

The Republicans AND the white house have not been above reproach either. This war has cost more and gone longer than it should have. The American people can feel this. Never mind how it might be going right now. Most Americans falsely expected a very short occupation. To those people, this war seems to have gone on forever indeed. I still don't know if the white house lied in order to enter the war. I wouldn't put it past them, but I really don't want to accuse them of it either. That would be extremely low to stoop. Yes, there were people who should have known that they were using bad intel. Yet, the Democrats keep screaming that the White House should have some psychic ability to know things like this. They have yet to show the smoking gun that the white house lied when recommending war. That does not keep them from saying so, though. It's good for them politically if they do. If the white house didn't lie, well then the congress would have to take most of the blame for declaring war (including the democrats/Hilary; that was their job, not the white house).

Further, this keeps getting termed a "conflict" because congress never "declared" war. Any so-called-journalist who says that should be fired. Congress did authorize the use of force.
Blood by any other name runs just as red.

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In that light, I realized some of the future implications that this might have. Americans wont want to go to war unless there has been an attack on American soil... Wait a moment... didn't that just happen? Yep, you guessed it. It will be hard to get America to go to war now even IF there has been an attack on American soil. Whether intentionally or not, we are being conditioned to avoid war at whatever cost. If the cost of avoiding war is a worse war later, we'll gladly pay it.

Presuming world war three rolls around at some point, it seems likely that the US will respond in much the same way it did in WW2. It will shove it's head in the sand for as long as possible. The next hitler will have an easier time getting a foothold and it will be a drawn out and bloody war to remove him. It will be much worse precisely because we wont get involved when we need to.

Israel is pretty well sunk. If worse comes to worst, they're on their own. The US isn't capable of going to war on their side. At best, we'll provide them with equipment. There's not a chance that we'll provide them with an army.

If we don't "win" in Iraq, these problems will only be worse. A loss there will almost entirely neutralize our armed forces. Consciously or not, that's what we're really fighting for here.

I was meta-moderating today, and came across an article that I missed several days ago. It concerned Microsoft's plan to introduce DRM (or something similar) to the USB specification.

Their concern: Employees are stealing sensitive information on thumb drives.

Their solution: We require all hardware manufactures to include DRM in the USB specs.

Wait a minute! First, if you cannot trust your employees then you have a problem. Admittedly there are some (read: very few) places where such security is called for. In order to get me to take you seriously, you first need to have these computers totally isolated from the internet. I also wouldn't take you very seriously if you told me that the machines had floppy drives. Now what would happen if you simply took out the "Removable Hard Disk" drivers (or even if Microsoft had a patch that removed automatic volume detection). Tweak the idea a little (find the bugs that I haven't thought of) and voila: you have a viable solution. Easy.

Of course, the easier thing is to simply avoid USB technology. But think ahead, instead of backwards. I cannot stand it when the corporate world wants to make us take a step back in technology to suit their "needs", but especially in freedom...

I just had an unusual occurrence. I'm posting here to solicit opinions. Please tell me what you think about my hypothesis.

I just received an email to my account for one Darby Candi (I found this in the header). This is in my yahoo box by the way. Well, my name is not Darby. All the message said was: "interesting observed". The return address is:"Samuel Luanna"

So I assumed that "Sam" had made an error and had sent his message to the wrong address for whatever reason. But when I sent him a brief reply, the message bounced (unknown account). Upon closer examination of the original header, it appears he had replied to me. While it's hypothetically possible for him to reply to a spoofed message (I've had at least one virus spoof my account), and then quit his service, I'm thinking there is a much more devious (and realistic) explanation.

I'm wondering if some services (yahoo perhaps) are creating blacklist of spam accounts, and not just email contents. Could pretending to send out emails to mistaken addresses be a way to give the account a partially clean record? Something else along these lines perhaps? Does yahoo use spamhaus or such? Any theories would be appreciated.

The amount has to be huge because the McDonald's corporation isn't going to give a shit if you award $20,000. It needs to be a big enough judgment that the company has to declare it as an item on its SEC filings.

I like this idea generally. Corporations are (by and large) led by greedy men who actively attempt to be above everything. The only way to get their attention is to take power away from them. Money is one representation of that. Another, to my understanding, is that big investors read SEC filings. Such might draw away potential investors, and upset current investors. The threat of this should at least bring the issue to the CEO's personal attention.

I have decided today that I have no right to be angry when I'm tired
(unless I'm very sure I would be otherwise).

I'm not applying this to everyone, just myself. Being tired clouds one's judgment, can heighten negative emotions, an makes it harder to see someone else's point of view.

Just a thought.

(P.S. In case anyone reads this, I had this thought while trying not to explode at someone today, not because of any rash decision.)