Windows' new background update service is really getting on my nerves. I. Want. To. Restart. LATER! I DON'T want to have my computer asking me every five fucking minutes if it's OK to restart. What, my computer's got Alzheimer's now? Can't remember what I answered when it asked me the same stupid question just now? I'll restart Windows when I'm fucking good and ready to restart Windows. Get it? Stop stealing focus when I'm writing!

I'll be coming over to Redmond soon, asking around for the idiot that came up with this "feature". I'll be packing a friend. It will be listed as an "enforced Darwin award" on the autopsy. The jury will want my autograph. There will be websites singing my praise. (There's a bit of video. Watch it. It's disturbing as all hell and still oddly satisfying.)

It seems Google is now giving out invites like candy (thanks to freejung for that soundbite). I got four of them with no apparent takers. Anyone? Even Gmailfortroops.com have more invites than troops right now...

Also, I was kinda hoping this would be a smash hit, earning me lots and lots of money. No such luck. It seemed a good idea at the time(TM).

Alsoalso, GMail's Report Spam button doesn't work. I (Sergey, it was a mistake, I swear!) hit it on the Welcome to GMail message and it disappeared to the Google basement where they keep their old surplus KGB torture equipment, but newbies still get the message so I guess they let it off with a warning. I was kinda expecting a dialog box, BTW.

Alsofurthermorealso, my initial plans of registering user accounts 1@gmail.com through 999@gmail.com to create a TB of online storage fizzled out as I 1) realized that Sergey would come home to me, say "Terabyta piraata bastard!" and tug my earlobes really hard, and 2) I wouldn't be able to come up with, not to mention remember, a thousand secure passwords. Besides, I already have a TB online. :-P

So I had read the Scientific JFK Assasination site and was all content with LHO as the lone gunman when that pesky Altman photo showed up again. With Lee Harvey Bloody Oswald standing in the doorway of the bottom floor of the Texas School Book Suppository at the same time as JFK is choking to death on a pretzel. No wait, wrong prez.

Anyway, it occured to me - in one of those rare absolutely crystal moments you get just before you fall asleep - that it should now be perfectly possible to re-create and simulate Dealey Plaza using one of the commonly available 3D game engines around - Source and the new fancy Doom3 one comes to mind. Put all of the people in there (there are enough photos and info available to account for every man, woman, child and alien killerbot in that square that fateful day - we can even add E Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis for the conspiracy buffs). Put a Mannlicher-Carcano on a box near a window and press play. Take a shot. Hell, be my guest. Take three shots. Make the bullets leave a trace in the air and stop the action after the third shot. Is it magic? Did the Governor's hand line up with JFK's throat? Did his head jerk backwards or forwards? Try it out for yourself.

Go ahead. Make the mod.

Take the shot.

Back and to the left.

Before we bought our house a year ago, we rented a house in this very same village. That house was on a sheep farm, built in the '30s to accomodate the old folks of the farm so the younger generation could have the big house to themselves. Anyway, we lived there for ~3 years and occasionally, I helped them feed and water the sheep (~70 ewes, some bad-tempered rams and upwards of 120 lambs at most) for a week or so when they went on holiday. Sometimes during lambing season, we saw the vet's car. Nothing major, they lost a lamb now and then and sometimes a ewe. Life goes on.

Thursday, I was on-site with a customer, fixing things as usual. It took me a while so I didn't bother dropping off my backpack of tools (a 20GB USB drive, misc bootdisks, screwdrivers and stuff) at the office but instead brought it home. After dinner, I got the idea to walk down and see if they still needed help with a computer (I'd ran into them a few days before and they mentioned some issue with updating Norton Anti-Virus). When I got there, they were in the farmhouse, gathered around a ewe, looking worried. Monica had her arm in there, swearing and cursing. Turns out, the ewe had given birth to one lamb, but there was another one in there. Stillborn, except it wasn't born yet and Monica had been at it for close to an hour and was getting mighty tired in the arm. One of the problems with stillborn lambs are their teeth. Their mouths drop open and the teeth are sharp as knives. Not good for neither the mother nor the midwife. I helped fetch a few things but after a while we got the idea to lift the backside of the ewe to try and make it easier for Monica to move around in there. I got changed into an old orange overall atleast 3 sizes too small and got in the pen with them. The straw on the floor was soaked with blood, sheepshit and only God knows what else, but we lifted and after a while, she got the head out.

However, the lamb's front hooves were still in the way, Monica's whole arm was going limp and the ewe wasn't getting any better so I asked if I could try. They exchanged glances like "what the hell, she's dead anyway - we might as well get some entertainment out of the deal" and a quart of Iodine, soapy water and medical lubricant later, I was going in.

I had half expected a smooth, fleshy tunnel of sheepy vagina. What I got was a coarse trip through bone canyon without a paddle. I could tell by the sounds coming from the front end that my hand and wrist were way bigger than Monica's, but I was rested and pressed on. After ten minutes or so of navigating through remains of miscellaneous membranes I decided that I had to push the head back in to make way. We tied a noose around it, I pushed it back in, the ewe screamed like a banshee but I got a hold of the right front leg and pulled it out together with the head. It wasn't enough, it was still stuck. The vet was way off at the other side of the county, the ewe was dropping off and we knew we had to hurry if the first lamb was going to have a mother. I lubed up and went back in. My hand started to cramp just as I was grasping for the other hoof but I gritted my teeth, managed to bend it inwards and pull it, the neck and right leg out. Monica screamed with joy and kissed me on the cheek. :-)

I got washed, changed out of the overalls, washed again and was offered a wide assortment of destilled beverages and a ride home but I declined all offers and walked home to a very long, hot shower. My parting words were "When you get the vet here to check up on the ewe, ask her to fix the computer and we'll call it even". ;-)

Monica dropped by yesterday and told me that the ewe hadn't eaten much since, but she'd gotten a shot of cortizone and some lime and she'd started to drink water and appeared a little friskier so they have good hopes for her. She's not producing any milk so the first lamb is being bottle-fed for now.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

FAIR has a nice little summary on media reporting on the end of the UN inspections of Iraq 4 years ago compared to their reporting on the same event today:

Excerpt:

The chief U.N. weapons inspector ordered his monitors to leave Baghdad today after saying that Iraq had once again reneged on its promise to cooperate--a report that renewed the threat of U.S. and British airstrikes.
--AP, 12/16/98

Information on Iraq's programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.
--AP, 9/7/02

On the use of Sarin gas in the war against Iran, the US State Department issued a stern verbal protest against the legitimate government of Iraq (guess who) but balanced that out with the following reprimand against Iran:

"The United States finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations."

Bada-bing!

"In September (1988), the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to impose sanctions on Iraq. These sanctions were nothing like today's global embargo. They called for a halt to U.S. military aid, commodity credits and loan guarantees and a ban on U.S. imports of Iraqi oil--which, in a global oil market, would have a token effect compared to the post-Gulf War global blockade imposed by the U.N."

The Reagan and Bush administrations "adamantly" opposed the bill, calling it "premature" (New York Times, 1/8/89, 9/15/88), and eventually the bill died quietly in a conference committee after being further watered down. Sanctions "would hurt U.S. exporters and worsen our trade deficit," Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly told a congressional panel in June 1990, six weeks before the invasion of Kuwait. (Kelly is now the Bush administration's top State Department official for East Asia.)"
Source: http://www.fair.org/extra/0209/iraq-gas.html

Read:
FAIR on Iraq
Human Rights Watch on Iraq
Perfessor Multigeek's journal
Twirlip's journal

The latest (but most likely not last) breach of security in MSIE details a way to run any program on a user's computer from a remote webserver. A demo site runs logout.exe which promptly logs out the user from Windows. The official response from a MS Sweden representative is to rename logout.exe to something else. He did not specify what one should rename format.exe to; maybe stupidbastards.exe would be a good idea?

But seriously, is anyone stupid enough to still use MSIE? I mean, they should be on Jackass or a special online edition of the Darwin Awards. It's like breaking into a military biological research facility only to drink from all the sealed vials you can find.

The other day, while playing Counterstrike online, the thought occured to me to use the same basic rendering engine for more than just a lot of FPS games. I have heard of someone building a flightsim around the QII engine, but never seen it. Yesterday, a friend told me about C&C Renegade, a FPS game based on Command & Conquer.

So what if someone (this means iD, Blizzard, Westwood and/or Sierra/ValvE) were to make a hypermassive multiplayer online RTS/RPG/FPS? With almost all aspects of war integrated? Imagine someone playing a flesh-and-blood general on a tactical level, sending out orders to real, live players in a flight sim with F/A-18 Hornets to attack a SAM site staffed with more real, live people. On the ground, there would be battles fought between tanks and Delta Force-style snipers would seek out the opponent's leaders.

The client would use the same basic engine for gameplay with different GUIs for the different levels, kinda like Counterstrike is a mod to Half-Life which basically is a mod of Quake. When starting, you select if you want to be Air Force, Navy or Army and then what you want to do: Pilot a fighter, manage supply routes, man a SAM battery, aim a howitzer, crack enemy codes or be a grunt with a machine gun. Imagine the clans/platoons/squadrons that would evolve. Positions that no one wants would be filled by computer-generated players on the servers. Ah, the servers. One game on a cluster of servers world-wide. And there would be real-world money in it. Arms dealers would spring up on eBay. Whoever makes this game will be rich - if they do it right. And I've got prior art. ;-)

Of course, this doesn't have to be set in a realistic world, the Game could easily work StarCraft-style or for NOD vs GDI or for replaying most of WWII.

Now, methinks this can be built. Should it be done? Would it help ease tension in the world - act as an outlet for agression if you could bomb the crap out of a simulated Afghanistan? Or would Al-Qaida use it as a training camp? Discuss.

One client to fight them all, and on the battlefield smite them.

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