Imperialism

Imperialism is a policy of extending control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. The term is often used to describe the policy of a country in maintaining and dominating over distant lands, regardless of whether the country calls itself an empire.

Imperialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Clockwork Red White Blue - The US, the last imperial force in the world today?

Although the US repeatedly says that it's saving the world for democracy, history has clearly shown otherwise. In fact, when such a challenge arose, the US actually backed away from its rhetoric, letting democracy and freedom be trampled by underfoot by a ruthless dictatorship.

TP: Fallout from the American Imperial Project

From noreply@apple.com

Epeus' epigone - Kevin Marks weblog - Apple is holding my data hostage

The Majors - The Real Music Pirates

Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.

Cheap Trick, Allman Brothers Sue Sony - Yahoo! News
(via fefe)

"A major label like Sony BMG likely receives 80 cents of every 99 cent download. Out of that 80 cents, 4.5 cents goes to the Allmans based on their existing terms. "

So that leaves 75.5 cents to Sony per track. You'd think, with scratch like that, they could develop a better root-kit. To their credit, they have at the very least spent wisely on lobbyists.

The Digital Music Weblog

Corrupters of youth

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

Boing Boing: Predecessors of anti-game hysteria: anti-novel, anti-waltz, anti-phone!

We need a "War on Idiots", not a "War on Terrorists"

More than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals, including killers, rapists and child abusers, have been freed from prison without being considered for deportation and hundreds are missing, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, admitted yesterday.

Telegraph | News | Hunt for 900 dangerous criminals freed in error

A Clockwork Red White Blue - We need to know that

Seems like that the TIA is not dead.

A Clockwork Red White Blue - You don't need to know this

National Archives Says Records Were Wrongly Classified - New York Times

Starting today, all passwords must contain letters, numbers, doodles, sign language and squirrel noises

So where did the “change passwords once a month” dictum come from? Back in the days when people were using mainframes without networking, the biggest uncontrolled authentication concern was cracking. Resources, however, were limited. As best as I can find, some DoD contractors did some back-of-the-envelope calculation about how long it would take to run through all the possible passwords using their mainframe, and the result was several months. So, they (somewhat reasonably) set a password change period of 1 month as a means to defeat systematic cracking attempts. This was then enshrined in policy, which got published, and largely accepted by others over the years. As time went on, auditors began to look for this and ended up building it into their “best practice” that they expected. It also got written into several lists of security recommendations.

This is DESPITE the fact that any reasonable analysis shows that a monthly password change has little or no end impact on improving security! It is a “best practice” based on experience 30 years ago with non-networked mainframes in a DoD environment — hardly a match for today’s systems, especially in academia!

CERIAS Weblogs � Security Myths and Passwords
(via schneier)

How AdSense works and how you never see a dime

It’s clear to me now why Google has so much cash in its coffers — stealing from the little guy!

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The great Google float

Punching Craig David in the face

If you copy Craig David's CD you get ten years, but if you punch him in the face and pummel him into a seven day coma you will only get six.

(via Fefe's Blog)

On planing a project and man-months

One thing that I get sick of is how people take an estimate, expect it to be accurate, feed it into a plan, and when the plan is (inevitably) proven wrong, blame the estimate. This is a fallacy from the era of Waterfall development, but it still lingers on in many Agile environments. ... Consider this: in Australia, it's usual for every person to get 4 weeks of leave per year (which, on average, they take all of it eventually).

Surprise! People take vacations!

Expecting an estimate made several months earlier to be accurate is crazy - but people still do it.

Software is too expensive to build cheaply...: Estimation vs planning

Majors using misleading information?

Never! Lies! Filthy lies !!11!ONE!!!ELEVEN!!!!

Judge orders record labels to turn over documents | CNET News.com

Ridiculous

The Rising Cost of War in Iraq

What have all terrorists in common?

They hate the US UN.

What have all terrorists in common?

They hate the US UN.

Fucking amateurs

List of military nuclear accidents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And the Darwin award in the category "Stupid nuclear scientist" goes to:

Canadian physicist Louis Slotin manually assembles a critical mass of plutonium while demonstrating his technique to visiting scientists at Los Alamos, causing a fatal criticality accident.
May 21, 1946

List of military nuclear accidents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia rivals IMDb

While I still like to go to the IMDb to fast find "which actors played in that movie" and "where have I seen this actor before" type of information, I think they are loosing the race to Wikipedia.

Just compare www.imdb.com/title/tt0096697/
with en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:The_Simpsons.
(Just compare the URLs!)

Or take for example: Ned Flanders on the Wikipedia

Give people the tools to contribute information ("content") as easy and as fast as possible, without big hustle, and they will create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. While the IMDb is actually as well open for adding information, the process isn't clear and AFAIK involves creating an account and having your information reviewed. And while the rigid design of the IMDb might seem like a good idea at first glance, it is the Amazon of movie sites with dozens of links that lead somewhere else and information that is nice to have but shouldn't be thrown into your face like for example the certifications. (Do I need a paragraph telling me the certifications a film received in Island, Singapore and Brazil on the 'main detail' page right after the actors?)

There are still plenty of people adding information to the IMDb, but I wonder how long it takes before a majority moves on to Wikipedia.

Movie probs

and other movie related stuff.

Bayrider

A bloody pink shirt

Currently for 99 cents on eBay.

eBay: 1317 UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION Peasant's Bloody Pink Shirt! (item 7612253008 end time Apr-27-06 21:30:00 PDT)

Oh my, where has the internet come to?

petistic

Why do I have word verification on my posting form?

Word verification on the posting form is meant to be a spam reduction mechanism for BlogSpot in general, and is applied to certain potential spam blogs by an automated system. Because this is automated there will necessarily be some false positives, though we're continually working on improving our algorithms to avoid these. If your blog is one of the false positives, we apologize.

I H A T E to enter this god damn stupid code everytime, it sucks big time, it is stupid and intrusive.

Don't apoligize, make a better system.

And why do I have to track down the information that my blog has been flagged as spam by some automated system? Please, in the future, give clearer information.

Blogger Help : Why do I have word verification on my posting form?