Today in the News So Far

Well, I'm going to start writing a little free form about the news I see on a daily basis. I might mine this later for article topics for the things that really cause me concern.

CNN:
Suicide bombers kill dozens in 2 Iraqi cities
People appear to die every day in Iraq. The decision is made at some point that killing will acheive your goals or if your goals can be acheived through peaceful initiative. There is little excitement in solving issues through politics... The HERO wants the war - so they can be proclaimed a HERO by all and remembered. In the end, all wars end with politicians and agreements - the Hero's actions a turn in to just a political necessity.
This CNN article is ok - until there is a non sequitur in the middle of the article when they start talking about a democratic Hawk that is now requesting our withdrawal from Iraq. The placement of this paragraph makes the implication that somehow this democrats actions resulted in the attacks and deaths in Iraq.
The next paragraph repeats a White House official calling the democrat - a coward.
A former Vietname Vet - being called a coward - by people that never served.

It is not cowardice to want to back out of an unjust war. Cheney was noted in an article yesterday: Cheney: War critics are opportunists He says senators of both parties saw Hussein as a threat that he considered Democrats opportunists and that they were attempting to revise history.

This is patently untrue. Let's break it down shall we.

Truth - Everyone backed the war at the time we started it. At least in terms of congress and in terms of having enough votes to say - let's go kill some people for the just cause.

Implication that is False - that Democrats are changing their mind on the basis of no new information.

Listen folks, I don't know how to say this any clearer. If we entered the war under false pretenses, we need to apologize to the Iraqi people, today and not 150 years after the fact like we did to the native americans.

No, leaving Iraq immediately is not probably on the list of the top 10 best things to do. Neither, apparently was starting the war in the first place. Suddenly, people are soooo concerned about the USA doing the absolute best possible action when they weren't all that concerned when they started the war in the first place.

Personally, I don't think we should pull out. But, I don't think we should stay there either.

We should pull out because we look a lot like a invader at present.

We should not pull out because Iraq may well fall in to total civil war if we just leave.

There is a solution to this problem, I think. But we need to find a neutral party that is trusted by everyone willing to send their troops in to replace ours.

Problem is, the only neutral parties I can think of don't really maintain much of a military and at this point in time must view sending troops to Iraq like we should have when we started sending troops to Vietnam after the French were getting the snot kicked out of them there. Basically 'no way are we sending our folks there to die'.

Anyway, enough about the war. Just consider that we have a whole appeals process before we can execute a person, but to start a war we just need a bunch of a$$hole politicians who may or may not have military experience to say 'hey that sounds like a great idea'.

Technology saves the day - again - no supernatural beings necessary:
Sons save mom overseas with webcam.

Cheap laptops for everyone?
Windup laptops aim to bridge digital divide
Well, I suppose it isn't quite for everyone. Personally, they should charge $150 per laptop in the United States and make it a big seller this year. Take the extra $50 (assuming these folks are smart enough to be flush with money from $100) and give out free laptops instead of $100 laptops.
The wind-up laptop looks pretty neat to me - and if it is basically an internet only type of machine with basic functionality - I think it would be great as a second or third machine. It would also be a great advertising opportunity for Linux - the operating system I think will be on these laptops.

But you know, they'll probably only make them available in 3rd world countries and ignore the possibilities. Hell people in the US pay four times as much for a cell phone sometimes, people.

News in General
Sony's DRM woes expand to include copyright infringement
Now, Sony is a big company and they have a really big screw-up on their hands with their RootKit using DRM software.
I'm a programmer, and I've got to believe that Sony can at least afford to pay top-notch programmers. But apparently, they have a buch of coders that steal open-source code for commercial purposes! I mean, these guys didn't even bother to write their own software for playing MP3s.
This is nuts. I'm tempted to never by Sony stuff again after noting the things they are willing to try to protect themselves and the well poor quality in their ethics practices in using GPU license code and hiring people that can't code for crap when obviously they have money for coding.
Well, maybe after all the lawsuits settle they won't have so much money and they'll have to hire good people for more money instead of morons for $1.50 an hour.

Standard war for next DVD discs.
Blu-Ray snubs HP
Well, I hate to say this, but this whole argument about the next DVD standard is really moot. Yeah yeah yeah - higher quality DVD content for HDTV. You know - that's just not that important to me. New DRM built-in to the disks - either by Blu-Ray or HD-DVD - well, folks its hard for me to get exciting about something that is a benefit to the producers of content and not to me.
Its like getting excited about PMI on my house. Ooooh exciting I'm paying insurance so that when I go under financially the banks will have my mortgage fully paid off - but does this help me in any way - no - mortgage gets paid off and I'm still out of a house and probably a job.

Real nice. I can't wait for the cracks to come out for the new DRM these guys dream up. I think people copy DVD's now just because they can and because they are thumbing their nose at the 'man' than for any other reason. Commercial pirates - you know those folks should fry. But if I want to make a laugh/funny group of cuts from movies - how come its friggin impossible? If I want to do anything just for fun using these folks content - I'd have to spend thousands of dollars - probably more.

If I was selling that stuff, it'd be different, but you know these people are morons. They have no marketing sense. If I did make a funny movie composed of the actual funny bits of so-called funny movies and people saw it and laughed - that would generate interest and possible sales of those movies.

Review: New 'Potter' tries to do too much
I'll be going to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire today. I'll report what I can about the movie. I'm a big fan of the series, but the last movie was a bit too short given the actual content of the book. I do wish people had the attention spans they used to have during President Lincoln's time. They would go to a debate that lasted 8 hours long. Now its a struggle to get people to sit down for 2.5 hours to watch a movie. Hell, I'd love to see Sci-Fi channel pull off their magic and do a paragraph by paragraph Harry Potter... Oh, it'd be ages long (not the first movie so much, they didn't cut as much from that as the others), but it would be very enjoyable.

Probably have to wait 20 years for them to do something like that - because the people who have the current license for Harry Potter wouldn't let anyone else edge in for that long.

And to point - its probably a few years before the series wraps up in the movies.

By then, who knows - home movie makers may have enough technology to do it justice by themselves.

ok, well I guess that's enough headlines for today. Time to do some real work.

One more thing - anyone that has advice on how to draw anime/manga - feel free to drop me a comment or e-mail message. RhagamYgg@hotmail.com . I have a few story lines I want to write - and I was going to do them as books, but I suspect that the proper medium for them is Manga/Anime.

Alex