Indeed, counting to ten is some hard stuff.

Our little war in Iraq was supposed to bring peace, stability, and democracy to a nation under the yoke of a dangerous tyrant. We have brought a temporary democracy (only time can determine if it will stick), but have yet to deliver on peace or stability.

In fact, we can't even give them as much stability as they had underneath Saddam Hussein. According to James Glanz of the NY Times, "virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below preinvasion values."

Yep President Bush, we sure are winning.

You can find the article here.

Don't die.

Little french poodles, Hercules, and Tom Cruise make for a good flick.

The US gov't has yet to give up on a way to place the entire Internet under an all-inclusive spy ring. The latest is called ADVISE, which will attempt to "troll news, blogs, even e-mails."

Frankly, I could care less if they troll anything in the public domain on the Web. It's posted to be read by anyone, which also includes gov't authorities.

However, the program needs to stop at anything which isn't meant for the public eye. My email, for example, should be protected from the government's prying eyes. They should have no right to my personal/business communication.

Alas, with our current gov't, I doubt they'll stop at public domain websites. Wiretapping American citizens seems to be the current thing to do nowadays.

Read about ADVISE here.

Don't die.

Lions, tigers, and bears camp out on my doorstep.

If you're one of those people who jump in on the new technology bandwagon early, you're going to have to be talking large with your pocket book. Blue-Ray (one of the two new competing disc formats) movies are going to come out at around $35 a pop according to Sony Pictures and this here article.

Ouchies! Of course, before you even think about buying a Blue-Ray disc, you need the hardware to play these bad boys (which doesn't look to be cheap, either).

I'm thinking at this price range, I'll be waiting a few years to join in on the Hi-Def fun.

Don't die and stuff.

I'm going down, down, down.

So I went skating. Whee! Here's some crazy, crazy pictures.

I swear I feel my mystique fading daily.

I like my sauce hot.

I blogged earlier that Yahoo and AOL were going to begin "certifying" mail and charging money to do so.

I pointed out this tactic would more than likely increase the amount of spam, and not decrease it. Andrew Lochart, of Postini, agrees with me: “It guarantees delivery of paid-for bulk email based on the sender paying, not based on users’ preferences. In other words, it will allow more, not less, unwanted email through to users.”

Red Herring also says points out the tactic "favors wealthy larger enterprises over smaller upstarts who might not have the money to pay for sending emails to users." More than likely this could lead to lawsuits.

Read more here.

So, before this gets out of hand, Yahoo and AOL might want to reconsider their options.

Don't die.

The death of a snowman.

Just recently, the US gov't has released statements that Google, Yahoo, and MS efforts to censor China to be immoral. Unfortunately, the US gov't does not seem to be setting the best example.

NASA has been under fire by goverment cronies to censor their findings and have been pressured into making statements which the scientific findings didn't support.

Read about it here and here.

Toons with power.

A group of people are enraged over a picture which has been published newspapers across the world. Journalists have been fired. People have been killed. And the US has taken a strange stance on censorship.

This was a cartoon, people. A cartoon!

Don't die.

UPDATE (2/7/06):

Now it's a global crisis! Really.

We don't wear suits.

A quote on IT from Max Barry's new book Company (I'm butchering it to make it shorter):

'Reverse numbering... they say it's motivational. As you move into more important departments, you rise up in the rankings,' Freddy says.

'What's so bad about IT?'

'Please,' Freddy says. 'Some of them don't even wear suits.'

Max Barry is a funny man.

Don't die.

Despite superb programming to the contrary, the world is still flat.

AOL and Yahoo are taking a tactic to "reduce spam" which will fail. The will give "preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from a quarter of a cent to 1 cent each to have them delivered." So, if I pay the fee to AOL, the mail I send will go straight to the receiver's inbox, bypassing spam filters that send the mail to the bulk mail. This is a tactic which will be abused, and increase the amount of spam in an AOL inbox. Hopefully gMail doesn't seek to follow in Yahoo/AOL's footsteps.

This is almost as bad as AT&Ts suggestion for a multitiered Internet.

AOL and Yahoo put price on e-mail

As always,

Don't die.