dannyman.toldme.com

I was once asked by an Algerian, “why does George Bush hate Arab people?”

I did my best to explain . . . George Bush doesn’t hate Arab people, but after 9/11, he sees militarism as a way to gain support from the American people.

Of course, any perceived insult to Islam is a tool to control Muslim people. Muslims are now killing each other over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. The BBC reports:

Demonstrators shouted “death to Denmark” and “death to France”. They called for the expulsion of diplomats and soldiers, who were sent by both countries as part of international efforts in the US-led “war on terror”.

“They want to test our feelings,” protester Mawli Abdul Qahar Abu Israra told the BBC.

“They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and to their newspapers,” he said.

On NPR this morning, “Morning Edition” explained it something like this:

“Muslims attacked Danish embassies to protest a Danish cartoon depicting Muslims as violent people.”

But . . . what really annoys me, is that Muslims will protest cartoons that, maybe they haven’t even seen–they are not even easy to find in the Western media–which is why I posted them here . . . they are doing what they are programmed, so easily manipulated to do, by their governments, and by their media. Where are the protests when their own media routinely publish cartoons of this moral caliber? (more…)

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The West’s current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it’s no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world. The hard work of rooting those things out will have to be done by honest Muslim leaders and intellectuals willing to retrace their tradition’s steps and do the intellectual heavy lifting that participation in the modern world requires. They won’t be helped, however, if Western governments continue to pander to Islamic sensitivity while looking away from violent Islamic intolerance. They won’t be helped by European diplomats and officials who continue to ignore the officially sanctioned hate regularly directed at Jews by the Mideast’s government-controlled media, while commiserating with Muslims offended by a few cartoons in the West’s free news media.

Tim Rutten
“Drawn Into a Religious Conflict”
L. A. Times, February 4, 2006

As seen on the streets of London, by virgorama, who has generously shared via the Creative Commons License:

This is why those cartoons need to be published. British Muslims, calling for blood, threatening terrorism. (more…)

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I wrote a letter to Yahoo! today. I am curious what answer I will get:

Hello,

I live in the Bay Area. I have friends who work At Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. I am a big Google fan, but I am also all about Flickr!. I purchased an account even before Yahoo! bought them and have since written a Flickr plugin. I have followed the recent controversey over google.cn’s launch, and I have come to the conclusion that Google is doing the right thing:

• They will openly censor searches in accordance with Chinese law.
• They will not offer services that would put them in a position to compromise privacy: mail, blogs.

I have heard press reports that Yahoo! and MSN have cooperated with the Chinese government to reveal the identity of Chinese Bloggers, and have them arrested. This is wrong. And as a user, as someone who pays Yahoo! … I want to know, what are you guys doing about free speech in China? Wouldn’t you agree that disengagement in business activity that leaves you involved in arresting people is the way to go? What is Yahoo! going to do?

Do I need to stop using Flickr if I want to feel good about using the Internet? Do I need to encourage others to boycott Yahoo!, as consumers once boycotted companies engaged in human rights violations in South Africa?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
-danny

Perhaps, you too, should contact Yahoo!, or perhaps Microsoft, to express your concerns. I will post any reply I receive here.

-danny

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You know . . . there are a lot of ignorant religious fanatics in this world. Our country has its share, but Islam . . . well, the mullahs and their Western allies have been doing what they can to maintain power and obtain cheap oil by keeping their people ignorant.

And, in the Western cultures . . . we spend our time writing a lot of silly things, and drawing silly things, and we have a hard time getting anyone to take us seriously.

So, when some Danish paper publishes a set of dumb cartoons, and contends with death threats, and now a bunch of fools threatening to boycott Danish products, well, I feel like I want to do some small thing. (more…)

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The past week has been good. Saturday was the excellent Birthday Party #30. Sunday I got some work done, then I was getting up to pick up Jessica at the airport when she called and reported that her Southwest flight had landed 40 minutes early! So, I met her at the BART instead. Monday and Tuesday I was out-of-sync, and Tuesday at work was spent doing some emergency resuscitation of a dead laptop . . . Wednesday morning, I think it was, I was back on my game, and on the bus ride in to work, I saw something really cool: a full traffic break.

I had been wondering why the Southbound traffic was so sluggish. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the traffic evaporate in the Northbound lanes, which were led by a Highway Patrol car, weaving to a full stop, four lanes of traffic behind him. Everybody stopped, and the officer got out in the middle of the highway, to remove some chunks of wood. A guy in a white pickup truck at the head of the third lane hopped out to help remove debris, as our Southbound traffic sped away. “Northbound 680, all lanes stopped at Danville to remove debris. Gapers Southbound,” is how that might have been reported on Chicago radio.

Gapers. Gapers is a traffic delay that you get when drivers slow down to gape at something interesting along the highway. “Something interesting” usually means a traffic accident. And in many cases, it is only reasonable to slow down, just to make sure people aren’t leaking from the incident into the traffic lanes. For my part, I thought the full traffic break, during rush hour, was a sure sign that we are civilized: we empower a single cop in a patrol car with the power of Moses, to part the rolling seas of a busy highway, to make 70MPH a dead stop. I heard an opinions piece on the radio some months back, a guy from India felt that Stop signs were emblematic of America’s true power. In India, nobody would ever stop at a stop sign, so the government doesn’t bother with traffic control. In America, people will come to a full stop nearly every time, even if they don’t really need to, because our civilization is in such a state that people respect and understand the legitimacy of our laws. (more…)

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Hello,

I have written a basic WordPress plugin to present a Flickr photo stream from a WordPress blog.

Photos Flickr provides for basic browsing of a Flickr photo stream from within a WordPress blog.

You can see this plugin in action at http://dannyman.toldme.com/photos/ and if you would like to try this plugin yourself, you can read more about it at http://dannyman.toldme.com/photos-flickr/.

Thanks,
-danny

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[From an e-mail I sent to the Sci-Fi Channel . . .]

Hello,

I don’t have cable, and my only access to TV shows has been via Netflix and Internet downloads.

I am very excited that you folks are now offering paid downloads of Battlestar Galactica! Bittorrent works great, but I’d like to see you guys compensated for the creative work and production costs, right? And since I only watch a few shows per month, the $2/episode is definitely a better value than buying Cable access, which is overpriced for my needs.

UNFORTUNATELY, the iTunes store is a closed, proprietary system, that can not be accessed from my home entertainment center, which runs on FreeBSD. So, even though I own a video iPod … I can not easily obtain the downloads from your vendor … and if I do somehow get to the iTunes store, I have no idea if they’re DRM-protected, which would block me from watching your show on my entertainment center anyway. :(

Please … please try to either:

a) Convince Apple to open up iTunes access to third parties. A while back, the open source community reverse-engineered the iTunes protocols so that Linux users could access this resource, but Apple locked these consumers out again.

b) Consider adopting Google Video as a sales channel — they have the capability to sell videos via traditional web browsers, which would allow ALL computer users to access your content, increasing consumer accessibility and sales for Battlestar Galactica.

Failing that … can I Paypal you guys $2/week for the episodes I have been obtaining via Bittorrent? :)

Thanks,
-danny

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I am one of those contrarian freaks who despises Daylight Saving Time, regarding it as a stupid fix to a problem that does not exist. You want more daylight after work? Set your alarm clock ahead and get to work an hour earlier! Don’t go changing my schedule . . .

Most people . . . normal people, don’t feel strongly about DST. “Yeah, it is annoying to change all my clocks twice a year, but then I don’t mind the extra daylight in the evening.” Of course, my last job I was working 7AM-3PM anyway, so I was saving Daylight . . .

So, enough bitching. Let’s talk turkey. Let’s talk Operational Qualification for third party auditing of a production database system. When I run the regression tests for PostgreSQL-7.4.8, the “horology” regression test fails. The README for this version reports that this may happen if you run on the day of DST switchover . . . or if your Operating System naively applies current DST rules retroactively. But, in my case? Huh, just don’t get it: (more…)

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Danny blows out the candles! (Thanks, Lea)

Yesterday was a fantastic gathering of friends.

Today we get to relax, and recuperate.

I love you, Yayoi. Thanks for organizing, and getting a fantastic cake, and cleaning up while I slept in today. And thanks to everybody who came by, and brought presents, and conviviality, and thanks to Brian, who treated nine of us to dinner.

Everything and everyone was fantastic. I am a fortunate person.

There are future events that will encompass Dim Sum, and “Axis and Allies” . . . those who may find such things interesting and would like to be added to such activities, let me know.

And thanks to those of you who sent e-mails or cards just to wish well.

And now . . . I have some work-work to catch up on, and my sister to pick up at the airport this evening.

It is good to be older. :)

-danny

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<SmooveB> <kyusaku> everson's constant: "for every subject X, there is 3
          geocities pages saying "X is Cool", 2 saying "X suX", and at least 1
          "X ate my balls."
<Tambreet> Am I reading this correctly?
<Tambreet> We are bowing to terrorist request and releasing the female Iraqi
           detainees (most of them at least)?
<recursive> are they hot?
<dman> huh?
<dman> Tam: ?
<jetfire> are the terrorists hot?
<jetfire> gee, not sure
* recursive asks the important questions
<Tambreet> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4624716.stm
<h4ck> awwh man, I might have to buy a mac just to use aperture
<[Ender]> I cannot find a "Chuck Norris Ate My Balls" page
* Tambreet can find a "Koffing Ate My Balls" page.
<TanAdept> Koffing!

So:

1. Chuck Norris ate my Balls. Not sure why, but Google needs to know!
2. Now that someone has won the War on Terrorism, I’d like to know what’s our peace dividend? National healthcare? Yeah, right.

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“Well, spank my ass and call me thirty.”

Do I have to start acting like a grown-up now?

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Lift every voice and sing
’til Earth and Heaven ring
Ring with rejoicing sounds of liberty!
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the listening skies!
Let it resound
Loud as the rolling sea!
Sing a song . . .

Yes sir, I grew up in the public schools of the Chocolate city. Unfortunately, I’m working in the vanilla suburbs, so this cracker doesn’t get King day off. Oh well, that’s alright, I have work to do, you see.

And on Wednesday, I’ll be thirty years old. Neat, huh? I’ll have to start acting like a grownup.

If you haven’t received Yayoi’s e-mail invitation, and you would like to help us celebrate on Saturday, drop me a line and I shall send you details.

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr

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