Categories
Freedom

Don’t watch them terror videos.

A quote from journalist Jason Burke on terrorists “becoming the media” through propaganda videos. Read his article – it is very insightful.

“Propaganda, indeed any communication or creative work, only functions in a language that is comprehensible to its target audiences. The harsh truth is that the style of al-Qaeda’s attacks and the executions in Iraq – and the whole theatre of modern terrorism – is familiar to us. The question is whether the content soon will be too.”

More here

Categories
Freedom

A View on Current Political Shifts

James Gosling’s blog has this to say about the US election: “I realized I was in trouble when I noticed that I was thinking of Michael Moore as a voice of reason.”

A more vitriolic (yet inescapably true) opinion can be found at fuckthesouth.com

While IE’s market share has dropped 5% since May to 88.9%, Mozilla browsers – including Firefox – have grown by 5% and now have 7.4% share of the market. There’s a powerful force at work here.

And here’s a compelling thought – if students in the Ukraine are not scared to stand up for their rights, to voice their disapproval of a political situation, why should the rest of us in “developed” countries sit back and accept whatever our governments dish out for us. There’s a good lesson to be learnt here

Categories
Asides

I hate Christmas in November

Why is it that we are forced to deal with Christmas decorations and advertisements starting in October already? It really amplifies the commercial aspect of Christmas, and by the time Christmas comes the shit has already fallen down or we’ve seen the ad a million times. Bah humbug.

Here are a couple of quotes from Richard Thieme’s newly launched blog (http://www.thiemeworks.com/blog/). This is the guy whose writing inspired me to realise that I truly am a hacker.
“when you finally have a book in print, it’s absolutely humbling to be bitch-slapped by Walter the Farting Dog”

“The challenge is to live in niches, not surrender entirely in the face of the rage and storm of the world, and remind each other quietly in the night what matters most.”

I look forward to more blogging from him.

Telkom is still suing Hellkom – yes the rich bastards sent a fat legal document to Gregg Stirton of Hellkom.co.za. Nothing like wasting exorbitant profits on legal expenses to squash the little guy.

It seems as though there may be no more Grand Prix broadcasts on the public broadcaster… SABC has failed us again…

Linux Uptime – 102 days for dewberry.co.za

In other news, what I thought was a great technology idea (I’m not at liberty to disclose) was not entirely original… just goes to show that there’s nothing new under the sun.

And workwise – finally kernel 2.6.9 supports LSI Logic MegaRAID – that should destroy a few headaches.

Gentoo Rocks!