7,000 Iraq Refugees to Enter U.S.

Only 800 Iraqis refugees were allowed into the U.S. since 2003, but 7,000 will enter the U.S. this year. I wonder why so many Iraqis want to emigrate if America is perceived so negatively in Iraq?

More Google Cookie Crumbling

Computerworld ran a story on 19 July 2007 about the fall-out from Google's recent decision to revise its cookie policy. The new and improved cookies will last only two years.

However, in the recent development critics charge that "No users will experience any gains in privacy at all due to Google's change in policy," stated Randy Abrams, director of technical education at ESET, a vendor of antivirus products.

Ever wonder how long Google's cookies last on your computer? Currently, the cookies set by the company are designed to expire in 2038.

That is longer than any cookie I know.

Follow the Campaign Money for the Next President

Federal Computer Week released a story, 16 July 2007 about the Federal Election Commission. The first day that the FEC offered its first interactive campaign finance application, the Web site garnished 90,000. This figure is an increase over its usual 7,000 visitors monthly.

The site cost about $12,000 to build and took about six months to develop.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency created in 1975 by Congress to administer and enforce campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1974 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act. It describes its duties as "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections."

Would You Like $968 Million to Prepare?

Computerworld released a story announcing that the U.S. is offering $968 million for disaster technology. According to the Reuters news agency the money is in the form of grants to help state and local public safety agencies buy sophisticated radios and technology for communications during disasters, according to a Commerce Department spokesperson.

Who Said the Germans Don't Have a Heart?

An article today in Computerworld reported that German police understood how an angry computer user was so frustrated with his computer that he tossed it out the window. Apparently in the middle of the night a man was so frustrated that in an outburst his startled neighbors heard the commotion. The Hanover police responding to the melee sympathized with his technical frustrations. They decided not to press charges but they did make him clean up the mess.

"Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer. `Who hasn't felt like doing that?' said a police spokesman. I think we can all relate to computer users everywhere who have felt, and some have done, the same thing.

Political Globalized Islam

Two worthwhile books with flawed logic from a French theorist: The Failure of Political Islam & Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah by Olivier Roy.

Will fundamentalist Muslims manage to take power, or will the mostly nonfundamentalist autocrats now in power stay there?

The fundamentalists could well take over several governments in a short period: Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) has launched a virtual civil war; in Egypt, radical fundamentalists control parts of the cities and countryside; fundamentalist parties are gaining in nearly all the Muslim countries with electoral politics (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Malaysia). The fundamentalist challenge to the established order is real.

So how is political Islam a failure?

The failure Roy refers to is one that distinguishes between Islamism and neofundamentalism. For Roy, the former means the drive for political power, and the latter means focusing on the family and the mosque. Think Iran for Islamism; think Saudi Arabia for neofundamentalism.

Islamism has failed and the weaker cause of neofundamentalism has flourished accoring to Roy.

True enough, Roy points out that fundamentalist Islam is a form of modernization. Contrary to the usual assumption, it is not medieval in spirit at all but an acutely modern form of protest. In Roy's elegant formulation, it "is the sharia [Islamic sacred law] plus electricity."

Though fundamentalist Islam cannot work, what Roy misses is that the realization that fundamentalism does not work could be years or decades off. We have no idea whatsoever from knowing the full import of fundamentalism. For example, as the Marxist-Leninist precedent shows, regimes kill and repress their opponents and also export their ideology abroad. The mullahs in Iran relish in power as most people appear to enjoy it. The salient point: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely," Lord Acton, is not discussed by Roy.

In 1933, sixteen years after the Bolshevik revolution, communism had a strong life after the revolution; sixteen years after the Iranian Revolution fundamentalism is alive and well, despite Roy's objection.

Roy was wrong on Algeria. The Muslim FIS in Algeria is superceded by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA): they specialize in murdering the children of police officers, women without veils, unsympathetic journalists, and non-Muslim foreigners. They kill their victims in particularly horrifying ways, slitting throats and cutting off heads. Educated and/or Western-oriented, French speakers, or those wearing a business are attractive as potential victims.

Leading American specialists on the subject, such as John Entelis, John Esposito, and John Voll, argue that we should look beyond fundamentalism's rough edges and bristling rhetoric and relax.

However, you can only engage in dialogue those who are willing to accept its consequence: democracy, freedom, free choice.

We need to learn from history and to hope with the Who, "We don't get fooled again."

The Declaration of Independence

Are Google Cookies Crummy?

Today Computerworld released a story about Google which states their new policy: user cookies will expire after two years. However, for the two-year cookie policy to work: users must not return to the search site. The solution then is pretty simple, no? Users should just stop searching on Google. I would think that it is clear by now that many ordinary computer users do not understand what cookies are or how they work.

What are cookies? Cookies are small bits of code stored on a computer; cookies are handy for users though because their user preferences are stored on the computer. Another common aspect of cookies that users often overlook is that they are able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers. Users can shut off or modify how cookies are downloaded to their computers.

A user might view the cookie issue as convenience, Google is looking out for me, or more sinisterly, Google is deciding something for me that I'd rather do myself.

Privacy advocates think Google can do better. According to the Computerworld article:

"Google's paying attention to the issue of cookie expiration, but as a practical matter, I think this change will have little impact on online privacy. . . . Users still know too little about how Google collects information, what information is collected and what it's used for. And, of course, [for] anyone who returns to the Google site within two years, the cookie will be renewed. I think two days rather than two years is probably a better period for a search cookie,"

stated Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.

How Does Search Really Work? Or, Can I Trust Google?

Computing Reviews released an interesting topic: “Adversarial
Information Retrieval: The Manipulation of Web Content:” by Dennis Fetterly of Microsoft Research. To summarize, Fetterly demonstrates: how search engine results can be manipulated by content providers. By using methods such as adding unrelated content to meta tags, duplicating information, and cloaking content so it is indexed
differently, Web pages can improve their result rankings. While the economic incentive for achieving high rankings is significant, manipulated results undermine the trust of millions of users. Fetterly suggests research into link-based spam detection and the identification of spam blogs, and advocates the development of a clear set of rules
for search engines. This is a worthwhile read.

Follow the money

The EE Times reported today that global venture capital firms are targeting China and India: and, the U.S.

However, the import of the report may be that capital investment overseas is lower than has been widely assumed, with only a 1 percent increase over last year in the number of U.S. companies planning to expand offshore investments over the next five years. Highly regarded firms such as Deloitte & Touche and the National Venture Capital Association concluded that U.S. VC firms are still only "dabbling" in places like China and India.

In the case of China, perhaps the nation is too questionable for many investors to consider, and India has chronic problems as well.

Update on Pandemic

Update:

I've noted some concern about a pandemic, but, perhaps not enough given today's Computerworld story:

"Some IT managers say they see no choice but for organizations to prepare their tech operations for a possible avian flu epidemic. But there are concerns that attention to the issue may be waning in the U.S."

"It's not a question of if, but when. So the sooner that companies and families and communities and states are prepared, the better.

James Seligman, the Center for Disease Control's CIO, on the likelihood of a pandemic striking the U.S.

Does Your Crystal Ball Need a Brushup?

Paul Saffo published an interesting article in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review in which he describes:

Six Rules for Effective Forecasting:

1. Define a cone of uncertainty; 2. Look for the S curve; 3. Embrace the things that don't fit; 4. Hold strong opinions weakly; 5. Look back twice as far as you look forward; 6. Know when not to make a forecast.

Only Human (2004, Spanish, Seres queridos)

Only Human (2004, Spanish, Seres queridos) attempts to imitate a Rabelaisian plot: wacky, and clever, but this film most often falls flat. This Spanish film is in the mold of Meet the Parents but without the laughs. The improbable plot lines should sustain interest but frankly, I fell asleep. I tried again the next day and slogged through it. The universal appeal of bringing home that special someone is undercut by its own cleverness. We should enjoy our protagonists' Leni's family buffoons: blind Dadu, the grandfather, the unwed nymphomaniac sister living at home with a 5-year-old daughter, the zealous brother with his fanatical attachment to Judaism, the pre-menopausal crisis of the mother, and the wayward father. When Leni brings her Palestinian fiancé, Rafi, to meet the family, we are set up for conflict galore but global issues pale in comparison with the chaos that reigns in Leni's family. It begins promisingly enough; unwittingly, Rafi may have accidentally killed Leni's father, but the anarchy that ensues teases but never delivers.

Ft. Dix Accused Write

Ft. Dix housed a village of refugees from the fighting in Kosovar before those people could re-settle.

As reported earlier, six men were arrested as suspects in a terroristic plot against Ft. Dix. The 14 July 2007 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer released a story about the Ft. Dix suspected terrorists writing to the judge in their case. Dritan Duka stated that the charges of an armed attack on New Jersey's Fort Dix "lies and accusations." The defendants also bemoaned conditions in jail while two of them, Mohammad Shnewer and Duka, who also wrote on behalf of his brothers and codefendants, Shain and Eljvir, while proclaiming their innocence in those letters. The prosecution would like the trial to begin on 9 October but the defense is seeking more time.

Five of the six defendants--Shnewer, 22; Serdar Tatar, 23; and brothers Dritan Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26, and Eljvir Duka, 23--were charged with plotting a Fort Dix attack that was "inspired by . . . al-Qaeda." They could face a life sentence if convicted.

The sixth defendant, Abdullahu, was charged with supplying some of his codefendants with guns. He faces a 10-year sentence.

Two FBI informants penetrated the group and secretly recorded more than 100 conversations.

All six are foreign-born Muslims who came to live in South Jersey. Shnewer is the lone naturalized U.S. citizen in the group." The Duka brothers, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, are in the United States illegally.

Shnewer stated that he twice had "gotten a write up for praying." He included a Bureau of Prisons incident report that said he was chanting loudly in an Arabic dialect at this cell door.

The Pennsylvania Al-Qaeda

A federal jury convicted a Pennsylvania man, Michael Curtis Reynolds, 49, after deliberating for an hour. Reynolds was convicted of working with al Qaeda in a plot to blow up the Alaska pipeline, another pipeline in Pennsylvania and a refinery in New Jersey. Acting on a tip from Shannen Rossmiller--a judge from Conrad, Montana who in 2004 helped snare a Washington state national guardsman who was considering defecting to al Qaeda-–was what originally led the FBI to Reynolds.

Gettin' Zombie with J. Edgar Hoover?

Campus Technology reports today that the FBI and Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) identified 1 MM BotNet Nodes. The paring identified the IP addresses of more than 1 million zombie computers throughout the United States as a part of security sweep nicknamed "Operation Bot Roast." Zombies are computers that are unwitting hosts for the activities of bots, pieces of malicious software that are often used to facilitate crimes. Many of those effected by this sweep are unaware that their computers have been compromised, hence the moniker, zombie. I know what you are thinking but no, J. Edgar Hoover has not returned.

Buckets Before Blues

According to an article by Campus Technology (11 July 2007), Linda L. Briggs reported that Temple University solved their content management issue. Temple retains roughly half a million pages of content on more than 500 active Web sites which is an enormous content management challenge.

In addition, Temple has around 34,000 students across 17 campuses around the world. With Adobe's product, Contribute, thousands of users--literally anyone at the university with the proper permission--can post and update website content. The decentralized system is saving the university significantly by allowing university departments, rather than the IT department, to create, edit, publish, and control their own Web content.

Every Iraqi Wants the U.S. To Withdraw Immediately, Right?

Or, do they in Kurdistan (Iraq) also?

In the U.S., we don't hear much about Kurdistan.

Get 'em Today! Step Right Up! Indispensable Free Tools

As frustrated with computing as I am? How about a few suggestions? And, to top off this great offer, these indispensable tools are free. You can't beat that, now can you?


One of the best tools out there is What's Running which is a product that gives you an inside look into your Windows 2000/XP/2003 system. Without sounding too deep you can explore processes, services, modules, IP-connections, drivers and more through a simple interface. Once you know what is running you can easily shut the process down or watch your applications unfold before your eyes. If you ever are like me, and wonder why applications take so long, now you will know. You can see the processes of your computer at work. It does not make the process any faster but aren't you happier knowing that your computer is not simply mocking you and it is really trying to please you? Another handy procedure is to configure your startup programs easily. Now you don't have to wait until the little rats inside the box feel like working, you can only start what you absolutely need and get to work faster. Unless, of course, you would rather wait a bit and have 'unother cup 'o tea.


Get "CCleaner" and while you are guessing what the "C" in the name stands for, you can begin to marvel about how much better your computer is running. It cleans the Winrot up for you so you can actually still use your computer after the shrink wrap is gone. You are not insane, the older your PC gets, and the more you use it, the slower it gets, and it's not just because it's old. Winrot, otherwise known as the Bill Gates Syndrome, is caused by a number of issue: programs with sloppy uninstall routines that litter your hard drive with their leavings; conflicts between several different versions of the same DLL (Dynamic Link Library), that is, code which multiple applications share separated into a DLL which only exists as a single, separate file; registry gunk; invisible startup programs; and problems along these lines.

The Mahdi Army Enforces a Little Street Justice Prohibition

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God."
Mark 10:14.