Saturday, September 30, 2006

Reddit.com - A is for Anarchy

Reddit changed their logo to the V for Vendetta dude. Is it because our government just passed a bill legalizing torture and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and no habeus corpus?

This is a scary place.

The 'A is for Anarchy' is a reference to this site.

Our previous post on V for Vendetta.

And with this post, a couple of suggestions from Reddit itself:
1) an anti-tv note
2) a programmer's call to action. i've long since thought that us programmer-types were the biggest cowards on the block. good to hear someone else say it.
3) and an anti-wage slavery movie.

they all tie in nicely.

note: would Reddit put up this symbol if they were a corporation? heeeeeeeeeeeelllls no.


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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Fancy Little Football Person (i.e. 'uppity negro')

A terrorist from the Dallas Police Terrorist Defense Committtee today got off on his hate for uppity negros. Apparently, he can't stand the fact that Terrell Owens is allowed to call a white man a liar:

"The officers reacted because they were called to this location to do this job. Now they're being put under a microscope by some fancy little football person," White said. "Give me a break. Those officers are 10 times better than this man."


It's funny watching this go down. It's too cliche. You know this loser Glenn White wants to start dropping N-bombs, but he knows he can't be _that_ outwardly racist, even in Texas. Instead, he chooses to go the 'uppity negro' route, referring to Owens as 'some fancy little football person', and then finishing off his tirade with a 'those officers are 10 times better than this man'.

Typical racist shit. How boring.

And how awesome is it that this fool Glenn White has such a white name? Classic. Mr. White's challenge for T.O. to 'go down and file a complaint' is a common tactic amongst our nation's finest terrorists. Most terrorists around the U.S. just trash those complaints when they come in, or the terrorists just harrass, terrorize, beat, arrest, or murder the people doing the complaining. Typical terrorist tough-guy coward hiding behind his badge.


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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Good Samaritan Gets Screwed

No universal healthcare? Then don't go trying to save people from criminals, else you could end up a lot worse than just stabbed.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Firefox Needs to Stop Sucking

Seriously.

The same way that Mircosoft sucked so badly for so long, Firefox is continuing to suck so badly for so long. Think about it - what we're talking about here, really, is the lesser of two evils. It's Republican (Microsoft) or Democrat (Firefox) - both suck horribly, but we're afraid that Microsoft might get the job done (end human existence) a little bit quicker - so we stick with Firefox. This shit is not right.

I used Firefox forever just to issue a big 'Fuck You' to Bill Gates and Mircosoft. I used it in spite of the fact that it could take minutes to render a page that Internet Explorer could render in two seconds. I used Firefox in spite of the fact that, when I first started using it, you couldn't even click on a 'mailto:' link and have it get to your web-based email account (matter of fuckin fact - it still can't! not without an extension). I wrote my own extension to handle it at first - how many developers can do that, much less regular browser users? 1%? Talk about anti-democratic.

How does Firefox continue to suck so badly after its been around for seemingly ever, now? We gave you a chance, Firefox, and you still suck - after all these years. And we hear that Mircosoft is going to have tabbed browsing eventually - and you know what? We. Can't. Wait. That's right. We can't wait to switch back. If the world is gonna continue to suck, then we just want to go ahead and get this thing moving along - so we choose to enter the death spiral. It's a heck of a lot better than getting dragged kicking and screaming. At least we feel like we have a choice in the manner of how we get fucked.

Yes - we do feel vindicated that Mircosoft is finally about to introduce tabbed browsing ten years after it was obvious it was needed - it's a broken Bud bottle to the eye of all the Mircosoft apologists over the years who continued to scream "but it's free, therefore it's good for the consumer!". We all had no choice but to use shitty Internet Explorer. So listen Mircosoft apologists - and Bill Gates apologists - go fuck yourselves. Corporations are evil and Bill Gates is at least an asshole. Dude is a fuckin gangster. I'm not impressed that he or any other rich gangster is trying to become a philanthropist after they savage regular working people who were only struggling to provide the most basic existence for themselves and their families. That's right Bill Gates - I know what you are.

And I'm gonna use your new browser when it comes out anyways.

Because Firefox sucks. Where's the shortcut key to get to my home page? Where? <Alt>+<Home>? Are you kiddin me with this shit? <Alt>+<Fuckin>+<Home>?? These people think I'm double-jointed or some shit?

<Ctrl>+H gives us History. Seriously. Like I really want to know where the fuck I went yesterday, or ten days ago. Jesus Christmas.

So I download the Keyconfig extension and it totally sucks. It's a brilliant idea - a major attempt at fixing a major Firefox flaw - but the extension itself is near impossible to figure out. It's got this drop down that appears to be completely meaningless. What the fuck? I finally figured it out, but not before I went over to Internet Explorer to find out that it, too, used <Ctrl>+<Fuckin>+<H> to go to its History list instead of Home.

I'd love to use a half-decent, not-overly-shitty browser like Opera. Really. But if I use it, then some other asshole will use it, and before you know it - I'm writing websites that have to comply with three shitty browser implementations. No way. Spare me the browser bukkake party - dealing with two shitty browser implementations is already more than I can handle.

Firefox extensions out the ass. I mean, when I upgrade to Firefox-whatever-the-fuck, I'm gonna need to upgrade my twenty or so shitty extensions. Don't even get me started on the shitty, Nazi-esque versioning/update/upgrade system that Firefox has put in place for extensions (sorry, 'Add-ons'. Now that Microsoft is threatening to get back in the game, the MBAs over at Firefox decided to start speaking fucking normal, down-to-earth English, again.).

What a situation. What are we to do?

How about, tell the MBAs running Firefox to pull their heads out of their aaaaaaaaaaasses and start including some decent core functionality in Firefox. How about, stop adding new, stupid shit like 'Livemarks' until you implement core functionality that should have been in the browser since Day One? How about providing a decent Firefox extension API - one that doesn't require a degree in XUL-onomics and abstract-XPCOM-shinterfaces just to create a simple extension?

Seriously - Firefox may be beyond repair. There really is something to dynasties and such. The consistent failure of Firefox to produce a decent browser over the past how many years? may just mean it's time to abandon ship. Look at the University of South Carolina football program. I don't care if they get Bill mf-OG-gangster Gates to run that shit - it is never going to be a winning program. The loser tradition there just runs too deep - too long. It takes hard work to build up that kind of tradition. Hard work over years. At some point the losing becomes ingrained in the psyche of everyone associated with the program. It's a bit like the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino (which was really nothing more than Boston's crazy racism and them not allowing the best players they could get - black players - to be on the team). At some point, the people involved in these losing programs/projects are just waiting for their chance to give up - to fold up like a wet paper napkin. They know instinctively that they are supposed to lose - so they lose.

So, I gave one suggestion for how to fix Firefox - it went something like 'pull head from ass' - something to that effect, but let's just get rid of all pretenses - let's drop the objections for just a minute and be reasonable. How difficult would it be to design and build a new web browser from scratch that would do all of the things you wanted your web browser to do? What if someone semi-competent like Google took up the task? Could they get it done in six months?

I think they could, and I think it would be a much better browser than either Mircosoft or Firefox (who owns them? Mozilla Foundation or something?) has right now - and it would probably be better than either of the next versions from these technology lightweights. Google could open-source the browser and make it so that normal humans could write add-ons for it.

When Google buys their UNIX, I hope they get rid of that X-Windows bullshit that prevents UNIX/Linux/etc. from becoming a serious contender against Mircosoft. Building a browser from scratch would really lend credibility to Google when they finally launch their computer operating system in five years.

I know there are lots of genius-types associated with Firefox - which is part of the reason I'm so pissed-off about its lackluster implementation. Misusing talent like that is a serious crime in my book. We have to allow people the freedom to accomplish, and it's obvious that whoever is running Firefox has been crushing the creativity and genius of many of its team members for far too long. It's time for a change.

That reminds me - having some Apple UI-type influence on Google Browser would be really neato. I could almost get excited about something like that. Who cares that Google is sending my keystrokes directly to the Injustice Deparment, Department of Homeland Hilarity, and the Congress of UnAmerican Activities? Look at the interface!

...fixed many typos.

...and prepended 'In' to 'Justice Department'. (I'm not proselytizing - just tellin the truth. In the spirit of self-criticism. Just plain speech. Frank speech.) And if you know the scholar whose words I'm stealing in this final bit, then you are the shit. Not 'shit' or 'a shit' - 'the shit'. Big difference. One is a complement. The other - not so much. :)

...I checked-out the Firefox 'Add-ons' site recently and it has this slick process for uploading/updating extensions. Don't know when that happened, but it's a massive improvement. I take away everything bad I ever said about Firefox. :) Not really. But this is a huge plus. Maybe I need to contribute an api/library/facade that would actually make Firefox Extension building possible for mere mortals. They do have a couple of other new tools that do a lot of good - including this extension wizard - which seems super-cool, but I haven't actually used it yet.


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Sunday, September 03, 2006

Immigration, and Nicaragua Remembered

This LA Times opinion piece popped up in July, but just getting to it now. The immigration debate rush has passed, but now the attack on Iran is about to commence. We thought we should look back at the immigration debate issue before it gets forgotten completely. Let's go to the video-tape:

The most formidable leader Nicaragua ever produced was José Santos Zelaya, who ruled in the first decade of the 20th century. He was a crusading reformer who built roads and ports, challenged the power of the clerical-backed elite and dreamed of converting his country from a feudal backwater into a modern capitalist state.

Zelaya's nationalism, however, placed him in conflict with several American companies that were active in Nicaragua. They brought their complaints to Washington, and in 1909 the U.S. government engineered Zelaya's overthrow. In his place it installed the chief accountant of an American mining company. With the help of U.S. Marines, he suppressed a series of rebellions and kept Nicaragua in its backward state.


U.S. overthrows yet another government, same old story, whatever - nothing new here. But check this part out:

Through a combination of immaturity, arrogance and incompetence, however, Sandinista leaders — including Daniel Ortega, who served as president from 1985 to 1990 and who is again running for president this year — squandered their historic chance and turned most Nicaraguans against them. Their decade in power was a period of war, repression and steady impoverishment.


So, the government of Nicaragua 'squandered their historic chance'. And then somehow, magically perhaps, Nicaragua was wracked with 'war, repression and steady impoverishment'. War with or against who?

Well, you see, the writer's former employer, The New York Times, has a track record too - of supporting U.S. military interventions abroad - wherever they may be, for whatever reasons our government tells us. And now the LA Times has allowed him to hawk his wares in their paper. Color me not surprised.

Ever heard of those terrorists called the Contras? Sure you have, but the New York Times doesn't want to remind you that the U.S. government was busy terrorizing the civilian population of Nicaragua for ten years, until they finally relented and elected a U.S.-supported candidate. And they won't even deign to tell you that they were, in fact, terrorists - terrorists of the worst kind. Bill Blum's got the goods. As do many other folks - like South End Press.

It's as if the Sandinista government just decided that a war should take place against some unknown, nonexistent enemy. Hilarious. Or, not.

This is the kind of straight-up propaganda that the New York Times and other corporate newspapers like the LA Times produce every day. Most Americans are not even aware of it. The passive voice is one of the tell-tale signs of propaganda. Nobody was actually responsible for anything, things just happened.

We got sidetracked on the propaganda aspect of this story, but the point of this post was supposed to be about the fact that America destroyed the economies of Central America through massive state terror, and the destruction of those economies is what has forced so many Central American people to come to the U.S. to earn a living. If the U.S. government had never wrecked the economies of those countries in the first place, we might not be having an immigration debate at all.

How odd that, as you continue to learn the true role of the U.S. government in the world, you see how our government has been involved in massive violence around the globe for decades - many decades - hundreds of years, even! It's all a bit surreal.

There's been a massive escalation in U.S. terror since WWII, sure, but we're been doing it as long as we've been able to get away with it. And with your new knowledge of the American Empire you begin to see how U.S. terror campaigns always seem connected somehow. We installed the Shah of Iran in 1953, then American hostages are taken by pissed-off Iranians during Carter's presidency, then Reagan gives weapons to Iran to trade for the hostages, but he needed money for the arms for Iran and for his terror force, but he needed to do it without the knowledge of the U.S. people or the U.S. Congress, so he smuggled drugs into the U.S. from Central America, all the while raping, torturing, and murdering the people of Nicaragua in his eventually-successful campaign to install a pro-U.S. ruler in Nicaragua.

It's just too much. How could anyone possible be so sadistic? I think that's the question many of us ask. And it's not just one person - it's the top 1% or top one-half of 1% of Americans who are most responsible for these decisions. Power and privilege are powerful drugs, that much seems apparent.

UPDATE: Fixed typo - changed 'overthrew' to 'installed' wrt the Shah of Iran in 1953. The wiki seems somewhat knowledgeable, but I prefer to stick to the documentary record.


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