Saturday, June 02, 2007

Here's a Little Green Footballs post that made it to the front page of Digg. which is surprising. It speaks of a documentary about the making of Palestinian terrorists, and I would have expected it to be buried.

Frightening stuff, showing the truly evil nature of our adversaries. I can imagine that the Nazi youth were something like this, and it has no allegory in the West (unless perhaps among the most fanatical environmentalists and bible-thumping evangelical Christians). Its demonstrates a complete disdain for human life, or even more than that--a fundamental joy in taking human life as a means for entering Paradise.

Strongly recommended for anyone above the age of 15.
She was a beauty, alright. Reminds me of my wife in some ways.
I remember when the Amish would rather skin their favorite hog Joshua before he was fully fattened than use electrical power for anything. Now they're using solar panels.

I consider this a sign of the Apocalypse.
Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at a light 2304, is a story about... well... Digg. I've noticed that whenever there's news about Kevin Rose, one of Digg's founders, it tends to go straight to the top. That seems a little solipsistic to me, but whatever.
My Sprint Treo is getting a little long in the tooth. I want one of these.
There's no such thing as an emission-free vehicle. At best, the emissions simply happen somewhere else. Of course, some methods for producing energy produce less emissions than others.
Shouldn't it be call the "Lord Jesus Library" instead?
Better to die free?
Ahem. And the last arms race went so well for Russia, didn't it?
A positive story about an American businessman. It doesn't happen very often, so enjoy.
When you've been on the inside of something, your words should probably carry some weight.
Hypocrisy is bad enough. Armed hipocrisy is another thing entirely.
This is good news and bad news. Good, because it was foiled. Bad, because such plots are on-going.
This is a fascinating story, for all it says about the UN, Russia, Iraq, and for all it doesn't say.

As far as I'm concerned, they're looking in the wrong place.
And the National Kitchen Utensils Association is to blame...

Doesn't have as much of a ring to it as does the NRA.
Huh. This is going to get more and more interesting as time goes on. Do we need virtual police to protect our virtual selves and our virtual property from virtual crimes in a virtual world?

Say that ten times fast, and you might hurt yourself.
Replace "Lebanon" with "Israel" in this story's title, and the media would be screaming of a "massacre."
What a surprise: a Leftist "protest" turns violent.
I've commented before on the issue of "personal" information in songs purchased from iTunes Plus. Certainly, one might not want some of the information to get around, in particular sensitive information like passwords, and even more particularly if that information isn't encrypted.

At first, I was tempted to say (actually, I did say) that one only need worry about the information if one was posting songs to the Internet. My conclusion was based in part on the idea that one has all sorts of information on one's computer, and songs purchased from iTunes would probably be the least of one's worries if a computer is stolen or lost.

However, I then realized the quite obvious and more important point: the songs are also kept on iPods, which 1) don't offer any way to encrypt information, unlike a PC, and 2) are far more often lost and stolen. Also, one doesn't really expect personal information to be stored there, and might avoid doing so on purpose (for example, by not using an iPod's PIM functions).

And so, I can see that some people might have a legitimate concern over this issue, and Apple should certainly provide more information on what they're storing in songs purchased from iTunes Plus. From the linked story above, this is also apparently the case for all songs purchased from iTunes.

Update: I also don't find the argument in this story to be compelling. One problem with unencrypted information on an iPod, even if just a name and email address, is that it's not very useful as an anti-piracy measure. If one's iPod were stolen, and all of the songs contained on it were made available via P2P sharing, how could the purchaser prove that he wasn't the one who uploaded them? Or, conversely, how could Apple prove that he was? In short, the information should be encrypted, and only Apple should have the key.
I don't think there's any reasonable assumption of privacy on a public street, or in windows that face a public street. That's why most people tend not to undress in front of open windows (unless one is into such a thing, and not that there's anything wrong with that).

Seriously, though, there are all sorts of pictures and video that one might end up in, whether it's for the news or a family snapshot. If one is worried about being noticed in public, than one should probably stay home.