February 2004 Archives
So, The Passion Of The Christ *is* a license to print money after all. According to box office mojo, POTC has made $117.5 million in 5 days. Seeing as the movie cost $45 million to make ($30 million budget, $15 million marketing), I'd say Gibson is going to make some decent coin don't you?
The Guardian is reporting that senior government lawyers questioned the legality of invading Iraq. Seems that some thought the threat (or lack thereof) posed by Hussein did not warrant a pre-emptive strike. Say it ain't so :-)
The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, agreed that secrets charges against the former GCHQ employee Katharine Gun should be dropped after the defence made clear that potentially hugely damaging evidence about the legality of invading Iraq would be disclosed in court, the Guardian has learned.You know, seeing as both Dubya and Blair are probably not going to be held accountable for lying to the public, I *really* hope that voters remember this come election day.Serious doubts about the legality of the invasion were expressed in the run-up to war by senior lawyers throughout Whitehall, including the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.
The doubts were expressed by the entire FO legal establishment, and not only Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former deputy head of the FO's legal team who has said publicly that she resigned last year because she was unhappy with Lord Goldsmith's legal advice.
The FO argued, partly on the basis of intelligence, that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein did not warrant a pre-emptive strike. It also questioned Lord Goldsmith's interpretation of international law and the standing of past UN security council resolutions.
Fresh evidence about the FO's doubts were sent by Ms Gun's defence lawyers to the prosecution on the day it decided to abandon the case against Ms Gun.
Watched VH1's 100 greatest one hit wonders last night. The funny thing about the countdown was the number of bands/artists that were not actually one hit wonders. Soft Cell and a-ha were two prime examples. The fact that I own 'Soft Cell - The Singles' seems to indicate they recorded more than 'Tainted Love' :-) 'Take On Me' is the only a-ha song that made it 'across the pond'. As I recall, that song was not as popular as 'The Sun Always Shines On TV' in England. 'Cry Wolf' and 'Train Of Thought' were hits as well.
Blimey, perhaps I shouldn't be admitting that I know some a-ha songs. I probably shouldn't admit that I bought their first two albums either :-)
The Commodore 64 has been found alive and well displaying timetables at a bus station in Brisbane, Australia.
Via Phil
Oh my goodness, they got rid of Rich :-(
Survivor - best TV programme EVER.
How sad am I?
I'm easily amused and almost choked on my lunch while reading this :-)
Blimey, this one slipped under my radar and I'm reading about it for the first time. Tony Blair under pressure again about Iraq.
Tony Blair is set to face questions on the dramatic collapse of the trial of GCHQ whistle blower Katharine Gun.Looks like the major British newspapers are running with the story.She had been accused of leaking a secret e-mail from US spies allegedly requesting British help in bugging UN delegates head of the Iraq invasion.
The prime minister's monthly media briefing on Thursday is expected to be dominated by the dropping of the case against the ex-intelligence officer.
The government has denied claims the move was politically motivated.
There has been speculation ministers were worried about the disclosure of secret documents during the trial, particularly the advice from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith about the legality of war.
Virtually all of Thursday's broadsheets lead on the collapse of the case against Katherine Gun - the intelligence officer who leaked details of American plans to bug UN diplomats before the war with Iraq.Common to many front pages is a smiling Ms Gun - captured on camera within minutes of leaving the Old Bailey.
Amid speculation about why charges were dropped, the Guardian claims prosecution lawyers took the decision after receiving dramatic new evidence of serious doubts in government about the legality of the conflict.
The Sun and the Daily Telegraph believe the trial could have been hugely embarrassing for the government, while the Times says outcome of the case has left the spy world in turmoil and raised fears about relations with the United States and the future of the Official Secrets Act.
The Independent's headline consists of three bullet-points: the whistleblower: cleared...The Government: accused of cover-up....The case for war: an official secret.
The whole episode prompts the Daily Mail to ask: "what war secrets are you still hiding Mr Blair?".
How much money is Mel Gibson going to make with Passion Of The Christ anyway?? Tell me that movie isn't just a license to print money. With all the free publicity the movie is getting, Martin Riggs is laughing all the way to the bank. Think I'm wrong?
Via J-Walk, the best sand sculptures you ever did see. Some of them, no, *all* of them are just fantastic.
I've been playing with Mozilla's thunderbird for the last couple of days. I really like it. It's now the default mail app on my Winders box. I'll be trying it out on my Linux machines in the next few days. Who knows, maybe I'll even prefer using it over Evolution. Wait a minute, what am I saying? Evolution is only the best mail app ever. Surely Thunderbird will have a hard time beating it. Well, time will tell, I didn't think I'd replace Galeon either and along came Firefox so you never know...
So, after about a year and half of procrastination, we thought it was high time that we finished our other upstairs bathroom.
Thursday night we ripped out the crappy linoleum floor and removed the toilet.
Friday night we got totally sidetracked in Home Depot and ended up deciding on the spur of the moment to paint the bathroom as well. So we bought some paint and around midnight (ish) we were done painting :-) Listened to a lot of old Prince albums in the process. You know, Prince has written some really good stuff but, oh my god, has he written a lot of dog shite as well. Anyway I digress.
Saturday we cut and installed the hardibacker board and starting putting down the tile. It was then that we realized that we didn't buy enough tile. Bugger. Unfortunately the tile is special order and will take another 5-6 days to get here. Double bugger.
Because I didn't want to wait another week without a toilet, I grouted that area yesterday so that the toilet can go back down on Tuesday night. That always gives me the willies. I'm paranoid that the bloody thing will leak. Still, our other bathroom toilet didn't leak so perhaps we'll get lucky again :-)
And here's the problem with server side RSS aggregators. If the server is down, you're buggered. bloglines is currently out of action. I feel lost :-) Can't really complain too loudly because bloglines is a free service afterall. I do have a really old OPML file that I can use with syndigator for the time being.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Oh, and then there are polls. That being said, I can't help but smile when I see this:
The two senators battling it out for the Democrats' nomination to take on George Bush in November would both beat the president if an election was held today, a new poll reveals.John Edwards of North Carolina and John Kerry of Massachusetts both held up leads of 10% or more among likely voters in a Gallup poll commissioned jointly by CNN and the USA Today newspaper.
Bill Maher waxes lyrical on people not being 'comfortable' with John Kerry. Made the diet coke run out of my nose :-)
And now I’m hearing a lot of people say they don’t know if they’re “comfortable” with Mr. Kerry. To which I would like to counsel: Who cares if you’re “comfortable!” He’s not running for national game show host. You don’t have to fuck him, just vote for him. Even if he’s a prick – I hope he is a prick, if he’s a prick who gets things done, who makes the right decisions – I would love a prick like that in the White House. In fact, I think that should be his slogan: “A prick in the White House!”
So Yahoo have dumped Google and have a new search engine. I tried it out. After you submit your search , you are presented with the results page . The results page has an area for sponsor results and web results. From the sponsor results help page, sponsor results are
...paid listings provided by Yahoo! & Overture Services, Inc. that appear on Yahoo! Search results pages and within selected Directory categories.Ok fair enough. Now if you look at the web results help page you notice this little disclaimer
Note: Web Results include Yahoo! Directory sites, including those submitted via the Yahoo! Express program, and other sites submitted to search engines via other "pay-for-review" or "pay-for-inclusion" programs.So the regular web results have 'pay-for-inclusion' too? And this is different from sponsor results how? If the regular web results are going to be littered with 'pay-for-inclusion' results, I don't think I'll be switching from Google anytime soon :-)
Sometimes you read a news article and there's really nothing left to say :-)
The family of late singer Johnny Cash has blocked an attempt by advertisers to use his hit song Ring of Fire to promote haemorrhoid-relief products.
Americans are obsessed with their teeth. They are. As I recall from my youth growing up in England, there was a sterotype of a typical American. One of the pieces of that stereotype involved how perfectly white American teeth were. After living here for a bit, I can honestly say that the teeth stereotype is correct.
I dunno, maybe it's changed in England, maybe people care a bit more whether their teeth are a brilliant white. Over here you can't get away from adverts on the TV about how to make your teeth whiter. All brands of toothpaste now say 'whitening' on the box. It's mad I tell you.
And on a related note, I swear rinsing your mouth with sulfuric acid couldn't be any more intense than bloody listerine. Makes the tears stream down my face. Bastard.
Just because it compiles & runs swimmingly on Linux, doesn't mean it will even compile in Winders. I thought I was finished for tonight, my C++ homework all finished. Sigh, not so. I've gotten so used to Perl's write once, run anywhere that I made a bad assumption.
Sadly, telling my professor "well, it compiles on Linux" isn't an option as the course requirement is that it compiles in Visual C++. Sigh. Actually I'm glad that I rebooted into winders to double check. Might have been a tad embarrasing handing in code that doesn't compile.
So, off I go to see what's broken. Didn't want to go to sleep tonight anyway :-)
Firebird, ahem, Firefox now rocks on Linux. I've stuck with Galeon for ages because Firebird used to render fonts awfully. Now they're *lovely* :-) I was excited when I saw that the download page had an option for GTK2 + XFT. Yes that's what I'd been waiting for!
What a schweet browser. Sorry Galeon, I won't be using you again :-) In fact even my wife thinks Firefox is awesome and she won't be using IE again in Winders either :-)
PAR rocks. Rocks I tell you. I, however, do not rock. With that in mind, here's my tip of the day. If your application prompts the user for parameters before continuing, it's not a good idea to compile with the --gui option. Just a thought.
Via Dave's 'Just Answer The Bloody Question', here's the transcript of the awkward Whitehouse press briefing I heard on NPR while driving to work yesterday.
Q Scott, a couple of questions I have -- the records that you handed out today, and other records that exist, indicate that the President did not perform any Guard duty during the months of December 1972, February or March of 1973. I'm wondering if you can tell us where he was during that period. And also, how is it that he managed to not make the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?MR. McCLELLAN: John, the records that you're pointing to, these records are the payroll records; they're the point summaries. These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. These records --
Q That wasn't my question, Scott.
MR. McCLELLAN: These payroll records --
Q Scott, that wasn't my question, and you know it wasn't my question. Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73? And why did he not fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
MR. McCLELLAN: These records -- these records I'm holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. The President was proud of his service. The President --
Q I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer?
MR. McCLELLAN: John, if you'll let me address the question, I'm coming to your answer, and I'd like --
Q Well, if you would address it -- maybe you could.
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, John. But this is an important issue that some chose to raise in the context of an election year, and the facts are important for people to know. And if you don't want to know the facts, that's fine. But I want to share the facts with you.
Q I do want to know the facts, which is why I keep asking the question. And I'll ask it one more time. Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73? Why didn't he fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status in 1972?
That Rumsfeld bloke. He's a character isn't he? With Iraq being such a clusterfuck, I can't say I'm surprised that he's trying to weasle his way out of the blame. He's got balls, I'll give him that.
Rumsfeld and his key aides, meanwhile, are running for cover.In one recent high-level meeting, Rumsfeld looked at Secretary of State Colin Powell and said, "Jerry (Ambassador Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian in Iraq) works for you, right?"
Powell looked as if he'd been struck by lightning. Bremer and every other U.S. official in Iraq reports directly to Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld demanded and got complete authority over the military, over the civilian authority in charge of rebuilding the country, over the administration's $87 billion Iraq budget, over every line of every contract let. And suddenly he forgot that Bremer works for him?
That same week, Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were summoned to a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss how the U.S. contracting system is working in Iraq.
When Wolfowitz was asked a tough question about the controversies surrounding the U.S. contracting efforts in Iraq, he turned to Armitage and said: "You can answer that one, right, Rich?" Armitage answered by noting that the Department of Defense and the Office of the Secretary of Defense control every American contract let in Iraq, and that the State Department has authority over none of those contracts.
"Iraq is now a contaminated environment and Rumsfeld and his people want out," said one senior administration official. "They can't wait for July 1 when the CPA (Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority) turns into the U.S. Embassy and the whole mess they have made becomes Colin Powell's."
Blimey, the whole Bush AWOL issue is really taking off now. It's been on the blogosphere for a while: Atrios, Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum in particular. Now it's hitting the mainstream media. As I was driving to work this morning, NPR ran a piece that was less than favorable towards Dubya.
As noted just about everywhere, Bush could clear this all up if he just released his military record. The fact that he hasn't done so makes you wonder doesn't it?
How cool is Filelight eh? I'll tell you, VERY COOL INDEED. Run, don't walk, and get yourself a copy :-)
I've got to the point where I really cannot take the Grammy awards - or any music awards for that matter. Hip-hop, R&B, rap (whatever it's called this week), is just not my cup 'o' tea. I don't 'geddit'. Having to sit through hours of craptacular rap artists just to get a glimpse of a band that I like is not my idea of a good time I'm afraid.
What the hell happened to the music industry? Didn't music used to be good? I'm sure it did, I'm sure I wasn't imagining things :-)
/me retreats back to his trusty back catalog of good stuff. Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure are all in my car CD player. NICE.
It's amazing how quickly blog entries accumulate. This weekend I was too busy to even sit down in front of my computer so the last time I checked my blogroll was Friday lunchtime. Imagine my surprise when I fired up the ol' aggregator at lunchtime today. My goodness, people write a lot - who knew?
:-)
So, Kathy Cox has had a change of heart after wanting to ban the word evolution from Georgia schools. This is a good thing.
State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox announced Thursday she will recommend that the word evolution be retained in Georgia's proposed curriculum for middle and high school science."I made the decision to remove the word evolution from the draft of the proposed biology curriculum in an effort to avoid controversy that would prevent people from reading the substance of the document itself," Cox said in a statement. "Instead, a greater controversy ensued."
Cox had proposed the phrase "biological changes over time," a term that scientists derided as meaningless, be used instead.
"I am here to tell you that I misjudged the situation and I want to apologize for that. I want you to know today that I will recommend to the teacher teams that the word 'evolution' be put back in the curriculum," she said.
Thanks to Gav, I finally got to try out Orkut. I wasn't sure what the point of Orkut was before I was involved and I'm still not entirely sure what the point of Orkut is now that I *am* involved. I'm really no further forward to be honest. Still, it was a good way to waste my lunch break yesterday :-)
Thanks to the insomnia fairy, I managed to get about 3 hours sleep last night. The 474 cups of coffee I've had thus far have just about kept me going today. It's not like I can just crash when I get home either. I've got school tonight until 10:00pm and then when I get home from that I get to play Oracle DBA as one of our Solaris boxes at work is having some patches installed.
Should be an interesting night. Yawn :-)
The most craptacular display of lip-synching I have *ever* seen. To their credit, at least Kid Rock and Justin Timberlake did sing live but Janet/Nelly/Puffy - a whole lot of arse to be honest.