Here is a link to the full three and a quarter pages of the NIE that the president declassified after some part of it was leaked to the press. May I suggest that you take a few minutes to read the entire document before making any judgements.
Surprise! Halo Wars is an RTS that is being developed by Ensemble Studios for the XBOX 360. This RTS will be based on the Halo universe that so many of us know and love. I can’t wait for the release of this game.
Ensemble Studios, the makers of Age of Empires, will be announcing something big tomorrow the 27th. We at Phyrfight love the series, and are waiting with anxious ears as to what the surprise will be. Stay tuned.
From:Don Feder – Fighting Terror with Estrogen
“…And now, let us say a few good words for warfare and violence. Those whose mantra is violence-never-solved-anything, are dogma-blinded, historical illiterates who would lead us down the soft path to national suicide. Without warfare and violence, we would have no country. America was born on the battlefield. (George III would never have let us go without a fight.) The Declaration of Independence was noble words penned on paper. It was the sword that gave them a reality. In this instance, the perpetrators of revolutionary violence included John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington—men of learning and ability all… Without warfare and violence in 1939-1945, today, half the world would be singing ‘Deutschland uber Alles,’ while the other half bowed to the honorable emperor of Japan. And without warfare and violence during the Cold War, the world would have been swallowed up by a monstrous ideology responsible for 100 million deaths in the 20th century… [M]en with guns suffered and died to preserve and protect a republic where human rights are enshrined. Today, the choice is warfare and violence or total submission to Islamofascism—the annihilation of the Jewish people, the subjugation of women, dhimmi status for those infidels still alive and a world governed by a barbaric desert ethos.â€
A rural town in Idaho is considering mandating firearm ownership for all households. It sounds like a good idea, however I would want to make absolutely sure all the people are trained properly.
Armed Town
Fox News Sunday interviewed President Bill Clinton on what he did while he was in office to kill or capture Usama bin Laden. In this blogger’s opinion Clinton is the most emotional I have ever seen him.
From the EFF’s Newsletter EFFector:
In last week’s announcement of the new Microsoft Zune media player and Zune arketplace, Microsoft (and many press reports) glossed over a remarkable misfeature that should demonstrate once and for all how DRM and the DMCA harm legitimate customers.
Microsoft’s Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or “rented” from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service. That’s right — the media that Microsoft promised would Play For Sure doesn’t even play on Microsoft’s own device! Buried in footnote 4 of its press release, Microsoft clearly states that “Zune software can import audio files in unprotected WMA, MP3, AAC; photos in JPEG; and videos in WMV, MPEG-4, H.264” — protected WMA and WMV (not to mention iTunes DRMed AAC) are conspicuously absent.
From: Bob Ray Sanders
“Kinky Friedman, one of the independent candidates running for governor of Texas, supposedly is in hot water these days because of some racially insensitive statements he has made in the past…
…Kinky’s recent poll numbers have dropped a little, and some folks believe – actually some Democratic leaders are hoping – that he is about to self-destruct because of his “racist†views.
Come on, y’all. There may be plenty of reasons not to vote for Kinky Friedman, but his being a racist is not one of them, mainly because he is not.
As far as I can tell, Kinky – the guy who once led a group called the Texas Jewboys – is a lot of things, but he is no bigot.”
From: Best of the Web
9/20, Five Years On
“Everyone took note of last week’s fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but blogger “Tigerhawk” notes an anniversary of an event of equal importance: President Bush’s Sept. 20, 2001, war speech to a joint session of Congress. The speech holds up awfully well. Here are a few highlights:
The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. . . .
Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. . . .
Americans are asking, why do they hate us?
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.
These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. . .
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.
From the Daily Mail:
Big Brother is shouting at you
“Big Brother is not only watching you – now he’s barking orders too. Britain’s first ‘talking’ CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.”
Now “anit-social behavior” can be instantly berated by the faceless cowards of the Party. Pretty soon, the populous will simply be shamed into absolute compliance with the will of those in power who are “democratically” elected.
The real scare is the fact that the UK is our stongest ally, and many believe that we should follow in their footsteps. On an unrelated note, I’m currently in the market for a cheap island in the South Pacific.
Via Engadget:
A 26 year-old woman has become only the fourth person to be fitted with a bionic arm and the first woman to have it done. It “works by detecting the movement’s of Mitchell’s chest muscle, which has been rewired to the nerves that once served her left arm.”
From:The New Hampshire Union Leader via PatriotPost.US
“On September 11, 2001, our guard was down. America vowed that morning that we would never let that happen again. And yet, after five years many of us have grown weary of maintaining our defenses. America is in danger of losing sight of the enemy. (Many of us already have.) We have become so distracted by the political fights over how to defend ourselves that we seem to have forgotten why we need to. Today would be a good time to stop bickering and remember that we are all Americans, and therefore all targeted by a resolute army of fanatical warriors. The enemy does not care if we are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, believer or atheist. It just wants us defeated. Polls report that more than a third of Americans, and nearly half of New Yorkers, believe that our own government either orchestrated the attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. Such insanity can only be spread in a society that has lost its bearings. We must refocus on our common enemy: the Islamic radicals who want to establish their own despotic empire and view us as the most important obstacle in their path. America was attacked five years ago by agents of radical Islam. Their successors are fighting us in Iraq and Afghanistan and awaiting their chance to wound us again on our own soil. That is not a fantasy. It is the world in which we all live. Despite discouragements and setbacks, America can win this new and challenging war. But only if we fight the right enemy.†—The New Hampshire Union Leader
Is listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, torture?
On the 9/12 O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly had a guest on from Human Rights Watch, who said that playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers could possibly be considered torture.
Apparently I have been inflicting torture on myself for years now without being aware of it. I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Maybe I should rethink my choice of music so as not to subject myself to such horrendous acts.
Why is no one talking about the success and stability of the three northern provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish regional government is operating very well, yet all we hear about Iraq is violence in one city: Baghdad. The country of Iraq cannot be summed up with news from one city. That is like saying all the crime in Washington D.C., is representative of the United States.
For more information check out TheOtherIraq.com.
For general inforomation on Kurdistan try Wikipedia.
From: EFF
“Innocent Target of File-Sharing Lawsuit Deserves Attorney’s Fees
RIAA Should Pay Victim’s Legal Costs in Baseless Suit
San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with the American Association of Law Libraries, the ACLU, and Public Citizen, filed a brief with an Oklahoma district court Thursday, strongly urging a judge to award the innocent target of a file-sharing lawsuit the cost of her attorney’s fees in battling the baseless allegations of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).”
Facinating stuff from:Cornell
IN 1999, legendary theoretical physicist Hans Bethe delivered three lectures on quantum theory to his neighbors at the Kendal of Ithaca retirement community (near Cornell University). Given by Professor Bethe at age 93, the lectures are presented here as QuickTime videos synchronized with slides of his talking points and archival material.
Sony recently announced that it would not be releasing the upcoming Playstaion 3 console simultaneously in Japan, North America and Europe as was previously promised. The console will be released late in Europe currently posted as March 2007.
The reason: Blu-ray isn’t ready.
This comes after Sony postponed the launch for 6 months in May 2006. Why did they postpone such a highly anticipated product?
Blu-ray wasn’t ready.
So my question to Sony is this: Why are you so caught up in being absolutely certain that Blu-ray is the default format for your next generation gaming machine?
The answer is that the disc format belongs to Sony, and rather than let the market decided which format is better, Sony would prefer to beat HD-DVD by forcing the production and use of Blu-ray taking advantage of its already-installed base of Playstation gamers. The problem here is that Sony has made one enormously gross assumption. Sony believes that no matter what they do, their console will far outsell either of its competitors and create and overwhelming demand for Bly-ray discs.
However, the fact that Microsoft has had a console of almost identical gaming power on the market for a year and the fact the Nintendo will be launching an innovative and cheap console slightly before the Sony launch will prove to be a much more considerable challange than they realize.
More as it develops.
What happens when a rocket hits your ambulance?
From SOUTALKUFFAR
“What happens when a Hellfire missile hits a Volkswagen ambulance at 950 mph? The Volkswagen emerges almost completely UNSCATHED!! Quite a testament to the quality of German engineering“
From: Q Ball
“The BSG: Resistance webisodes are online. Just go straight to scifi.com.
Be warned the last 30 seconds is a teaser(spoilers) for season 3, there is a pause before the teaser.”
From: CNET
“A Brazilian judge has ordered the local office of Google to disclose the data of users of its social-networking site Orkut who have been accused of crimes such as racism or child pornography…
…He said Google’s local office had shown a complacent attitude toward “the serious crimes practiced on Orkut” and showed “profound disrespect for national sovereignty.” ”
more