Pangloss

Phi, I don't think that's a sufficient support, re: your statement that Bush said that god told him to invade Iraq. It's third hand, and I don't know that news source. In other words, Abbas is just saying how he interprets what Bush told him. I realize you were talking about Arabic interpretation of Bush's motivations, but there was a clear implication to the readers here that Bush's motivations were religious in nature, which I feel would require kind of defense or qualification before I would agree with it. (Just my two cents here, in terms of finding common ground -- you're welcome to your opinion on it, of course, I'm just talking about my reaction to it.) Do you have a more direct attribution? (The second source you listed is irrelevent to me because he's not making the same claim there at all.) I've read from various sources in the past that this has been a congenital problem in Iran since the 1979 revolution. I've started to wonder lately, however, if it might have changed somewhat. The reformist movement has gained a lot of ground over the last ten years, opening up some civil rights for women and so forth (not as bad as the Taliban, for example). Also there seems to be developing a kind of rift between "government" and "religion" in some ways -- analysts no longer seem to view them as being one and the same anymore. The new president, for example, while a fundamentalist, actually ran on a platform of reform and opposition to the clerics, and that platform was said to be very popular with the underpriviledged side of the Iranian voting populace. (Many observers, of course, feel that was all a ruse, but it's an interesting ruse.) All of which suggests to me that things have changed quite a bit in Iran, and it might be possible now to get better intel on the ground.

So what do you folks think of this case? It went a bit further today, with the New York Times' Judith Miller (who refused to reveal the names of people she spoke to on the phone) went to jail. Matthew Cooper, as it turns out, got a last-minute reprieve when his source let him off the hook. That's interesting, and it suggests to me that (a) we'll learn very shortly who that source is, and (b) it won't be Karl Rove (since he'd have no reason to let Cooper off the hook). The Wikipedia has a very good, objective, extremely in-depth article on the subject here. I actually recommend reading this article even to those who are familiar with the case (something I'm not entirely sure I am even after reading several stories and this article!). It's awfully confusing. In a very brief nutshell, Valerie Plame was a CIA operative whose husband was an ambassador for the US. When he spoke out against the Bush administration, someone in the White House revealed his wife's undercover CIA status to columnist Robert Novak. The incident is under the investigation of an independent counsel, who asked to see notes from reporters who worked on the case (to try and find out who the leak was). Outing an undercover agent is a serious offense. (If it were Karl Rove, for example, it would be somewhat akin to the revelation that Nixon's top aid ran Watergate.) One of the more interesting aspects of this case is that it has many liberals asking that the reporters be forced to give up their sources (presumably so they can nail someone in the White House with a crime), and it has many conservatives crying for enforcement of protection for journalists! The role reversal isn't total -- journalists certainly side with not revealing the sources -- but it's quite interesting. What do you all think?

Interesting article from a couple of penetration experts on network security. It's an excerpt from their new book entitled "Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter to Data" which just went on sale. It's well-written and not technical; sort of the bird's-eye view of the more paranoid side of state-of-the-art computer security. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=397660&rl=1

Yah I think that's a reasonable point and I didn't mean to stomp on your opinion there, if I was a little abrupt above. In fact I just popped back in here to see if I needed to ameliorate my tone a bit, but you'd already posted. But I guess you got my point there. Regarding your question, I don't really know more than what's in that first article I linked from the BBC (a startlingly informative source for US political matters, as I've come to discover over the past few months since you guys suggested it in a discussion which you may or may not recall). The general idea is that he was identified by former hostages, who spent well over a year with the students who took over the embassy. But there were said to be over 500 students directly involved in the hostage event. It's plausible. But it's plausible either way. I think Occam's Razor suggests that the conclusions of "he is one of them" and "they're simply mistaken" are the more likely scenarios here, rather than (for example) something like "Karl Rove made a few phone calls to former hostages after the election". (Not that you were suggesting that.) It's worth noting that the new president admits to being a member of that student organization, but he claims to have not participated in the event.

Just as a side note to this thread, it was learned today that we may not be able to get any further photographs of the crater left by the impacting vehicle due to the cometary "tail". I'm actually at a loss for a non-registration link for this at the moment, sorry.

I sympathize (and agree with Phi's point about spin), but I also sense anti-Bush sentiment creeping its way onto the map, wedging itself into the most direct path between "Iran" and "non-nuclear" status. We need to avoid such distractions, and remember that it's Europe which has lead the call in asking Iran to remain nuclear-free. Iran is a nation which exports four million barrels of oil per day, much of it to China (which is already making funny shifting noises in its chair that sound suspiciously like a Security Council sanctions veto), and the excuse that it needs nuclear energy is a poor one. (And it's not even much of an excuse, since their politicians openly admit that they feel they have a right to nuclear weapons.) Fish? Cut bait? Make the call, but leave Bush's foreign policy rhetoric out of it, guys. He is not responsible for Iran's nuclear brinksmanship.

Oh no, I spoke too soon! http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-russia-comet-case,1,2124097.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

Yeah, it does actually have a tail it's just not as pronounced, and when they got up close (and presumably adjusted their exposure times for optimal photography on the comet) it seemed to more or less disappear from view. The Wikipedia article on Deep Impact has some pretty good approach shots showing the tail when it was still a month out and closing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_%28space_mission%29 Here's one of the pics:

Hm, yes, I see your point. This article in particular seems to support what you're saying. This picture seems to be particularly revealing: That certainly seems to point toward the XML files not doing the job of actually pulling the data from the back-end database program (ala MySQL). Yes, I think you're right, and Icheb about much of this as well, and I was wrong. If this is true then it does still represent a major change in the way web applications can be developed (I disagree with Icheb on that, but I respect his opinion on it), and vastly reduces the need for "heavy" apps like PHP and ASP.NET delivering full-blown web pages to the end user. But you're right, it's still got to have some sort of piece at the back end doing the database work. PHP, ASP.NET, CGI, whatever. Maybe something else entirely ("legacy" apps, as indicated in the image). In fact it seems to kinda open a few doors there, doesn't it? Thanks for sticking in there with me on this. I'm going to do some more poking around with AJAX and I may post a new thread on it for more discussion later.

I don't think that's correct -- I don't think there *has* to be a server-side application running at all (aside from the HTTP daemon itself). I don't think there's any PHP or ASP.NET or even CGI going on behing Google Maps, for example. I think it's just serving up dynamic XML updates upon user request. It just has an active application "feel" to it. Just to explore this a bit further, I'm not saying you never need server-side technology. I'm asking why you couldn't replace PHP with AJAX. There's a very subtle distinction here. Obviously you need some sort of server-side application if any sort of processing is required on the server when a user is not around. This is not generally the case even with dynamic web sites. Google Maps, for example, is simply letting users pull data from a database. If you needed to do something like shift your inventory from a warehouse to a distribution center at a pre-specified time, or anything else you want done without user interaction, then you would need some sort of server-side executable running. But you wouldn't build inventory management software with PHP. In fact, web service is typically an afterthought to an existing company-wide, LAN/WAN-based, DBMS-centric system with a heavy front end installed on people's desktops. You're not going to mimic that in PHP, you're just going to serve data from it. The only thing I've been able to think of that might answer my question to Icheb would be something like portal software, such as this message board, or Nuke, or in the ASP world stuff like DotNetNuke, Community Server, blog software, etc. Stuff that requires server-side processing but it's primary function is to serve web pages to users. But even here there's a rub -- I don't know that you couldn't simulate/replace all of the functionality of a portal program with a clever combination of XML/JS and a good database with cleverly written stored procedures. DBMSs (even the freebie MySQL) have a pretty rich and powerful set of features, and are more than capable of managing permissions, archiving data, and performing other automated functions. And your front-end XML/JS pages can easily simulate the appearance of portal software. In fact, we typically bypass a lot of those built-in DBMS functions when we build web applications these days anyway, because there's no point in having two levels of functionality. For example, a typical web app will require the user to log in uniquely, but *the app itself* will always log into the DBMS the same way -- with a pre-specified username and password that's actually stored in the application code! That's the sort of thing that really makes you wonder -- why have we reinvented the wheel? But that's how it's done today, in every web application from ScienceForums to Amazon.com. So we're back to square one. So far as I can tell thus far, there doesn't appear to be anything you can do in PHP that you can't (in theory) do in AJAX. Which is why I called this a matter of semantics and methodologies, not capabilities. (But I'm all ears here.)

Darnit, Dave! Dont interrupt me while I am adjusting my tin foil hat! ;-)

So you can't give me any specific examples of a web application that can be constructed with PHP but not AJAX? The reason why I say it's a question of semantics and methodologies can be expressed with this simple example: Let's say you have an MySQL database, and you want to deliver information in that database to users. You construct a set of XML pages on the server, and write a set of JavaScript scripts to serve them. In this example, the same end result has been achieved as could be achieved by, for example, a full-blown PHP or ASP.NET application. But what do you need PHP for in this scenario? What does it give you that you do not get with the AJAX (XML+JS) approach? What scenario involving delivery of information to end users requires PHP and cannot be handled by an XML/JavaScript approach?

(Just as a side note, this is an academic discussion, not a debate. I'm not trying to evangelize AJAX, I'm trying to learn and to help others learn. So I'd appreciate it if you'd watch your tone. Thanks.) Again I'm not an expert on AJAX, but so far as I can tell, AJAX does appear (to me anyway) to have the potential to "replace" PHP. I'm sure we would all agree that, from the user's perspective, it makes no difference what the delivery method is -- what matters is that the content is delivered. So far as I've seen (in my limited experience thus far), there doesn't appear to be anything you can do in PHP that you can't do in AJAX. I imagine that each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, but to me this seems like a question of semantics and methodologies, not end results. So could give us some real-world examples, Icheb? What I'm looking for are some specific things that you can do in PHP that aren't possible in AJAX. Thanks.

Yes, more or less. CGI/Perl is the "old and busted" approach to serving full HTML pages (as opposed to just updating the data to a standing XML page ala AJAX), and it has certain limitations (though it still has its followers), the most common complaints revolving around the way it spawns processes for each script (it's not managed). The "new hotness" approaches to full-HTML delivery are discussed above as PHP and ASP/ASP.NET.

I keep wondering why we haven't gotten an earful from the end-of-the-world crowd about Deep Impact. Are they still hanging their heads in shame about the Millenium Bug, or are they all too busy preparing for Peak Oil now?!

A better question would be why would one use PHP in preference to ASP. Those are the two most popular server-side application development platforms at the moment. PHP is open source from the Linux world (sometimes referred to as LAMP, for Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP), and ASP is closed source from the Microsoft company. There is a third alternative becoming popular right now called "AJAX", for asynchronous Javascript (not Java) and XML, which previously was not a technology one could use for server-side data access, but now it is (thanks to Microsoft, ironically). Expect to see a lot more open source development in this area over the next year or two -- it appears to be tipping. I have no real experience in the PHP world but I have built a few applications for customers in ASP.NET, so I'd be happy to try and answer any questions regarding that area. I'm not a Microsoft evangelist but I do seem to have more or less hitched myself to their bandwagon in a lot of ways over the years (MCSE, etc).

This reminds me a lot of the "zero tolerance" laws currently enforced at a lot of schools. Kids show up for school with a butter knife in their lunch box and get expelled from the system permanently. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot. This is what happens when people get too fixated on the news.

It was appealed, and the decision here came from that appeal. He can appeal even further, to the state supreme court and/or the US supreme court. I imagine he will do so, but they have the option of simply chosing not to hear is case.

Full story here: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

There's a little speaker in there. It's connected directly to the motherboard. Back in the early days of Windows (and latter days of MS-DOS), when sound cards were still expensive, there were various software approaches to try to eek performance out of those speakers. It never really worked all that well, and for the most part the little thing's been more or less forgotten. Good questions for the A+ exam, but that's about it. It does have one piece of useful functionality. It beeps when you turn your computer on (you've heard it a thousand times, but you probably thought it was the multimedia speakers making the noise). What's useful about it is that it gives you an initial indication that the system is functioning. If there were a problem with, for example, the video card, it would beep three times. It's helpful when you're troubleshooting a hardware problem. But things are so cheap now, and it's so common to get most of the peripherals already built into the motherboard, that it's not really all that useful anymore.

I think you're probably right on the funding issue, and I don't think you're necessarily wrong on the other stuff either. At risk of straddling a dangerous fence, I see the best we can do as citizens is to support the efforts that are being made by the people we've elected to make them, and continue to voice our concerns, loudly at times, about methods, extremes, and the handling of mistakes. We certainly live in interesting times.

Well I respect your opinion on it, but I disagree. I think that our involvement in Iraq has lead to terrorism in Iraq, but I don't believe that the increase in terrorism outside of Iraq is due to our involvement there. I believe we would have seen that increase in the wake of 9/11 regardless of our actions. Backing away from terrrorism doesn't decrease terrorism, it increases it, as the Spanish have now learned. That's just my opinion, of course. I don't condemn other positions on this, and I don't pretend that this is a truism or fact. It's just my take on the situation. IMO if the terrorists are screaming and crying, we're probably on the right general track. Osama's upset about our involvement in Iraq? Good. Osama's upset about our creation of a new, democratic government in Iraq? Good. Osama's upset about increased security and anti-terrorist movements around the globe? Good. Osama's upset about our working with security forces in the Phillipines? Good. Osama's upset about our efforts in Afghanistan? Good. You see my point here, right? I don't mean to excuse any bad behavior (such as Abu Graib), but I'd hate to see the war succumb to a simple hasty generalization or fundamental attribution error.

Oh I see. Well that's a reasonable assumption, given the historical context of isolationism, which was predominent in American politics at the time. That's the funny thing about the logical fallacy of "hasty generalizations", though -- they ignore minority opinions and specific events. Just because America is involved in a war in Iraq, for example, doesn't mean it's not a controversial issue here. Make sense? I'm not familiar with the incident ecoli is referring to, but in answer to your question "Why would the US be concerned over WWI?", the answer is that the war in Europe was extremely controversial and hotly debated in American politics -- that's well documented. We were loaning money to both sides of the conflict, and the conflict-of-interest issues were very serious. There is also the issue of the Lusitania, which directly impacted on American opinion about the war. Prior to 1917, it's a bit analogous to the situation of Britain and France during the American Civil War. They were indirectly involved, and had a huge stake in the outcome. It wouldn't surprise me if there were demonstrations in Britain and France for or against involvement in the US civil war at that time.

Yup, just make a folder and do a save-as. It'll make an HTML file and a little subfolder containing the graphical elements. You can then tuck the folder away somewhere and ignore it, and Google Desktop Search will catalog the contents of those folders and make them available for searches. One cool thing about GDS is that when you go to the Google WEB site and run a search it will also show you results on that web page from files on your computer. Pretty nifty.