Disbanding Terrorist Groups

A new Rand Corporation report comprehensively surveys the ways that terrorist groups have been disbanded in the past: "Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended." Instead, historic wars on terror have been won with policing and settlements. Rand's conclusion? To defeat Al Qaeda, we need to end the war on terror.

[1] http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/to-destroy-al-qaeda.html

This is entirely too much fun.

Peters Who?

Boogies Burger is much better, and just around the corner.

The bacon maple milkshake is worth it.

Building a mod_secdownload using Apache and mod_rewrite

A friend of mine [1] runs a small record label, named Flemish Eye [2]. He's a great designer and understands PHP well enough to do most things, but I help him with anything that falls out of his expertise. He recently approached me with a request to build a secure download section.
The basic idea is that wants to provide a free download of the songs in an upcoming record in mp3 format to whomever purchases the record. So he would generate a set of secret codes, and

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Bill C-61

Meh, some acquaintances of mine met for a peaceful demonstration surrounding Bill C-61 which aims to make Canada's copyright laws more like those in the US. I haven't had the time to keep up with the bill or to read it and its critcisms, so I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to comment.

But, I am grateful to those who did attend and did voice their concerns as I'm sure that my feelings about the bill would likely be similar.

http://kempton.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/reflection-on-c-61-rally/

Hopefully some real dialogue can happen, and the bill can be updated to reflect everyone's interests not just the large companies supposedly fighting piracy. Specifically, I hope that the bill can consider those of us who do not partake in piracy, and our rights to digital mediums as a right of expression and right of backups.

I am sick of paying a 'piracy' tax.

A simple problem deserves a simple solution

Apology

This past Friday evening I let some frustrations from the week boil over into name-calling on a friends blog post. I apologize to my friend, and I apologize to the Twisted community. Both deserve better.

Purpose

In my final comment on that post I expressed my intent to respond and to further explain the feelings about twisted that caused me to react in the way I did. I also promised to do my best to ensure that my future posts would be a constructive experience. It is my intent that the series of posts will result in one of two things, or preferably both.

1. I hope that I will learn something from these posts. Whether it be something about Twisted. Or whether it only turns out to be a lesson on communication.
2. If any of my complaints are valid, hopefully they will be communicated in a such a manner that the Twisted community can address them and subsequently improve twisted.

Please read the rest of this post on my website.