http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/28/scotus.terror.cases/index.html
That’s absurd! You mean Bush does NOT have the right to detain a person indefinitely without any rights, without being able to see a lawyer, without being able to challenge the charges, all because there’s a “war” and they’re labeled “enemy combatant”?
The world is going crazy, I say!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4948369-110878,00.html
A very well written satire on “what is torture” from the viewpoint of the Bush administration, written by a former Monty Pythoner.

A federal judge equates Bush’s gaining power with the way Hitler and Mussolini gained power.

In those cases the dictators were given power legally, but without public mandate. Much like how Bush got the mostly Republican president appointed Supreme Court to make him President.

There’s also interesting paralels in how the Bush administration has used a major terrorist act to justify the removal of many personal freedoms and rights while they continue to use fear and paranoia to retain nearly fascist control over the nation. Only difference is when the Nazis did the same thing, they themselves committed the bombing of the government building while the Bush administration is simply accused of allowing 9/11 to happen.

CIA Casts Doubt on Iraqi Militia Link to al Qaeda
You’ll need to scroll down to the 2nd item for that article.

The administration is grasping at any straw to try to justify the war, completely ignoring the evidence to the contrary and trying to make evidence fit even if it means twisting it all around.

This is some great information on the origins and evolutions of the name of the Judeo-Christian God (Yahweh, Elohim, Abba, etc.)

http://northernway.org/fathergod.html

A lot of the information we have on the evolution of the Judeo-Christian God has come from the discovery of the proto-Hebrew Ugaritic writings. Probably as important a discovery to Western religion as the Rosetta Stone was to understanding Egyptian.

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze33gpz/canaanite-faq.html
The culture/religion that the Jewish tribes/religion sprang from.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Ugaritic

…and I quickly gave it up, and started walking the other day.
Man! I am SO out of shape. I’m kinda fat, I admit, but not too bad. But I’m VERY out of shape and get tired just reaching up over my head!
So, in an effort to tone up and get some endurance, I started getting up early in the morning and walking for 30 minutes. I thought I could start jogging, but that lasted about one block. I figure once I can walk hard for 30 minutes without feeling any amount of strain or soreness, THEN I can try jogging.

But this is tough for me, getting up in the morning any earlier than the last minute with only just enough time to shower before work. It’s hard when that alarm goes off to justify actually getting up instead of sleeping for another 45 minutes. But, I just have to keep thinking about how much I want to not have a big stomach and be able to do anything physical without having an early heart attack.

Last year I went paintballing for the 1st time. And after the second round, I had to leave the field feeling like I was having asthma-coronary combo death. Hurt like heck, to the point of tears, and that was only after 20 minutes of sprinting in short bursts. Fortunately, once the endorphins and dopamine kicked in, I got past that “wall” I think runners refer to, and was actually able to keep playing (a little subdued) for another couple of hours. But, I really don’t want to have to keep doing that. I don’t want to have to hit any wall just playing some paintball.

And so I’m getting up early in the mornings and hoping my sore legs don’t make it that much tougher to get up at ungodly:30 a.m. every day.

Well, I’m into shell scripting now!
It’s amazing! It makes me feel like I did back in 7th grade when I discovered programming on Apple II’s, and 9th grade when I started using Basic on Commadores, and a few years ago when I started PHP. The feeling of power, of control. That you can make this machine do what you want it to, and the potential is limitless!

I’ve used bash shell scripting for a couple years now…solely to make 1-line scripts to replace a 1-line command. Like, so I can set up a cron (automated) job to maybe tarball a directory, or something super simplistic. I’ve finally started writing my own scripts to do slightly more complex and interactive things.

It’s extremely similar to PHP in many ways, but also different in many ways that matter. So while it’s not completely alien to me, it is pretty much a new language for me.

Anyway, here’s a couple of really helpful sites I’ve been using:

http://www.linuxcommand.org/
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/unix/bash-tute.html

Here’s a snippet from the code I wrote to restore a backed up mySQL database.
I’m proud of it. =) (Although the first few lines of nested IF/THENS is pretty clunky. I’m going to find a better way. But at least it works as-is.)

—————————————————————————–
#!/bin/bash

echo -n “What database file are you restoring from? > ”
read response1
if [ "$response1" ]; then
if [ -f "$response1" ]; then
rep1=$response1
else
echo “”$response1″ does not exist!
”
echo -n “Last try: What database file are you restoring from? > ”
read response1
if [ "$response1" ]; then
if [ -f "$response1" ]; then
rep1=$response1
else
echo “”$response1″ does not exist! Exiting….
”
exit 1
fi
fi
fi
fi
echo -n “What database name are you restoring? > ”
read response2
if [ "$response2" ]; then
rep2=$response2
fi
echo -n “Are you sure you want to use “$rep1″ to restore database “$rep2″? (y/n)> ”
read response
if [ "$response" != "y" ]; then
echo “Exiting.”
exit 1
else
mysql -u root –host=localhost $rep2 < $rep1
echo "Success!
"
exit 0
fi
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDENDUN: Drat. The blog doesn't display spaces or tabs at the beginning of lines. So, unless I put in lines of periods, that code sample is displayed as justified left instead of formatted properly. Oh well. Makes it harder to read, but (shrug)

ADDENDUM in "Extended Entry"...
Read the rest of this entry »

If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a joke!
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/06/02/private.space/index.html
The first time a non-government ship will leave Earth’s atmosphere! I almost never thought it’d happen in my lifetime. If it works, it will mean the opening of a whole new world of space exploration!
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/New_Index/body.htm

As cynical as I am about commercialism and blatant capitalism, they’re often the driving forces in scientific advancement. And making things cheaper. Once it’s shown it’s possible for private ventures to enter space, we’re going to start seeing more projects to explore the asteroids, the moon, Mars, perhaps even further! So long as there are commercial benefits, rare minerals to be found, off-Earth communities, zero-G farming, tourism, people will find the way to make space flight cheaper and faster.

The flip-side, it may also make it less safe. NASA has been doing well having only three major accidents involving death (four if you count the non-fatal mission failure of Apollo 13,) over four decades of space flight. Once you get companies wanting to do it cheaper and faster, cost saving failures may increase the risk of spaceflight. But then, no one wants to have their investments blow up and deaths to prevent investment…so who knows. The 1st Mars rover, a complete success at a fraction of the cost of other NASA projects because they cut the size of the development and management team to a handful of people and next to no bureaucracy, shows that good things can come from smaller/no government fingers in the pot.

Ever since that shortlived T.V. series in the early 80′s about a private reusable rocket and the family that built and flew it (forgot the name of it) I dreamed of space travel available to the public and not limited to a small group of Air Force officers and pilots. Oh, granted I doubt *I* will ever get to go into space. I’m unskilled at anything useful for space, and have no “connections” and no money. But I relish vicariously this incredible advancement for all Earthlings..

Holy mother of god, the movie “I, Robot” scares the b’jeebees out of me!
Seen the trailer for it yet?
Take a look here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/ in the “20th Century Fox” section.

Now, I don’t know how many other people out there have read Issac Asimov, I have a feeling very few. He was one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time (and a very prolific non-fiction writer too!) Thing is, he was the granddaddy of “hard science fiction,” where while the story and setting may have been far future or interstellar, it was always based and grounded in hard, believable science. And his shortstory collection “I, Robot” is by no means the high-impact action sci-fi thriller the movie appears to be!

First, let me say that by itself the movie “I, Robot”, if it retained its original name of “Hardwired”, might be a very good action movie on its own. I like Will Smith, and I adore Proyes (the director, who did 1st “The Crow” and “Dark City”.) It could be a great flick! But, the fact 20th Century Fox has stollen the name “I, Robot” and applied it to this film that was originally written with having nothing to do with any Asimov story, makes me angry and disgusted. I started watching the new trailer with glee and anticipation, and turned away from it in disgust. And that’s when I started doing to research on the movie. Here’s some interesting links:
Boycott “I, Robot”‘s opening week
A review of a screenplay for “I, Robot” written by an accomplished sci-fi author.
An explanation of how the current “I, Robot” movie came to be.
Another’s op-ed on the movie.

I really hope Alex Proyes has a figurative gun to his head held by 20th Century Fox when he makes statements supporting the tenuous-at-best relationship the movie has with the Asimov fiction. I can’t imagine any fan of Asimov, or sci-fi in general, abusing the image and spirit of Asimov in that way for profit.

My wife made a good comment last night about how no movie can accurately present the scene and setting of a sci-fi or fantasy book because they’re so far removed from what we know, everyone has a different version in their head. True, absolutely. When you’re talking about buildings, clothing, cars, visual images people should be able to give film producers a lot of slack. But if a movie is going to claim to be in any way based on a novel, it should resemble the plot or at least themes of that novel in some fashion. By all accounts (and to be fair, no one will know FOR SURE until the movie’s released) the movie has no resemblance to the book in any shape or form except for the inclusion of the “Three Laws of Robotics” Asimov developed. Although the Laws have become so ubiquitous that they’re found all over contemporary sci-fi.

I have to agree with the writer of the op-ed linked above, that if Proyes thinks that “breaking the Three Laws” is what the Asimov stories is all about, he’s either a moron or the studio has blackmail photos of him. I read Asimov’s “Robots of Dawn” when I was in Jr. High, and it introduced me to the world of hard sci-fi. I followed it up with “I, Robot” and later the “Foundation” chronicles. And I can say with certainty that the themes of Asimov’s robot stories exactly is how “bad things” can still happen BECAUSE of strict adhearance to the Three Laws that were designed to protect humans from robots.

A point was made somewhere on a chat page, that Asimov himself (or his book publisher) actually “stole” the title of “I, Robot” from a earlier film. This is true. And because of this, there is a kernel of forgiveness in my heart for 20th Century Fox. A precedence has been set for capitalizing on the very effective title “I, Robot.” However, I feel that title more accurately represents the collection of stories Asimov wrote which developed an understanding of the underlying “beingness” of robots. The philosophy of robot/human understanding and misunderstanding. I really don’t see how it really applies to rampaging “mad robot” action.

The best thing in the world would be for millions of people to see the film, for some significant number of those people to go read the Asimov stories, and afterward feel “where the hell did they get that movie from THIS?!” Unfortunately most filmgoers will have no interest in reading in general, and much less in hard science fiction. They’ll probably put the book down after 5 pages and forget all about it, and then go buy the DVD to store next to their “Tomb Raider” disc.

I know one thing good from this controversy, it’s prompting me to go back and revisit a wonderful time in my life when Asimov was a new, glorious dicovery for me. I’m going to go back and re-read “I, Robot” and remember those early teen days when I had the time to read just about a novel a day and I wasn’t yet jaded and cynical.

So I’ve been using Linux for about 6 years now. Off and on. In that time I’ve learned to do a LOT of things–from building drivers to get odd pieces of hardware to work to writing scripts that do daily backups.

But it seems, even as late as last week, I keep finding all these little, very simple commands that do cool things I’d not seen before and sure wish I knew years ago.
Commands that are so basic that it’s embarassing to have not known about them for so long…even though I know how to do things like install applications from source code and manage an Apache Web server only through the httpd.conf and other config files, never using a GUI. =)

Here’s a few recent, very useful Linux commands:

> du -s /(path)/* | sort -nr
— That one shows you a list of how much disk space each sub-directory is taking up.

> which (executable filename)
— Gives you the exact location of that executable. Would have LOVED to have known that one when I was upgrading PHP and ImageMagic a few months ago!

> fg
— lists currently running programs started via that bash session.

> set
— lists active variables. Excellent for writing shell scripts! Which I’m starting to really get into.

> file (filename)
— explains exactly what kind of file it is. Much more detail than simply “text” or “binary”.

> find /(path)/ -name “*.txt” -mtime +30 -type f -exec rm -f {} \;
— I sorta knew how to use the “find” command but never really read the MAN (manual) before. Little did I know until just today how you can find files based on create,modification, or access dates AND attach other commands to do to it.
In this example, it’ll find any regular file with a .txt extension in a specified path that was modified more than 30 days ago, THEN it deletes each file it finds. I set this one up as a daily cron job on a certain directory to prevent it from building up too many temp files.

Sharing the wealth. =)

NEXT DAY ADDENDUM:
Oops, “fg” does not list jobs, like “jobs” does…it brings background jobs into the “fore-ground.” So if you send a job into the background with the ampersand or “bg”, you can bring it back up with the “fg”.