Thursday, June 29, 2006

How much evil can you take?

Following a link by Lisa to Shai Tsur's post on the Guardian blog, I was astounded to find so much of concentrated poison written in the comments section.
Looking at it, I was reminded of the "Sticker song" ("שיר הסטיקר") by Israeli Hip-Hop band called "Hadag Nakhash" ("הדג נחש"). It's jingle goes like this: "How much evil can you take" (swallow - lit. from Hebrew) or in Hebrew "כמה רוע אפשר לבלוע".

The staggering amount of bigotry, plain Palestinian propaganda, which might make Saeb Erakat look harmless and L3 (Loony Leftist Logic) was almost more than I could take. These people often don't even know what they are talking about, but totally oblivious to the facts presented by the Israel defenders. All their ranting could be summarized by "Israel is an evil occupier, killing innocent Palestinians, and all the rest is untrue because it is an Israeli propaganda. Israelis are Nazis and terrorists."

Sick.

Bloody hypocrites II

Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri commented the arrest of dozens of Hamas members, claiming that it is "a international crime and declaration of open war against the Palestinian people".

In his interview to "Al-Jazeera" Al-Masri also said that this is "an act against the moral values of humanism and democracy, and violation of the will of our (Palestinian) people".


Hamas spokesman is talking about the moral values of humanism and democracy.

Right.

How many idiots are buying?
Too f***ing many.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Arr!!! The Pirate Party is on deck!



Over 100,000 hits in the first 2 days. Lots of interest and support.
Perhaps someone in the senate would get the hint?
Click the banner to visit their site.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

No time for sentiments

A large scale military operation is going to take place in Gaza very soon. The army is getting ready, so are the terrorists. They are errecting obstacles and fortifications.

I hope that Israeli command would be wise enough, not to send troops into Gaza streets before using massive bombardment. It is not the place or time to be sentimental. This is war, and it is our obligation to minimize our losses in all costs.

Update
After reading some analysts, I tend to agree with them. Our elected Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is only determined when dealing with a bunch of settlers on small hill. There is only one way to realy make a shift in this situation, and it is to target the heads of the Hamas led government. Only fear for their lives would make them to compromise. Unfortunately, such actions still require determination, a virtue that our Prime Minister lacks.

Bloody hypocrites

Russia blames US for the death of Russian hostages in Iraq.
Did you get it? Russia blames not the Islamic terrorists, but US.
“We are saying openly that it is either governmental institutions or coalition forces that are responsible for order”

“We can see how the coalition forces are ’restoring order’.
Every day dozens of innocent people are dying, and now diplomats are getting killed, too. The responsibility for what is going on in Iraq lies upon those who sought mass destruction weapons here, but found nothing.”
Apparently they forgot about this small issue:
On Sunday, Arab in an Internet statement an Al-Qaeda terrorist group in Iraq said it had executed the four employees of the Russian Embassy in revenge for what they claimed was “the torture, killing and expulsion of our brothers and sisters by the infidel Russian government” in Chechnya.

I know, that I should stop marvel at their stupidity, but never manage to do that.
The rest is here.

Update:
Some Russian "experts" and politicians say that the whole kidnapping and beheading affair, is "a provocation by America's secret services".

Blog Efficacy Poll

Thou it wouldn't bring much attention to Dave's blog efficancy poll, I call to my 5+ readers, who didn't vote yet, to participate.

Monday, June 26, 2006

The perils of comments in blogosphere

Taking interest in security and public key cryptography, has brought me to a concern about the unacceptable easiness of identity theft in blogosphere comment section.

Many blogs use open commenting system in order to allow bloggers from other blogging systems to be able to comment. Some have an option to register.

Now think of it. How easy is to pretend that you are someone else in open commenting system? Absolutely no challenge, even for the absolute newbie, since the system relies on trust that you would enter your own details. Registering doesn't solve the problem either. There are so many blogging systems, including the independant ones, that it makes impossible to register in all of
them. There is also a challenge of remembering all the passwords on different systems, because using the same password, is a recipe for possible disaster. Much worse, than in the first case.

Why should you care? Who would bother to hassle you?
Fist of all, some of the bloggers are quite prominent and have much influence, making them a welcoming target for many possible reasons. Second, the are many cases of web vandalism like trolling. Some vandals even form groups, like GNAA.

How can we solve it?
There are two possible solutions that I can think of.

One, is to create a global, multi-platform registration system that would manage all the web identities. This would require a broad support from both public and commercial blogging systems and a lot of resources both to set up and to maintain. There is also a possibility of hijacking identities during the introduction of the system, just as described before.

Second, is to use digital signatures, common in public key cryptography. The advantages of this method are clear. There is no need in making a global system and is quite easy to implement, with widely available tools.
There are some problems to be solved thou. For example, digital signatures aren't very HTML friendly, not very pleasing to the eye and some blogging systems are reformatting the comments, therefore destroying the signature. Using an external program to sign the comments, could be a hassle too.
Some of those problems could be overcome, with simple to use plug-ins to existing systems. For instance, the "ugly" signatures can be replaced with neat icons, after the system has verified the message. All the signing and verification could be done within the browser, without external programs. Such plug-ins would be widely available as soon as the method begins to be adopted.

Getting more information and security tools can be done from GnuPG.org.

My public key can be obtained here.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

This is how digital signature looks like
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFEoBjCTrdUoO5KTCwRAq+bAKCnFSTqOxpxPSPcw+DVs2ngVe3wzgCePXqI
rpuD/ymQxBQPGjsjKNGmc+M=
=rPcc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

WTF?!

Let me quote the commentator concluding the football game between Portugal and Netherlands:
THE single-most ridiculous second-half of football I have ever had the privilege to witness. Four red cards and 16 yellows. The up-shot? Portugal set up a quarter-final with England.

Right. Absolutely ridiculous! The players were arguing, fighting and played quite dirty. This was a pretty tense game, but it looked more like gladiators fight than a football game.
I wonder, how would Portugal play against England, with all the players who will be missing the next game.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

September 29, 1938. Again?

Looking at events taking place in Europe, I'm constantly reminded of history lessons, year 1938 to exact. Then, the gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Now they are giving the whole Europe to Muslim fanatics.
The Munich mistake caused the bloodiest war in human history and ,people, history tends to repeat itself. Appeasement doesn't prevent wars, it only delays them for a while, possibly making them worse.
Think about that.

It's official - IDF is not responsible for the death of the Palestinan family

Like Tom Paine said: another fiction from Palliwood.
It's now official - IDF is not responsible for the death of the Palestinan family.
I wonder, how much attention will the MSM give to the presented evidence?

Another avoidable accident in Israel

Another horrific accident took place on Israeli railroads, this Monday. Near Beit-Yehoshua a train hit another truck witch got stuck, again, on the railways, this time after accident with another vehicle. The outcome: 5 dead 150 wounded.

It is at least a fourth accident in 12 months that I'm aware of. While the performance of the rescue services deserves respect and admiration, those who are responsible for keeping these accidents from happening do nothing.
After the accident a year ago near Kiriat Malakhi, the Ministry Of Transportation took an oath to improve the situation on the railways crosses, but then came the elections, ant the railways were forgotten.
The saddest thing is that the solution to the problem is known, and was discussed. Multi-level intersections (basically bridges) are the safest ant the most effective solution, ever invented. Only this January, head of MOT, Arie Barom has asked on the government meeting for a budget for building 154 such intersections. Unfortunately, the agreed and financed program hasn't even began.
Perhaps they are waiting for another accident to happen.

This was loosely translated article, originally written by Sergey Bavli, on Mignews.com

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

A grim remider

While walking with a friend and fellow blogger through our small town, we walked past a memorial that stirs a few grim pictures from recent years.


On the memorial written:
In memory of Marik Gabrielov, murdered by terrorists in Ramallah on 28.10.2000