Barnson.org

Some people are like slinkies, They don’t really have a purpose, But they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs…

:p

After googling for the solution profusively, and trying various recipes over the last few months, I finally figured out the most straightforward — and simple — solution to registering a Linux box on a Windows 2K or Windows 2003 Dynamic DNS server.

On my Ubuntu box, it was this simple: 1. As root, open /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf using your favorite text editor. 2. Add the following lines to the configuration file, where “MYHOSTNAME” is the name of your machine as you wish it to appear in DNS:

send fqdn.fqdn “MYHOSTNAME”; send fqdn.encoded off; send fqdn.server-update on; do-forward-updates;

3. Save and close the file. 4. Restart networking; on my ubuntu box, it was “/etc/init.d/networking restart”.

Voila! Just nslookup your hostname, using the Windows 2000 or 2003 server as your DNS server which you registered on with DDNS, and your host will appear within whatever domain is configured on that server.

(Note: If your DDNS server is configured to only accept GSS-TSIG updates, this won’t work. Have your domain admin allow RFC-compliant updates; it’s just a check-box in the DNS server configuration dialogs.)

All I gotta say is that chick did it live. Dude. I’m floored, that rocked!

http://www.myspace.com/weirdal

That’s all I have to say about that. Go and buy the CD right now just like you know you should!

Yeah, as Matt knows, there’s a new addition here.. http://www.timpane.com/liam

There’s alot to tell.. but I need to go burp him!! Liam Timpane is here to rule the world.

Given that it’s Sunday, and I’m sitting at home in sweatpants after having just woken up while the rest of the family got dolled up and went to church, Robert Kirby’s latest column seems appropriate (click the link for the full article, it’s short and entertaining):

Two weeks ago, a kid got up in church and announced to the ward, “I’d like to bear my tithing.”

He meant to say, of course, that he would like to bear his testimony. But it’s such a small LDS gospel distinction that nobody bothered to call him on it. …

…I think it’s a bit disingenuous to push kids to say they know something when they don’t. It’s OK to encourage them toward public gratitude and the like, but I wonder about the efficacy of insisting that a kid be truthful everywhere but in church.

If you’re going to fib in church, I think you should wait until at least you know what you’re doing.

I just wrote this in response to a friend’s post on LiveJournal regarding Israel. It was a random musing of sorts, but I thought it would be interesting to throw it out here.

By all means, please tear this apart. 🙂 It’s more of a brain dropping than an absolute, calculated belief.

————————

The fact is, terrorist cells and organizations, by their very nature, are nearly impossible to wipe out completely. They’re like a virus (Mr. Anderson); their ability to replicate and stay out of sight is impressive, and it’s very hard to attack them without doing severe damage to the body they inhabit. In this case, Lebanon.

Furthermore, their heirarchy is so spread out that you cannot behead the dragon. Nor can you capture your opponent’s major supply centers or invade their country. Again, they are too diverse.

So it follows, therefore, that if we cannot achieve victory through defeating their leaders, conquering their territory, or even annihilating them completely, we must adopt a new way to win.

So, flying in the face of all conventional military thought (which has gotten us nowhere with this new enemy), I propose we must fight an almost purely defensive battle. We don’t outsmart them, we don’t outmaneuver them. We simply outlast them. There’s an old Irish saying that in war, it’s not those who can inflict the most, it’s those who can suffer the most that emerge victorious. And we can take a lot more than they can, if we only would realize it.

Because we’re big (I’m speaking mostly of America here, but it applies on a lesser level to Israel as well, so long as Israel maintains its friendships with big countries). We’re very big. And we can take a hell of a lot more than they’ve been dishing out so far. Looked at from a purely statistical standpoint, September 11th was barely a scratch on the surface of America’s numbers and strength. Al-Qaeda’s best minds spent years of preparation and planning, consumed a large amount of resources throwing themselves into a concerted attack, and a few years later we find that Nature, acting in her normal completely random way, can dwarf their best efforts when it comes to devastation. Al-Qaeda did not hurt us that deeply on September 11th. What ended up screwing us over was that we overreacted.

Our problem is that as a country we’re still pursuing the myth of perfect safety. But so long as we accept that the occasional attack, no matter how hard we try to safeguard against it, is an inevitability, and learn to live with them, then we remove the “terror” from the equation. Once we start expecting them, they stop taking us by surprise, and we can both prepare and budget for them. Storing up grain against the inevitable bad harvest, if you will. Terrorist threats are then no longer the boogeyman, the horrible possibility that keeps us up at night, but become instead(at least in the national consciousness) a frustration, an annoyance. On an individual level it’s no less heartwrenching to those who are affected by the strikes, but from the perspective of a community or a nation they can be thought of as minor inconveniences. And in so thinking we say to our enemies: “We will be here long, long after time has taken its toll on you.”

Terrorist groups have hardly ever lasted for even a generation, as evil always finds a way to turn upon itself. A strong nation lasts for centuries.

Also, taking this stance frees up a ton of resources that were previously wasted attacking targets that vanished as soon as we arrived and left us no safer than before. And those resources can be put to tremendous humanitarian use. A group based out of Rome analyzed what could have been done with the money that we’ve thrown at Iraq in the past few years – hundreds of billions of dollars – and determined that such money would have been sufficient to bring clean water to every single person on the globe. Every town, every village, every camp.

That’s obviously an extreme example, but if we start implementing programs even a fraction as large, over time the terrorist recruiters will find their pool drying up quickly. Violent religious fervor *thrives* on poverty. Improve your average person’s lot in life, and they’ll be less likely to turn desperate and angry.

So that’s my plan for long-term victory.

Of course, there’s one tiny little thing that throws a wrench in this entire argument: the atom. Or, more precisely, the fact that it can be split.

OK, I know you’ve probably heard of World of Warcraft. It’s the single most popular massively-multiplayer online role-playing game ever made. With over 5 million subscribers, it’s simply… massive. There is no other way to describe it, and the high-level game is all about players vs. players.

I uploaded a copy of this video “Big Blue Dress” to my server. Hope you get a kick out of it.

http://barnson.org/matthew/media/BigBlueDress.wmv WARNING: 50 megabyte file! This may take a few minutes to download on a high-speed connection, and about 3 hours on dialup!

Here are the lyrics as I could transcribe them:

I’ve been kickin’ ass since the dawn of time. I’m just a killing man that’s reached my killing prime.

I burn and I plunder as it suits my desire. The weapon of my choice is great balls of fire.

(Chorus) So why, I ask — this doesn’t make much sense — that a man of my stature should have to wear a dress?

I mean, what, may I inquire were you thinking on that day when you conjured up for a man like me a robe that looks so gay?

Ahh… Say bye-bye and your troubles melt away. Ahh… He uses fire but his robe looks so gay. (End Chorus)

I was taught my craft at the dawn of pain. You may not like my methods but you’ll surely know my name.

I just think incendiary thoughts and my hands burst into flames. A few moments later, and you’ll never be the same.

(Chorus)

(Instrumental Solo)

So if you’re embarassed and you hang your head in shame, and you’d like an opportunity to redeem your worthy name,

well just remember this when next you look to kill that a man who’s truly skilled can look quite good in twill!

(Chorus)

AOL released search records for 650,000 of its users. This has become a treasure-trove for search aficianados everywhere. Read about the seven types of searchers.

I want to sell T-shirts on cafepress which read “i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life.”

I received one of those emails today which looked like a propaganda piece, but I read it for some reason. It turned out to be interesting, and I thought I’d post it for comments:

The psychology behind suicide bombings. By – Pierre Rehov, documentary filmmaker On July 15, MSNBC’s “Connected” program discussed the July 7th,2005 London attacks.

One of the guests was Pierre Rehov, a French filmmaker who has filmed six documentaries on the intifada by going undercover in the Palestinian areas.Pierre ‘s upcoming film, “Suicide Killers,” is based on interviews that he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it. Pierre agreed to a request for a Q&A interview here about his work on the new film.

Q – What inspired you to produce “Suicide Killers,” your seventh film?

A – I started working with victims of suicide attacks to make a film on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. Especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.

Q – Why is this film especially important?

A – People don’t understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon. My film is not politically correct because it addresses the real problem, showing the real face of Islam. It points the finger against a culture of hatred in which the uneducated are brainwashed to a level where their only solution in life becomes to kill themselves and kill others in the name of a God whose word, as transmitted by other men, has become their only certitude.

Q – What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?

A – I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute.

So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

Q – What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?

A – It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying “Thank God, my son is dead.” Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize.

This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement goal is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a Shaheed or the family of a shaheed. They don’t see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.

Q – You say suicide bombers experience a moment of absolute power, beyond punishment. Is death the ultimate power?

A – Not death as an end, but death as a door opener to the after life. They are seeking the reward that God has promised them. They work for God, the ultimate authority, above all human laws. They therefore experience this single delusional second of absolute power, where nothing bad can ever happen to them, since they become God’s sword.

Q – Is there a suicide bomber personality profile? Describe the psychopathology.

A – Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack of developed personality. Usually they are impressionable idealists. In the western world they would easily have become drug addicts, but not criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since they don’t see good and evil the same way that we do. If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they would have hated violence. But they constantly battle against their own death anxiety. The only solution to this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and be rewarded in the afterlife in Paradise .

Q – Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious conviction?

A – Yes, it is their only conviction. They don’t act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do.

Q – Do all Muslims interpret jihad and martyrdom in the same way?

A – All Muslim believers believe that, ultimately, Islam will prevail on earth. They believe this is the only true religion and there is no room, in their mind, for interpretation. The main difference between moderate Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don’t think they will see the absolute victory of Islam during their lifetime, therefore they respect other beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world as described in the Koran, is for today. Each victory of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to become extremists.

Q – Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.

A – Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their women’s behavior.

Q – What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of suicide bombings?

A – Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are also supporting the same organizations through different networks. The ironic thing in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money comes through financial support from the Occidental world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel).

Q – Is there a financial support network for the families of the suicide bombers? If so, who is paying them and how does that affect the decision?

A – There used to be a financial incentive in the days of Saddam Hussein ($25,000 per family) and Yasser Arafat (smaller amounts), but these days are gone. It is a mistake to believe that these families would sacrifice their children for money. Although, the children themselves who are very attached to their families, might find in this financial support another reason to become suicide bombers. It is like buying a life insurance policy and then committing suicide.

Q – Why are so many suicide bombers young men?

A – As discussed above, libido is paramount. Also ego, because this is a sure way to become a hero. The shaheed are the cowboys or the firemen of Islam. Shaheed is a positively reinforced value in this culture. And what kid has never dreamed of becoming a cowboy or a fireman?

Q – What role does the U.N. play in the terrorist equation?

A – The U.N. is in the hands of Arab countries and third world or ex-communist countries. Their hands are tied. The U.N. has condemned Israel more than any other country in the world, including the regime of Castro, Idi Amin or Kaddahfi. By behaving this way, the U.N. leaves a door open by not openly condemning terrorist organizations. In addition, through UNRWA, the U.N. is directly tied to terror organizations such as Hamas, representing 65 percent of their apparatus in the so-called Palestinian refugee camps. As a support to Arab countries, the U.N. has maintained Palestinians in camps with the hope to “return” into Israel for more than 50 years, therefore making it impossible to settle those populations, which still live in deplorable conditions. Four hundred million dollars are spent every year, mainly financed by U.S. taxes, to support 23,000 employees of UNRWA, many of whom belong to terrorist organizations (see Congressman Eric Cantor on this subject, and in my film “Hostages of Hatred”).

Q – You say that a suicide bomber is a ‘stupid bomb and a smart bomb’

simultaneously. Explain what you mean.

A – Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind. In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn’t know it.

Q – How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?

A – Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Nazism.

Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

Q – Are these men traveling outside their native areas in large numbers?

Based on your research, would you predict that we are beginning to see a new wave of suicide bombings outside the Middle East ?

A – Every successful terror attack is considered a victory by the radical Islamists. Everywhere Islam expands there is regional conflict. Right now, there are thousands of candidates for martyrdom lining up in training camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Inside Europe, hundreds of illegal mosques are preparing the next step of brain washing to lost young men who cannot find a satisfying identity in the Occidental world. Israel is much more prepared for this than the rest of the world will ever be. Yes, there will be more suicide killings in Europe and the U.S.

Sadly, this is only the beginning.

My immediate thoughts: 1) How does a filmmaker get into psychological motivations like libido and repressed personalities? Does he have training? 2) I hope this is just the radical side of Islam, and there’s a more moderate sect, above what he claims is the more moderate sect. 3) Could Islam be classified as Christianity 1000 years later? Christianity doesn’t allow for other religions as well, if you want to get to heaven, but as the Western world has become more civilized, we’re not killing other people for that belief. 4) Islam = Nazism? Interesting statement… 5) The UN as a terrorist organization. I think the UN has outlived its usefulness, and I guess it’s not surprising it’s as corrupted as any other organization.

My $.02 Weed