Bryan Strawser

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Archives for January 2005

Two Years Since The Switch

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Mike Wendlund, over at Tech:Knowledge writes of his experiences after two years as a user of Apple products… he “switched”!

I just celebrated my two year anniversary of being – near as I can – an all-Mac operation in my personal computing.

Ten overwhelmingly positive experiences have kept me strongly in the fold:

No spam – There is no better spam filter than Spam Sieve. It’s a Mac-only product and it catches 98 percent of my junk mail.

No worms or viruses – None. Zip. Zero. Not a single one in two-plus years now.

No adware/spyware – Same thing. These are non-issues on my Macs.

No crashes – It just doesn’t happen with OS X. I had one crash in December 2002, but I was running OS 9 at the time and it was a very old program (from 1994-ish) and I was curious to see if it worked. It didn’t.

I switched in December 2002 when I purchased the Apple Dual G4 Desktop and expanded that system in April 2003 with a Powerbook G4 Laptop. Now it’s nearly two years later and I’m still using both machines without any upgrades (other than new software).

My employer is a WinTel / Microsoft shop so I picked up a Motion Computing 1400D tablet earlier this year – and used in conjunction, these two machines make my life alot easier. But I prefer an Apple solution — why? Just look at the three items I highlighted from Wendlund’s blow… No spam, no worms, no viruses, no adware, no spyware, and no crashes.

You can’t beat that.

Besides, Macs are SEXY!

FBI Holds Onto Passenger Records

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The Boston Globe reports today that the FBI has been keeping millions of records on air travelers who flew in the months before September 11th:

If you’re among the millions of Americans who took airline flights in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI probably knows about it and possibly where you stayed, whom you traveled with, what credit card you used and even whether you ordered a kosher meal.

The bureau is keeping 257.5 million records on people who flew on commercial airlines from June through September 2001 in its permanent investigative database, according to information obtained by a privacy group and made available to The Associated Press.

Privacy advocates say they’re troubled by the possibility that the FBI could be analyzing personal information about people without their knowledge or permission.

”The FBI collected a vast amount of information about millions of people with no indication that they had done anything unlawful,” said Marcia Hofmann, attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which learned about the data through a Freedom of Information Act request.

And I say. BIG DEAL.

I believe in privacy. I’ve been a member of the ACLU since I was 16 years old – I’m a long time member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations – and I’ve written a ton of letters and done some individual lobbying about issues like the Clipper chip, digital telephony, and other issues.

But you also have to draw a line about what’s reasonable from the standpoint of investigations – and I’m trying to see the issue here.

If you think the FBI really has the time to go digging through these records to see if you and your mistress were flying somewhere together because they’re trying to co-opt your vote – then I recommend that you pull the tin foil hat down a little closer around your ears to block the alien rays.

More Love from Victor Davis Hanson

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As always, Victor Davis Hanson provides a perspective on the War in Iraq that I had not considered:

Second, our very success creates ever increasing expectations of perfection for a postmodern America used to instant gratification. We now look back in awe at World War II, the model of military success, in which within four years an unprepared United States won two global wars, at sea, on the ground, and in the air, in three continents against Japan, Italy, and Germany, and supplied both England and the Soviet Union. But our forefathers experienced disaster after disaster in a tale of heartbreak, almost as inglorious as the Korean mess or Vietnam tragedy. And they did things to win we perhaps claim we would now not: Shoot German prisoners in the Bulge, firebomb Axis cities, drop the bomb — almost anything to stop fascists from slaughtering even more millions of innocents.

Our armored vehicles were deathtraps and only improved days before the surrender. American torpedoes were often duds. Unescorted daylight bombing proved a disaster, but continued. Amphibious assaults like Anzio and Tarawa were bloodbaths and emblematic of terrible planning and command. The recapture of Manila was clumsy and far too costly. Okinawa was the worst of all operations, and yet was begun just over fourth months before the surrender — without any planning for Kamikazes who were shortly to kill 5,000 American sailors. Patton, the one general that could have ended the western war in 1944, was relieved and then subordinated to an auxiliary position with near fatal results for the drive from Normandy; mediocrities like Mark Clark flourished and were promoted. Admiral King resisted the life-saving convoy system and unnecessarily sacrificed merchant ships; while Bull Halsey almost lost his unprepared fleet to a storm.

The war’s aftermath seemed worse, to be overseen by an untried president who was considered an abject lightweight. Not-so-quite collateral damage had ruined entire cities. Europe nearly starved in winter 1945-6. Millions were on the road in mass exoduses. After spending billions to destroy Nazi Germany we had to spend billions more to rebuild it — and repair the devastation it had wrought on its neighbors. Our so-called partisan friends in Yugoslavia and Greece turned out to be hard-core Communist killers. Soon enough we learned that the guerrillas in the mountains of Europe whom we had idolized, in fact, fought as much for Communism as against fascism — but never for democracy.

But at least there was clear-cut strategic success? Oh? The war started to keep Eastern Europe free of Nazis and ended up ensuring that it was enslaved by Stalinists. Poland was neither free in 1940 nor in 1946. By early 1946 we were already considering putting former Luftwaffe pilots in American jets — improved with ample borrowing from Nazi technology — to protect Europe from the Red Army carried westward on GM trucks. We put Nazis on trials for war crimes even as we invited their scientists to our shores to match their counterparts in the Soviet Union who were building even more lethal weapons to destroy us. Our utopian idea of a global U.N. immediately deteriorated into a mess — decades of vetoes in the Security Council by Stalinists and Maoists, even as former colonial states turned thugocracies in the General Assembly ganged up on Israel and the survivors of the Holocaust.

After Americans had liberated France and restored his country, General de Gaulle created the myth of the French resistance and immediately triangulated with our enemies to reforge some pathetic sort of French grandeur. An exhausted England turned over to us a collapsing empire, with the warning that it might all turn Communist. Tired of the war and postbellum costs, Americans suddenly were asked to wage a new Cold War to keep a shrinking West and its allies free. The Department of War turned into the Department of Defense, along with weird new things like the U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command, Food for Peace, Alliance for Progress, Voice of America, and thousands of other costly entities never dreamed of just a few years earlier.

Unprofessional? Varifrank confronts his European Co-Workers

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Over at Varifrank, we see the meaning of “Unprofessional”:

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:


” See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier…”

After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud.

and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.

I’m afraid I was “unprofessional”, I let it loose –


Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?

Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?

Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?

Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?

Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?

Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us.

Do you know who those people were? that’s right Franz, Europeans.

Theres is a French Aircraft carrier? where is it? Right where it belongs! In France of course! Oh why should the French Navy dirty their uniforms helping people on the other side of the globe. How Simplesse…

The day an American has to move a European out of the way to help in some part of the world it will be a great day in the world, you sniggering little f**knob…”

The room fell silent. My hindi friend then said quietly to the Euros:


“Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute? There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the world, why can’t you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them would have done so. I’m ashamed of you all…”

He left the room, shaking and in tears. The frustration of being on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to assist and faced with people who could not set aside their asininity long enough to reach out and help was too much for him to bear. I just shook my head and left. The Euros stood speechless.

If that’s unprofessional, I’m afraid of what his definition of “professional” is…

Hat Tip: Lex and many others.

VDH: World Weary Americans

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As always, Victor Davis Hanson, expands my mind and launches a broadside at some of the “conventional wisdom” out there in the world:

The U.S. military is habitually slurred even though it possesses the world’s only lift and sea assets that could substantially aid in the ongoing disasters in Indonesia and Thailand. Blamed for having too high a profile in removing the Taliban and Saddam, it is now abused for having too meek a presence in Southeast Asia. No doubt America should have “preempted” the wave and acted in a more “unilateral” fashion. Meanwhile we await the arrival of the Charles De Gaulle and its massive fleet of life-saving choppers that can ferry ample amounts of Saudi, Chinese, and Cuban materiel to the dying — emissaries all of U.N. and EU multilateralism.

All this hypocrisy has desensitized Americans, left and right, liberal and conservative. We will finish the job in Iraq, nursemaid democratic Afghanistan through its birthpangs, and continue to ensure that bandits and criminal states stay off the world’s streets. But what is new is that the disenchanted American is becoming savvy and developing a long memory — and so we all fear the day is coming when he casts aside the badge, rides the buckboard out of town, and leaves such sanctimonious folk to themselves.

Thanks for Noticing

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Apparantly, Lex isn’t too happy with Ralph Peter’s Editoral in the New York Post which criticizes the recent history of the United States Navy:

It happened because part of us are always at sea. The Navy helps provide security for all the sea lift which brings real combat power to the land fight, and sustains it once there. We keep the sea lanes of communication secure, while buttressing traditional allies in both South Asia and the Pacific Rim – something the Army would have a hard time doing in any case due to the tyranny of distance, and is far too overstretched to accomplish in today’s environment. And when push comes to shove, we shove back. Hard.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr Peters is right in his larger concerns about the nexus of national interest in Asia, and you’ll never hear a word from me in disparagement of the ground forces – they’re doing the heroes’ work right now.

It’s just worth saying that your US Navy has been patrolling the world’s hard places for a long, long time now. Even while other folks were comfortably ensconced in garrison. Your humble scribe did three interbellum deployments to the bad place, and looked the wolf in the eye each time on multiple missions in Indian Country. And this naval officer is by no means feeling relieved that he finally has a mission at last.

Been busy, Mr. Peters. Busy long time.

Thanks for finally noticing.

There’s more – go read it.

Paul Street on the Geneva Conventions

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Over at Znet, we can read more moonbattery from the likes of Paul Street:

Well, gee, but it seems that Iraq and the Islamic world has soldiers of the United States Empire flooding in, “intent on killing” Iraqis and Arabs in general. This is indeed very much the intent that is drummed into the heads of US soldiers in their boot camps, where they are encouraged to mercilessly butcher “sand-niggers” and led to believe that they will be avenging 9/11 in Iraq even though the Iraqi people, including Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with the jetliner attacks. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed because of this racist war indoctrination ordered by the imperialist War Pigs in Washington D.C. Insofar as al Qaeda now has a presence in Iraq, of course, this is pretty much entirely due to the illegal and murderous US occupation of that once sovereign nation.

The bloody war masters in the White House, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department will not mind, I hope, if impartial observers deem the American invaders to be illegal combatants and therefore fit to be murdered, tortured, and imprisoned indefinitely without right to counsel or even formal charges.

I was unaware that we were training our sailors and soldiers nowadays about “sand niggers” and drumming that intent to kill into their heads in training.

Good god!

I’m surprised that CNN and the New York Times hasn’t picked up this story yet.