"The British Abu-Ghraib". Interestingly they use the same techniques like the American "bad apples". Coincidence? Nope, the techniques are called "R2I" and are part of their training. (via rc3.org)

Good article on Bush's "reform". I sincerely hope that this finally blows up in his face. (via rc3.org)

...or if you think that XML is somehow easy to use, you're wrong!

In fact, look at these articles by Michael Kaplan:

• "Every character has a story #4: U+feff (alternate title: UTF-8 is the BOM, dude!)" or "How Notepad did something correctly that the entire RSS 2.0-cheerleader crowd still doesn't get in their head"
• "The jury will give this string no weight" or "You may not be able to compare two strings in a XML document, even by using the right APIs, as soon as you leave the US". Don't you dare to believe that while (*c != 0) { if (*c != *d) strEqual=FALSE; c++; d++; } is valid code in any way!

Michael really gets "it". Most of the RSS-supporting crowd doesn't. Text is HARD! (HARD! HARD!). Writing a specification that takes these things into account is even harder.

Now all of that wouldn't be a problem if we could trust our educational institutions to actually teach their engineering students about these things. But they're not. Instead hundreds of computer science undergrads of the University of Regensburg today believe that you can't use German Umlaute in C.

A list of quotes on the death squads in El Salvador. This makes you want to cry. Among the first is this quote from the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador, mind you, this does not come from the “liberal-biased, communist media”:

The El Mozote Massacre 1 Apr 1993

On the Afternoon of 10 December 1981, units of the Atlacal Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) arrived in the village of El Mozote, Department of Morazan, after a clash with the guerrillas in the vicinity . . .

Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses.

During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.

Do you want to know more? Read John Negroponte’s biography on Wikipedia (also via rc3.org)

Interesting. I'll try to get the full text of the referenced article. It's a very good read: Eric Umansky "Losing in Iraq (aka the Chinese finger trap)" (via rc3.org)

I missed it on Jan. 12^th, but they finally acknowledged what we've known even before the war started. There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. So they came to their senses and called off (bbc) the search (cnn). Naturally, the Democratic Party will not get off their asses and use this to their advantage.

But of course, John Stewart is on the case. Watch Social Distortion now! It's incredibly funny. Speaking of social distortion: Bush's plan to reform social security touches an important topic in Germany as well. I bet that the Schröder administration follows Bush's moves very closely, if just to learn how not to do it.

I also wonder if both, Stewart and Bush, watch The West Wing. They used Stewart's quote. I don't remember it exactly, but in one episode Toby said something along the lines of "Social security is the third rail of US politics, touch it and you'll get electrocuted", to which Josh replied: "It's also where all the power is".

The pentagon is currently considering to create US-led death squads to selectively assassinate insurgents or apprehend them to send them to "secret interrogation facilities". The current US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, was instrumental in implementing the same strategy in El Salvador during the Reagan administration. It seems that he might have been hand-picked for the job.

They call it The Salvador Option.

For now, it's not clear if the Bush administration is directly involved in this, but who would want to associate their name with an idea like this one.

I mean, who elected this these asshole assholes to begin with?

UPDATE: The administration consists of more than one asshole, I'm sorry.

Russel Beattie recognizes that Apple's low-cost strategy might backfire. I've thought about this as well. It's really a question of brand positioning. I guess someone at Apple's marketing department must be quite anxious right now...

Russel Beattie analyzes Microsoft's DRM strategy. It's a great post and, for once, great comments as well. Go read it.

I added John Carmack's weblog to the list of sites on the left side. Finally having a forum where you can read his thoughts on game engines and flying rockets to space is great.