] Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has won Ukraine's
] presidential election by more than two million votes,
] electoral officials have said after completing the count.

Yushchenko wins Ukraine's Election

The Mozilla Foundation took out a 2 page ad in the NYTs today, complete with several thousand names of people who donated money.

Stop using IE. 11 Millions downloads can't be wrong.

Firefox gets 2 page NYT ad

While Phreaknic 8 has come and gone, I ran across a file on my laptop called "pn8-quotes" which, apparently, I started to keep PN8 quotes in. Not many here, but fun for all:

Guys *do* want a plot. They don't want it to open with a banging. They want [DING-DONG] 'Hi, I'm here to fix the fridge,' and *Then* banging!
-Abaddon

Yeah I get that "Nick, why all the black?" thing alot. You know why? I abhore fashion. I hate it. No one is into patterns quite like I am.
-Rattle

No color for you. I ABSORB your color
-Rattle

Fuck Rockit, he sues everyone. Thats how he says 'Hello!'
-Abaddon

Acidus: "Jill told me 'Don't do something stupid,' but that thing with the cigarette, that was smart!"
Abaddon: Congraduations MacGyver, so why didn't it go boom?

It's a MISDEMEANOR you pussies!
-James

America! Fuck Yeah!
-Decius, all damn weekend

...wait a minute. Thats not my MOTD
-Acidus after Palindrome and Decius 0wned his laptop

] Speaking to high-ranking military officials Wednesday,
] Putin said that while international terrorism was one of
] the main threats facing Russia, the country's nuclear
] defenses also had to be kept up to date.
]
] "We are conducting research and are testing the most
] up-to-date nuclear missile systems, which, I'm sure, will
] be supplied to the armed forces in the near future,"
] Putin was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
]
] "What is even more important, these systems will have no
] analogues in the other nuclear powers during the next few
] years."

Putin followed by saying "We will bury you."

Did I wake up in 1972? I wonder why he is rattling his sabre. Coupled with the recent consolidation of government and Putin's roll-back of a representative goverment, this is troublesome.

Putin: Russia testing new Nuke missiles

Holy Shit!

Raw Video Captures of The Battle of Fallujah

Wow. The Washington Post puts up a website which lists each and every casualty in Iraq, in order, with their photos, personal info, etc....

Wow.

washingtonpost.com: Faces of the Fallen

Rattle wrote:
] ] Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, 75, the
] ] leader who passionately sought a homeland for his people
] ] but was seen by many Israelis as a ruthless terrorist and
] ] a roadblock to peace, died early Thursday in Paris.
]
] Let me say a phrase I'm sure we will be blasted with over the
] next few days: History will not look kindly upon Yasser
] Arafat.
]
] Things may have been very different today if he took a
] different action in 2000. Things may have been very different
] today if he did not continue to resort to (and practically
] invent) terrorist tactics.
]
] It may now be possible to make significant headway toward
] peace between Palestine and Israel. Maybe..

Fuck this man. I hope he is going someplace very hot for all his actions that have caused such pain and suffering, for both Israel and the people he is claiming to defend. He has loads of blood on his hands, from the Munich Olmpics in 1972 to for his complete inability to help the peace process. Terrorist turned statemen my ass. As Dennis Miller once said "This man used to blow up AIRPLANES! Why are we celebrating him?"

RE: CNN.com - Palestinian leader Arafat dies at 75

First off let me say I am pleased we are having such an open and frank debate on this topic, and I am pleased it is so civil.

] The concept of marriage isn't just about Christianity or
] religion or conservative politics -- marriage is pretty much
] as intense a personal decision as a human being can make, and
] if many people want to defend the sanctity of that concept, I
] can't blame them.

Does 2 people of the same sex getting married in some way reduce or detract from sanctity of your marriage?

If gay marriage somehow cheapens the sanctity of your marriage, you didn't have a very good marriage to begin with. If gay marriage doesn't cheapen your marriage, then why the hell are we having this discussion? Yes, it really is that simple.

My parents wrote their own wedding vows. They were Moody Blues' lyrics. Slim to nil in the religous department. Not very sanctified is it? So should we have a law that defines wedding vows, to make sure vows are always holy and pure? What about a ban on Vegas Wedding Chapels, so a hung-over Brittany Spears can't have another 56 hour marriage? Her being a skank doesn't reduce the feeling my parents have for each other, or their marriage, anymore than my parents using Moody Blues' lyrics as wedding vows reduces my grandparents love for each other.

This entire "sanctity of marriage" arguement fails, for all the reasons you listed as marriage being so emotional and personal.

RE: The Values-Vote Myth

] As more personal information is collected into databases,
] computers have been handed increasing power to make
] decisions about our everyday lives. The technological
] systems intend to solve costly and important business
] problems, but the proliferation of these so-called
] electronic blacklists has alarmed consumer and privacy
] advocacy groups who say many databases have incomplete,
] incorrect or misleading information.
]
] "Technology has made it cheap to do all kinds of
] surveillance and watch over people and make sure they
] obey the rules. But when a system makes a mistake, what
] can you do?" said Richard Smith, an Internet security and
] privacy consultant.

Databases used by companies to blacklist consumers

] On the WOT:
]
] Iraq will slowly become an Islamic fundamentalist state. The
] U.S. will be largely out of there within a year and on to
] Pakistan. We'll get Bin Laden, but Islamic Fundamentalism will
] continue to fester and will rear it's head again in a decade
] or so. Bush will be seen as having won the WoT in the short
] term.

I disagree. Iraq will become a fundamentalist state, but it will remain in state of civil war for quite some time. You have 2 Islamic sects, the minority one repressed the majority one for decades. Sunni's don't want free or fair elections, because they will not have enough representitives to prevent rather nasty laws against them from being passed. I'm talking Jews in 1930's Germany style laws. The only hope for the Sunni's is to have the ratio of people in the gov't representing them be disproportional to their % of the population. But the Shiits are not going to let them having anything close to power again. Listen very closely: Popular elections, with the number of representatives for different ethic/religous group being proportional to actual populations of those groups will not happen. There is too much hostility between the groups, and we are stupid if we think 2 years has cured it.

None of this even mentions the Kurds, which have basically had their own country for the last decade or so, and aren't really liked by anyone. They sure as hell are not going to disarm and follow the laws being passed in Baghdad. They will resist, with lethal force.

Bush is kind of screwed on Iraq. The only way Iraq will be able to have any type of stable peace in the near term (next decade) is a) A new dictator, or extremely pro-Shiite anti-Sunni government. It will not be anything close to the "island of democrasy" Bush promised. b) A large, non-Iraqi military force staying there basically locking down the country, and enforcing the will of the government composed of equal Shiites and Sunnis (and maybe Kurds, but most likely not). It can't be an Iraqi force, because the Iraqi government would use to against the Sunnis and/or Kurds. The problem for Bush is, thanks to his extreme foreign policy, Non-Iraqi basically means US, unless Bush manages to get a multinational force from different Arab countries instead (he won't).

He pulls out, Iraq collapses, into something maybe slightly than Saddam's government, and Bush has to explain what our sons and daughters were dying for. He stays, and our troops will continue to be killed off one by one, because the people will not view the government as a legitiment representation of the people (because it isn't).

RE: Iraq Predictions