Archive for October, 2003

Steve sent me two interesting stories about nuclear proliferation in North Korea and the Middle East. I don’t think there’s any better way to sum up the matter than this.

In other news, a new poll says that 59% of Palestinians would support terrorist bombings of Israel even if Israel pulled out of West Band and Gaza, and a Palestinian state were formed.

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

Similarly, 80 percent of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the “right of return.”
…
Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Slightly more than one in four – 26 percent – of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

Forty-two percent of Palestinians and 61 percent of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

Jews don’t support Islamic terrorism? No way!

If you haven’t done so recently, check out the spiffy new look of the ObjectivismOnline forum.

Here is the actual ruling handed down by a judge in the Eminem defamation case, quoted verbatim:

Mr Bailey complains that his rap is trash,/
so he’s seeking compensation in the form of cash./
Bailey thinks he’s entitled to some monetary gain,/
because Eminem used his name in vain./
The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact,/
they’re an exaggeration of a childish act./
It is therefore this court’s ultimate position,/
that Eminem is entitled to summary disposition.

Winamp 5 is in beta. I have just two words to describe it: GET IT

In other news, iTunes is now available for Windows. I was not particularly impressed with it. On the plus side, $1 per song is a lot cheaper than buying CD’s, especially since you only pay for the songs you like. On the downside, the iTunes software is not very powerful and does not support WMA. With my very limited student budget, I’m still waiting for an unlimited subscription model, even one that doesn’t allow songs to be stored locally.

What I’d really like, is music that plays in surround sound to justify the 5.1 speaker system I bought…

In response to Yahoo’s refusal to delete a listserv run by “banned separatists,” the Indian government forced Indian ISP’s to ban the entire Yahoo Groups community. The easily circumvented ban is one of many instances of censorship in India and Pakistan. I’m curious as to whether the site is still being blocked. Perhaps some readers in India could enlighten me…