The internet is a sham.

Rebuilding the wheel

I've rebuilt components of other blogging systems here for years, but now I'm finally ready to just use somebody else's system.

Labels: blogging, coding, technology

posted by Afshin @ 1:47 AM   0 Comments

When good punks go bad . . .

Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a boycott of Chinese goods:

While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.

So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?

The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:

China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?

In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."

Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.

Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:

function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
 '*********************************************************************
 'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing.      *
 '(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length   *
 'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout.                    *
 '(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory.                           *
 '                                                                    *
 'Version 1.0: Got the alert                                          *
 'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value.                              *
 'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
 '                                                                    *
 'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/                          *
 '                                                                    *
 'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE.  CHECK MY SITE  *
 'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE.            *
 '*********************************************************************
 dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
 dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
 '*********************************************************************

 dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
 strTemp = ""
 LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
 strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"

 set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
 set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
 xml.async = false
 call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
 call xmlhttp.send()
 timeStart = now
 do
  timeCurrent = now
  intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
  if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
      strTemp = strErrorResponse
      call xmlhttp.abort()
      exit do
  end if
 loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
 if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
  call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
  strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
 end if
 set xmlhttp = nothing
 set xml = nothing 
 getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function

Labels: coding, conservatism, fud, islam, music, politics, religion, terrorism

posted by Afshin @ 4:41 PM   0 Comments