This interview with John Hamre (formerly a deputy Defense secretary under Clinton) from GovExec mentions that the criminals that Saddam Hussein let out of jail prior to the US invasion of Iraq are contributing to the security woes there. Looking back, I wonder if at that point the general release of basically everyone that the government had improsioned was a sure indicator that Saddam knew that the invasion was inevitable and that there was no way the Iraqi army could stand up to the US. Most people here knew that both invasion and victory were inevitable, but I think the conventional wisdom has been that Saddam is an idiot who throught that war could be averted or that Iraq could somehow win. I don't see any rationale that explains emptying the jails other than that Saddam knew how the war was going to go down, and that having thousands of additional violent criminals (on top of the ones that he employed as part of the regime) would make the ensuing occupation more difficult.

You knew that IBM was going to countersue SCO, the question was when it was going to happen. It's happened. Some of IBM's claims directly counter allegations made by SCO, and others are just extra salt for SCO's wounds. We can hope that this will be the end of SCO once it's resolved.

Yet another reason to switch to Firebird: Notepad popups.

Eric Sink: Geek Gauntlets (further discussion of marketing for geeks).

One of my hobby horses is complaining about spending billions of dollars (and backing out of treaties) to build missile defense systems that don't really have much of a chance of really working. Fred Kaplan has an update on the most recent evidence that we're wasting our time and money.

I'm not sure if it's embarrassing for the whole country or just California that Arnold Schwarzenegger is being treated as a legitimate candidate for governor of the nation's most populous state. Because Gary Coleman is also on the ballot, and I really don't see how one is any more qualified than the other.

Former Intel engineer and would-be jihadi Mike Hawash plead guilty yesterday of conspiring to aid the Taliban. He travelled to Asia in October, 2001 to attempt to enter Afghanistan and fight against US forces, along with other members of the "Portland 5". On April 9, after Hawash had been detained on a material witness warrant and jailed without charges, I wrote: Charges were ultimately pressed on April 29 (as noted here as well). I'll stand by my statement. Hawash is a US citizen. The government should have pressed charges against him on April 9 or waited until April 29 to arrest him like any other criminal.

Nick Bradbury uses a game PC for development, too.

Google News Alerts interest me because I worked for a dot com that tried to build a business around this concept and ultimately flamed out. Given that Google already has the code to parse and aggregate news stories in place, putting in alerting on top of that seems like a no brainer.

Frustration with SCO's litigation and shenanigans is beginning to boil over. There's a request at Advogato suggesting that people appeal to their state attorney generals to have SCO's executives arrested. Indeed, when I read stories about SCO, I think about how great it would be if people would physically assault SCO's corporate leaders if they see them in public. I know that's not rational or appropriate, but their pathetic machinations enrage me.

Update: Eben Moglen has written a useful document that looks into whether Linux users should capitulate to SCO's license demands.

A few days ago I was going to post here that I was a bit frustrated with Cerulean Studios because I paid for Trillian Pro 1.0 when it was released and they haven't really upgraded it since then. I have used Trillian for a long time and was glad to compensate them for that usage, but at the same time I had paid for a subscription for upgrades and then didn't get any upgrades. Anyway, since I started intending to grip about them the've released a beta version of Trillian Pro 2.0, so I'm not going to complain. I'm becoming suspicious that they're just not the release early, release often types.

Every time I've flown recently, I've posted an update here on my airport experiences. This time I had direct flights each way, and both were very much on time. The security procedures are still annoying, but they're a streamlined annoyance at this point. I don't think I will ever get used to taking off my belt and shoes at the security checkpoint. Before my return flight, the reports of terrorists planning to use explosives packed into cellular phones broke, but it didn't seem to affect the security procedures at the airport at all. I had two mobile phones in my bag, and the security personnel didn't ask me to take out either of them.

I'll be away for a couple of days on a trip. Posting should resume on Wednesday.

When one reads about Ireland's Magdalene Asylums, it makes it clear that the Taliban aren't as far divorced from Western culture it would be comfortable to believe.