AlexCrowley

Sorry to join in here, but the meds are wearing off... In this thread theres been a lot of discussion about Al Quaida and very little about domestic terrorism, which is something that should concern people, usually made up of a subculture who feel their rights have been trampled by the oppressive government in power. From what I recall of reading the CIAs 2000 report on terrorism there is no one country on the planet that does not have a domestic terrorist group. A War on Terrorism, by definition, requires more than launching bombs at dark skinned people in hot climates where you coincidentally need a military presence due to having to leave your last residence due to restless natives. As an English ex-pat who grew up at a time when the IRA was very active and blew up my town and the surrounding area with just enough time between that we'd all forget exactly how the town center looked with windows blown out, terrorism is something that I've taken for granted and read a little about. Someone may have mentioned this, but as hard as it may be to step outside of an emotional reaction (because its TERRORism), it isnt about bodycount. It's *never* about the bodycount. Bodycount is incidental. It's about "terror" and it's about ideologies. It's about 'I am right, you are wrong' and not being well funded enough to have your own standing army. It's Public Relations pure and simple. I hate to break it down this way, because usually this conversation gets me flamed heavily. Terrorists require an authority to oppress them, or at least give that illusion. I'm still not sure how the US occupying Iraq based on faulty intelligence is considered a positive on the war on terror. It doesnt matter the truth of it. It's like the difference between Michael Moore and Bill ORielly. They're both insane and if they were heavily armed I would be afraid of both of them, but if Michael Moore is saying 'hey, its great the US have come to bring us freedoms' while Bill is saying 'These invaders are on our soil and killing our families, and we're all poor and our religion says we shouldnt tolerate this'...well at first you're goint to think Bill is crazy, but after the fifth of sixth month without power, a job, food, stability and having to duck bullets every time you leave the house to grab a big mac you're going to start thinking that perhaps Michaels' a tool and that Bill is great and its time to start passing out the ammunition. Am I saying provide therapy to terrorists? Of course not. I think I read an earlier post that seemed to make sense as far as the options go. I guess my point, as I approach rationality, terrorism is more than Al Qauida - even tho they get the most press. It's like the IRA ceasefire, all of a sudden there were 20 groups we'd never heard of blowing crap up. What is terrorism? I live in Boston Mass now, I've had beers where people 'collect for the cause'. I dont recall seeing Marines storm the bar and start arresting terrorist sympathizers. Would I say that outloud in Boston?? HELL NO!!! Here they're freedom fighters. Now, I'm from the older, more historied and educated nation - hell we created our own church before you guys were around - does this give Tony Blair the right to invade Boston? If he does could he bring some decent fish and chips? Where do conflicting perspectives resolve? Is it mob rule? Can we get an electoral college to vote which groups are terrorists and which ones are freedom fighters? Dont understand where I'm going with this? Check out Irans leadership over the last 100 years and the various twists and turns that took and under who's influence and who was bad and who was good and why. If its about 'evil terrorists' = 'a countries public opinion' + 'body count' + 'perverting religion' then there are some who could make a pretty good argument for Iraqis seeing the US as terrorists. Here's my question about the iraqis.... If an insurgency is a rebellion against an established government then the iraqiis cannot be insurgents (since the conflict started before ratification of the parliament and the installation of any form of official rule). That makes them either terrorists or freedom fighters, but not insurgents. But why would they not call terrorists terrorists? Beats the hell out of me, maybe there's a difference between iraqi terrorist-freedom-fighters and alquada terrorists.....perspective again, i guess you cant be on TV denouncing uncle ahmed and aunt tizzie as terrorists when insurgents makes them sound just a little confused as to what the reality is. Back here in the US Tim McVeigh had pretty light skin from what I saw. I doubt he had time to read the koran between bible study and chem 101. [edited to add] In 1996 the Olympic bombings were done by a radical fundamentalist christian Eric Rudolph, an anti-abortionist who also bombed 3 abortion clinics. As a young man Rudolph allegedly took up the beliefs of Christian Identity, an extremist sect whose primary belief is that white people are God's chosen people, and everyone else is doomed to an eternity in Hell. Christian Identity also preaches the evils of homosexuality, prostitution, abortion and general sexual unseemliness of all sorts. Records indicate that Rudolph moved among many radical religious and racist groups in the US. The fact is that terrorism is a hydra, you cut off one head and 7 more pop up. By constant public aggression towards a subset of a small culture (of any nationality or creed) and you will, undoubtably, prove to the moderate members of that culture that the zealots just may have been correct, at which point they radicalize. This is why AQ were reportedly happy with Bush winning a second term (sorry, that was the reported reaction, not me making a judgment on the current administration). Because it meant that the public face of the US in the middle east would be one seen heavily armed, dirt streaked and oppressing their brothers - REGARDLESS of the reality of all the positive work being done by the soldier on the ground. Terrorism = Madison Ave, with some camo and plastique and an ideology. I appreciate your patience following this rambling post. Please direct all flames to /dev/null TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Scotty_Rove.wmv This is what was televised. While the movie is hosted on a liberal website I will leave it to you, the viewer, to decide whether the footage is authentic. As of today the whitehouse press briefings are only available until 8th July, so keep checking back there under 'press briefings' for official transcripts from the gov. TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

I thought it was somewhat interesting given their docility over the past 4 years. I don't think they've discovered any journalistic ethics/drive or a new set of testicles. My cynical side (and I'm pretty much one dimensional) thinks that they look at the opinion polls and produce news to fit the demographics. Outlandish? Think about the pre-election coverage, it looked like Bush was going to lose for a little while there and the US press started reporting many stories which had made the european press many weeks before but were definitely not supportive of the administration. Bush wins and we're back to gentle stories in the press. Two weeks ago and the new figures come out that Bush is at his lowest popularity rating ever and we're seeing stories in the mainstream press critical of Rove and the administration again, and some of it even includes what used to be called 'investigative journalism' something that seemed to have died in the US. Still outlandish? consider that recent studies have shown that a person is more likely to read news with which they feel a personal resonance. It's why those on the left can call for Roves head (ROVE WAS SECRET SOURCE!) while the right think it's much ado about nothing ("Rove sets record straight about email to Cooper"). Yeah, made up headlines, but spend a few minutes browsing the 100+ Rove inspired headlines on Google news and play 'guess the affiliation'. I dont believe the press is liberal or overly right wing. They are only conservative in so far as they have sponsers and need viewer and readership numbers to make more money. Of course, you have to wonder where Fox sits on the bell curve, their viewing numbers have crashed over the last few months. Remember, nobody likes 'cognitive dissonance' or buzzwords that whitewash over uncomfortable truths. TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

My day job is working for a company which, while not porn, will be greatly impacted by this legislation. The real issue here is that its an end run around the free speech issues that stopped previous attempts at censorship of adult materials in the past. Because pornography couldnt be defined legally they've created this odious piece of legislation, which in effect will make many major mainstream sites illegal. Pretty much any naked image will be elligible, which will mean google, yahoo and other portals that provide direct access to images will be liable. As will a store like Amazon, at least one of their books will depict something nude and vaguely erotic. Digital photo galleries will be liable for every member, so that includes digital cam vendors who provide image albums for users, plus all the other third party image sharing sites out there. This is a really really bad law that does more than infringe people's ability to find good porn. TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

http://billmon.org/archives/001989.html This guy has compiled a number of contradictions from White House briefings and official statements and interviews with the press since the time of the original leak. Each quote is referenced to the official gov. transcript or media piece it was taken from. I find it somewhat confusing that many who feel that Rove requires defending should turn to a modified Chewbacca defense to do so. I have no investment in either side of the argument, but thought this link would provide some insight and primary source material. From the compilation, the last few entries, links to originals are in the original page linked to above: " Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. The American Prospect Plugging Leaks March 8, 2004 I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name. Karl Rove CNN Interview August 31, 2004 "Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn't disclose Valerie Plame's identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else . . . Who outed this woman? . . . It wasn't Karl." Luskin said Rove "certainly did not disclose to Matt Cooper or anybody else any confidential information." Rove attorney Robert Luskin CNN Interview July 4, 2005 Luskin confirmed that Rove and Cooper had spoken prior to the publication of the original Time article, but said that Rove “did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA” nor did he “knowingly disclose classified information.” Newsweek Turning Up the Heat July 6, 2005 Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division . . . Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Newsweek Matt Cooper's Source July 10, 2005" TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

I'm sure this is too late, but I think I might be able to help. So far no one appears to have been able to work out the nature of the problem you were set and have given answers that reflect exactly that. 1) create a shell script that will copy things to a backup directory 2) in the example given the format was [script name] [file 1] [file2]. To those that thought this was a badly constructed example (kaerock) go back to reading your unix text books. This is not an Alias. To decipher the problem into legible english. Create a shell script that will take file(s) named on the command line and copy them to a back up folder. So, in the above example file1 and file2 should create file1copy file2copy in the backup folder. Ferret, it looks like your code came from The Happy Hacker, plus it doesn't actually solve the task at hand. Your script simply archives stuff put into a specified folder. read this: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ Don't worry about the Advanced part of it's name, it'll take you through everything. If you're already studying other languages you already have a basic understanding of topics like variables and flow control. Especially check out the the following chapters: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/sha-bang.html http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/othertypesv.html If you're covering other languages just consider the problem programmatically. Break down things into tasks. Example: you know you need to accept multiple arguments on the command line, how would you collect them and use them? read man cp online, or on the system you're using if you can. When I'm writing scripts I try to stay away from the computer until I understand the problem space properly. then I write everything out as a list in plain english. Once you have defined the problem correctly and the steps you need to take to solve the problem you can start programming, by translating what you wrote into plain english into the syntax the tools require. Remember, computers are really stupid and you have to tell them everything. Writing everything out beforehand can help you pinpoint the tasks that you'd take for granted but you must explicitly tell the computer. Problem: run a backup of files listed on the command line to a backup directory. Questions? 1. what can i use to copy files? 2. what syntax does the tool use? (for scripting) 3. what will the backup folder be called? 4. where will it be? 5. what does the script require before it's run? Solution? 0. what does the script require before it's run. 0a. The script should set up the environment variables, a backup folder, she-bang line etc. 1. when called capture the file names (variables) 2. create a loop to iterate through the list of file names 3. For each filename that goes through the loop copy the file to the backup directory. 3. exit program These are the very basic steps required for the program. It'll be quick and dirty, you'll have to rely on your environment (whatever that is) to provide feedback - bash, luckily, is pretty good with feedback (even if its somewhat confusing and cryptic at first). Improvements to the script would be: 1. check the files called on are actually existing 2. automatically handle different file types (directories or files) 3. interactivity (asking the user if they're sure). 4. allowing for multiple copies of the same file (to track revisions) 5. better error handling. Hope some of this helps. TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.