Salocin

South Philadelphia schoolgirls recognised the man who had shown them more than they cared to see, chased him down, beat him up, and held him for the police.

Three former victims recognized the suspect - who had been preying on the girls since Sept. 14 - and chased him down. About 20 Goretti students soon followed and they managed to wrestle him to the ground until Philly cops arrived

How very satisfying.

An Israeli army chief claims Israel's actions in the West Bank are unsustainable and damaging to the chances for peace.

If George W. Bush had a resume, what would it look like?

Matt Groening, talking on Fresh Air, on Sunday October 26, 2003, mentions that Fox News threatened to sue over an episode in which they were parodied by the show. There was a news ticker along the bottom during the episode, and although Fox News backed down over the lawsuit (Murdoch is unlikely to be willing to pay for a lawsuit against himself), cartoons on Fox networks are no longer allowed to have mock tickers because, "they may confuse the viewer into believing the news headlines are real".

"The protesters marched from the White House, down toward the White House...". Fox News demonstrates its ineptitude.

As you can see, there's a major redesign in progress, which will hopefully stabilize within a couple of weeks. Recruiting season is probably not the best time to undertake a coding challenge, but all of a sudden I couldn't stand the old look of the website.

What does this mean for the weblog? Well first of all I no longer have the silly pride associated with having coded it myself. Never mind. I've done away with the 100 little obsessive systems that told me about traffic and visits and referrers and advertisers and average visit length (I guess you could say I've mellowed). I have to spend less time coding once I have it set up.

I'm trying to push the design away from what Movable Type comes with, but it's not easy. I managed to create the "snippets" category to put the little things I want to refer, but don't have the time or inspiration to talk about. The colours have changed and the whole registration bullshit has gone. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Oh yes - one more thing - I lost all the comments during the transfer, which is annoying, but no great loss.

Actor playing Jesus Christ in The Passion is hit by lightning while filming.

The US is voraciously consuming finite resources while turning a blind eye to the consequences and lambasting anyone who dares to raise the alarm. So says the Guardian

Americans, especially those who watch Fox News, believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with the September 11 attacks.

A new twist in the most appaling deadlock on the planet. A US convoy was bombed in Gaza, leading to the death of several Americans. Israel blamed the Palestinian authority for not cracking down on terrorists, but in a confusing twist, Islamic Jihad and Hamas have both immediately denied any involvement, whereas they are usually quick to claim actions taken by themselves. My question is, who stands to gain the most from the US reaction to this attack? If this is a Palestinian militant action, what can they possibly hope to achieve from it? It seems misaligned with their objectives. If Islamic Jihad and Hamas did not do this, then who did and why?

US Soldiers have been sending form letters written by US Army staff in an attempt to circumvent what the White House refers to as "the filter" of more traditional news outlets. The Washington Post reports that in some cases, the soldiers themselves did not even know the letters had been sent. BBC News reports that some of the letters were sent to people's homes, and were shared (in good faith) with the local news media by their family. So let me get this straight - the US Army is doing this to circumvent the filter of the media? Somebody tell me I'm dreaming please?

I'm desperately trying to understand this from every single point of view. I'm sure there's at least one point of view held by one person in the world somewhere where this doesn't appear to be brutal and blatant manipulation of the press.

They send fake - forged - letters to people's parents, making them believe that the letters are genuine and come from their children in the field, and let the parents send these letters, in good faith, to local newspapers. These then print the letters, and somehow this is a good thing?

The Washington Post implies it's part of a campaign to communicate directly with the country :

The form letter from the troops, like the Bush interviews with local media outlets, stems from a frustration with the national media and a desire to circumvent what the administration views as unfairly negative coverage of the Iraq conflict.

It's a blatant corruption of the freedom of the press, tricking the local media into publishing the army's message with an individual soldier's name on it. It probably classifies as identity theft and it leaves me queasy just to think about it.

I'm desperate to understand how it's all right for the country that pretty much runs the show these days to do things like this. Again from the Washington Post...

In one interview, with Hearst-Argyle, he [Bush] said, "I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people."

And this somehow includes misrepresenting the source of the information and getting people to believe it by making it come from some sucker who doesn't even know he's sent it? I thought I understood simple ethics, now I'm confused.

Further information on the media filter (admittedly from a somewhat biased website).

Napster is in the process of being reincarnated by Roxio. It's going to apparently resurrect as a pay-to-use music service, and if you pre-register you're eligible for 5 free tracks. They've also got a funky animations they they're calling Napster Bits that chart the fall and rebirth of Napster, which are good fun to watch. Napster used to be at the forefront of the online-music phenomenon, and now it's aiming to become the I-Tunes for Windows users.

I have subscribed to Rhapsody (listen.com), and it's better than you'd think. A replacement to Kazaa? It's becoming difficult to justify sidestepping copyright law when you can have most of the English-speaking music in the world for $10 per month.

Listen.com's Rhapsody service is a Windows-Media-Player-like application that sits on your PC and gives you instant access to a huge library of music.

While phrases like "celestial jukebox" are clearly emotionally and rhetorically loaded marketing attempts, the system doesn't fail to impress. The response speed is good - especially for the newer tracks - and the colleaction appears, at first blush, reasonably complete.

Aside from the extremely obvious recent releases (Heaven, by Live, for example), you can also get some of the music that was conspicuous in it's absent from previous online paid music offerings, such as Ben Folds or the Barenaked Ladies - hardly underground music, but previously, shamefully unavailable. Rhapsody has all that.

In terms of foreign music, I think it needs to be known in the US to have a hope of being on the system, which for an international like myself is extremely frustrating - France Gall (old, famous French music) or Kyo (recent, top-10 French music) demonstrate that at both ends of the spectrum, foreign artists are not at all represented. Should this prevent me from subscribing to it? No, but it will damage the system's ability to convince people that they can now delete Kazaa from their PCs. To those who place their ethical and legal boundaries farther out than others, it will be their excuse for saying that the service still isn't good enough.

What problems have I had with the system? Not many - I found that if I try to listen to older songs that may not be so regularly demanded, I can get a song that skips the first couple of times I play it (until it's in the Rhapsody cache). This happens even with extremely famous songs, such as Prince's When Doves Cry, although given the amount of applications simultaneously attempting to use the internet connection on my XP computer, there's a small, outside chance that this is caused by my own bandwidth issues. With DSL, I hope not.

Bottom line: Rhapsody's great, stop stealing music, it's no longer justifiable with the arguments being used (although I never thought those arguments made it justifiable in the first place). All those who said "the music industry must adapt", it has, and it's good. No more bitching.