June 2003 Archives

Now that Star Wars Galaxies is shipping, you're going to need a name for all your characters. Since you can't use regular human names, like "Joe Smith", or joke names, like "Chewintobacca" or "Oggie Ben Doggie", this is the site for you.


"Welcome to the SWGS Random Name Generator, now powered by PHP! To start generating names, choose a species from the menu to the left, select the number of names you want, then hit submit.


"If you would like to see the basis I used for creating the names, read our naming guide. In it, you can find ways of creating your own Star Wars names, and see the various naming patterns found amongst the eight playable species of SWG."





http://swg.stratics.com/content/gameplay/characters/name.php

A decent timeline can be found here, sadly no longer updated it still provides some interesting insight.

This hypocritical Biblical quotation refers to the words of Jesus in Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."


http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/stickers.html

Interesting Essay:


"One of the bedrock beliefs of most Christian fundamentalists is in the inerrancy of their scripture, the Bible. Indeed, if it can be shown that the English-language Bible that I can obtain at my local bookseller (usually the defined as the King James Version) is absolutely inerrant, their case that it is the word of God would be greatly strengthened.


"But, if, on the other hand, it can be shown that there are clearly and unquestionably errors in the Bible, from whatever source, then the position of the fundamentalist is greatly weakened, and if it is based on inerrancy of the Bible, disproven.


"The purpose of this essay is to make the latter case, i.e., that when the Bible is examined with dispassion and with objectivity, it soon becomes obvious that it is so hopelessly riddled with errors, impossibilities and contradictions that it is essentially ludicrous to make the claim that it is inerrant."


http://www.bidstrup.com/bible2.htm

A new study indicates significant shifts in the nation's religious composition, with mainstream faith groups stagnating, and the numbers of those who profess no religion on the rise.


The American Religious Identification Survey 2001 was carried out under the auspices of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and is considered a follow-up study of a 1990 census. The poll utilized a sample of over 50,000 randomly selected respondents, and was described as "the most comprehensive portrait of religious identification in the U.S. today." It revealed, for instance, that while the numbers of Roman Catholics increased since 1990 from 46 million to nearly 50.8 million, their percentage of the population fell nearly two points. Protestants and other non-Catholic groups remain the majority, but their proportion slipped sharply from 60% to 52%. And those identifying with a non-Christian religion jumped from 5.8 million to 7.7 million, but reflected only 3.7% of the population.


The survey and news reports about the study, though, noted that one of the most significant findings involved growth in that segment of the adult population "identifying with no religion." In 1990, 14.3 million or roughly 8% identified with this category. The new ARIS count now shows that the non-believer population has grown to 29.4 million, roughly 14.1% of the American community.


http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheist4.htm

A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.


But such weapons have not been found in Iraq and were not used.


Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. But most of the Sept. 11 terrorists were Saudis; none was an Iraqi.


The results startled even the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the surveys. How could so many people be so wrong about information that has dominated news coverage for almost two years?


http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/6085261.htm

Scientists consistently worry that the public just doesn't know enough about science, and that this general lack of public understanding carries with it dreadful consequences, jeopardizing everything from government financing of research to social progress. Recent controversies in the U.S. and Europe over therapeutic cloning and agricultural biotechnology have brought fresh concerns from the scientific community. Many scientists assume, for example, that if the public knew more about human genetic engineering, then any moral or religious reservations about cloning-for-medical-research might be tempered. Or, if the public better understood the science behind the genetic modification of crops, then few would take seriously the hyperbolized risks associated with the technology.


http://www.csicop.org/scienceandmedia/literacy/

Kirk's tale is interrupted by derisive laughter from a nearby table. "A likely story," says the man lounging there, his boots resting on the tabletop, a sneer on his lips. "That kind of big talk may impress people where you come from, pal, but it wouldn't last ten seconds in Mos Eisley. And it's not doing so good here, either."


http://www.grudge-match.com/History/kirk-solo.shtml

A police officer arriving at a bachelorette party because of a noise complaint was mistaken as the entertainment.


The partygoers thought Gainesville Police Officer Jamie Hope was the stripper, and they didn't realize he was legitimate until he drove away with the bride-to-be in handcuffs.


http://gainesvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030603/APN/306030661&cachetime=5

Prime Minister Jean Chr�tien, who returns to Parliament today after a two-week swing through Europe, left here more convinced than ever that he made the right decision to steer clear of the United States-led war in Iraq.


While refusing to say so publicly, the Prime Minister and his advisers are relieved the Liberals kept Canada out of a military adventure that is shaping up in the U.S. and Britain as potentially the biggest political scandal in decades.


During the past two weeks, as Chr�tien met with world leaders in Greece, Russia and France, the failure of the U.S. and its allies to find evidence to justify their invasion of Iraq emerged as a potential source of lasting damage for U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.


In both countries, there are continuing revelations about questionable intelligence used to justify claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had to be removed by military force because he was hoarding chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.


Click here for full story.

At E3 2003, we managed to sit in for a demonstration of The Movies, Lionhead's upcoming strategy game. The Movies will let you play as the owner of a movie studio over a period of about 100 years, from 1900 until the present day. You'll begin by making black-and-white films, though over the course of your 100-year career, you'll research such groundbreaking technologies as boom microphones and color film.


Though we were able to see only a temporary, "placeholder" version of the game's interface, Lionhead designer Adrian Moore assured us that the developer wishes to make playing The Movies as simple as possible. In the menu screen we saw, Moore was able to plan a movie from a single menu, choosing the genre (horror, in this case), the actors (Bruce Campbell, Drew Barrymore, and Vincent Price as "the monster"), and the writing allotment. Coming up with a good script will require a lot of time and effort from your team of writers, represented by a five-star meter that gradually fills up as you wait. However, waiting as long as possible to let your team put together a five-star script will cost you a lot of money, since you'll be continuously paying your writers and your actors and other staffers in the meantime. In the demonstration, Moore chose to rush the script by interrupting his writers at about a star and a half, which resulted in the perfect script...for a cheesy B movie.


http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/movies/preview_6028564.html

Ashcroft's greatest -- uh, let's go with "highest profile" -- accomplishment to date was the rolling back of individual rights by several decades, under the guise of fighting terrorism.


The provisions of the PATRIOT Act taken as a whole are enough to make civil libertarians scream; the average citizen can usually find at least one provision worthy of alarm. Sponsored by the Bush administration, the PATRIOT act gave sweeping new powers to Ashcroft and his department, including:

• The right to freely monitor the activities political and religious groups without a criminal pretext.
  
• New restrictions on open hearings and the public's right to receive information through the Freedom of Information Act.
  
• The ability to stamp down on the dangerous menace of librarians who tip off the media to federal subpoenas of borrowing records.
  
• Permission to monitor conversations between lawyers and suspects, on those increasingly rare occasions that suspects are allowed to have lawyers.
  
• The ability to detain Americans in prison indefinitely without trial or criminal charge.
  

• Dramatically loosening restrictions on secret government surveillance of citizens, including on phones, e-mail and bank accounts.
  
• Adding a "deport at will" option allowing the Justice Department to circumvent inconvenient immigration laws.
  
• Expanding terrorism investigations to allow the Department to revoke the rights of anyone within about six degrees of separation of an actual terrorist act.
  
• Criminalizing the use of encrypted e-mail.
  
• Increasing the list of federal death-penalty crimes.
  
• Allowing the government to desecrate the graves of deceased victims of terrorism without permission from families.
  
• Restricting access to information about corporate pollution and environmental crimes. This would, incidentally, not only prevent private citizens from researching toxins in their backyards but would even restrict the ability of local governments to get information about environmental crimes in their own neighborhoods.
  

... George W. Bush is fully aware of how his enemies perceive him, and this is precisely how he wants them to react. His personality and mannerisms are actually the result of deliberate effort. This is not to say that it's all an act, but he does emphasize these elements of his personality for the benefit of the press and general public. And yet these affectations continue to be astonishingly effective; his act still manages to fool even his political opponents, who really ought to know better. After all, the basis of Bush's phenomenal political career has been people's underestimating him.





http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/george-w-bush/

Nope. No terrorists here.


"[T]here have also been a number of people who claim I'm overstating the case and that it's not possible to build a real cruise missile without access to sophisticated gear, specialist tools and information not readily available outside the military.


"So, in order to prove my case, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and build a cruise missile in my own garage, on a budget of just US$5,000.


"I like to think of this project as the military version of 'Junkyard Wars'.


"Obviously the goal of this website is not to provide terrorists or other nefarious types with the plans for a working cruise missile but to prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of sophisticated attack from within their own borders."





http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/

Senior Pentagon officials made a rare appearance in front of the media Wednesday to deny they lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.


http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/06/04/wmd_controversy030604

CATPRIN, a tailor for cats. Ever imagined dressing up your lovely cat into a fabulous beauty? You don't have to dress her everyday, in fact she might not feel comfortable with a dress on for days. Just dress her up only on special occasions like her birthday, takes a photo and that should leave you lots of memories and fantasies.





http://www.petoffice.co.jp/catprin/english/

The prime minister has been criticized since media reports emerged that the government might have punched up the dossier to exaggerate claims that Saddam Hussein would be able to launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes.


No one has found any weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq, increasing pressure on the British government to explain the dossier that formed the underpinnings of Blair's decision to go to war.


Last week, BBC Radio quoted a source within the British intelligence community as saying intelligence officers had cast doubt on the validity of the 45-minute reference in the dossier.


http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/06/04/blair_probe030604

In North Korea's mountainous Hyungsan region, a military academy specializing in electronic warfare has been churning out 100 cybersoldiers every year for nearly two decades.


Graduates of the elite hacking program at Mirim College are skilled in everything from writing computer viruses to penetrating network defenses and programming weapon guidance systems.


http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00.html

Intel has a problem on its hands with its new chipset for wireless laptops: The Centrino chipset can freeze laptops trying to run software for creating Virtual Private Networks.


Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, are widely used "tunnels" that allow a user to connect to internal computer networks at businesses, schools and governments through the Internet.


http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59050,00.html