Tuesday 26 October 2010
Sunday 24 October 2010
The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.
From El Reg:
The enemy of my enemy #
Posted Saturday 23rd October 2010 12:47 GMT
OK the military might have a valid point about putting lives at risk, but you have to wonder how organisations like the Taliban have managed to garner enough support to warrant going after them with guns.
Well the reason why is - we gave them guns and ammo during the Cold War in an attempt to dislodge the Russians from Afghanistan and it all kinda snowballed from there. We weren't that bothered that this might be a problem at the time because they were keeping the Russians away from us. Unfortunately this attitude seems to have gotten us into a spot of bother.
So the question is, seeing as this "arm them and don't be too concerned with the consequences" would seem to be a repeated pattern of behaviour (at least as US foreign policy is concerned), who the hell are we arming right now? Because it will be them - whoever they are - that we have to deal with next. In fact if we are currently arming someone else in the next phase of whatever ideological battle we're supposed to be having maybe we should be learning from recent history and not repeating the same behaviour over and over again?
The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.
I hope AC doesn't mind my reposting this. The final sentence says it all so well.
The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.
From El Reg:
The enemy of my enemy #
Posted Saturday 23rd October 2010 12:47 GMT
OK the military might have a valid point about putting lives at risk, but you have to wonder how organisations like the Taliban have managed to garner enough support to warrant going after them with guns.
Well the reason why is - we gave them guns and ammo during the Cold War in an attempt to dislodge the Russians from Afghanistan and it all kinda snowballed from there. We weren't that bothered that this might be a problem at the time because they were keeping the Russians away from us. Unfortunately this attitude seems to have gotten us into a spot of bother.
So the question is, seeing as this "arm them and don't be too concerned with the consequences" would seem to be a repeated pattern of behaviour (at least as US foreign policy is concerned), who the hell are we arming right now? Because it will be them - whoever they are - that we have to deal with next. In fact if we are currently arming someone else in the next phase of whatever ideological battle we're supposed to be having maybe we should be learning from recent history and not repeating the same behaviour over and over again?
The enemy of your enemy isn't your friend: He's just the next enemy in a long line of enemies who could have been your friend if it weren't for the fact that you keep seeing enemies everywhere.
I hope AC doesn't mind my reposting this. The final sentence says it all so well.
Friday 8 October 2010
TEACHINGS OF DIOGENES
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Erlang Community - How to use ei to marshal binary terms in port programs - Trapexit
Saturday 2 October 2010
Parallel port output in Linux with Python
Parallel port output
http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/pyparallel.html
http://www.hare.demon.co.uk/ioport/ioport.html
http://bigasterisk.com/projects/parallel
http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov/download.html
http://book.opensourceproject.org.cn/kernel/kernelpri/index.html?page=opensource/0131181637/ch05lev1sec4.html
pyParallel
On Ubuntu 10.04 pyParallel can be installed from Synaptic.
Then start python:
>>> import parallel
>>> p=parallel.Parallel()
but that won't work
unless you first make /dev/parpart0 writable
# sudo chmod o+wr /dev/parport0
and unload the lp module
# sudo rmmod lp
For permanent changes it is best to add the user to the lp group instead of changing the permissions. You still need to unload the lp module though. Presumably you can do this in the init scripts.