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You’ve got to love the technofreaks. Even if I didn’t loathe Microsoft – and I do, by the mad pipings of Azathoth, I sure do – I think I’d have to switch to Linux based on the inspiration of this heart-warming story alone. Thanks to oneJohn for bringing this to our attention.

The project began when Nils Schneider, a 17-year-old computer science student from Germany, received an iPod for Christmas. Unlike most new iPod owners, he decided to install Linux – a freely available computer operating system not used as standard in iPods – on his device.

The existing version of Linux for the iPod would not install easily, however, as the latest generation of player features new hardware. Undeterred, Schneider decided to figure out how these components worked by himself. He found he could control some parts of the device but not
those containing details about the way the unit starts up, which is vital to getting Linux installed.

Instead of going through the usual process of trial and error to work out the code, Schneider realised that listening to it could provide a shortcut. Bernard Leach, a UK software engineer who helped set up the so-called iPod Linux project, had already worked out how to control the piezoelectric component within the iPod that produces the click.

To decipher the bootloader code – the program which allows the iPod to start up – Schneider decided to use Leach’s system to play the bootloader code as sound. “I just tried to encode a single byte as a click sound with different spaces between the clicks,” Schneider told New Scientist. “It seemed to work but it was slow so I played around with the code and found out how
to make the clicks faster.”

After encoding the bootloader data he recorded the resulting sounds onto another PC programmed to convert it back into computer code. The whole process took more than 20 hours and Schneider had to construct a sound proof box for the recording. But, in the end, he had extracted the information intact. This made it possible to get Linux running on the device, along with a variety of compatible software programs such as simple games and audio recorders.

“After extracting the bootloader it was only a couple of days’ worth of work to get iPod Linux booting,” Leach told New Scientist. “Otherwise it would have taken months.”

Does anyone doubt that the kid would have forged on anyhow even if it did take months? This bizarre impulse to mess around with things is why we’re not all still living in caves, mud huts and thatched dwellings. I love the phrase “unlike most new iPod owners”, as if ten or fifteen percent of them are modifying the operating systems.

Jeanne can’t take it any longer:

Screw the Republicans. What a flippin’ joke! 55 seats in the Senate and they slink around worried about what the Democrats think and propose tax increases! Are you ****ing kidding me!!

I was stupid enough to stick by Bush through this last election, to defend him, to vote for him and he gets re-lected with a good majority in the Senate and this is what we get? A proposed tax increase?

Baseless cowards! Screw them all. This literally raises my blood pressure spike!!!

Where is that voter registration change form…..

Unfortunately, former Democrats appear to be flooding into the Grand Old Party even faster than those who genuinely love freedom are fleeing it. Thus, one can expect the Republican Party to continue to move left, perhaps even nominating a pro-choice presidential candidate such as Condoleeza Rice. That could get interesting.

Perhaps in the next election, people will be more inclined to base their vote on less nonsensical and mathematically challenged grounds than the inevitable “a vote for [2008 Libertarian candidate] is a vote for [2008 Democratic candidate]” mantra.

Captain Ed visualizes world peace… in a graveyard:

“United Nations peacekeepers have gone on the offensive against a militia group in Congo, deploying helicopters and killing nearly 60 people in the biggest battle fought by the world body in more than a decade.”

The wave of democratization that has accompanied the steel will of George Bush to enforce the terms of the cease-fire and UNSC resolutions involving Saddam has changed the demeanor of the tinpot dictators of Southwest Asia; it may have inflamed the ire of the Europeans in the short term, but it put a lot of credibility into American warnings. The UN has lost that credibility after a decade of fleeing at the first shot, and if they want to regain any ability to actually keep peace, they need more examples of this kind of reaction to provocation. This is a good start.”

Blessed be the peacekeepers, for they shall rack up a body count. So, it’s important for the most dangerous organization on the planet, one utterly dedicated to nothing less than destroying national sovereignty, to demonstrate its willingness to slaughter? I wish I could say that it is stunning to me, as an ex-Republican, to see the voices of the party, large and small, embracing the would-be Last Reich.

I should add that George Bush may not be Hitler, but he and his “steel will” are looking more and more like Bismarck. Unlike the president’s leftist critics, I wouldn’t dream of denying that the recent developments in the Middle East are the direct result of his decision to uphold the ideals and defend the credibility of the United Nations by invading, liberating and then occupying Iraq. I also suspect that this military muscle flexing on the part of the blue helmets is inspired by it as well.

A few years ago, I wrote a novel that began with a blue-helmeted force of UN Peacekeepers going into combat against a rebel militia force. But I never imagined that less than a decade later, we’d be reading about UN troops going on the offensive in the bloody news.

Robert Novak writes:

For many Republicans, the Bush Social Security bill is beginning to look like a bridge too far. They would like to abandon what they see as an impossible quest. However, the president is committed — a commitment that now is not limited to personal accounts but necessarily includes basic revision of how Social Security is financed and distributed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a first-term Republican senator from South Carolina, has taken the lead in searching for a bill that would attract a few Democrats who are essential for passage. Three months ago, he proposed raising above $90,000 the amount of individual income subject to the Social Security payroll tax in order to pay “transition costs” for personal accounts. That brought down the conservative house on Graham for “negotiating with himself.”

Many things have happened since then. Bush said that raising the tax cap is on the table

Surprise, surprise. Instead of replacing the Ponzi scheme, it appears likely that the total tax base will be raised, thus allowing personal accounts to replace personal income. Which, as I wrote on Monday, would be a net LOSS of freedom, instead of the expansion of freedom it is being portrayed as.

The only good Social Security reform is elimination. Given the enthusiasm of America’s most vocal and politically active group for the program, that would appear to be extremely unlikely.

I must confess a certain sympathy for the sort of progressive, educated, quasi-intellectual who reads The New Yorker and shudders at Fox News. There truly is something horrible about seeing a crowded Macdonalds in Verona, and strolling down the streets of Oxford one realizes that there is virtually no point to tourist shopping, since you can buy precisely the same clothes and whatnot at the Mall of America. The last time I was at the Megamall, what impressed me most was that barring a few digital gadgets I’d probably order online anyhow, I did not see a single thing I wanted to buy.

And I’ll admit, I cringe at the sight of the obese American tourists in their t-shirts and white tennis shoes, farting and shouting at each other as they stroll around Venice. I was at a hotel in Amsterdam a few years ago, and the contrast between two families in the hotel’s living room – one Italian, one American – could not have been more stark. The two Italian children were quietly sitting on a couch next to their parents, drinking wine with them. The supersized American parents were talking so loudly that I could understand every word of their conversation from across the room, while their two roly-poly teenagers were doing reverse somersaults over the back of another couch.

I was alone, engrossed in a worn English copy of The Prisoner of Zenda and a glass of wine, when the Italian girl glanced at me and caught me staring with horror at the out-of-control kids. She glanced at them, shook her head and said: “Come animali, che brutto!” Needless to say, I did not feel any strong urge to leap to the defense of my fellow countrymen. At that moment, I probably would have preferred to confess to being a Frenchman first.

Europeans also have a great respect for literature which is delightful. Most homes possess a library that is more than a mere smattering of books, most of which are not the King-Clancy-Grisham fare that Americans overwhelmingly find so absorbing. However, their servile nature is downright frightening to any red-blooded American, even an elitist, as their resignation to whatever lunacy their socialist governments are currently wrapped up in inflicting on them is complete. If the price of culture is gas chambers and gulags, it is far too high.

Anyhow, if the Europhile elitists have a point about what Umberto Eco describes as the absence of culture, (for in Apocalypse he explains at some length how the concept of mass culture is inherently oxymoronic), they also miss the larger one. First, every individual has a perfect right to his tastes, regardless of how appalling they might be. Second, in a world without Wayne Newton and Britney Spears, there would be no one for the devotees of Wagner and Calvino to despise.

And where would be the fun in that?

From the Rev. Moon-owned UPI:

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, “Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as ‘the ways of reason and science,’ is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance.”

I don’t completely agree with the ignorance bit, although I’ve been open to it ever since hearing the lamentations of a mother who didn’t believe in discipline complaining about the latest shenanigans of her son while happening to have a Bible open to the bit about an undisciplined child being a mother’s curse. I suppose

But most atheists are hopelessly irrational, being moral parasites wholly dependent upon the very belief systems in which they claim no faith.

And before anyone begins an indignant commentary on how they have personally developed their own highly refined moral system, consider these two points. 1. Is it likely that the extraordinarily close similarities between the moralities of your supposedly independent system, every other atheist’s supposedly independent system and the heavily Christian system by which Western culture is dominated is simply a huge coincidence? 2. Whence come the moralities of those atheists who, by every indication, have given no thought whatsoever to the matter?

One theme that pops up quite often when success, or the lack of it, enters the discussion, is jealousy. The presumption appears to be that one must always be jealous of another in a similar field who is more popular. But a comparison of two recent columns should demonstrate my take on the situation, which boils down to the point that since most people harbor pedestrian interests, mass popularity usually requires some amount of willingness to pander to the mediocre mean.

For example, in a recent post, I mocked a certain column, the headline of which breathlessly announced the discovery of a dangerous new practice by teenagers. A few days later, I wrote a column on a deceptive stock market practice which is undeniable, yet significant and understood by very few. It also dealt tangentially with what is suggested to be one of the most important long-term initiatives of the current presidential administration.

Interestingly, almost twice as many people opted to read about the dangerous “new” practice even though it has been around for decades and almost certainly has a minimal effect on almost everyone. Now, this doesn’t surprise me, given my generally low regard for the popular tastes of a world in which Britney Spears is one of the most popular “singers” in the world, but it may be contrary to the understanding of some people who believe that those who follow the news are more intelligent and less addicted to pop culture than the norm.

Ultimately, there is a choice. One can either devote oneself to pandering to the popular tastes, or writing about one’s own interests with the full knowledge that many readers simply will not be interested. I have no doubt that a column headlined “Britney’s Sex Secrets” would draw an even bigger readership than decades-late alarmism, but I am also convinced that were Dante to draw up modern circles of Hell, one of them would require damned intellectuals to subsist on a library comprised entirely of People and US magazines.

The genius of the free market is that it gives people what they want. That is also its curse. I don’t think most writers are particularly jealous of a writer who achieves popularity by writing about utter trivialities, any more than most women are jealous of Jenna Jameson. Success always comes at a price, and some prices are simply too high to pay.

Walter Anderson, a telecommunications entrepreneur who used the pseudonym Mark Roth, was arrested on Saturday at Washington’s Dulles airport after arriving from London. He was charged with evading more than $200m in taxes over five years and faces up to 80 years in prison if found guilty. He reportedly pleaded innocent….

Mark Everson, commissioner of the IRS, on Monday acknowledged that the US tax authority’s efforts to pursue tax evaders had declined in the mid-1990s. But he said Monday’s news was a sign that the IRS was getting back on track. The IRS and Justice Department said they received co-operation from four unidentified countries during its investigation of Mr Anderson but they refused to comment on what prompted the investigation.

Hark, the first sign of spring! The annual IRS show trials.

DP doesn’t sweat the details:

For someone who loves to periodically crow about how brilliant he is, and who usually demonstrates the truth of that, today’s column on measuring the stock market based on indices was amazingly naive and stupid. Anyone who would invest in the group of stocks making up the Dow in 1965 and never make any trades, which is what your analysis assumes, would have to be dumber than your column. The same is true for anyone who would invest in the mix of stocks making up the pre-2000 NASDAQ and never make changes. No one ever does that. The way most people invest is through mutual funds. The most common way of tracking performance of any fund is by comparing it to the index which most closely mirrors the fund’s investment objective, and that comparison includes the changes in the appropriate index. Many funds perform better than their comparable index, even with its changes in composition (the composition of the fund is also constantly changing–that’s why there is a fund manager), and when the fund’s performance is significantly less than the index, it experiences a mass exodus of assets.

DP somehow manages to completely miss the point while inserting his foot in his mouth, which is that historical analysis by index is misleading because investors BUY INDIVIDUAL STOCKS, not because they occupy themselves constructing their own little index-matching funds. Furthermore, around 88 percent of mutual funds underperform their index of comparison, and while 12 percent may be “many” it is certainly not “most”.

Theory is a fine place to begin, but one has to learn to abandon it in the face of actual evidence.

PS sees a little Fonz action going on:

I think you may have ‘jumped the shark.’ I read everything and agree with the vast majority of what you write, but subverting the private ownership of retirement accounts (something you would be presumably be in favor of ideologically) on the basis of your dislike for its proponent (and his overall political philosophy) does not seem to me to have been done out of a desire on your part to function as a paragon of enlightenment and virtue.

Your argument was set up very nicely rhetorically, but your desire to see such an initiative fail seems a bit petty to me: “But this does not mean that the Bush administration’s plan to allow a modicum of private investment in the stock market is necessarily a winner or even an expansion of individual freedom in America.” How about substantiating this assertion instead of proceeding to do something analogous to a Democratic ‘scare the old people’ scam?

This made me think of a story from an Ann Coulter column a number of years ago . . . with you cast in the role of the Russian, I’m sorry to say: “There’s a joke about a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Russian who are told they have only one day until the end of the world. The Frenchman says he will spend his last day with a bottle of Bordeaux and a beautiful woman. The Englishman says he will take his favorite sheepdog for a walk across the moors. The Russian says he will burn down his neighbor’s house. I’m with the Russian.”

I’ve enjoyed your columns for a long time . . . but think this one appears to me to be going down a new and different road.

Yes, and many people thought NAFTA was actually about free trade too. Not so many believe that now. I have no objection whatsoever to people controlling their financial assets or making money in the market, but the Bush plan is MANIFESTLY not about returning freedom, (not to mention money), to America’s workers, but is intended instead to shore up a failing government program. You’ll notice that the emphasis is on fixing and funding Social Security, not eliminating it so that people can keep their 15 percent and do whatever they want to do with it.

I don’t hope the Bush plan will fail if enacted. I don’t have to. I know it will. My opposition to the plan is not based on it being proposed by Bush – I predicted that Social Security money would be moved into the markets back in 1998 – but because it is a overt measure to use government force to inject more money into the stock markets.

My position is the same as it was when I was on the board of a company being acquired by a public company. The CEO, who was staying on with the new owners and was acting as their sock puppet, argued vociferously for accepting a stock deal, because “the investors want to be invested in industry X”. I won the rest of the board over by pointing out the obvious – that in accepting a cash deal, every single investor who wanted to be invested in industry X could do so by using their cash to buy the publicly traded stock of the new owners.

None of this is to say that the Bush plan is worse than the existing Ponzi scheme. It isn’t. But don’t pretend that it is a massive blow for freedom and the individual investor either. It’s not intended to be.