The Unreasonable Man

Dutch parliament has fallen. So here is the story as I understand it.. oh the tangled webs we weave:

• A number of years ago, Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali flew in from Somalia and requested asylum in the Netherlands.
• Asylum was granted.
• She went on to gain Dutch citizenship and to become successful politician; an MP for the VVD, in fact, a party that has right-wing anti-foreigner (and anti-Islam) sentiments high in its list of issues.
• Her friend Theo van Gogh was scandalously killed for slandering Islam in a movie she wrote.
• She recently talked to TV and admitted (again) that she had bent the truth a little during the asylum procedure.
• The minister for “foreigners’ affairs”, also a VVD minister, i.e. a minister for a party that does not like foreigners, forced her to resign and told the nation immediately that Ms Hirsi Ali would be losing her Dutch citizenship (if only ‘immigration’ always worked so quickly).
• A public outcry ensued over all this. Not everyone in the Netherlands is a xenophobe.
• A few days ago, the minister finally relented, but made Ms Hirsi Ali sign a confession to the effect that it was all her fault and that she has misled the minister. Intrigue and politics a la “24″, with “homeland security” and its evil plans.
• Ms Hirsi Ali signed the confession - under duress (no choice, or lose passport).
• Another public outcry ensued. Several Government coalition parties attacked the minister and wanted her out of that particular position. The prime minister refused to consider that.
• The government fell over this today. New elections will be held.

And all this over foreigners. The Dutch do not like foreigners. Everyone should be white, Christian, and Aryan, and speak Dutch “or go back to their own countries”. I know the VVD party quite well - I was a member and local PR official, and left because of its virulent anti-foreigner attitudes. I always thought these shortsighted attitudes would bite the party back in the end. It seems that this has happened.

Now the Queen gets to appoint the people who form the new government. Talk about lack of democracy: the queen of the Netherlands has incredible political power. Who was she ever elected by?

Am I unusual? I listen to music in its original language, and when that language is not English, I always find the lyrics and take the time to translate and understand them. Thanks to Tom Jobim, Manu Chao, Mecano, Angelo Branduardi, and many others I therefore understand more Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian than would otherwise be the case. The Latin languages seem to be what I listen to.

In a way I am a bit like that alien on Star Trek that could only speak in metaphor. “Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra”. “Uzani, his army with fists open”. “Shaka, when the walls fell”. “Ri and Jiri at Lunga. Ri of Luwani, Luwani under two moons. Jiri, of Umbaya. Umbaya of crossed roads, at Lunga. Lunga, her sky grey”.

Similarly, I can only imagine myself dealing with a situation in Brazil by saying “Olha que coisa mais linda, Mais cheia de graça!” or “É ela menina, Que vem que passa!”. “O seu balançado é mais que um poema!”. Of course I would probably be saying that in Brazil anyway…

The iTunes license conditions are mildly amusing:

The Apple Software may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List.

Cool, because just imagine what would happen if Specially Designed Nationals got Music, or if Entities, let alone Denied Entities, had to use iTunes instead of WMP. They’d probably get all violent and stuff.

You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

A very sensible precaution, and a timely one, since I was just sitting here wondering how to use iTunes to create Anthrax, Semtex or Plutonium. If it weren’t for this warning, I might have continued on this path. And just think of what extra damage missiles could do if they were equipped with music.

The irony is that the iPod reached me from Shanghai. The iPod is better than ever:  a large colour screen, and significantly less than the previous thickness. Nice. Maybe now I’ll get into video on the iPod too.

iTunes for the PC really is dumb. I now remember why I said that in the first place.

In Advanced Preferences, I have enabled option “copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library” and disabled option “keep itunes music folder organised (places song files into album and artist folders, and names the songs based on dics number, track number, and the song title“). Read again, I disabled that.

My music folder is in F:\Music. That is where it looks for my music. So when I drag file “Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #2.mp3″ into my library, it then becomes “f:/Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #2.mp3″, right? Right?

Nope. Wrong.

It becomes “f:\Leonard Cohen\The Essential Leonard Cohen\Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #2.mp3″.

Apple, I disabled the “keep itunes music folder organised” option, and you ignore that and do it anyway. Is this a bug, or just a way to discourage me from using iTunes?

For your info, Apple: you should not ignore my setting. I use it for a good reason. Since I download music rather than buying it from your DRM-enabled Apple store, the album is usually not correctly filled in. So I get a thousand or more directories, literally; and I can never use Windows Media player or any other player - I am now wedded to your stilly iTunes.

And that, of course, explains why you introduced this “bug”, to manipulate me. I do not like being manipulated, Apple. It is a shortsighted strategy.

“Chloe, listen to me. I have a thumb-drive that’s going to help you find the syntax. I need you to datamine the files.”

“Upload the drive to my socket, access code 5J55J”

Yes, Jack’s saving America again. CTU always saves America by uploading, either to screens or to sockets, or by opening sockets, and by inventing protocols - and especially, by not following protocols.

Oh but… wait a minute. I just paused the screen at 29 minutes 11 seconds into the 3pm episode. Jack is not uploading to a socket at all: he is sending her an email!!
Worse: Jack is using the SMS application on his Treo 650 to send that email! That will never work: SMS is for phone numbers. And oh shoot, even worse: he got the email address wrong as well: co’brian@CTUGOV.net.. you can’t have quotes in an email address, and surely he means @ctu.gov? Jack is seriously slipping. Chloe’s socket will never get Jack’s drive.

I am back home. I took a few pictures in New York: they are now online here (link)

They include some of the hotel (character) and a few of the rest of Chelsea as well. I love that lantern shop.

I would write more, a lot more. but all this travelling has totally worn me out, so I will now go get some (a lot of) sleep.

New York City. I will be staying at the Chelsea Hotel, at 7th Avenue and 23trd Street. I checked in and left my bag there a few minutes ago. The Chelsea is a place with “character”, and plenty of it.

That means, in Real Estate language, that it is a dump. But a dump with a lot of history. Sid Vicious did his knife death thing there with Nancy Spungeon. Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001, A Space Odyssey” written there. William Burroughs wrote some of his work there. Woody Allen has filmed three films there. Karel Appel stayed there many times and there is an Appel on the wall. And the list goes on, and on. Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Jane Fonda, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan have all stayed there. I am surrounded by Bohemian history. I was of course immediately suckered into taking not the $285 room, but the $325 apartment, oh and that is for two people, and that is per person… it’s a seller’s market. Pictures soon, if I get a chance.

“Why? Why didn’t you message me?”

“I need to get into your utilities volume. What are you doing here anyway?”

“Setting up a new socket. We were overloaded from the NDB database”.

“Edgar, just open the header file and give me his clearance level”.

You’ve guessed right: I am still watching 24, season 5. It is coming up to noon and the intrigues are coming hard and fast as the victims drop. Excellent entertainment.

Tomorrow morning, I am off to New York City for three days. New York, where a Good Deal on a hotel means you pay just $285 a night. The hotel, in Chelsea, has “atmosphere”. I shall bring my camera and try to take some pictures, but am afraid it will be work, work, work. Which is a shame, because Manhattan in early summer is an interesting place to be.

“I know this is not Protocol”. “I’ve set up a link to your desktop”. “You need to post two more people here at point delta. It’s a high probability point of infiltration”. “Can you give me the figures?” “I ran it through a high-res filter so it may take a few seconds to render”. “I should be able to log on remotely”. “The only reason you are still conscious is that I don’t wanna carry you”. “We’re running a Data Recovery operation on his phone records”. “I want her to run a locate”.

Have you guessed what I am watching yet?

Yes. The Fascist “you’re either with us or against us” show Par Excellence, 24, season 5. Using VLC, on my PC.

It is not even 8am and Jack has already coldbloodedly executed one person without any reason or process. But it is OK, he was a bad person, very much a terrorist, you might say. So it is OK - no, it is imperative that he had to be coldbloodledly executed.

Of course as always, the bad guys underestimate Jack (”we’ll take him out once CTU have him under arrest”). Yeah Right. Jack will have them neutralised so fast you won’t even be able to say “set up an encrypted feed to his desktop”. My prediction is that there will be much killing of bad people and torture, even of good people, maybe even turture of Jack’s friends and family, by the good guys, but it will all be necessary to fight terrorism, so it’s OK.

And I’ll tell you what, if anyone ever wants me dead I sure hope I have Jack Bauer and his 9mm protecting me and reluctantly but coldly killing anyone who stands in the way. In 24, I am on the side of “force”, not “choice”, Choice is for wimps, for liberals. Force is what you need when things get tough!

I bought a new dual-core HP PC today. With Windows installed by HP.

Boy, what a mess: I’ll never do that again. The OS represents 30 running tasks; HP takes another 20. And that’s before you run anything. These tasks, and all the other applications on the PC, are only designed to get your money. The many games are “free trials” (some as short as 60-minutes). MS Office is a Free Truial, too. MS Money is apparently an ASP now, and will only work for two years or until September 1998, which ever comes earlier. And then you have to pay MS more money to get access to your own financial data. And so on: the list goes on. On top of that. HP installs a lot of nonsesne, including many megabytes of printer drivers and camera drivers for printers and cameras that I do not have an will never have.

I am now struggling with hundreds of apps that do something, usually as above try to get your money, but HP does not tell you the details. Many of these apps cannot be removed (try removing Network Connections, or whatever it is called, that only exists to sell you MSN, AOL, etc, and that comes back every time you remove it from the menu.)

Why can outfits like HP get away with this? They are abusing their customers. Free trials: yeah right. Half my 2 GB of RAM is used up by the rubbish HP install.

I would do a fresh re-install, but HP will not tell you where the simple drivers are, and Microsoft prevent installs of the OS nowadays with their equally cynical “genuine advantage” program.

I do not want to be a pawn for these guys to squeeze money from. I suppose that the Linux desktop is the only OS that does not do this. I knew that, but the extent to which customers are abused by these companies is really staggering.