Kim Jong Unstable

Kim Jong Un, the Supreme Brat of North Korea, has been making a lot of fuss about war in recent weeks. It all started back in early March, when the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed new sanctions on the reclusive state. The ruler of this starving, bankrupted nation was deeply offended and angered when these sanctions on luxury yachts and jewelry were approved. Kim Jong was Unamused North Korea responded to the sanctions by cutting of contact with South Korea across the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. 

After a little while, the North started up a new line of rhetoric, saying that it reserved the right of a preemptive strike on the United States, and that it would turn Seoul, the capital of South Korea, into a "sea of fire". 

North Korea continued acting out, having military drills and reopening nuclear plants.  On March 11, the North Korean army declared that the armistice treaty that put a pause on the Korean War, to be "invalid," and that the North had entered a "state of war" with the South. Recently, Little Kim, as he is known to the news media, had missiles moved to the east coast of the country, pointed toward the United States. 

This week, North Korea reported that the "moment of explosion" was soon approaching. Russian officials have been in close contact with South Korea, Japan, the US, and the UK, after the North Korean government told them that the Russian and other foreign embassies will not be able to be protected after April 10th.  

North Korean missiles are not expected by anyone to reach the United States, but South Korea and Japan are a much different story. I, personally, don't find it likely that the North would carry out any military action, because China has condemned the idea. You see, on the international stage, North Korea is like a spoiled toddler, and China is its mom. If, however, Kim Jong Unafraid decides to fully embrace the Juche idea of self-reliance that North Korea is founded on, and carry out a strike on any of its neighbors, it will be the end of the Kim dynasty, and the Koreas will most likely be reunified. The joint US-South Korean forces located in South Korea will gain control of the country, and China will probably be too overwhelmed with refugees to stop it. We Americans would then be able to retry what we planned for the Iraq war: take out the evil dictator, put the good guys in charge, and get out.

My favorite part of this whole series of events has been when Anonymus, the computer network hacker group, actually hacked the North Korean government. That goes to show how powerful Anonymus is. They hacked the government's network, put ridiculous pictures on the state media sites, and even recovered 1500 email addresses from state officials. 

(This is a pretty awesome picture that Anonymus posted)

Analyzing the Tech Wars: Who Will Win?

At the turn of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and J.P. Morgan's General Electric were duking it out for to see just who would bring light to the homes of America. Now,  we find ourselves in the 21st century, and a similar battle is taking place. We are today in the midst of the Tech Wars.

The Backstory

The Tech Wars started in 1985, when Microsoft came out with the first Windows operating system. The Mac OS X system was born only one month earlier, and it introduced the magical technology of GUIs, or graphic user interfaces. The GUI revolutionized computer by making computers the least degree user friendly. Before GUI, the only way to operate a computer was by typing flawless lines of command prompt code. Needless to say, both Microsoft and Apple jumped on the innovation.

Then, everything changed. In 1990, the first web browser was released. The browser was originally called WorldWideWeb, but became known as Nexus. Microsoft countered by releasing Internet Explorer. 

A mini-war, known as the Browser War, was short lived. Internet Explorer did, but does not continue to dominate web browsing, but there will be more on that later on. Meanwhile, the U.S. government had given up neutrality in the Tech Wars and took a stance against Microsoft. It was apparent that Bill Gates had monopolized the PC industry. The trial of United States v. Microsoft began on May 18, 1998, when the  Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states sued Microsoft for disposing of competition in order to protect and extend its software monopoly. In October 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued Microsoft for violating a 1994 consent decree by forcing computer makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of Windows software. 

Bill Gates was called "evasive and nonresponsive" by a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his deposition. He argued over the definitions of words such as "compete", "concerned", "ask", and "we". Businessweek reported that "early rounds of his depostition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of email Gates both sent and received." Intel Vice-President Steve McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president, as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free.

On June 7, 2000, the court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its "remedy". According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.

In January 1996, while the trial was in its twilight, two Stanford PhD students were beginning a research project. The project went through many names, including PageRank and BackRub, but the final name was eventually chosen: Google.

The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. The name "Google" is actually a play on on the word "googol" Googol is the number 1 followed by one hundred 0's.

Google's original homepage

Google's first production server

Google is currently in an attempt to slowly win the Tech Wars outright, but there will be more on that later on.

On November 10th, 2001, a new battlefield was burst into by Apple, when they introduced the first iPod. iTunes arrived on the seen in January, 2000. There have since been four lines of iPod: the classic, shuffle, nano, and touch.

While Windows XP, the then and still now most widely used computer operatring system was flourishing, It was a cold night at Harvard in February, 2004. Another new battleground was found when Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook. 

Facebook was ruler of social networks, even called "The Social Network," but little did Zuckerberg know that his status was about to update. On March 21, 2006, a new social network was formed with a courageous battle cry, or more appropriately, tweet. Twitter and Google+ are simultaneously plotting a coup to overthrow Mark Zuckerberg as you read these very words.

Today

So, who exactly is ahead in the Tech Wars. We shall now break the battle down, topic by topic.

Computers

As we can see, Microsoft clearly crushes all competition when it comes to computer usage and operating systems. 

By far, the most widely used Windows system is XP.

As far as smartphones go, the result is not as expected.

Websites

While Facebook is on the decline, it is still up toward the top of the website list. Twitter still has a long way to go, but Google has extended its tentacles and seizes control of the World Wide Web with a combined 1.35 million monthly visitors to the Google homepage and the google-owned YouTube.

Facebook comes in 2nd with 700 thousand monthly visitors, half that of Google's sites.

Yahoo! is in 3rd with 500 thousand. Who still uses Yahoo!, anyway. Yahoo! is to Google as MySpace is to Facebook. Wikipedia, MSN, Amazon, and Ebay all then preeed Twitter, which receives 200 thousand monthly visitors. 

At number 10 is Bing. Bing gets 165 thousand views a month. Bing is an acronym for "Because It's Not Google," and because it's not Google, Microsoft's search engine has no chance in the internet game. Bing is to Google as Amazon is to iTunes. Stay in software, Billy.

On the other hand, Microsoft and Google are neck-and-neck in the browser wars.

Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox

Money

The almighty dollar is the driving force in the Tech Wars. The battle for cash is a four-horse race between Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook.

No one touches Bill Gates in personal fortunes.

Apple, though, leads the way in company value.

Apple: $176 Billion

Microsoft: $121 Billion

Google: $93 Billion

Facebook: N/A

Wild Card: Google

Google is the wild card in this war because it is the only competitor to have a popular search engine (Google), video site (YouTube), browser (Chrome), computer (Chromebook), and social network (Google+).

The winner of the Tech Wars will ultimately be in sole control of the most powerful thing ever created by humankind: the Internet.

(The internet as shown by site traffic Google is the brightest dot.)

Second Amendment Gone Wild!

Our nation of reactionary sheep has had a lot of talk about guns since that December massacre. Most people have learned who Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are, and a Marist poll has shown that more than 95% of our country has opinions on new gun control legislation. In fact, a Marist poll reports that 60% of those polled favor stricter laws in general (including 43% of gun owners); 59% are in favor of banning assault weapons; an overwhelming eighty-seven percent support universal background checks before gun sales, while only 12% oppose. It is amazing that in a democracy, the people's opinion has so little to do with legislation. What really matters is the wants of special interest groups, and what scares me is that an NRA spokesman said this week that the group advocates having more guns in schools. Historically speaking, that hasn't worked out to well. Thankfully, Connecticut's senate passed new laws yesterday banning high capacity magazines and 100   weapons that had previously been legal.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. I was struck when finding two similarly crazy stories two days in a row. 

In Texas, the Armed Citizens Project has been raising money in order to give people free guns. Once people pass a background check and a safety course, the Project is just giving out guns. Here you go! 

A town north of Atlanta is upping the Texans in this Second Amendment game of chicken. Nelson, Georgia's city council voted to mandate gun ownership. To be fair, the ordinance is not quite as crazy as it sounds at first. It excludes felons, and people known to be mentally ill, but applies to everyone else. That is, unless any citizen objects to gun ownership. That has to be the most useless law I've ever heard of. All citizens are required to own guns, unless they don't want to. 

It'd be fun to watch if the game of chicken continued. Imagine if some state, like Kentucky for instance, set up stands on the street where people could check out guns for an hour or two. Then, maybe in Mississippi, all cars will be fitted with Gatling guns othe roof, while over in Alabama, all citizens' houses will have rocket launchers attached to them. Roll tide!

I just had to post this guy. He was protesting the gun laws in Connecticut. His sign on the right side of the picture is hilarious. First he says, "ConnecTicuT!!!" with spastic capitalization and three exclamation points. Then below a version of the USSR flag, he says, "The unconstitional STaTe!!!" First of all, he has more of his capitalized T's and three exclamation marks, but what really makes the picture what it is is the fact that he misspells "unconstitutional". How educated we Americans are!